meanwhile

To put it more bluntly: the argument is over and you lose.

The thread is over 300 pages long. Saying "I posted something already that proves I am right - it's there, really!" is ludicrous.

Oh - and attempting to discredit a source because it links to a blog somewhere on the page is just silly. The only source the relevant exceprt, which in itself proves you are wrong, relies on is

Robinson, 1996Robinson DL, 1996. Head injuries and bicycle helmet laws. Accident Analysis & Prevention 1996 Jul;28(4):463-75.

..which is hardly a blog. And the chief author of the site I quoted from is the scientist who runs the UK's main helmet testing lab and who is the usual technical expert in UK accident trials where helmet knowledge is needed... He's Brian Walker in the list below:

[TABLE="width: 80%"]
[TR]
[TD]John Adams, Ph.D.[/TD]
[TD]Professor of Geography, University College London, England[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Jean-René Carré[/TD]
[TD]Emeritus Directeur de Recherches, Institut National Recherche & Etudes sur les Transports et leur Sécurité, France[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Dr Mayer Hillman[/TD]
[TD]Senior Fellow Emeritus, Policy Studies Institute, England[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Dr Peter Keller[/TD]
[TD]Wellington Hospital, New Zealand[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Frank Krygowski, MSME, PE[/TD]
[TD]Professor of Mechanical Engineering Technology, Youngstown State University, Ohio, USA. Nationally certified cycling instructor, LCI #315 KC[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Dr Dorothy L Robinson[/TD]
[TD]Adjunct Associate Professor, University of New England, Armidale, Australia[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]John Whitelegg, BA, PhD, FCIT, FILT, FRSA[/TD]
[TD]Professor of Sustainable Transport, Liverpool John Moores University, England[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Gerald J S Wilde, Ph.D.[/TD]
[TD]Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Queen's University, Ontario, Canada[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
[h=3]Editorial Board[/h] The Editorial Board is responsible for the content of cyclehelmets.org.
[TABLE="width: 80%"]
[TR]
[TD="width: 28%"]Avery Burdett[/TD]
[TD="width: 72%"]Accident Researcher; Past President, Ottawa Bicycle Club; Former Director, Citizens for Safe Cycling, Canada[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Guy Chapman[/TD]
[TD]Road Safety Activist, Reading, England[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Bill Curnow[/TD]
[TD]Retired scientist and policy adviser, Canberra, Australia[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Shane Foran, MSc[/TD]
[TD]Safety Analyst, Galway, Ireland[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]John Franklin[/TD]
[TD]Cycling Skills & Safety Consultant, Cheltenham, England[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Riley Geary[/TD]
[TD]Director, Institute for Traffic Safety Analysis, Arlington, Virginia, USA[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Chris Gillham[/TD]
[TD]Journalist and Researcher, Perth, Australia[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Dr Richard Keatinge,
MFPH MRCGP[/TD]
[TD]GP, Anglesey, Wales[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Charlie Lloyd[/TD]
[TD]Transport Researcher, London Metropolitan University, England[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Dr Nigel Perry[/TD]
[TD]Senior Fellow, University of Canterbury, New Zealand[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Dr Dorothy L Robinson[/TD]
[TD]Adjunct Associate Professor, University of New England, Armidale, Australia[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Brian Walker[/TD]
[TD]Director, Head Protection Evaluations, UK[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Dr Peter Ward, MB.BS DCH DRCOG MRCGP[/TD]
[TD]GP Principal, Gateshead, England[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Malcolm Wardlaw, BSc, MBA[/TD]
[TD]Consultant on Cycling, Health and Safety, Edinburgh, Scotland[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

..It's notable, and should be a tip off to anyone with common sense, that while there are many pro-helmet sites on the web they're all either anonymous, sponsored by helmet makers, or edited by Some Guy On The Internet. There is a complete absence of qualified pro-helmet opinion.

wphamilton

Doesn't that "you lose" mean a surrender in the Internet?

The page linked in your article is not a site, it is a blog page. There may be other pages in the site.

The page contains none of the information supporting anything in the article extract.

Stop trying to play "gotcha". You got my attention for a little while, congratulations, but I don't play childish games.




