Re: The antidote

Tony Raven said:

In article <[email hidden]>, brian@
[nospam].com says...

Quoted message said:

DavidR wrote:

I don't know if anyone else has said this on the thread, but you really
should wear a helmet. I mean that not as a patronising git, but as
someone with the near death experiences to prove it.

Oh purleeze....not another "Helmet saved my life"? patronising git.
http://cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1019

We are entitled to our opinions.

Brian.

Tony Raven said:

In article <[email hidden]>, brian@
[nospam].com says...

Quoted message said:

DavidR wrote:

I don't know if anyone else has said this on the thread, but you really
should wear a helmet. I mean that not as a patronising git, but as
someone with the near death experiences to prove it.

Oh purleeze....not another "Helmet saved my life"? patronising git.
http://cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1019

Actually, that's an interesting article. I have always suspected that a
helmet wouldn't help you much in a serious collision, but the two
incidents that I have been involved in (Both low speed with no other
party involved) convinced me of their merits. An increasing number of
cyclists seem to agree with me as well. Still, like I said, interesting
article.

Brian.

In article <[email hidden]>, brian@
[nospam].com says...

Quoted message said:

Tony Raven said:

In article <[email hidden]>, brian@
[nospam].com says...

Quoted message said:

DavidR wrote:

I don't know if anyone else has said this on the thread, but you really
should wear a helmet. I mean that not as a patronising git, but as
someone with the near death experiences to prove it.

Oh purleeze....not another "Helmet saved my life"? patronising git.
http://cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1019

Actually, that's an interesting article. I have always suspected that a
helmet wouldn't help you much in a serious collision, but the two
incidents that I have been involved in (Both low speed with no other
party involved) convinced me of their merits. An increasing number of
cyclists seem to agree with me as well. Still, like I said, interesting
article.

The problem is that if every time a cyclist said what you did, it was
true then the hospitals would be full of dead and seriously head injured
unhelmeted cyclists. The fact that they aren't indicates that either
helmeted cyclists have far more accidents or that helmets don't work.
As indicated in the link I posted, there is evidence that helmeted
cyclists are over seven times as likely to hit their heads in an
accident as unhelmeted ones.

Yes you are entitled to your opinion and to wear what you want on your
head but you are not entitled to try to tell DavidR or anyone else what
to wear (which is what you did), especially when all the evidence is
that wearing a helmet is not a wise course of action.

--
Tony

" I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong."
Bertrand Russell

In article <[email hidden]>, Brian Robertson
brian@[nospam].com says...

Quoted message said:

Tony Raven said:

In article <[email hidden]>, brian@
[nospam].com says...

Quoted message said:

DavidR wrote:

I don't know if anyone else has said this on the thread, but you really
should wear a helmet. I mean that not as a patronising git, but as
someone with the near death experiences to prove it.

Oh purleeze....not another "Helmet saved my life"? patronising git.
http://cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1019

We are entitled to our opinions.

But not to expect others to accept them as fact.

Tony Raven said:

In article <[email hidden]>, brian@
[nospam].com says...

Quoted message said:

Tony Raven said:

In article <[email hidden]>, brian@
[nospam].com says...

>DavidR wrote:
>
>I don't know if anyone else has said this on the thread, but you really
>should wear a helmet. I mean that not as a patronising git, but as
>someone with the near death experiences to prove it.
>

Oh purleeze....not another "Helmet saved my life"? patronising git.
http://cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1019

Actually, that's an interesting article. I have always suspected that a
helmet wouldn't help you much in a serious collision, but the two
incidents that I have been involved in (Both low speed with no other
party involved) convinced me of their merits. An increasing number of
cyclists seem to agree with me as well. Still, like I said, interesting
article.

Quoted message said:

The problem is that if every time a cyclist said what you did, it was
true then the hospitals would be full of dead and seriously head injured
unhelmeted cyclists. The fact that they aren't indicates that either
helmeted cyclists have far more accidents or that helmets don't work.
As indicated in the link I posted, there is evidence that helmeted
cyclists are over seven times as likely to hit their heads in an
accident as unhelmeted ones.

