Oh well that settles it, there is the KidTruth guarantee. If the data doesn't back it up, it is meaningless.

That's weird... I live in Raleigh and never read or heard about that....

Just wondering what all you pro-helmet nazis think when you see a scenes like these:

and here i thought you 'misremembered'.

and i care why?

1. spare me your ron paul helmet troll, it's getting boring, and i don't give a flying ****.

2. have you ever been to amsterdam? ever ride a bike in amsterdam? didn't think so.

Picture 1: Hot! Is she smiling at me?
Picture 2: Hey, mister. You have a flat tire.

Oh, brother. Now, those of us who espouse helmet use are "nazis." That is so old and predictable a slur. And I couldn't care less about the pics you posted. That proves what, exactly? Nothing.

Troll elsewhere, please, or come up with something that doesn't make you sound like a blubbering school girl.

Your complete failure to understand how burden of proof works is unfortunate, but unsurprising. Once again, we see cognitive dissonance at work.

First, you assume that the bold claim is with those disputing the claims of helmet advocates. Why? Because it's just obvious that helmets are safer. So you're assuming a priori that the claims are true. But, um, no. That's not how it works.

Second, you represent the helmet skeptic argument as "no helmets are safer because magic will help you," an atrocious straw person. Sorry, the actual argument is that the claims for safety benefits are not true, in the absence of sufficient evidence (when grown-ups argue about helmets, the sticking point is what constitutes sufficient evidence). Again, fail. And while we're talking about grown-ups, they also like to accurately represent their opponents' argument and argue against that, not some absurd parody. Straw people are easy to knock down, so only impuissant mental midgets go after them (and only impuissant mental midgets think they've proved something by knocking them down).

In point of fact, our a priori knowledge about the benefits of helmets is exactly nothing - we don't know that they do anything, and it is incorrect in the absence of evidence to assume that they do. THIS, then, is our starting point. The status quo, as it were, is life without helmets. The bold, specific claim, then (it has to be specific), is that helmets will reduce the risk of head injury if we wear them while bicycling. Now, it's not a particularly bold claim - we're talking bike helmets, not cold fusion - but it is sufficiently bold as to require some evidence. Once it has been agreed that the evidence is sufficient, we can declare that helmets reduce the risk of head injury and be confident that wearing a helmet will improve personal safety, not before. The thing is that there is no consensus yet on whether the existing evidence is sufficient.

Now, I've already expressed my personal position and I have no desire to explain it further. Next time, before you try and correct me on burden of proof, I suggest a debate club.

Did you actually read my post?

I think that girl in the low cut red dress has been very very bad and deserves quite the spanking for riding without a helmet. Pcad can be quite the disciplinarian in these situations.

Spoken like a true helmet nazi pcad! Here are some more pics of women behaving badly. The caption on one of these is "-20 wind chill".

Hi Honey, I'm ho.....WTF? A hard days graft at the office only to come home to find BF laid waste by a flame out thread on helmets. Sheesh.

what's creepier: some danish dude stalking women on bikes, then posting pictures of them on the internet; or someone who trawls the 'net, looking for pics of women on bikes, in some lame attempt to prove his tedious trollish point.

why can't anyone be reasonable and just say "helmets help, sometimes more than others, and the only reason people don't use them is because they look dorky on some people"
there, the debate is over

I was just starting to consider that the helmet thing might be a large setup to get us into danish cycling girlies - 5 pages worth of foreplay?

Uh, look buddy... posting photos from Copenhagen Girls On Bikes does not help your case. Partly because it's entirely irrelevant, partly because it's just a creepy website.

Well... I'm a scientist... and since all the *actual data* on the efficacy of helmet use shows no reduction of serious head injuries or fatalities, it is difficult for me to subscribe to this. Meanwhile, I'm going to just post pictures of people (women especially) having a fine time riding their bikes without helmets...

Love your avatar...

I definitely subscribe to the "scientific method," (you know -- testable, repeatable results, etc) but I, after 35 years of cycling, finally had my first crash last year where my head/helmet hit the ground. And I am certainly thankful I was wearing the helmet. So ...

Speaking of the scientific method, I just found this quote recently about testimonials that I absolutely love: "the plural of anecdote is not data," (or something like that).

Btw, I saw this same article months ago, and decided immediately, not to pass on the info to my son or other loved ones.

Creepy? You gotta be kidding. Irrelevant? The point is to show that women (who make up a small percentage of bike riders in the US) can happily and safely use bikes as their primary mode of transportation... without helmets... so long as the society respects their right to be on the road.

And just because I know that "ya, but the traffic is a lot worse in the US, it's more dangerous" is coming, take note of this. In the US the cyclist's fatality rate (per distance) is over *6 times higher* than the rate in Denmark... even though a 10 times higher percentage of US cyclists wear helmets! Yes traffic is a *lot* worse... but guess what... wearing a helmet doesn't help (as you would know if you checked any of the links I posted). If you'd like to be *safe* it would be good to ponder what might actually help.

Your helmet hit the ground. We don't know if your head would have.

people, please refrain from arguing with this idiot and his his fuzzy logic.

it's pointless, as well as boring.

Creepy for sure. And the pics of the women you're posting aren't in the US and, oh yeah, rocks, slick roads and potholes don't exist in this imaginary world you live in so as long as your society respects the rights of Danish women to ride in the US - they will never crash and hit their heads.

You make common sense seem silly.

You're right, his head was nowhere near the helmet he was wearing. Smart thinking.

I'd like to try my the style of helmets that skateboarders and BMX dudes use. Those are likely to work better than something with 40 vents and pointy!

I'm not interested in the helmet debate, but I'd be interested in where you got that statistic for other reasons. I've seen raw cyclist fatality statistics, but never calculated on a per mile basis and I can't begin to imagine how they estimate milage in any meaningful way.