I don't care if you look it up or not. You're one person out of billions, it makes no difference to me whether you find that information, find it and disregard it, or do or not do anything with it. I've posted it.

yugyug

I could speculate about the combined impact speeds of car-bicycle collisions and the danger of pointy things at the backs of trucks, but I don’t really care to because I’m not that interesting in making a claim the helmet standards should be more rigorous. What I did just claim is that the lack of a pen-test makes helmets less safe - to what degree, other here are better informed.

But, for me anyway, when I do wear a helmet, when I know I’ll be riding in very sketchy traffic or fast downhills, I wear a hard shell skateboarder type. Might as well make it count.

yugyug

Australia did actually a pen-test in place for most of the 80s. It was why the iconic Rosebank Stackhat was able to corner the market, because imports didn't comply with the certification. Australia had protectionist trade policies at the time so this worked out well for everyone concerned, and in fact they didn't lose the pen-test requirement until Rosebank had enough time to develop their own soft-shell helmet.

Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with you about the qualities which would really make helmets safer, but it seems to me that if those factors were actioned the resulting helmet would be unwearable for most cyclists. This would draw, from the point of view of helmet makers, unwanted attention to the necessity of helmets in the first place. Policy makers and helmet manufacturers have found the sweet spot in helmet standards where they don't protect enough to help in the worst kinds of accidents, but do protect enough to work make their users feel safe, make the "won't someone think of kids" brigade and politicians feel like they have done something, and make helmet manufacturers a tonne of money.

yugyug

It came out in the very early 80s. Anyone notice the Star Wars influence? Its been pointed out in the Aussie bike forums that its basically a retro ice hockey helmet toughened up with less ventilation to satisfy the penetration test standard.

MMACH 5

As I've said, I'm a helmet nanny. I wear one every time I ride.

If you're donning a helmet to protect you from motor vehicles, it has been shown you are expecting much more than a bicycle or skateboard helmet is designed to deliver.

yugyug

No, my expectations of what such a helmet can do are quite low and commensurate with their capacities.

meanwhile

Not if you are over 8.

There are MULTIPLE cites in that article; which one are you refering to? And why should it matter as the only relevant cite to my point is the one for the data in the extract I used. Which



Robinson, 1996Robinson DL, 1996. Head injuries and bicycle helmet laws. Accident Analysis & Prevention 1996 Jul;28(4):463-75.

..is hardly a blog.

..Says Mr "I don't need any sources".

Really: stop being silly. Look at the names I quoted; anything on the site I used is guaranteed to be at the same level of accuracy as an academic journal because it has passed the same level of review. That you can't get at a copy of


Robinson, 1996Robinson DL, 1996. Head injuries and bicycle helmet laws. Accident Analysis & Prevention 1996 Jul;28(4):463-75.

...is your problem. If you have doubts, pay for your local library to get you a copy.

meanwhile

..However, said toughening up increases the weight. What increases rotational inertia in a crash. Which is the main instrument of serious neurological damage in car-less crashes. So it's probably one of the least safe helmets you can buy.

wphamilton

Only one cite in the portion that you quoted, which I explained in detail and which you're arguing over now.

You don't have a point, unless it's your hackneyed idea that setting a personal context in an introductory paragraph needs some kind of proof with urls submitted.

This is tedious and irrelevant. Back to the message filter from whence you came.

rydabent

I get a chuckle out of the anti helmet crowd listing "papers" that they say prove their point. IMO "papers" are produced by someone that has a preconceived point they want to prove, and their "research" magically always comes out to prove them right. I have a roll of "papers" hanging in the bathroom, and they are pretty much equal to the "papers" the anti helmet crowd list.

Fact------------do helmets work and prevent injury in low speed accidents-----------yes. Do helmets prevent injury or death in high speed accident on the hiway-----------no.

howsteepisit

Once again, rydabent presents opinion as fact, and further ridicules those who would try to determine facts from opinion with rigor. A fine example of cold logic.

meanwhile

"In detail" does not equal COMPETENTLY. The one cite in said portion was of an academic journal, not a blog. My god, man, is this hard? It has page numbers, publication date, and an easily searchable journal name! Again:


Robinson, 1996Robinson DL, 1996. Head injuries and bicycle helmet laws. Accident Analysis & Prevention 1996 Jul;28(4):463-75.