Quoted message said:

Yes you are entitled to your opinion and to wear what you want on your
head but you are not entitled to try to tell DavidR or anyone else what
to wear (which is what you did), especially when all the evidence is
that wearing a helmet is not a wise course of action.

Let me defend Brian (which will probably come as a shock to him).

He *is* entitled to try to persuade other cyclists to wear cycle helmets.

We are all entitled to try to persuade anyone of anything (legal).

In article said:

Tony Raven said:

In article <[email hidden]>, brian@

Quoted message said:

I don't know if anyone else has said this on the thread, but you really
should wear a helmet. I mean that not as a patronising git, but as
someone with the near death experiences to prove it.

Oh purleeze....not another "Helmet saved my life"? patronising git.
http://cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1019

We are entitled to our opinions.

Yes. We are entitled to the opinion that you are being a patronising git.

JNugent said:

Tony Raven said:

In article <[email hidden]>, brian@
[nospam].com says...

Quoted message said:

Tony Raven wrote:

> In article <[email hidden]>, brian@
> [nospam].com says...
>
>> DavidR wrote:
>> I don't know if anyone else has said this on the thread, but you
>> really should wear a helmet. I mean that not as a patronising git,
>> but as someone with the near death experiences to prove it.
>>
>
> Oh purleeze....not another "Helmet saved my life"? patronising git.
> http://cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1019
>

Actually, that's an interesting article. I have always suspected that
a helmet wouldn't help you much in a serious collision, but the two
incidents that I have been involved in (Both low speed with no other
party involved) convinced me of their merits. An increasing number of
cyclists seem to agree with me as well. Still, like I said,
interesting article.

Quoted message said:

The problem is that if every time a cyclist said what you did, it was
true then the hospitals would be full of dead and seriously head
injured unhelmeted cyclists. The fact that they aren't indicates that
either helmeted cyclists have far more accidents or that helmets don't
work. As indicated in the link I posted, there is evidence that
helmeted cyclists are over seven times as likely to hit their heads in
an accident as unhelmeted ones.

Quoted message said:

Yes you are entitled to your opinion and to wear what you want on your
head but you are not entitled to try to tell DavidR or anyone else
what to wear (which is what you did), especially when all the evidence
is that wearing a helmet is not a wise course of action.

Let me defend Brian (which will probably come as a shock to him).

He *is* entitled to try to persuade other cyclists to wear cycle helmets.

We are all entitled to try to persuade anyone of anything (legal).

Why should it be a shock?

Brian.

Brian Robertson said:

Tony Raven said:

In article <[email hidden]>, brian@
[nospam].com says...

Quoted message said:

DavidR wrote:
I don't know if anyone else has said this on the thread, but you
really should wear a helmet. I mean that not as a patronising git,
but as someone with the near death experiences to prove it.

Oh purleeze....not another "Helmet saved my life"? patronising git.
http://cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1019

We are entitled to our opinions.

Opinion is not proof , you said you had "near death experiences to prove
it" so which is it to be?

Tony Raven said:

The problem is that if every time a cyclist said what you did, it was
true then the hospitals would be full of dead and seriously head injured
unhelmeted cyclists. The fact that they aren't indicates that either
helmeted cyclists have far more accidents or that helmets don't work.
As indicated in the link I posted, there is evidence that helmeted
cyclists are over seven times as likely to hit their heads in an
accident as unhelmeted ones.

Yes you are entitled to your opinion and to wear what you want on your
head but you are not entitled to try to tell DavidR or anyone else what
to wear (which is what you did), especially when all the evidence is
that wearing a helmet is not a wise course of action.

Well, although sorry for any offence caused, I don't think that I am
sorry for saying what I did because the result has been quite an
interesting debate from which I have learnt a few things of interest to
me as a cyclist.

Brian.

marc said:

Brian Robertson said:

Tony Raven said:

In article <[email hidden]>, brian@
[nospam].com says...
> DavidR wrote:
> I don't know if anyone else has said this on the thread, but you
> really should wear a helmet. I mean that not as a patronising git,
> but as someone with the near death experiences to prove it.
>

Oh purleeze....not another "Helmet saved my life"? patronising git.
http://cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1019

We are entitled to our opinions.

