published helmet research - not troll

patrick said:

I know, I know. this has been hashed to hell and back, but
I figured some of you might actually want to read real
research.

see the most recent issue of the Journal of Public Policy
(Vol. 23, Issue 23 - June 2004) - Wiley, Inc. Publisher -
can get abstract from the wiley site.

The Effect of Bicycle Helmet Legislation on Bicycling
Fatalities - Grant and Rutner.

First pass is that it was a pretty good article for what
it is worth.

p

by the way. don't bother replying. I dont use that hotmail
account anymore.

I recently heard something on NPR to the effect that the
wearing of helmets and the rate of bicycle fatalities is
hard to draw claer relationships to because many of the
fatalities are/were children vs auto, where a helmet (while
still a great idea) is not going to have as big an effect as
it will in a one cyclist Done Fall Over incident, or even in
an adult vs auto.

FB - Thinks that all research aside a helmet is a good idea.
(Imperically speaking of course..)

"Faster Bordello" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

patrick said:

I know, I know. this has been hashed to hell and back,
but I figured some of you might actually want to read
real research.

see the most recent issue of the Journal of Public
Policy (Vol. 23, Issue 23 - June 2004) - Wiley, Inc.
Publisher - can get abstract from the wiley site.

The Effect of Bicycle Helmet Legislation on Bicycling
Fatalities - Grant and Rutner.

First pass is that it was a pretty good article for what
it is worth.

p

by the way. don't bother replying. I dont use that
hotmail account anymore.

I recently heard something on NPR to the effect that the
wearing of helmets and the rate of bicycle fatalities is
hard to draw claer relationships to because many of the
fatalities are/were children vs auto, where a helmet
(while still a great idea) is not going to have as big an
effect as it will in a one cyclist Done Fall Over
incident, or even in an adult vs auto.

FB - Thinks that all research aside a helmet is a good
idea. (Imperically speaking of course..)

Where's the proof? Where's the proof? People around
here don't need any real proof to be convinced that
Lance is a doper, but they need proof that a helmet
makes sense to wear.

Bob C.

psycholist said:

People around here don't need any real proof to be
convinced that Lance is a doper, but they need proof that
a helmet makes sense to wear.

Nah, lots of us want proof on both counts.

"patrick" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I know, I know. this has been hashed to hell and back, but
I figured some of you might actually want to read real
research.

see the most recent issue of the Journal of Public Policy
(Vol. 23, Issue 23 - June 2004) - Wiley, Inc. Publisher -
can get abstract from the wiley site.

The Effect of Bicycle Helmet Legislation on Bicycling
Fatalities - Grant and Rutner.

First pass is that it was a pretty good article for what
it is worth.

It can be found here:
economics.uta.eduhelmet.pdfOpen ↗

Gemma

Tim McNamara <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

psycholist said:

People around here don't need any real proof to be
convinced that Lance is a doper, but they need proof
that a helmet makes sense to wear.

Nah, lots of us want proof on both counts.

As a significant comment on the pertinent article - they
claim that a helmet seems to save some 15% of youth
fatalities. I haven't read the article yet (I just got
it) but in the abstract they say that 15% equals some
1,500 kids.

Firstly, 25 years of fatalities is some 15,000 deaths.
Of that only 40% or less are children or 6,000. 15% of
6,000 is 900.

Furthermore, the claim is that the benefits of helmets do
not seem to cross over to adults.

Could this be because:

1) An adult is a lot higher from the ground.
2) An adult is a great deal heavier than a child.
3) Because helmet laws tend to heavily discourage bicycle
use by children the statistics become highly skewed in
directions that are difficult to quantify.
4) Since the number of deaths of bicyclists are so small the
statistics are almost meaningless. "Typical" child
fatalities are from riding out in front of a vehicle in
motion. In these cases the specific impact points are far
more important than body armor.

I'll read the article tonight and be able to analyze it more
fully. I will say that most articles on helmets that have
been written by college professors, as this one appears to
be, aren't written to be scientific knowledge but are
written instead only to fulfill their collegian duty of
"Publish or Perish".

[email hidden] (Tom Kunich) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Tim McNamara <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<m2659sxkey.fsf@Stella-
Blue.local>...

Quoted message said:

"psycholist" <[email hidden]> writes:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

snip

Quoted message said:

Furthermore, the claim is that the benefits of helmets do
not seem to cross over to adults.

Could this be because:

1) snip

One of my friends thought it was due to the adults more
developed "protect your head reflex".. and anecdotally I
like it ..