..Complaining that this is a blog is just bizarre.

meanwhile

Rydabent famously claimed that being hit head-on by a truck at speed is safer on a recumbent because you don't have as far to fall to the ground...

meanwhile

So basically you're an ignorant man and resent people who are smarter and better educated than you? Well, that's one of *my* preconceived ideas confirmed...

wphamilton

I don't know why anyone would argue with this - it could be a starting point for discussion.

meanwhile

Yes, it could. But in fact you junked that possibility by refusing to engage with the statistics which show that virtually all crashes that result in serious injury or death involve high speed hits from cars.

The reality is this simple: the energy limits of cycling helmets are so low that they only work in crashes where the chance of serious injury is virtually non-existent. Which is unsurprising when consider that they are an inch of packing foam with a 1 mm shell of hard plastic on top.

(Actually, the above is an over-simplifcation. Unlike you actually know what I'm talking about - I have a physics degree - and the helmet spec is probably wrong for producing helmets that mitigate even low speed falls effectively. Stronger shells and anti-rotation features are needed; the impact model that was used simply wrong. You could find out more about this if you did any research, but I doubt that will happen..)

yugyug

To my knowledge the studies on rotational concussion didn't come out until the 90s? Anecdotally the bigger problem was heatstroke.

Anyway, you can't buy it now, except on ebay - for anywhere between 10c and a gazillion dollars . It guess it has retro-cool - I saw a wannabe hipster wearing one the other day. If he was a true hipster he would just break the law and not wear a helmet at all though

meanwhile

A question for helmet advocates: how to do you imagine helmet testing to ensure they match required certifcation levels works???

meanwhile

Indeed. The point is that increasing penetration resistance doesn't really help with safety and may make helmets worse. Like space launchers, cycling helmets suffer the problem that most design changes to increase performance in one area make it worse in another. Helmets require strength, but strength requires weight, and weight makes rotation worse. The only way out of this is by using materials with exceptional strength to weight - but they're very expensive and often have other problems (eg kevlar hates UV.)

To be blunt, most people are not very smart or prone to deep thinking. They look at a helmet and if it is helmet shaped they think "Helmet! Safe!" Rather like a child painting stripes on a soapbox racer thinks they will make it go faster. But real engineering isn't like this: it's full of trade-offs and complexities, and if you get a safety model wrong - which was probably the case with cycling helmets - you may do more harm than good. Helmets are designed around linear impact, but they should be design around rotation - and engineering to reduce linear impact may well make rotation worse.

wphamilton

I'll not comment on his alleged inclinations but there's not much wrong with the opinion he expressed here.

For example, and this was selected almost randomly from a simple Google search.
Effectiveness of Bicycle Safety Helmets in Preventing Head Injuries

"Main Results.—There were 3390 injured bicyclists in the study; 29% of cases and 56% of controls were helmeted. Risk of head injury in helmeted vs unhelmeted cyclists adjusted for age and motor vehicle involvement indicate a protective effect of 69% to 74% for helmets for 3 different categories of head injury: any head injury (odds ratio [OR], 0.31; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.26-0.37), brain injury (OR, 0.35; 95% CI, 0.25-0.48), or severe brain injury (OR, 0.26; 95% CI, 0.14-0,48). "

This is not an unusual result for this type of study. If I were to take issue with Ryadabent here it would be because "There was no effect modification by age or motor vehicle involvement (P=.7 and P=.3)." which would does not exclude the possibility that helmets can have some effectiveness even in collisions with higher speed vehicles.

