On 9 Dec 2005 07:34:53 -0800, "iakobski" <[email hidden]> said
in <[email hidden]>:
Quoted message said:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-1914632,00.html
Ah, the redolent odour of reheated stale [censored].
I replied, of course:
Re "Pass Notes: Cycle Helmets"
As HL Mencken memorably put it, to every complex problem there is a
solution which is simple, neat and wrong.
The obsessive-compulsives have apparently fed you their usual line and
steered you away from the uncomfortable truth, acknowledged by David
Jamieson as Road Safety Minister, that there is no known case where
cyclist safety has improved with increasing helmet use.
Of course, you could always continue with the absurd fiction that 3/4"
of polystyrene is sufficient to ward off a speeding car, but I advise
you not to test this with anything that matters. Your shiny new PC in
its packaging won't fare any better than your head. The smart money
is on reading Cyclecraft, adopting the new National Standards for
adult cycle training, riding well and avoiding the collision in the
first place.
The comment "Do say: The difference between a cyclist who wears a
helmet and one who doesn’t is the difference between taking an aspirin
and having to relearn the power of speech." is preposterous and
unsupportable. No cycle helmet in the world is designed to prevent
injuries of that scale (have you really not checked the standards?).
The scary "brain injuries" about which so much is made are, in any
case, mostly simple concussions.
The major source of serious and fatal cyclist head injury is impact
with motor vehicles (usually the driver's fault, by the way). The
forces produced typically exceed the rated capacity of Formula 1 motor
racing helmets. Cycle helmets are designed for low-speed falls not
involving any other vehicles - a type of incident whose only long-term
effect is generally increased wisdom.
The evidence which underpins helmet use is of the same type which
confidently predicted that combined hormone replacement therapy
protects women against heart disease (on investigation the opposite
turns out to be true). The largest study ever conducted, covering
eight million cyclist injuries, showed a small but significant
*increase* in fatality rates and no effect on head injuries.
In New Zealand, helmet use more than doubled in a single year from
under 45% to over 95%. Looking at a chart of the head injury rate
over this period it is impossible to discern in which year this
happened - and indeed impossible to tell the difference between the
trends for pedestrians and cyclists.
Finally, despite helmet use being very low in the UK, fewer than one
in three cyclists hospitalised suffer a head injury (compared with 45%
of pedestrians).
You are being manipulated by a small coterie of zealots into pushing
their agenda for compulsion. The best one can say about the effect of
compulsion is that in some countries it hasn't done much harm -
although in those countries where helmet use has been enforced it is
generally acknowledged as a public health own-goal, with more people
giving up cycling than taking up helmet wearing.
All this and more is documented at http://www.cyclehelmets.org - the
evidence persuaded me, I hope it will persuade you.
Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken
