I just visited this thread after some time away and come to a similar conclusion: same mean-spirited, misleading arguments, different day. What's with the repeated red herrings about head injuries in other activities? When the thread is about bicycle helmets, why obfuscate the matter or resort to thinly veiled mockery by telling people that if they want to wear a helmet when cycling, they better wear one under other circumstances? Why use cycling's overall health benefits as a tool with which to bludgeon others who don't share the same views? Whether cycling is better overall than a couch-potato lifestyle for reducing the incidence of heart disease etc. doesn't directly address the potential for head injuries, whether or not helmets can reduce/prevent them, whether particular helmet laws are just or valid, etc.

E.g.:

Sounds like someone is trying to divert the attention away from the issue at hand by switching the discussion to falls. That page doesn't even discuss what type of falls: falls from ladders, falls in the bathtub, falls off a bicycle...?

What does that have to do with cycling-related head injuries or helmet efficacy?

So if you draw a different conclusion or disagree, you're against cycling or its health benefits? That's like how earlier in this thread a study was being used to supposedly "show" that helmet laws reduce the number of cyclists, implying that if you support such laws, you're somehow anti-cyclist.

"experts have to say is riding a bike lengthens a life" seems like a radical oversimplification of at least one of the articles linked above:

Direct link: http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/con...urcetype=HWCIT

which does not directly address the potential for cycling head injury or helmet efficacy.

If the goal is to abuse or misuse studies, you could quote that same article as telling us "Bicycling to work was inversely related to years of education" and come to the "conclusion" that only ignorant people cycle to work.

Six

It doesnt surprise me that besides being against helmets, you would also slam bents.

There is an old adage----------we get too soon old, and too late smart. Im sure that as you get older, you will get smarter to. You will come to learn all the pain and problems of a DF bike does not have to be endured. Dont bother to tell me that after several hours on a DF bike doesnt cause pain. I rode DF bikes for 60 year, I know. The plain fact is almost everyone would ride further and faster on a bent.

Btw and yes even tho my bent bike and bent trike is far safer than an DF bike, I still wear my helmet on both all the time.

it places it in context.

you may do otherwise of course, but I don't think it's helps people riding bikes.

If you don't place the argument in context, you're making a prejudicial argument

We also have ample proof that old does not necessarily equal smart. And we have ample proof that DF bicycles do not have to be uncomfortable. Frankly, the argument that you never figured out how to make bicycles work for you so ended up on a wheeled sofa is not very persuasive, either for your claim that recumbents are superior or that you are smarter than the rest of us.

Regarding the argument about helmet efficacy and the dangers of non-cycling activities, it should be fairly obvious. If a person claims that helmets are necessary for cyclists because cyclists are at risk of head injury, then logic only dictates that anyone at risk of head injury should wear a helmet. It makes no sense at all to single out a single "risky" activity for protection while completely ignoring all the other ones. The obvious conclusion is that people demanding all cyclists wear helmets while having nothing to say about, for example, bareheaded car occupants, are not really concerned about safety so much as they are outraged that their personal opinions are not taken as gospel by all other cyclists.

If we're going to conflate stuff, then your prejudice against 'bents does views on helmets no favor. Who's going to take you seriously if you're willing to dismiss something as innocuous as recumbent bicycles? Might you be bringing that kind of attitude to the table with your views on helmets...?

I'm not especially concerned with how you take me. Frankly, my true opinion of helmet pushers gets my posts removed, so I quite obviously do have an "attitude" WRT to helmets.

I hate that you confirm rydabent's views.

As noted, it adds terribly important context. Most people assess risk in all activities they participate in, at least to a minor degree. Therefore, if people find activity x is not risky and does not require special protection, it stands to reason that if activity y has similar risks, they also will decide they don't require special protection.