To further illustrate the latter possibility, Accident Analysis & PreventionVolume 19, Issue 3, June 1987, Pages 183–190 concluded "a statistically significant association between helmet use and reduced severity of head injury. The association persisted after adjustment for age and sex of rider, and severity of crash forces. "

Again and again, this has been presented so often that we're flogging a dead horse. Injury patterns in cyclists attending an accident and emergency department: a comparison of helmet wearers and non-wearers "Results - There were no significant differences between the two groups with respect to type of accident or nature and distribution of injuries other than those to the head. Head injury was sustained by 4/114 (4%) of helmet wearers compared with 100/928 (11%) of non-wearers (P=0.023). ...Conclusion: The findings suggest an increased risk of sustaining head injury in a bicycle accident when a motor vehicle is involved and confirm protective effect of helmet wearing for any bicycle accident."

meanwhile

..Emphasis on **simple**: this is the same group of researchers who cheated to produce the 85% figure for the helmet company! And the methodology is exactly the same and so stupid that even a child shouldn't be fooled. They took two completely unalike groups and blamed the difference on helmets. Which, honestly, is stupid - people who bike salmon and ride drunk don't wear helmets but are about ten times as likely to be be injured. You can only meaningfully compare alike groups. Which is why the only meaningful studies are the ones using figures from countries introducing helmet laws.


...And this isn't even subtly bad science - it's a basic gross breach of methodology.

As was this:


To further illustrate the latter possibility, Accident Analysis & PreventionVolume 19, Issue 3, June 1987, Pages 183–190 concluded "a statistically significant association between helmet use and reduced severity of head injury

...That study was based on self-reporting and relies heavily on fudge factors for adjusting results; it's therefore junk. Especially when it is contradicted by results from the same country that were not self-reported and which used a vastly greater sample size, which was the case post MHLs. This is basic science: larger, better randomized samples always obsolete smaller ones

Suggestion: could you tell us what qualifications you have that allow you to decide which studies are valid and which are not? And whether you are even making a common sense attempt (eg googling "rivara helmet study criticism" which would have got eg A case-control study of the effectiveness of bicycle safety helmets) to check validity?

Because my suspicion at the moment is that you're completely intellectually incompetent and are making no effort at checking at all..

meanwhile

..Let's talk about basic common sense:

- You have a study from authors sponsored by a helmet maker

- The US government officially announces their key paper is meaningless and either incompetent or biased

- Their work disagrees with authorative, robust independent studies by organizations like the DTI

...And your answer is to ignore the independent studies and concentrate on results that favour your personal opinions, even they come from proven cheats/incompetents?

mconlonx

Yeah, and I remember a bare-head advocate once telling me "Do your own research" when I asked for a link to a paper they'd previously quoted...

Someone posted a newer study -- done in 2013 or 2014 -- which indicated that helmets do reduce instances of head injuries. To no surprise at all, study found that helmets were most effective regarding less than serious injury -- most effective at mitigating mild injury; less effective with moderate injury -- but it was found that there was also some effectiveness at reducing rates of serious head injury. I don't know that anyone was able to refute the findings of that newer study, and it stands in contrast to those claiming helmets are ineffective regarding serious head injury, which is certainly why I found it notable and worth paying attention to.

meanwhile

It's not like the tricks used in that paper are even hard to understand (or uncommon: they saturate the pharma industry).

A case-control study of the effectiveness of bicycle safety helmets
is very difficult to determine the benefit of a treatment by comparing groups who choose to take it with those who do not. A combined analysis of 30 studies, all or which compared women who chose to use Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) with non-users, estimated that HRT reduced the risk of heart disease by 50%. But when the bias of self-selection was avoided by choosing at random who would take HRT, it was found that HRT may even increase the risk of heart disease! The higher socioeconomic status of women who chose HRT may have been associated with other factors such as better diet and more exercise. This, not HRT, was the real cause of their lower rate of heart disease (Lawlor, Smith and Ebrahim, 2004). As noted above, cyclists who choose to wear helmets differ considerably from non-wearers. The study of bike/motor vehicle collisions found that helmet wearers also had much less serious non-head injuries. These differences, rather than helmets, may also explain their lower rate of head injuries.

...You simply can't compare unalike groups robustly. When you introduce fudge factors, as the authors above did, to supposdely compensate then the results can be anything you want depending on how you set those fudges. Now, if you have excellent data and are very honest and competent, you can get good answers - but the authors here are proven incompetents/liars! wham had even been told this and shown unequivocal evidence - but it seems like doing something as simple as checking an author name is beyond him!

And most of all, fudge factor studies NEVER outweigh studies that don't need fudges. In and this case such studies exist and conclusiely disprove the claims made.