I had two bike related concussions as a kid, as an adult 1
broken wrist 1 broken collar-bone 1 separated shoulder
(all at different times) never even a scratch or bump on
the head..

someone should do a study with a breakdown of the types of
injury by age... and exclude trials/bmx/free-riders...

[email hidden] (Tom Kunich) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Tim McNamara <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<m2659sxkey.fsf@Stella-
Blue.local>...

Quoted message said:

psycholist said:

People around here don't need any real proof to be
convinced that Lance is a doper, but they need proof
that a helmet makes sense to wear.

Nah, lots of us want proof on both counts.

As a significant comment on the pertinent article - they
claim that a helmet seems to save some 15% of youth
fatalities.

An important distinction - they say this about *helmet
laws*, not helmets. The actual effect for helmets themselves
may be higher if we account for noncompliance, which may be
substantial in this case (or not, but still the distinction
needs to be made).

In other words, requiring kids to wear helmets does not mean
every one of them will. This study appears to be examining
the effect of the legislation, which can only approach and
never exceed the effect that would be attained by perfect
compliance.

-RJ

Ronaldo Jeremiah said:

[email hidden] (Tom Kunich) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Tim McNamara <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<m2659sxkey.fsf@Stella-
Blue.local>...

Quoted message said:

"psycholist" <[email hidden]> writes:

>People around here don't need any real proof to be
>convinced that Lance is a doper, but they need proof
>that a helmet makes sense to wear.

Nah, lots of us want proof on both counts.

As a significant comment on the pertinent article - they
claim that a helmet seems to save some 15% of youth
fatalities.

An important distinction - they say this about *helmet
laws*, not helmets. The actual effect for helmets
themselves may be higher if we account for noncompliance,
which may be substantial in this case (or not, but still
the distinction needs to be made).

In other words, requiring kids to wear helmets does not
mean every one of them will. This study appears to be
examining the effect of the legislation, which can only
approach and never exceed the effect that would be
attained by perfect compliance.

Based on my quick skimming of the article, it appeared they
did not have any direct data on changes in ridership
resulting from the introduction of helmet laws. They claimed
that there was no such effect based on not seeing any
increase in pedestrian fatalities (which might be expected
if cyclists switched to walking instead) or in motor vehicle
miles. I'm skeptical of their conclusions since even a
pretty substantial reduction in ridership with previous
riders now getting rides from parents would have only a very
minor impact on total motor vehicle miles driven and might
not be detected in the statistics. Also recreational (i.e
just for fun) riding by juveniles may have been replaced by
other activities such as playing video games, etc.

Previous studies have shown substantial reductions in
ridership upon the introduction of helmet laws and such a
reduction could easily account for all of the observed 15%
decline in fatalities even if helmets were totally
ineffective. Locally (northern Cal.) there was an obvious
reduction in the number of bicycles in school bike racks
immediately following the introduction of the juvenile
helmet law and the numbers have remained lower than they
were before.

Their discussion of cost/benefit ratio appeared to assume
the only cost of the helmet law was the monetary and
inconvenience cost of the helmets. But if ridership
decreases then there are also the health benefits of cycling
that are lost as a consequence of such laws. Hillman's study
for the British Med. Assoc. indicated that for every year of
life lost due to cycling accidents there were 20 years of
life gained due to the beneficial effects of the cycling-
related exercise. A helmet law that results in reducing
ridership by as little as 5% would therefore have a net
detrimental effect on overall years of life even if helmets
were 100% effective in reducing fatalities (which is clearly
not the case).

In article <[email hidden]>,

Ronaldo Jeremiah said:

[email hidden] (Tom Kunich) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

As a significant comment on the pertinent article - they
claim that a helmet seems to save some 15% of youth
fatalities.

An important distinction - they say this about *helmet
laws*, not helmets. The actual effect for helmets
themselves may be higher if we account for noncompliance,
which may be substantial in this case (or not, but still
the distinction needs to be made).

Or the effect could be lower. Helmet laws change behavior,
especially among children, there is no doubt about that. If
you assume children are safer with their parents than when
unsupervised, and that a helmet law will decreases juvenile
ridership more for children riding alone than with their
parents, then it's possible that the effect of helmets for
children is less than a 15% reduction in fatalities.

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by Ajames54

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

"psycholist" <[email hidden]> writes:

One of my friends thought it was due to the adults more
developed "protect your head reflex".. and anecdotally I
like it ..

I had two bike related concussions as a kid, as an adult 1
broken wrist 1 broken collar-bone 1 separated shoulder
(all at different times) never even a scratch or bump on
the head..