Opinion is not proof , you said you had "near death experiences to prove
it" so which is it to be?

I don't have proof of many things in life. Like all of us, I can only
form opinions based upon my experiences and, if I am sensible, exhibit a
willingness to have those opinions updated by new information or new
experiences.

I have one experience under my belt that would almost certainly have
resulted in me suffering serious and possibly life threatening injury
had I not been wearing a helmet. I have had another experience in which
I came scarily close to killing myself when I wasn't wearing a helmet
and I have no doubt that the risk would have been much reduced had I had
a lid on.

Personally, I prefer to wear a helmet. Personally, a lot of people
obviously prefer not to. I hadn't taken into account the possibility
that people wearing a helmet might take more risks and it's an
interesting possibility. For my part, I do everything possible to
minimise my risks whatever I am wearing. I don't see cycling in my life
as some thrill chasing sport.

Brian.

Brian Robertson brian@nospam said:

Tony Raven said:

The problem is that if every time a cyclist said what you did, it was
true then the hospitals would be full of dead and seriously head injured
unhelmeted cyclists. The fact that they aren't indicates that either
helmeted cyclists have far more accidents or that helmets don't work.
As indicated in the link I posted, there is evidence that helmeted
cyclists are over seven times as likely to hit their heads in an
accident as unhelmeted ones.

Yes you are entitled to your opinion and to wear what you want on your
head but you are not entitled to try to tell DavidR or anyone else what
to wear (which is what you did), especially when all the evidence is
that wearing a helmet is not a wise course of action.

Well, although sorry for any offence caused, I don't think that I am
sorry for saying what I did because the result has been quite an
interesting debate from which I have learnt a few things of interest to
me as a cyclist.

It should also be stated that a lot of the people who now believe that
helmets confer no meaningful protection against serious injury on a
population level originally started with the same premise that helmets
must be good.

--
Andy Leighton => [email hidden]
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials"
- Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_

Brian Robertson said:

marc said:

Brian Robertson said:

Tony Raven wrote:
> In article <[email hidden]>, brian@
> [nospam].com says...
>> DavidR wrote:
>> I don't know if anyone else has said this on the thread, but you
>> really should wear a helmet. I mean that not as a patronising git,
>> but as someone with the near death experiences to prove it.
>>
>
> Oh purleeze....not another "Helmet saved my life"? patronising git.
> http://cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1019
>

We are entitled to our opinions.

Opinion is not proof , you said you had "near death experiences to
prove it" so which is it to be?

I don't have proof of many things in life.

I'm sure you don't but the only thing I know about your life is that you
stated " you really should wear a helmet. I mean that .... as someone
with the near death experiences to prove it." Yet as soon as you are
asked to back up that statement you start rattling on about opinions.

Like all of us, I can only

Quoted message said:

form opinions based upon my experiences and, if I am sensible, exhibit a
willingness to have those opinions updated by new information or new
experiences.

I have one experience under my belt that would almost certainly have
resulted in me suffering serious and possibly life threatening injury
had I not been wearing a helmet.

And you proof of this is?

I have had another experience in which

Quoted message said:

I came scarily close to killing myself when I wasn't wearing a helmet
and I have no doubt that the risk would have been much reduced had I had
a lid on.

You have no doubt because of what proof?

Quoted message said:

Personally, I prefer to wear a helmet. Personally, a lot of people
obviously prefer not to. I hadn't taken into account the possibility
that people wearing a helmet might take more risks and it's an
interesting possibility. For my part, I do everything possible to
minimise my risks whatever I am wearing.

No you don't, you take some actions to minimise the risks that occur to
you as long as those actions seem proportinate to the risks. I know that
because your a human, that's what humans do and then rationalise that to
be "common sense"

Brian Robertson said:

I have one experience under my belt that would almost certainly have
resulted in me suffering serious and possibly life threatening injury
had I not been wearing a helmet.

