On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 19:15:46 GMT, Dan <
[email protected]> wrote in
message <
[email protected]>:
>It's obvious that several of you monitor any subject that deals with
>helmets.
This is true. The reason is simple: clueless people keep trying to
introduce laws which will deter cycling, thus impacting one of the few
tried and tested mechanisms for improving cyclist safety - getting
more people on bikes.
There are two sorts of clueless people: those who have never been
exposed to clue, and those who have been exposed to clue but found it
to conflict with their pre-existing prejudices, so reject it.
A fair number of newbies in cycling groups fall into the first group,
and often they are the ones who start helmet threads. Exposure to
clue then either causes them to migrate into the second state (rare)
or to become clueful. In the clueful state they may or may not wear,
or even advocate, helmets. Whether they do matters only in the
context of clueless governments who believe that every cyclist who
wears a helmet is in favour of compulsion (an extreme form of type-II
cluelessness).
>Your arguments are well thought out and rehearsed to perfection
>but it doesn't change the facts or the common perception.
We get a lot of practice
The fundamental problem helmet advocates all have is that they are
assuming that the helmet is the only thing that changes, that putting
a PFDB on someone's head will not change their behaviour or that of
others around them.
There are four indicators which predict whether a person's behaviour
will change in response to an intervention: visibility, effect,
motivation and control. Helmets score high on all these indicators.
They are "visible" (i.e. we are conscious of wearing them), they
affect us (in the sense that we perceive that we are safer), we are
strongly motivated towards safety, and we have a great deal of control
over our actions.
http://ip.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/6/2/82
So the disparity between small-scale studies of self-selecting groups,
and whole-population time-series data, can be explained at least in
part by the (now well-established) mechanism of risk compensation.
Stating the facts, of course, rarely changes them. OK, sometimes it
does: the UK's leading helmet promoters stated the fact that 50
children a year die of cycling head injuries, and this did indeed
change the "facts" - the real figure is ten
Stating the facts is good. All of them, not just the ones we agree
with. It's just that the sceptics rarely have to state the pro-helmet
side because there is always someone else out there doing that.
Funny, though, how it's usually Thompson, Rivara and Thompson's 1989
study tat gets quoted.
>Helmets can and do SAVE LIFES.
Really? That's most surprising. They aren't designed to. Or didn't
they tell you that in your indoctrination? They are designed to
absorb small-scale impacts, the equivalent of falling off a stationary
or slow-moving bike.
On balance they neither save nor cost lives. When you take whole
populations of cyclists over long periods of time, the effect of
helmet use on head injury rates is statistically insignificant - the
trends are no different to those of pedestrians.
This does not square with figures like "helmets prevent 85% of head
injuries" of course. But then, even the original authors admit that
figure is wrong. I wonder why helmet promoters keep quoting it?
There are plenty of other studies to choose from, including others
from the same authors which are still at the upper end of the range of
estimates of efficacy. Why choose the largest figure ever recorded,
never duplicated since, from a study whose flaws are a matter of
record and acknowledged at least in part by the authors? It's almost
as if the problem isn't big enough to justify the proposed solution
unless it is sexed up a bit!
>While cycling is on the rise, there will be an increase in
>bicycle accidents which will cause an increase in mandated bicycle safety.
Wrong. In London recently they introduced a congestion charge; this
cut motor traffic by 20% and increased bike use correspondingly. The
injury figures are steady year-on-year, so the risk per cyclist has
dropped substantially. The C-charge was the /only/ change. You'd
expect the influx of inexperienced cyclists onto city roads to end in
carnage, wouldn't you? But it didn't. And most of those cyclists are
starting outside the charge zone, where traffic levels are as high as
ever.
Worldwide there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that more
people cycling will lead to /reductions/ in injury rates. Certainly
the countries where cycling is safest, are those where most people
cycle. And the converse also applies.
>All your statistics will not make a difference, no matter where you get
>them. I understand your lobbying, it's an avenue to protect your freedom of
>choice but regulation of helmet laws are easier than driver education
>towards bicycle awareness.
You have completely misunderstood. It has absolutely nothing to do
with my freedom of choice, and everything to do with the fact that
helmet laws cause massive drops in the numbers cycling, and make no
measurable difference to head injury rates. The reason I am opposed
to them (and I know I speak for several others here) is that *they do
not work*. Not only do they not work, they work against one of the
things which *does* work, which is getting more people cycling.
>If you'd use your energy towards stricter
>regulations of cell phone use while driving and keeping drunk drivers off
>the roads it would certainly promote cyclist safety and may keep the Helmet
>laws at bay.
LOL! We are not the ones lobbying for change. Go and talk to the
people who are trying to push through a law which has failed wherever
it has been tried, to solve a "problem" which exists primarily in the
minds of those trying to sell a solution to it!
Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University