...So were you wearing a helmet when you sustained all these injuries?

patrick said:

I know, I know. this has been hashed to hell and back, but
I figured some of you might actually want to read real
research.

There has been plenty of "real research" cited on this
topic.

For example, you might visit cyclehelmets.orgcyclehelmets.orgOpen ↗ and
track down some of the cited articles. Regarding the effect
of helmet use on fatalities, you can visit
cyclehelmets.orgmf.htmlOpen ↗ and see citations
at the page bottom.

Another source is the Vehicular Cyclist site, at
magma.ca~ocbcOpen ↗ with it's "Helmet FAQ." There are
lots of citations listed there, too.

Both of those are helmet skeptic sites. To be fair, I must
also point you to the rabidly pro-helmet "Bicycle Helmet
Safety Institute", www.bhsi.org This "institute" (named
Randy Swart) is working to make it illegal for anyone of any
age to ride a bike at any time without a helmet. I quote:
"The Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute supports carefully
drawn mandatory helmet laws covering all age groups."

Be aware that there is _very_ serious discussion taking
place in many scholarly publications regarding the
effectiveness of helmets. In general, we seem to have the
public (under the influence of heavy promotion) believing
that helmets are a godsend. Meanwhile, competent
statisticians who examine the actual data are much, much
more skeptical of both the supposed benefit, and the
supposed need.

--
--------------------+ Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove
rodent and vegetable dot com, replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

Frank Krygowski said:

Another source is the Vehicular Cyclist site, at
magma.ca~ocbcOpen ↗ with it's "Helmet FAQ." There
are lots of citations listed there, too.

This site (at least, the so-called "Helmet FAQ"😉 was created
by a rabid anti-helmet person who would spew continued
personal abuse at anyone who disagreed with him in the
slightest. You should note Krygowski's tactics. He posts a
link to Randy's site for "balance" but immediately
disparages it.

Quoted message said:

Both of those are helmet skeptic sites. To be fair, I must
also point you to the rabidly pro-helmet "Bicycle Helmet
Safety Institute", www.bhsi.org This "institute" (named
Randy Swart) is working to make it illegal for anyone of
any age to ride a bike at any time without a helmet. I
quote: "The Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute supports
carefully drawn mandatory helmet laws covering all age
groups."

Randy's site is not "rabid," even if you don't agree with
everything he says (or anything he says, for that matter.)

Bill

--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB

Quoted message said:

The Effect of Bicycle Helmet Legislation on Bicycling
Fatalities - Grant and Rutner.

Their statistics are sound, and their calculation of a 15%
reduction in the juvenile bicycling fatality rate during
the helmet-law era appears to be accurate, although
virtually indistinguishable from the already-existing
downward trend since 1975, represented by the blue line in
their data graph:

img22.imageshack.usgraph.gifOpen ↗

They conclude that their calculated reduction is not due to
any corresponding reduction in bicycling among juveniles,
but their opinion is unsupported by the data. The indirect
evidence they infer from a lack of increase in vehicle-miles
per capita, and in the juvenile pedestrian fatality rate, is
insufficient to offset the direct evidence easily inferred
from the significant increase in the rate of juvenile
obesity from 11.3% [1988-1994] to 15.3% [1999-2000]:

cdc.gov03hus069.pdfOpen ↗

angotja <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Ajames54 said:

Quoted message said:

> "psycholist" <[email hidden]> writes:

One of my friends thought it was due to the adults
more developed "protect your head reflex".. and
anecdotally I like it .. I had two bike related
concussions as a kid, as an adult 1 broken wrist 1
broken collar-bone 1 separated shoulder (all at
different times) never even a scratch or bump on the
head..

...So were you wearing a helmet when you sustained all
these injuries?

There were no bike helmets when I was a kid... the collar
bone was when hit by a car.. no helmet... the shoulder was
when mountain biking .. with a helmet .. the wrist was when
hit with a car door .. no helmet.

That being said I wear a helmet about 80% of the time on the
road and 100% when trail riding...

Frank Krygowski said:

In general, we seem to have the public (under the
influence of heavy promotion) believing that helmets are
a godsend. Meanwhile, competent statisticians who
examine the actual data are much, much more skeptical of
both the supposed benefit, and the supposed need.

I read in my local paper (The Lansing State Journal) that
riding without a helmet makes you 14 times more likely to
get killed. That claim exceeds any made by Swart. Imagine a
helmet that is 100% effective in preventing brain injury.
This 14x claim would still require that 93% of all fatal
crashes involve fatal brain injury with no other mortal
wounds. Gannett News printed the claim as if it were an
established fact.

