Helmets Part 1,489,348 - To Wear Or Not To Wear

[TylerDurden]

It is interesting to see how everyone here advocates the use of helmets.

Interesting because not one post objecting to mandatory use, has shown how that specific law would somehow be harmful.

Lots of comments about paternalistic laws taken to extremes, but nobody can say: A helmet law itself would be bad.

Helmet laws are simply a good idea, but politically unpopular and a royal pain to enforce.

If bike use is on the upswing, it won't be the voters who get people to wear helmets... it will be the insurance companies. ie: "Do you own any bicycles?", "If yes, be advised that claims for bike related injuries will be subject to review for policyholder's due dilligence of proper safety procedures.... failure of which may result in rejection of claim(s) and/or revision of policyholder's coverage and rates."

8)

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

It is interesting to see how everyone here advocates the use of helmets.

Interesting because not one post objecting to mandatory use, has shown how that specific law would somehow be harmful.

Lots of comments about paternalistic laws taken to extremes, but nobody can say: A helmet law itself would be bad.

Helmet laws are simply a good idea, but politically unpopular and a royal pain to enforce.

If bike use is on the upswing, it won't be the voters who get people to wear helmets... it will be the insurance companies. ie: "Do you own any bicycles?", "If yes, be advised that claims for bike related injuries will be subject to review for policyholder's due dilligence of proper safety procedures.... failure of which may result in rejection of claim(s) and/or revision of policyholder's coverage and rates."

8)

How would my proposed broccoli law be harmful?
Do you want homeland broccoli security kicking in your front door?
Is showing harm the only criteria for there not to be a law about every last little thing?

 

[TylerDurden]

I think that I shall never see
A law mandating Broccoli
The lovely shade of chlorophyl
Surpasses any coloured pill
And cancer asks a hefty fee
So, I'll keep eating broccoli


8)

 

[xyster]

I think that I shall never see
A law mandating Broccoli
The lovely shade of chlorophyl
Surpasses any coloured pill
And cancer asks a hefty fee
So, I'll keep eating broccoli

Yet another self-governing human unit,
A hearty YASGHU 2U!
Perhaps cloning TD
is the thing we must do 2 all B free.
But then we'd all be TD.
And we'd all have to eat our broccoli.

 

[TylerDurden]

Now, I am trooly cool.

 

[Mathurin]

Hi Tyler,

here's an anti-bike helmet law post for your pleasure:


It's kinda like the way if you ride around a lot then you've no doubt figured out the best routes to use and noticed that other experienced cyclists use the exact same routes. You've surely also understood that bike paths & lanes are generally much worse for utilitarian use then a wide lane or paved shoulder, that their only true use appears to be for reinforcing the idea that bikes require segregation from other vehicular traffic for safe operation. And worse still, they teach newbies dangerous habits...

So you may come to think the next step in evolution would be to get rid of this approach, since it has clearly failed. That designing future roads for safe and convenient curb riding would be preferable overall, especially since this would be more useful for other road users, such as trucks, compared to a segregated bike path.

But, doing away with bike paths would be kinda like making bike helmets mandatory in that both these modifications appear as though they would reduce the number of severe injuries, unfortunately there's a flip side to it.

For you see, though bike paths may be pretty bad for using bikes in a vehicular manner, places that get them in turn get more new cyclists on the roads, and while it's obvious that more bikes mean less cars, cyclists are less likely to get injured if they live in an area that has more cyclists, compared to one where there are less of them. How this relates to helmets is that places that get helmet laws enacted see a marked reduction in bike related injuries overall, although not significantly to the head. What happens is the reduction in injuries follows the reduction in cycling...




Bike path stuff:

My sister was riding her bicycle in town 11 years ago. She was in a bicycle lane going about 20mph just before sunset. A pickup truck waiting to make a left pulled right in front of her and crossed her path[...]

-1 bike lanes

If she had been riding in the normal lane instead of hugging the curb (bike lane) there's a good chance the truck would have seen her. Cars tend to scan the lanes for traffic, not curbs or sidewalks.