The reason we have not seen this is because in places like America, where fear-mongering and paranoia in regards to danger is rampant, coupled with misunderstandings on how a helmet works and risks associated with cycling, leads to people making uninformed choices. In places like continental Europe, where there is less a culture of fear and cycling is well-known, you see far fewer people choosing helmets (and more cycling in general). That's why context is so important.

I'm not sure what your beef is here. Studies show that mandatory helmet laws act as a disincentive to cycling... is that the part you disagree with? If so, why? Just logic? Or do you have a factual reason for believing that? (honest question)

Is it that cycling extends life? This should be obvious that a lifestyle centered around exercise in a society without a focus on exercise will see an increase in health, but there are multiple studies showing this as well. Is this what you disbelieve?

If neither of those, I'm not sure I'm clear on your complaint? Those two together obviously at least point to the fact that mandatory helmet laws are a net detriment to society's health, and may have a cost on our society because of it. That seems to pertain directly to cycling advocacy, wouldn't you think?

The context is cycling :) The questions ultimately boil down to the following, as I see it:

Can you hurt your head while cycling? What is the likelihood and possible types/severity of injury?
Can helmets help mitigate or prevent head injuries while cycling?

The rest is simply personal preference. It's not about forcing someone to be consistent across all endeavors. If a helmet can prevent/lessen head injuries while cycling, and if someone chooses to protect themselves with one while cycling but not elsewhere, so what? That just means they choose to lessen danger to themselves part of the time. And if it turns out after exhaustive scientific research that helmets irrefutably provide no benefit or actively cause harm, then it's still a personal preference whether to wear one or not (barring laws to the contrary). Live and let live.

Where helmet laws are concerned, you can a) make a factual legal argument as to why one is/isn't invalid or b) voice a political opinion about how or when government should mandate citizens' behavior. With the latter, we're again in the realm of personal preference. Live and let live.

six

Again this is a cycling forum. If you have an interest is helmet safety doing other things, go to that forum and post your heart out.

Then no pain on a DF. That is an outright lie in the same class as "tastes just as good as fresh perked"!!! As I have said before, 99%+ bent riders have thousands of miles on DF bikes before we got smart and moved to bents. The advantages of bents are numerous including being far more safe. Yet even at that I still think that wearing a helmet is wise.

That's charitably granting some people a perhaps unrealistic level of cool consistency, logic, and researching :)

Could you please link the studies? The only one I've found with any level of detail is one mentioned earlier in the thread that discusses helmet laws in Australia and a reduction in cycling there. Having read through that study, I did not find the author's conclusion about that issue to be convincing in its own right (concurrence does not equal causality), and certainly not something that could be generalized to all times/places as some universal predictor of behavior.

What I disagree with is underhanded scare tactics that casually throw out the notion that helmet laws reduce the number of cyclists, implying in the process that if someone supports helmet laws, he must therefore be against cycling. ("If you're not with me, you're against me.") We're also supposed to casually assume that fewer cyclists is inherently problematic; like most things, it perhaps has both benefits and drawbacks for different groups.

Further, if helmets laws reduced the number of cyclists, there would be two sides to consider: the laws and the people choosing not to ride because of the law. Would such a law be at fault (if fault there be), or would the fault lie with people deciding not to ride solely because their government makes them wear a helmet?

I have no doubt cycling offers various health benefits. But that does not address the potential for head injury while cycling or whether helmets can be helpful. Weightlifting, running, tennis, etc. offer health benefits, but that does not mean one cannot be injured while participating or take certain efforts to possibly prevent injury.

I like to draw parallels between cycling and other activities.

There are some people that wear a helmet for EVERY bicycle ride and some of those people go out of their way to tell other cyclists that they're stupid or crazy for not adhering to their protection level requirements. There are not many other activities that have such a large number of participants that take such a tough stance on protection levels. Some ice skaters wear helmets for some applications but almost none wear one for every skate session. Same for skateboarders. Same for trail runners (here almost none wear helmets.) Same for skiers.

Very odd, if you ask me.

