What helmet debate?
A Google search for helmet* on rec.bicycles.tech shows 10,100 posts.
But in a real debate, wouldn't both sides bring up (if not beat to death) other safety devices to
support their positions by analogy?
I tried a few Google searches of rec.bicycles.tech for helmet* and a few other words to see if
either side even mentioned other safety mechanisms.
I gave up fairly soon.
I found nothing applicable on rec.bicycles.tech for helmet* and a surprising list of safety devices.
Maybe my search technique could stand improvement, but try it yourself and see if you can find
any posts that address whether there's any relation between helmets and a few other obvious
safety devices:
Trigger-guards? Hilts on knives? Fuses or circuit breakers on electric panels? Bumpers on cars?
Horns on cars? Steel toe-caps on construction boots? Back-flow preventers on plumbing? Fire
hydrants on street corners? Deadman chain-saw and lawn-mower throttles? Life-vests for boating?
Kevlar vests for cops?
I did find single posts that mentioned smoke detectors and life-jackets in connection with the
helmet debate.
I also found three whole posts that mentioned helmets and safety-glass--gosh, talk about really
thrashing out the safety issue!
The closest that I came to finding posts with the blinders off was by searching for base* and
helmet* to see if the most obvious possible parallel was alive (batter* and helmet* come up dry).
There were a whopping 114 hits, many of which prove to be nothing about what baseball may suggest
about bicycle helmets. One post out of a thousand thinks that the audience might expect a bicycle
helmet debate to address batting helmets. Don't expect to take home the debate club trophy.
Probably I'm missing other obvious safety analogies that have in fact been addressed, but what kind
of supposedly deeply concerned bicyclists fail to raise so many obvious parallels?
It can't be that the deck is stacked in favor of one side or the other. If it were, one side would
be grinding the other side's face in its interpretation of the parallels.
It can't be that rec.bicycles.tech posters don't care about the issue--10,100 posts!
Maybe posters are a little inbred on this subject?
Wouldn't it be more interesting if both sides on the bicycle helmet issue didn't give the impression
of being locked together in a closet, shut off from the rest of the world?
I'll step aside now and leave it up to the ten thousand.
Carl Fogel