Woops!

(Ziggy) said:

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 22:00:36 +0100, Tom Crispin

Quoted message said:

Ooops, forgot the mandatory questions:

Were you wearing a helmet?

Did it save your life?- Hide quoted text -

This group does make me laugh -- any mention of an accident
immediately turns into a rabid anti-helmet-fest. It seems to me like
this was exacrtly the sort of situation were a helmet *is* useful - a
low speed impact that results in the cyclist falling and hitting his
head on the road (I assume, although it is not clear from the post,
that the main impact to the head was from the road and not the inital
contact with the van mirror). As Tom said, it would have saved a nasty
bump to the head.

I know a helmet is unlikely to protect me from an otherwise fatal
injury -- I don't believe the "helmet saved my life" stuff -- but I'd
rather have a bashed in foam hat than an egg-shaped lump on the bonce.

Anyway, glad it was not more serious. Did the van driver stop?

____
Rob

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

Quoted message said:

8am, cycling to work today, passing stationary WVM on the outside at
about 6mph, and approaching a set of pedestrian lights, WVM decides to
pull to the right to cross the right hand lane to use a loading bay.

Front of WVM hits my side, wing mirror the back of my head, and I go
down. Hard knock to the shoulder and hard bang to my head. I lie in
the road for about 5 minutes, with plenty of assistance from passers
by, including a nurse. Then I sit on the kerb for 5 minutes until the
police and two ambulances arrive.

Very low blood pressure and feeling faint. Paramedics wonderful.

In hospital under observation until 4pm.

Now I'm feeling sore in the right shoulder, but nothing broken. My
head has a large lump.

My body will repair itself; my bike won't. :-(

I wouldn't mind betting that your shoulder will be black and blue in a few
days time. -- and a darned sight more painful already

This is my shoulder a week after motorist caused "forced dismount" last
November
www.tapan.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Bruising23as.JPG

It was painful and didn't recover in a short 3 weeks -- more like 3 months!
And I still can't sleep lying on my right side nearly six months later.

Mind you I am 69 11/12's now and maybe I don't bounce as easily!

I trust you are getting legal help! It takes time but is necessary and hits
the perpetrator where it hurts -- on his no claim bonus!

Trevor A Panther
In South Yorkshire,
England, United Kingdom.
www.tapan.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

Quoted message said:

This group does make me laugh -- any mention of an accident
immediately turns into a rabid anti-helmet-fest.

I think you may have failed to spot the invisible smiley.

(Yes, it might very well have saved a lump on the bonce. But so might
American Football-style shoulder pads have saved his shoulder, and I
don't see anyone arguing for that. Lump on the head will probably go
down in days, shoulder injuries can take weeks and interfere
significantly with day-to-day life - I had to learn to drink
left-handed - in the meantime)

-dan

Quoted message said:

(Ziggy) said:

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 22:00:36 +0100, Tom Crispin

Quoted message said:

Ooops, forgot the mandatory questions:

Were you wearing a helmet?

Did it save your life?- Hide quoted text -

This group does make me laugh -- any mention of an accident
immediately turns into a rabid anti-helmet-fest.

The questions were (intended to be) completely tongue in cheek.

Quoted message said:

This group does make me laugh -- any mention of an accident
immediately turns into a rabid anti-helmet-fest. It seems to me like
this was exacrtly the sort of situation were a helmet *is* useful - a
low speed impact that results in the cyclist falling and hitting his
head on the road (I assume, although it is not clear from the post,
that the main impact to the head was from the road and not the inital
contact with the van mirror). As Tom said, it would have saved a nasty
bump to the head.

Indeed. The point is you can say the same thing about the last time I
bumped my head... which was on an open cupboard door in the kitchen.
Drew blood, nasty graze, bad headache, quite painful. Will people hold
that up as an example of why people in kitchens need to wear helmets? I
doubt it, yet a similarly [non] serious accident on a bike gets a public
tutting from a nurse for Not Doing The Sensible Thing. Why is there a
difference?

Quoted message said:

I know a helmet is unlikely to protect me from an otherwise fatal
injury -- I don't believe the "helmet saved my life" stuff -- but I'd
rather have a bashed in foam hat than an egg-shaped lump on the bonce.

