psycholist wrote:
> "Frank Krygowski" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
>>The "organ donor" line is common, tiresome, and flat out wrong.
>>
>>One of my best friends is an organ recipient. After his transplant, he
>>became an educator for a transplant organization.
>>
>>He assures me that cyclists never have, and never will, be significant
>>sources of organ donations. First, there are FAR too few cyclist deaths.
>>In the US, only about 750 cyclists get killed each year.
>>
>>Compare with about 40,000 motorists;
>>roughly 15,000 people who die from falls;
>>about 6000 pedestrians hit by cars;
>>perhaps 5000 drowning victims;
>>not to mention about over 700,000 heart attack victims and 150,000 stroke
>>victims (the main sources of organ donors, he claims).
>>
>>Furthermore, he pointed out that (contrary to the hype) most cyclist
>>fatalities are _not_ nice clean corpses that regrettably died from a light
>>tap on the head. Instead, almost all have been hit by cars and suffered
>>the sorts of multiple internal injuries that ruin organs.
>>
>>So, as usual, another trite piece of pro-helmet propaganda is worthless
>>when examined seriously.
>>
>>
>
>
> And equally as usual, another case of COMPLETELY misleading statistics. Of
> course cyclists aren't a significant source of organ donations. There
> aren't that many of us. What's relevant is to look at the number of organ
> donations relative to the number of cyclists.
Fine. Where are your figures for donations per cyclist? Feel free to
dig them up an post them.
Not that it matters much. The sarcastic comment was that cyclists
without helmets are likely organ donors. No matter how you slice it,
it's false.
BTW, another indication of the falsity is to examine the number of
cyclist fatalities per hour or riding, or per year of riding.
From
http://www.bicyclinglife.com/Library/SteppingStones.htm
(data is for Great Britain):
"How dangerous is cycling? A quick-cut measure to put the risk in
day-to-day terms is to calculate how many years of cycling there are for
each death. To put it another way, this is the number of years you could
expect to cycle before being killed in an accident. We know that
currently about 170 cyclists get killed per year and from surveys we
know there are about 3 million regular cyclists in Britain. There are in
addition at least another 3 million occasional cyclists, but we will
ignore them here. We divide 3 million by 170 to get 18,000 years.
Now that looks like quite a lot of cycling."
If the typical British cyclist can expect to die only after 18,000 years
of cyclng (on average), how can you pretend this is a signficant danger
- or a significant source of organ donations?
What would also be more
> relevant to this newsgroup is to toss out all the incidents involving people
> who ride once a decade and focus on those of us who spend hours and hours
> training on the road. How many of us, because of all of our hours of
> exposure to traffic and all the miles we log, end up having a serious
> incident at one time or another?
From the same paper: "A more useful measure of the risks for active
cyclists is to look at CTC members. There are 3 to 5 deaths per year,
out of 60,000 members, so that gives: 12,000 to 20,000 years of cycling
per fatality."
Understand, the Cyclists' Touring Club (CTC) is full of people who ride
very enthusiastically and frequently. These are folks who tour Britain
& Europe (and beyond) by bike, and do club rides each weekend.
>
> If I merely consider our cycling club, I can think of dozens of incidents in
> the past couple of years where people were hit by cars, dogs ran into the
> road and took them out, they went down in a paceline touch of wheels, etc.
> I can also recall dozens of statements like, "were it not for my helmet, I'd
> have been way more seriously hurt."
First, an interesting fact that has emerged in these Usenet discussions
over the years: Everyone who falls and conks their helmet on the ground
seems to feel it either saved their life, or saved them from being very
seriously hurt.
But is this true? Very, very doubtful. If you go back to the dim, dim
past and recall (or read) about cycling in the pre-helmet days, you get
NO stories about brain injured cyclists. I rode for many years before
helmets were marketed, and heard never a word about the supposed
"problem" of head injuries. I've read quite a lot on cycling history,
including reams of personal accounts. (Those who are interested might
check out Vintage Bicycle Quarterly magazine - 400 mile rides, day and
night, for weekend fun!) Head injuries were never a "problem" until
Bell decided to look for a new market!
Why would there be "saved my life" stories now? One obvious one is that
a helmet is bigger than a head; a near miss or light touch of a bare
head will be a resounding "clunk" on a helmet. Another is that
styrofoam is fragile. A broken helmet is evidence of... a broken
helmet, period! Yet many think it represents a nearly broken head. Still
another factor is the sound and surprise of physical impact. Whether
you're aware or not, it's common for faith healers to startle their
"patients" with a sudden shout and/or blow. For whatever psychological
reason, this triggers a "magic" response in the victim. Helmet
companies benefit from this, apparently.
But back to your club: A second point is this: Exactly how many
_deaths_ have their been in your club? (Because after all, that's what
"organ donor" is tied to.) How many before the helmet era? How many
since helmets became part of the club uniform?
In our club, the totals are: Zero, and zero.
IOW, despite all the hundreds of thousands of miles we do, cycling is
NOT a likely cause of death. Our club has seen people die of heart
disease, stroke, cancer, even accidents involving farm equipment; but
bike crashes? Zero.
>
> Can I cite statistics to back this up? No.
Of course not.
Has anyone produced any
> relevant statistics that apply to this population of serious cyclists who
> log many hours on the roads? NO!
False. See above.
> Am I pro helmet law? NO! Am I pro helmet? YES! Above all, I'm anti
> statistics.
Hmm. That's a worrying sign of innumeracy.
I know statistics quite well and I know they can be quite
> limited, quite biased and quite inaccurate.
If you are truly anti-statistics, you'd better stop taking any
medication you're ever prescribed. The _only_ way the FDA approves
medicine is by statistical studies resulting from double blind tests.
And BTW, there have been no such tests done for helmets, for obvious
reasons. The limited studies that promote helmets (especially, the tiny
one which produced the "Helmets prevent 85% of head injuries") would
NEVER pass FDA muster.
--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]
And as usual, those arguing against the data I post have no numbers