Lots of people say this... I was one of them too, thanks to an accident
where I was caught up in someone else's prang when a car spun out from a
collision and picked me up in its path as I waited stationary in a side
road. Don't remember anything about the accident, and had concussion
that put me off work fro a fortnight and a shattered helmet but not much
else wrong.
Pretty easy to conclude from that that I was much better off with the
lid... but is that a safe conclusion? I'll never know for sure, and I
certainly don't want a repeat to find out, but let's consider some
salient points:

- helmets shatter (like mine did) in a brittle failure mode that
actually absorbs very little energy (I don't know if it just shattered
or deformed first).

- helmets are built /down/ to a minimum standard, because overbuilding
makes them less comfortable. The current standard (EN1078 typically) is
lower than previous standards, and was created mainly by manufacturers
who found it hard to build a comfortable helmet to previous standards
for a reasonable cost.

- that EN1078 standard they are built down to, and thus won't exceed by
much, is for ~100 joules absorption, which is a lot less than a skull
can take. It's about what's needed to take a fall while stationary onto
hard ground with no other vehicle involved. While such falls /can/
kill, they only do if you're remarkably unlucky. Hit with substantially
more than that energy the helmet is far more likley to undergo brittle
failure, and do practically nothing.

- you'd be amazed at what people have survived without crash helmets.
Fact is the human skull is actually pretty good at protecting its owner
from serious injury. It gets out of its depth in many collisions with
vehicles as the energies are rather over anything natural selection
would commonly come up against, but you should realise that helmets are
designed for incidents with /no other vehicle involved/ (it's in the BSI
description IIRC)

- you can't assume any collison with a vehicle is actually a high energy
one, just because the vehicle has lots of energy. My own accident is
one I've had to recreate purely in theory as I can't recall it /at all/,
but ISTM it's most likely my head was rammed down hard onto the bonnet
of the car. A car bonnet is a large panel that actually deforms quite
easily, and though it might well hurt it's quite possible it will deform
readily and absorb a lot of the energy. So I can't say for sure I'd
have been much worse off without a helmet.

- helmets can make matters worse by adding leverage to twisting motions,
being that much bigger that they make the difference between being hit
and not, and at high speeds their weight will actually add more energy
to a collision than they're designed to absorb. All of these things
make it difficult to say with certainty that a lid must have made things
better in many anecdotal incidences.

Quoted message said:

I have had another experience in which
I came scarily close to killing myself when I wasn't wearing a helmet
and I have no doubt that the risk would have been much reduced had I had
a lid on.

But see above, and see the fact that helmets do not have any track
record of reducing serious head injuries, and there are times and places
when they can make things worse.

Quoted message said:

Personally, I prefer to wear a helmet. Personally, a lot of people
obviously prefer not to.

I used to prefer wearing one, and the reason why I wore one on pretty
much every bike trip I made for a decade was I thought it made me safer
and was a common-sense thing to do. Having done a lot of reading I no
longer think that, but I also see there was a clear double-standard in
my approach to risk. I had assumed cycling was /considerably/ more
dangerous than e.g. walking and driving, but it turns out not to be the
case, so if I don't need extra protection for them, then why for
cycling? In my case I had to admit that the answer was I was
rationalising my existing behaviour (as is a typical thing for folk to
do). Now, that's not a Big Problem in this case, but I do think it was
important that I had actually realised that. I decided to try without
and the first few trips without one for a decade I felt naked, but it
soon got back to being normal. Formal end of the process was a trip to
NL, seeing thousands and thousands of Amsterdammers cruising around
without them, though they're at /least/ as much risk of the sort of
accident helmets are designed for as anyone else.

Quoted message said:

I hadn't taken into account the possibility
that people wearing a helmet might take more risks and it's an
interesting possibility. For my part, I do everything possible to
minimise my risks whatever I am wearing.

Nice theory, but highly unlikely to be true. Consider the relative
safety of different speeds downhill, for example. A low speed, checking
your descent with the brakes, will reduce your stopping distance and
give you more effective reaction time, so will up your safety, as will
your lower energy in the event of parting company with the bike. So do
you do that for any reason other than needing to slow down for sharp
bends or already visible obstacles? Doubt it!
Similarly, while most of us do superficial mechanical checks on a
periodic basis you can minimise risks even more by giving the bike a
fuller mechanical check before each journey. In practice practically
nobody does this, though it is something possible that will minimise
risk. Fact is that as long as risk is /acceptably/ low we don't
actually go quite as far to reduce it as we like to think we do. It's a
bit much of a faff, to put it simply, and just as we'd all be safer if
we never went down stairs at speed without holding the bannister at all
times, in practice we know how to do it well enough that we're happy
trotting down stairs without grabbing the hand rail. 350 people die in
the UK in a typical year from trips and falls, especially those on
stairs, yet we don't wear helmets for that.