Cute, but you're avoiding the point of the answer I've given you.

No, it's not about forcing people to be consistant across all endeavors. It's more about people being hypocritical or portraying cycling as more dangerous than it is.

If the risk of head injury while on a bike is no greater than it is off a bike, I fail to see a logical point in using or promoting the use of a helmet while on a bike but not off it.

If it can be shown that cycling results in fewer head injuries, damage is done because when the focus is on the unlikely, rather than the likely, the likely will occur more often

The desperation in this attempt to ignore points that eviscerate your argument is obvious.

I'm saddened to see that, despite repeated claims about how smart and experienced you are, you still don't understand that your experience is not the same as everyone's experience. That you can't ride a bicycle without pain - or without falling off of it and landing on your head - doesn't mean that nobody else can. If you can reach the realization that we are all individuals, with individual experiences and abilities, then perhaps you will begin to see the error in trying to force your views on everyone else.

Not avoiding it, rather stating that it's ultimately neither here nor there. If someone is a statistician interested in the relative head injury rates across different endeavors, I can understand wanting to line them up for comparison. But this is a cycling forum for cyclists, and the thread is about bicycle helmets.

One could turn that around and say "It's more about people being hypocritical or portraying cycling as less dangerous than it is." The danger can be looked at two ways: statistics (for what they're worth) and personal assessment (for what that's worth). Obviously people are drawing different conclusions both ways, so that's not necessarily hypocritical or false-faced.

The only real hypocrisy I've noted in this thread is certain people claiming they don't care whether others wear helmets and then browbeating the people who wear them or espouse wearing them.

That "if" is up in the air. And it does make sense. Earlier Six jours made a point somewhat similar to yours:

But that doesn't necessarily follow. Cyclists naturally focus on things that are important/interesting to them, viz. cycling issues. Is someone not really pro-environment because they give money or time to a local environmental group but not a national one? Is someone who supports the ACLU but not the NRA not really interested in personal freedoms? They're being selective in their focus, as we all tend to do in life.

Certainly trying to skew studies and statistics one way or the other merely to back a personal agenda does no one any favors. But the point should be to gather large amounts of quality scientific evidence that pins down the chief questions of cycling head injuries and helmet efficacy and then let each person decide for himself; as so many have noted, individual perceptions and thresholds and responses to danger vary.

And ultimately, even scientific data may not be needed if we're looking at personal choices instead of public policy-making*. As in most things, people will use their own common sense assessment, not studies published in medical journals, for better or worse.

* From what I've seen, this thread actually has almost nothing to do with actual specific helmet laws, which is odd. It seems more an extended argument on tolerating different levels of personal risk and, often, an attempt to convince others to hold the same assessment: "I don't care if you wear a helmet, but you better agree with me that cycling doesn't pose any real danger!"

Yet still, the point cannot be avoided because it is part of life. There is risk in all things, and a healthy view is one that requires considering the issue as a whole.


It could also be an issue of ignorance. People may not even be aware of the everyday risk of head injury off a bike is as great as on a bike because all they hear about is the risk while on a bike, and not the risk when off a bike


and people would be better off if they considered the issue in context.

and if people had a realistic idea of what the relative risk of head injury on a bike is, and a realistic idea of the limitations of a helmet could provide they could make a better decision but most often they don't. A good too many people think to cycle is to risk a head injury and the best defect against that injury is wearing a helmet, even in collisions with motor vehicles.

From what I've seen, many of the arguments here were the same arguments the pro-law proponents used to get BCs helmet law passed. Members of the legislature ate it up and passed the law without debate

Six

I realize that it is off topic, but you still havent rolled out your "proof" that riding DF bikes is pain free. That until I see actual proof is a huge lie. Especially if ridding long distances like cross country cycling it just is not true. More and more cross country cyclist are going to bents for their comfort.

Since it is off the helmet thread, you could post your "proof" on the recumbent thread.