Mitch.

LioNiNoiL_a t_Ne t s c a pE_D 0 T_Ne T said:

Quoted message said:

The Effect of Bicycle Helmet Legislation on Bicycling
Fatalities - Grant and Rutner.

Their statistics are sound, and their calculation of a 15%
reduction in the juvenile bicycling fatality rate during
the helmet-law era appears to be accurate, although
virtually indistinguishable from the already-existing
downward trend since 1975, represented by the blue line in
their data graph:

img22.imageshack.usgraph.gifOpen ↗

Yes - if helmets were having a significant effect, that
graph should show a significant drop in juvenile fatalities,
over and above the prevailing trend, from 1991 to 1997, when
(as they show) the helmet laws became fashionable.

Incidentally, there are several sources on the web which
plot cylist fatalities and pedestrian fatalities over the
decades. Despite the increase in helmet use, the plots are
stubbornly parallel... with, of course, a certain amount of
random variation superimposed.

It seems clear that a) the emergency medical people have
gotten gradually better at their job (probably in large part
due to technology), and b) helmets aren't making a
significant difference in cyclists' fatalities. If they
were, the cyclist plot would drop relative to the ped. plot.

--
--------------------+ Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove
rodent and vegetable dot com, replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

"Frank Krygowski" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

patrick said:

I know, I know. this has been hashed to hell and back,
but I figured some of you might actually want to read
real research.

There has been plenty of "real research" cited on
this topic.

For example, you might visit cyclehelmets.orgcyclehelmets.orgOpen ↗
and track down some of the cited articles. Regarding the
effect of helmet use on fatalities, you can visit
cyclehelmets.orgmf.htmlOpen ↗ and see citations
at the page bottom.

Another source is the Vehicular Cyclist site, at
magma.ca~ocbcOpen ↗ with it's "Helmet FAQ." There
are lots of citations listed there, too.

Both of those are helmet skeptic sites. To be fair, I must
also point you to the rabidly pro-helmet "Bicycle Helmet
Safety Institute", www.bhsi.org This "institute" (named
Randy Swart) is working to make it illegal for anyone of
any age to ride a bike at any time without a helmet. I
quote: "The Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute supports
carefully drawn mandatory helmet laws covering all age
groups."

Be aware that there is _very_ serious discussion taking
place in many scholarly publications regarding the
effectiveness of helmets. In general, we seem to have the
public (under the influence of heavy promotion) believing
that helmets are a godsend. Meanwhile, competent
statisticians who examine the actual data are much, much
more skeptical of both the supposed benefit, and the
supposed need.

--
--------------------+ Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove
rodent and vegetable dot com, replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

Frank Krygowski said:

Be aware that there is _very_ serious discussion taking
place in many scholarly publications regarding the
effectiveness of helmets.

What makes it so serious, compared to other discussions?
Letters after people's names? Big egos? Feeding frenzy at
the hog trough of research dollars? Self-importance
typically associated with these things? Or is it earnest
effort, for once!

Quoted message said:

In general, we seem to have the public (under the
influence of heavy promotion) believing that helmets are a
godsend. Meanwhile, competent statisticians who examine
the actual data are much, much more skeptical of both the
supposed benefit, and the supposed need.

Ah, but there's no money to be made in telling people they
don't need helmets! And no political points gained from
being "anti-safety."

Matt O.

Matt O'Toole said:

Frank Krygowski said:

Be aware that there is _very_ serious discussion taking
place in many scholarly publications regarding the
effectiveness of helmets.

What makes it so serious, compared to other discussions?
Letters after people's names? Big egos? Feeding frenzy at
the hog trough of research dollars? Self-importance
typically associated with these things? Or is it earnest
effort, for once!

Maybe "serious" doesn't describe it well enough.

When you log onto the web sites for some of these journals,
you can find discussions between the original authors and
other knowledgeable scientists who discuss their work.

A recent paper out of Scotland reached some very pro-helmet
conclusions, for example; but correspondents were able to
point out errors in computation that invalidated its
results. That was interesting, because it pitted two (or
more) statistics experts against each other, with one
emerging a clear loser.

The discussions take place at a much higher level than the
typical wreck.bike discussions (if you can believe such a
thing!) For example, no time is wasted on tales like "My
buddy ran into a swarm of butterflies, and I _know_ his
helmet saved his life!!!!" ;-) It all tends to be very
scientific, very mathematical.

--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot
com. Substitute cc dot ysu dot edu]