Quoted message said:

I don't see cycling in my life as some thrill chasing sport.

Do you see driving and coming down the stairs as thrill-chasing sport?
Plenty of folk get killed doing them.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email hidden] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

Andy Leighton said:

Brian Robertson brian@nospam said:

Tony Raven said:

The problem is that if every time a cyclist said what you did, it was
true then the hospitals would be full of dead and seriously head injured
unhelmeted cyclists. The fact that they aren't indicates that either
helmeted cyclists have far more accidents or that helmets don't work.
As indicated in the link I posted, there is evidence that helmeted
cyclists are over seven times as likely to hit their heads in an
accident as unhelmeted ones.

Yes you are entitled to your opinion and to wear what you want on your
head but you are not entitled to try to tell DavidR or anyone else what
to wear (which is what you did), especially when all the evidence is
that wearing a helmet is not a wise course of action.

Well, although sorry for any offence caused, I don't think that I am
sorry for saying what I did because the result has been quite an
interesting debate from which I have learnt a few things of interest to
me as a cyclist.

It should also be stated that a lot of the people who now believe that
helmets confer no meaningful protection against serious injury on a
population level originally started with the same premise that helmets
must be good.

Well, I still think they are good for ME. That's only me though. I've
apologised for my original wording and have stated that I have no desire
to see any further pressure put on cyclists to wear helmets.

Brian.

marc said:

Yet as soon as you are
asked to back up that statement you start rattling on about opinions.

I have apologised for my original wording and had no reservations in so
doing. Can we leave it now, or do you get off on chasing people around
threads on usenet trying to show them up? Just wondering.

Brian.

Tony Raven said:

In article <[email hidden]>, brian@
[nospam].com says...

Quoted message said:

DavidR wrote:

Quoted message said:

I don't know if anyone else has said this on the thread, but you really
should wear a helmet. I mean that not as a patronising git, but as
someone with the near death experiences to prove it.

Oh purleeze....not another "Helmet saved my life"? patronising git.http://cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1019

--
Tony

" I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong."
Bertrand Russell

Yeah, nobody was talking about helmets on this thread.

David Lloyd

In article <[email hidden]>, Brian Robertson
brian@[nospam].com says...

Quoted message said:

Had I knocked myself out - and
I'm not sure whether momentarily I didn't - I would have drowned.

Had your hypothetical helmet caught on something underwater you could
also have drowned.

Quoting Brian Robertson <brian@[nospam].com>:

Quoted message said:

I don't have proof of many things in life. Like all of us, I can only
form opinions based upon my experiences

Are you of the opinion that the world is not flat? Are you of the opinion
that the Sun is about 1.5 x 10^11 metres away? Are you of the opinion that
there are over a billon people in China? If so, what personal experience
leads you to form those opinions?

Quoted message said:

I have one experience under my belt that would almost certainly have
resulted in me suffering serious and possibly life threatening injury
had I not been wearing a helmet.

When did you repeat the experiment with a control unhelmeted head?
--
David Damerell <[email hidden]> Kill the tomato!
Today is First Oneiros, October.

Quoting Peter Clinch <[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

Brian Robertson said:

I have one experience under my belt that would almost certainly have
resulted in me suffering serious and possibly life threatening injury
had I not been wearing a helmet.

Lots of people say this...

.... you missed the most telling one; if one in ten or so lid wearers has a
"saved my life" anecdote and only one in every few thousand cyclists can
expect to be killed riding (let alone the proportion who will die of a
head injury not accompanied by other mortal injuries), something is badly
amiss.
--
David Damerell <[email hidden]> Kill the tomato!
Today is First Oneiros, October.