Though if Tom /had/ been wearing his it would "obviously" have saved him
far more terrible injuries in /some/ eyes. It's not so much that you
believe it will save your life, but if it saves you a bump some /other/
numpty will think it *did* save your life.

And do you wear yours in other places and for other activities where an
egg-shaped lump on the bonce is actually similarly likely? It was
partly that conundrum that caused me to stop wearing mine. Maybe I'd
have been better off if it had caused me wear it when I was unloading
the dishwasher too, but despite my painful lesson I prefer to look out
for open cupboards and take that risk, rather than wear something I
really don't need all the time in the kitchen just in case.

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/

Peter Clinch said:

And do you wear yours in other places and for other activities where an
egg-shaped lump on the bonce is actually similarly likely? It was
partly that conundrum that caused me to stop wearing mine. Maybe I'd
have been better off if it had caused me wear it when I was unloading
the dishwasher too, but despite my painful lesson I prefer to look out
for open cupboards and take that risk, rather than wear something I
really don't need all the time in the kitchen just in case.

I appreciate that Ziggy's original comments were meant to be tongue-in-
cheek, but you can't deny that this group is fairly anti-helmet.

Re: your argument about bashing your head on a kitchen cupboard -
okay, but unless you are the Galloping Gourmet you are unlikely to be
travelling at 25mph in your kitchen!

I am fairly ambivalent about helmet wearing - sometimes I do,
sometimes I don't. If I'm popping down to the shops, no I won't.
Cycling to work I haven't been until fairly recently, now I usually
do. Offroad I almost always do. Not very logical, I know. I'm
certainly not in favour of a mandatory helmet law, despite the fact
that my sometimes wearing one seems to be viewed by some people as a
tacit vote for such a law.

Some of the anti-helmet arguments do strike me as silly though. "You
shouldn't wear a helmet; you should learn to ride safely!" Why do the
two have to be mutually exclusive? Of course a helmet is not going to
save you if you ride suicidally or have no brakes. But it's also
possible to ride safely while wearing a helmet, honest!

It seems that if you have an accident while helmetless, either you get
hurt, in which case wearing a helmet "could have made it worse
anyway", or you escape uninjured, in which case who needs helmets? 😉
(Or of course you get killed, and as we all know helmets are no use at
preventing fatalities...)

Anyway, sorry to hijack this thread, and Get Well Soon to Tom C and
his bike...

Rob

Quoted message said:

It seems that if you have an accident while helmetless, either you get
hurt, in which case wearing a helmet "could have made it worse
anyway", or you escape uninjured, in which case who needs helmets? 😉

I know you meant that as a humorous dig at the "group position"[*] on
helmet effectiveness, but it's actually quite amusing to consider that
as far as we can tell from the population-level data it's pretty
accurate ;-) Had you been wearing a helmet it may have helped or
hindered or neither, but we don't know which, and there's no observed
effect on a large scale which the helmet's presence (or absence) would
help explain.

[*] I don't think that there is a sufficient degree of homogeneity in
the opinions of individual posters for it to be reasonable to speak of a
"group position", hence the scare quotes. There are vocal posters with
a variety of different positions on the matter - some degree of common
ground and a whole variety of different emphases.

-dan

naked_draughtsman wrote on 01/05/2007 11:12 +0100:

Quoted message said:

I remember it but from the way it was presented it seemed like someone did
it out of curiosity. Didn't he also don a mini skirt and blonde wig and
found drivers gave him *much* more room?

No, it was research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council
and the results are being published in peer reviewed journals.

--
Tony

"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there
is no good evidence either way."
- Bertrand Russell

[email hidden] wrote on 01/05/2007 12:04 +0100:

Quoted message said:

Re: your argument about bashing your head on a kitchen cupboard -
okay, but unless you are the Galloping Gourmet you are unlikely to be
travelling at 25mph in your kitchen!

If you think that a helmet will help at 25mph you need to read their
specifications. Its only four times their design limit and in helmets
unlike many other products there is virtually no margin between their
design limits and their actual limits because to do so would compromise
venting, weight and appearance.

--
Tony

"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there
is no good evidence either way."
- Bertrand Russell

naked_draughtsman said the following on 01/05/2007 11:12:

Quoted message said:

I remember it but from the way it was presented it seemed like someone did
it out of curiosity. Didn't he also don a mini skirt and blonde wig and
found drivers gave him *much* more room?