BTW, nearly all the bike related stats and stuff I see come from the chainguard mailing list, that can be reached from this website:

http://probicycle.com/

More specifically, here:
http://probicycle.com/maillist.html

It's a yahoo group so searching for past material is painfully tedious...


And how about a quick reminder of biking do's and do not's?
http://www.bikexprt.com/streetsmarts/usa/index.htm

 

[TylerDurden]

...places that get helmet laws enacted see a marked reduction in bike related injuries overall, although not significantly to the head. What happens is the reduction in injuries follows the reduction in cycling...

So... uh.... more helmet laws means less riders?

Ah... riders are wearing helmets someplace other than the head.

No... madatory helmet use increases the risk of bike-on-bike violence.


But seriously, asserting that bicycle related unjuries correlate positively to numbers of riders is declaring something patently obvious... conversely, any connection between helmet laws and reductions in riders is specious at best.

 

[Mathurin]

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/eletters/166/5/592

Summary: In 1997, Nova Scotia made bike helmets compulsory. In the next two years, the number of cyclists was lower by half.

It didn't even increase the number of helmeted cyclists, although the ratio increased somewhat, but it mostly seems to have stopped a lot of unhelmeted people from riding. Bike injuries per cyclist per year seems to have about doubled, and head injuries pretty much follows the decline in cycling. There were actually more people injured after the law was enacted despite the greatly reduced number of cyclists. This information is well-buried by the original authors, who hailed the law as a success.

"The Nova Scotia data also mirrors the legislative failures in Australia and New Zealand, where cycling popularity collapsed and record numbers of cyclists were nevertheless hospitalised." - Chris Gillham




Edit: Still looking for that car vs bike head injury thing, but there's a flood of helmet related posts... The closest I've found so far says nothing about helmets:
http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/comparat.html


Interesting factoid: Florida holds the bar for highest fatality & injury rate of cyclists in the us of a.

 

[TylerDurden]

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:QeLT5chggsgJ:www.enhancements.org/test-site/trb/trb2004/TRB2004-000874.pdf+

From:

Bicycle Safety Helmet Legislation and Bicycle-Related Non-Fatal Injuries in California


A number of studies have tried to substantiate the relationship between the enactment of a bicycle safetyhelmet law and reductions in head trauma and most have found protective effects for legislation (1-3, 34, 35). Someof them, however, used incomplete data sources such as police reports or insurance claims, which tend to be biasedtowards motor vehicle-related crashes, leaving out many non-motor vehicle cases. Although data on the amount ofbicycle travel (exposure) are scarce, two Australian studies have found an association between bicycle helmetlegislation and reduction in bicycling activities (29, 36), an undesirable side effect reflecting loss of some of the benefits of bicycling. A Canadian study, however, found contradicting results (37). Furthermore, most studies used data from within 3 years of the post-legislation period and few have examined the long-term effects of helmet laws. More research, therefore, is needed concerning the effects of helmet legislation on bicycle-related head injuries and bicycling participation. Solid evidence on these two legislative outcomes is needed to account for the benefits and costs accurately

 

[Mathurin]

OK, finished reading that study. It does not account for changes in the number of cyclists or likelyhood of getting involved in an accident caused by helmet legislation. That's irrelevant: "[...]the study objective was to detect any significant reductions in the proportions of head injuries among Youth bicycle riders associated with the helmet law."



They made sure to not let it bias their data:

Bicycle safety helmet legislation in California is associated with significant reductions in traumatic brain injuries in aggregate, and for selected groups. This finding is independent of any assumptions about the level of compliance and enforcement of this law as well as any changes in bicycle use (i.e., exposure).