A person of your age and experience should know that you can't prove a negative. Again, you'd greatly improve your learning curve if you'd realize that your personal experience is not universal.

Actually, someone who supports the ACLU but not the NRA really isn't interested in personal freedoms. He's only interested in the ones he thinks are important. He's a hypocrite, IOW.

But that really doesn't have anything to do with what we're trying to get across to you re. helmets for non-cycling activities: the reason you don't wear a helmet while walking or driving or showering is that you don't think the level of risk demands it. And the fact is that you get to make that decision without input from anyone else. Well, many of us who ride without helmets do so because we don't believe the risk demands it, and we'd like to be able to make that decision without input from the busybodies and safety nannies.

Simple enough?

Not exactly. A person could be genuinely interested in/supportive of, say, freedom-of-speech issues and simply not care about gun rights, or vice versa. Not actively supporting one type of personal freedom does not mean your support of another one is false or hypocritical. Now, if someone went around saying he supports all civil liberties, personal freedoms, the Constitution, etc. and then only supported one right while ignoring or actively fighting against others, that would be hypocritical and dishonest. (The ACLU itself actually adopts such an exclusionary, some would say contradictory, stance regarding gun rights: http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice_p...cond-amendment but that's getting into a whole other issue.)

Already discussed and granted. By the same token, busybodies and anti-helmet nannies should allow others to come to their own conclusions regarding bike safety and what to do about it.

Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention, but I haven't seen too many posts from the helmet-optional crowd suggesting the helmeted are morons because they are wearing helmets or that they should remove their lids. In fact, I believe most of the discussion has originated because some of the more enthusiastic helmeted individuals have denigrated others for their choice to not wear a helmet

Context might help them to see that they can/should protect themselves in other arenas. Context may show that they're more likely to get a head injury riding, say, a motorcycle than bicycle. But that doesn't directly address the core issue: can you get hurt or injure your head while cycling? Can a helmet help? Do you personally wish to do anything about it or not?

True, which is why it is dishonest and irresponsible for some people in this thread to downplay cycling's risks and try to assure us it's safe. It does pose the risk for personal injury (including head injury) or death; whether anyone chooses to act on such data is a different and personal matter.

From the US CDC:

http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreation...einjuries.html

http://www.chp.edu/CHP/P03008

Interestingly, from the same source: "Bicycle helmets can reduce the risk of a head injury by 85 percent and brain injury by 88 percent."

A Dutch study:

http://www.swov.nl/rapport/Factsheet...le_helmets.pdf

A huge page of linked/quoted stats and studies summarizing bicycle injuries/deaths and helmet use/efficacy: http://www.bhsi.org/stats.htm

Is cycling as dangerous as some other activities? No. Are head injuries the leading type of cycling injury? Not according to some studies, such as the Dutch one above and this from the Canadian Public Health Agency http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/injury-bl...ov2008-eng.php Can helmets help? Some studies, including the aforementioned one, suggest so.

Should you or I do anything differently because of all that info? That's for each us to decide on our own.

Do we have statistics/studies showing how many people believe that to be the case?

I've seen it go both ways. Certainly the gist of this thread is polemical versus investigative :)

No one can eliminate risk entirely, risk is present in everything in anything anyone does. The trick is to understand risk and manage it. Can a helmet help? Sure, in some instances, and in circumstances that are within it's capabilities. Instances that include activities that are most often not considered risky but have higher incidences of head injury than cycling

Ok. Red flag. If you come across this reference, you're dealing with a source that hasn't done it's homework. Even the authors of this claim has said it's wrong.

Helmets can help up to a certain degree, but the trouble is most people think they help more than can (as evidenced by the debate that led to BCs all ages MHL, in which MLAs claimed that helmet use is the single most important measure to prevent deaths to cyclists) and cycling is more dangerous than it is (by those who quote injury and fatality data out of context)

So besides telling everyone they should wear a helmet, you’re also telling the DF riders to get bent? :p