If you saw a bloke wearing a mini-skirt and a blonde wig wouldn't you
give him more room? :-)

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

Tony Raven said:

If you think that a helmet will help at 25mph you need to read their
specifications. Its only four times their design limit and in helmets
unlike many other products there is virtually no margin between their
design limits and their actual limits because to do so would compromise
venting, weight and appearance.

For cracking your pate on a cupboard door OTOH you are probably still
within the design limits of a helmet, provided the corner of the door
didn't find its way through one of the vents.

--
Dave...

Quoted message said:

I appreciate that Ziggy's original comments were meant to be tongue-in-
cheek, but you can't deny that this group is fairly anti-helmet.

I won't deny it's perceived as such, but I draw a very clear distinction
between saying something is basically pointless and being actively
against it as "anti" implies. Otherwise it means that "if you're not
for us, you're against us" becomes true, and by that measure I'm clearly
anti-volleyball, and anti-celery etc.
Unfortunately the DfT takes the line that if you're not against us you
must be for us. That's quite staggeringly stupid given the evidence but
it's what is happening, and it's that that creates the problem: if
nothing is said then the assumption becomes, in the government's eyes,
that we think they're a good thing. c.f. "facilities": what the
government and public perceive as good for us is *not* good for us, and
I really don't think it's a Bad Thing to stand up and say so.

Countering ludicrous pro-propaganda means I'm against ludicrous
pro-propaganda. Nothing more, nothing less.

Quoted message said:

Re: your argument about bashing your head on a kitchen cupboard -
okay, but unless you are the Galloping Gourmet you are unlikely to be
travelling at 25mph in your kitchen!

First, note Tony's comment about the design spec: you're well above it
at 25 mph and a helmet subjected to such energies is quite likely to
undergo brittle fracture and do nothing much. Beyond that, the point
was saving a nasty bump, not saving a nasty bump at whatever speeds. I
got a nasty bump (like Tom did), but in one case it's clearly right to
be wearing a helmet because protecting against nasty bumps is what
they're good for, and in the other it's just one of those things and
clearly reasonable that I say "ow", walk around clutching my head for a
while, take a couple of Anadin and forget it. And again I ask, why the
difference?

Quoted message said:

Some of the anti-helmet arguments do strike me as silly though. "You
shouldn't wear a helmet; you should learn to ride safely!"

That's a stupid argument, granted, and the fact I'm happy to say so is
hopefully an indication that I'm not "anti helmet".

Quoted message said:

It seems that if you have an accident while helmetless, either you get
hurt, in which case wearing a helmet "could have made it worse
anyway", or you escape uninjured, in which case who needs helmets? 😉
(Or of course you get killed, and as we all know helmets are no use at
preventing fatalities...)

This is, ISTM, to counter the exact opposite arguments that /usually/
come out. We have seen an example very recently of an accident that
didn't involve the head at all being used as a platform for compulsory
helmet wearing. That sort of thing needs to be countered to show how
stupid it is.

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/

dkahn400 said:

For cracking your pate on a cupboard door OTOH you are probably still
within the design limits of a helmet, provided the corner of the door
didn't find its way through one of the vents.

Those lift-up garage doors have caught me a few times too. The answer
is clear... ;-/

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/

Peter Clinch said:

Quoted message said:

Some of the anti-helmet arguments do strike me as silly though. "You
shouldn't wear a helmet; you should learn to ride safely!"

That's a stupid argument, granted, and the fact I'm happy to say so is
hopefully an indication that I'm not "anti helmet".

Why is it stupid?

Which do you think would be more likely to save a rider from death or
injury?

It's only silly in that the two are not mutually exclusive, but
depending on the context the argument may be saying: "You won't make
yourself appreciably safer just by throwing some money at the problem,
but with a little application and effort you probably will".

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

It seems that if you have an accident while helmetless, either you get
hurt, in which case wearing a helmet "could have made it worse
anyway", or you escape uninjured, in which case who needs helmets? 😉
(Or of course you get killed, and as we all know helmets are no use at
preventing fatalities...)