The rejection of the hypothesis of independence for Youth meant that the distributions of injury type proportions for this group were not statistically the same between the pre- and post-legislation periods. This result, however, could not reveal how the proportions changed. To accomplish this, the Odds Ratio (OR) values were computed. OR is a common measure of association for two variables, which in this case were also injury type and time. In the context of this study, an OR is defined as one proportion divided by another, such as the proportion of Head-TBI of all bicycle injuries in the post-legislation period divided by the corresponding proportion in the pre-legislation period. As such, the OR compares the denominator to the numerator, which in this case is a comparison of outcomes in the pre- and post-legislation periods. Computed this way, the OR is unaffected by changes in the amount of bicycling between the two periods; that is, the OR is independent of exposure. Table 2 summarises the results of the OR calculations, which included the 99.0% confidence intervals (CI), for both age groups

However they still do hint to a decrease in overall safety:

The results in Figure 3 showed that the proportion of Head-TBI decreased for non-urban residents but increased for urban ones. Furthermore, Head-Other injuries remained unchanged for the first category but increased for the latter. One possible explanation for these differences is that non-urban residents may have had higher helmet-wearing rates after the legislation than those who lived in the urban counties. Another possible reason is that the urban bicycling environment became more unsafe during the period after the legislation was enacted and that caused more serious injuries involving the head. Both of these reasons, however, are speculative. Furthermore, since counties are large and can exhibit a wide range of localized densities, it is not possible to draw strong inferences about the effects of this variable.

 

[Geebee]

If you have a dig around on http://www.bentrideronline.com in the general forum there was a discussion on a study that showed the deaths to cyclists in New york were in the vast majority caused by head injuries to non helmeted riders to the extent they are thinking of making helmets compulsory.
I can't resist adding my way to show someone the benefits of a helmet.
Get them to stand against a brick wall tilt their head forward and slam it back as hard as they can, when they get back from hospital and have recovered, try it again with a bike helmet on.

 

[Mathurin]

Let's repeat other's mistakes rather then learning from them, there's a sad classic...


Hey I tried to find the thread you were on about, but the lack of search function on that forum is, well, shall we simply call it worse then yahoo groups?

 

[Geebee]

Not sure this is the same one but look like it.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/pdf/pr06_50.pdf
A lot more stats here, take a read of the first page at least.
http://www.helmets.org/stats.htm

The search function on BROL only works from the main forum page, it's designed to stop noobies using it.

 

[v_tach]

Interesting factoid: Florida holds the bar for highest fatality & injury rate of cyclists in the us of a.

Because of a variety of factors, we tend to have a lot more or everything (good and bad) related to outdoor activities.

 

[TylerDurden]

Let's run with the apprentice-druid for a moment:

Hypothesys:
If helmet laws reduce the numbers of riders, it is likely the absent riders wouldn't be wearing helmets if they were on the street.

Do we assume they are opting to drive instead?
Do we assume they are safe/healthier staying at home?

Is this like making airline passengers buy seats for small children... a safety-seat on an aircraft would be safest, but the additional cost would encourage more people with kids to drive; which is much more risky than sitting on mommy's lap in the airbus.

:?

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

Look ya babies...
Where does the slippery slope inevitably end?


Right, in the deepest recesses at the bottom of the ocean.

So lets cut to the chase & have the government force everyone to wear a hard-shell turtle suit fabricated out of cast aluminum from the moment you leave your house. The elderly will have to also wear it inside their home at all times. Where's the harm in that? It's easy to get into.

BTW, I hope the symbolism of the stick up the a$$ isn't lost on anyone.
Actually from the look of things, you could probably cobble up a home brew version out of 32 bicycle helmets.

 

[xyster]

And as to the argument that helmets should be mandatory to reduce insurance rates and other costs to society:

Freedom always comes at a price. It's better that price be paid with paper than innocent blood.

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.EFEC

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure." -Thomas Jefferson

 

[Reid Welch]

I choose to wear a helmet for Tyler's excellent exampling.

Others can choose to not wear helmets, having studied the risks and made their own informed decision.


Here's a compromise idea: All adults have the right to forego helmets.
To gain this right, why simply sign a waiver, photo-illustrated with before and after pictures of volunteer victims.

