in message <[email hidden]>, Peter
Taylor (') said:It would seem that many members of this group are dead set against
anyone
wearing a helmet when cycling. Tony Raven, Ian Smith and various
others.
The logic seems to be that if you are a regular cyclist, the only
accident will be being hit by another vehicle and a helmet will not
protect you
against that. And that a helmet will not protect you against leg
injuries.
Where is your evidence for this?
Cyclists in western Europe who wear a helmet are about five times more
likely to be killed per kilometer cycled than those who don't. That is
true[1] but, like all facts about helmets, this one conceals several
curious features which make it worth treating with a pinch of salt. The
number of kilometers cycled safely by non-helmet-wearing Dutch, German
and Danish cyclists is so much greater than the numbers for any other
country that it does affect the result.
Nevertheless there's a truth here. When the Australians and the New
Zeelanders made cycling helmets mandatory, the number of cycling head
injuries went down - but not as much as the number of kilometers cycled
went down. There really does seem to be a small positive correlation
between wearing a helmet and getting killed.
No-one really knows why. One possibility is risk compensation. One
possibility is over-heating of the brain leading to impaired judgement
(this is known to happen with military helmets). But the possibility I
think most likely is that in high energy impacts, the increased diameter
of the head with a helmet on increases rotational injuries of the brain
to a lethal degree.
This is not to say 'don't wear a helmet'. There are lots of sensible
reasons to wear a helmet, including protecting yourself from scratches
and bruising in simple falls. But for every serious accident in which a
helmet actually contributes to saving someone's life, there is slightly
more than one accident in which the helmet actually contributes to a
death.
Quoted message said:A few points:
Would they tell their own children not to wear a helmet when cycling?
Like I said - they're considerably less likely to get scratched and
bruised if they do wear a helmet, but very slightly more likely to be
killed. However, incidents where scratching and bruising is a risk are
so much more common than accidents where death is a risk that you may
think it worthwhile to wear a helmet, despite the small increase in the
risk of death.
I'd never advise other people's children not to wear helmets (or to wear
them, either).
Quoted message said:
Do they really think they know more about the effects of accidents than
the
A and E staff, who have frequent experience of the effects of
traumatic injury to the head.
Have they ever been to Spain? Or Italy? On a recent 7 day trip to
France we saw only three cyclists not wearing a helmet.
And have you noticed that deaths per billion kilometers cycled are very
much higher in France, Spain and Italy than in the Netherlands, Denmark
and Germany, where helmet wearing is rare? Chicken or egg?
[1] I haven't yet got enough figures to say confidently the exact figure,
but somewhere between three and seven times more likely.
--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
'Victories are not solutions.'
;; John Hume, Northern Irish politician, on Radio Scotland 1/2/95
;; Nobel Peace Prize laureate 1998; few have deserved it so much
