Absolutely. My point was that we helmet-threaders are exposed to more information than most folks, regarding helmets.

Side note about how non-cyclists are less informed. My mom asked me several months ago, "Did you hear that Dallas has repealed their bicycle helmet law?"
Somewhat enthusiastically, I said, "Yes. We've been trying to get rid of that for years."
Dumfounded, she said, "Wait, you don't want the law? YOUR HELMET SAVED YOUR LIFE. Shouldn't everyone wear one?"
I spent the next 20 minutes explaining that yes, I wear a helmet. But nobody should be required by law to wear a helmet. Along with the rarity of bicycle accidents, and even rarer accidents involving head strikes, and even rarer still, the head strikes that would be more than minor flesh injuries. She claims to be a conservative libertarian. I'm afraid she's just part of the unwashed masses. (See, I too, can look down my nose at those less informed.) :)

"Tribalism" may be the case with the helmeteers but I think the average bare-header just wants to be left alone. I'm not making any kind of statement when I rid without a helmet. I just don't find a helmet necessary every time I go for a bike ride. I'd like to be able to make that choice without being hassled by smug, ignorant helmeteers.

And again, please don't act as though the helmet nannies are the only ones derailing helmet threads in this forum. Countless times, a forum newb posts a question about which helmet he or she should buy. Clearly, they are planning to buy a helmet, already. They didn't sign up to BF to debate the usefulness of a helmet. Lo and behold, it usually takes less than a day for one of the bare-head brigade to fly in and tell them how they are wasting their money on a helmet. The the tread gets locked or merged into the helmet thread.

More weird persecution fantasies. The "average" bare-header is almost always "left alone".

I don't see how formation of social identification is possible through such a limited bandwidth medium. Something of that nature does happen with internet forums, but I suspect that there's a lot of "fill in the blank" going on regarding other members. We just don't know that much about that other person who habitually posts something - any person.

That's a valid point. Maybe non-helmet-threaders need to get informed before spouting off about "Darwin candidates" and such.

You have absolutely no way of knowing that.

+1

I suspect that this thread was created to keep the antihelmeteers from derailing threads. It's a form of "hellbanning" because they have no idea they were reason! :lol:

Well, that's sort-of true. You could have an interesting time taking bets on whether it's going to be a be a bare-header making fun of helmets, or a helmeteer going on about how many times his life has been saved. IMO it's usually the latter, but I'm not an unbiased observer.

Your post seems a bit of a non-sequitur, though. I didn't know we were talking about derailed threads.

Well, as a bare-header who almost never gets left alone about it, and who hears the same thing from other bare-headers both in the real world and here on BF, I'm in a much better position to comment about it than you.

The footnote says, "24 Thompson DC, Nunn ME, Thompson RS, Rivara FP. Effectiveness of bicycle-safety helmets in preventing serious facial injury. JAMA 1996; 276: 1974-5."

Same title, same authors, different year? I didn't catch that - but abstract is also exactly the same, which I did check. Is it really a different study? Or perhaps the same study, re-published.

Checking into this, there's a link on that same site, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9213156 which has the 1997 date. It looks the same. I think it's the same study, which means that none of this is very current.

Yes, that's what I was trying to get across when I wrote "but they're saying that the number of examples is too small for 10% improvement to be a hard and fast conclusion."

Your words:
Since this thread exists to prevent helmet debates from infecting the rest of the forum, I think derailed threads are absolutely part of the discussion.

I saw that. My question was mostly rhetorical. Skye is cherry-picking a report that supports his position but ignores a report (ironically from the same authors) that doesn't.

It's the same study. And it's old.

"There were 3854 injured cyclists in the three year period."

It's kind of confusing.

I expect that you understood it.

Skye is "misrepresenting" the report (and his conclusions don't match the author's conclusions).

I was pointing out how he was misrepresenting it.

That's a leap of logic I'm not seeing, but whatever.

Perhaps we could organize a little experiment: the bare-headers agree to post nothing at all on this thread. Then we see how long it takes for some helmeteer to post something smarmy.

Because this thread regularly goes quiet, only to be awakened by a smarmy helmeteer, I know where my money will be.

So, you are basing it on anecdotes.

No, you aren't in a "better position to comment" just because you say so.

That's because you aren't very aware.

http://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-s...l#post17176585

http://www.bikeforums.net/general-cy...l#post16847307

http://www.bikeforums.net/general-cy...l#post16439337

http://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-s...l#post15946219

http://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-s...l#post15934027

http://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-s...l#post15930452

http://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-s...l#post15582572

(Note that the LAB requires helmets to take their on-road class. And they officially recommend helmets too. And there's no good support for cycling-safety classes actually increase safety. (I'm not trying to discourage people from taking the classes!))

Even a better bet that it will be THE Helmeteer, Par Excellence in all his shining glory, repeating his certitude of the correctness of his opinions on this subject.

Said without irony, I suspect.

:lol::lol::lol:

It's based on experience. Which you don't have.

As for your link dump, it's just more evidence confirming the things folks have been saying about you here.

Uh...you kinda just did.

Huh?

I don't think that Skye misrepresented it all that much, at least not from a reading of just the abstract.

Be that as it may, there are a couple of other bits that I see as useful. In these incidents, only 15.3% of the total crashes involved motor vehicles, and crashes with motor vehicles were 3.6 times as likely to lead to serious injury. So assuming that 15.3% held true ubiquitously, and since the NHTSA traffic stats only include motor vehicle related incidents, we could multiply the previous risk calculation by 6.5 to include the total number of bicycle accidents (ER and Hospital related).

Those who have stopped riding near traffic due to fear of accidents might feel vindicated by the 3.6 times likelihood of serious injury involving motor vehicles, although it's still a very small risk in my judgment.

If we can exclude Ryda from this, it might make for a fair challenge. :)

I'll have to admit... as hard as it is... I was one of the naysayers, thinking I never wore a helmet, coming up as a "rambunctious" daredevil youngster and saying that the government has gotten everyone scared to walk down the street without safety gear but after "riding again" for a while since October 2014, I've been wearing one ever since. The wife and I started riding a place that required helmets. Well, I was going to buck the system and do as I pleased. I never had anything said to me, but noticing that I was in the minority, we got helmets and started using them. Now, I feel rather undressed without it. So, there's my confession for the day.

Same for me. Never felt the need to wear a helmet and full leathers with boots to ride my bicycle. I wore a proper cycling hat because it protected my head from sun and would stay put. Then I decided to do a 2 day club ride and helmets were required. That was 1988. I have likely owned 20 helmets since then and enjoyed wearing almost every one of them and still do so. Has little to do with safety for me. Just another cycling hat that has more features than the cotton hat with the tiny brim.