It would go like this:



Mutually Voluntary Waiver of the Helmet Law

Sign here to indicate your agreement to die from or suffer with brain injury resulting from a bicycling accident,
and that if injured, but surviving beyond one month post-trauma,
you agree that the State should not provide you with medical care
nor housing, nor with any other service or material need necessitated by
your decision to ride without an approved safety helmet.

(sign here)


I do not wish to wear a bicycle helmet while bicycling on public roads

My signature indicates that I understand the consequences of an unprotected slap upside the head.

 

[xyster]

To gain this right, why simply sign a waiver, photo-illustrated with before and after pictures of volunteer victims.

This from a guy who wins his arguments by the implicit threat of injury, communicated by his violent, head-punch-throwing avatar. [Note: Posting just below that kitty, I'm wearing my helmet while writing this out of fear for my safety.]

 

[v_tach]

Studies and statistics to try and figure out if wearing a helmet is a good thing... lol

Maybe we should do away with speed limits for automobiles. It might be discouraging someone from driving.

 

[xyster]

Maybe we should do away with speed limits for automobiles.

Works on the Autobahn...be interesting to see a study of autobahn accident & death rates vs. similar speed-limited freeways.

 

[TylerDurden]

I'll admit, there are times when a helmet might be irrelevant...

 

[v_tach]

Maybe we should do away with speed limits for automobiles.

Works on the Autobahn...be interesting to see a study of autobahn accident & death rates vs. similar speed-limited freeways.

Supposedly most of the Autobahn now has limits posted. Something else interesting I was told is that it's like $3000-$4000 US to get a driver's license in Germany. Not sure if thats true but was also told because of the cost and the very real possibility of having the license taken away, driver's there tend to be a little aware and respectful of each other and the law.

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

Yes it is true. It's a one shot cost for a lifetime DL. Bulk of that cost is to pay for the mandatory driver training classes prior to getting your licence. The classes insure that everyone on the road is on the same page & knows what to expect from other drivers. The speed limits on the bahn were incrementally installed by the hated 'greens' i.e. the green party.

To hear it told from the naturally biased perspective of a native german, people there have told me that the accidents increased as a result of foreigners that are first time bahn drivers (stationed American soldiers get singled out for special mention). When you grow up as a kid exposed to routinely travelling at 120 mph, it loses it's appeal by the time you're old enuf to hold your own licence. It's like 'been there, done that'.

Also they have a kind of national attitude that runs along the lines to what xyster is saying. People are expected to exercise restraint, that it comes down to personal responsibility & self governing in all aspects of society, not just the autobahn. Their attitude towards beer springs to mind.

Just because you can go fast (or get drunk) doesn't mean you have to all the time, is something they stress. They believe it should be up to the driver who is in the best position to judge what speed he can handle, what the car is capable of & stable at, & that conditions will allow (this also shapes my position on helmet use). Reckless driving is illegal even in the absence of a speed limit.

 

[Mathurin]

Not sure this is the same one but look like it.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/pdf/pr06_50.pdf
A lot more stats here, take a read of the first page at least.
http://www.helmets.org/stats.htm

OK, digging the sources for NYC recommendations pdf revealed that the helmet legislation thing is based on the observation that most of the cyclists who died in NYC over the past 10 years were not wearing a helmet, and is not based on an evaluation of the results other places have gotten from such legislation.


The second link you posted has no content regarding the effects of helmet laws on overall safety, narrowing down the picture to cyclist's heads. I'll take it you adhere to a "crashing with a helmet tends to reduce head injuries, therefore helmet laws are good" philosophy. No surprise the Nova Scotia program I mentioned to earlier didn't speak to you, it must have been a complete success since bike head injuries dropped by over 54% after two years, even though it's clearly made things much worse, but hey at least the remaining cyclists get to use their helmets about twice as often, fun fun fun! No doubt you'll also find the following article to demonstrate how making compulsory helmet laws is a good thing, again less head injuries!

http://www.cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2022.pdf