This is, ISTM, to counter the exact opposite arguments that /usually/
come out. We have seen an example very recently of an accident that
didn't involve the head at all being used as a platform for compulsory
helmet wearing. That sort of thing needs to be countered to show how
stupid it is.

Although almost certainly not a useful campaign, it isn't actually
particularly stupid.

A great many people do promulgate the idea that 'helmets save lives' -
including doctors groups whom the public may mistakenly think know what
they are talking about. So unless someone has been exposed to the
arguments that this is not (or only very rarely) the case, working from
that premise (and given that body armour is not actually readily
available for cyclists), someone who has suddenly become sensitive -
indeed probably over-sensitive - to the dangers of cycling and decided
that they want to do something about it is likely to pick on the most
high profile supposed 'safety campaign' available to support.

Blame the people who should know better - those who have been exposed to
counter arguments - not someone who just wants to 'do her bit' to
prevent tragedies and has innocently been taken in by the pro-helmet
machine.

Quoted message said:

This group does make me laugh -- any mention of an accident
immediately turns into a rabid anti-helmet-fest. It seems to me like
this was exacrtly the sort of situation were a helmet *is* useful - a
low speed impact that results in the cyclist falling and hitting his
head on the road (I assume, although it is not clear from the post,
that the main impact to the head was from the road and not the inital
contact with the van mirror). As Tom said, it would have saved a nasty
bump to the head.

In hindsight, I wish I had been wearing a helmet. But I wish I was
wearing shoulder pads too - and my upper right outside thigh has come
up with a colourful bruise, so you can add thigh pads to the list as
well.

I've uploaded a little diagram of the incident.
http://www.johnballcycling.org.uk/photos/crunch

The van was in traffic and the driver showing no signs that he was
about to manoeuvre just before the collision.

Then *I think* just as the traffic began to move the driver made the
decision to park in the loading bay marked on the diagram. He
accelerated hard and knocked me off my bike. I remember the van
hitting the side of me, and me thinking I'm going down. I remember
nothing until my bang to the head, and thinking, "I hope my skull's up
to this."

The position of my bike's front wheel, next to the van's front wheel,
and the pushed back wing mirror, and slight pain on the back of my
head, makes me believe that the wing mirror hit the back of my head.
The main impact to my head was with tarmac, and the main overall
impact was to my shoulder. My key ring, which was in my trouser
pocket, is badly damaged too, and my trousers a write-off. My thin
cotton M&S short sleeved shirt is unmarked, except for a few spots of
blood.

I have no significant cuts or abraisons.

In article said:

In hindsight, I wish I had been wearing a helmet. But I wish I was
wearing shoulder pads too - and my upper right outside thigh has come
up with a colourful bruise, so you can add thigh pads to the list as
well.

Get well soon.

Quoted message said:

I have no significant cuts or abraisons.

Good.

dkahn400 wrote on 01/05/2007 12:49 +0100:

Quoted message said:

Tony Raven said:

If you think that a helmet will help at 25mph you need to read their
specifications. Its only four times their design limit and in helmets
unlike many other products there is virtually no margin between their
design limits and their actual limits because to do so would compromise
venting, weight and appearance.

For cracking your pate on a cupboard door OTOH you are probably still
within the design limits of a helmet, provided the corner of the door
didn't find its way through one of the vents.

Indeed having only just got rid of the scabs from the last time I
collided with a cupboard door.

--
Tony

"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there
is no good evidence either way."
- Bertrand Russell

Peter Clinch wrote on 01/05/2007 13:11 +0100:

Quoted message said:

dkahn400 said:

For cracking your pate on a cupboard door OTOH you are probably still
within the design limits of a helmet, provided the corner of the door
didn't find its way through one of the vents.

Those lift-up garage doors have caught me a few times too. The answer
is clear... ;-/

Being rather taller than average in the days of yore, I used to
regularly smack my head on the top of the door frame at home. The funny
thing about it was it only happened when I was wearing my cycle helmet
getting ready to go out. It never happened without the helmet because
I'd grown up without a helmet and knew instinctively where the top of my
head was. Must be a lesson in there somewhere.

--
Tony

"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there
is no good evidence either way."
- Bertrand Russell

Tony Raven said:

Being rather taller than average in the days of yore...

....but not these days? You must have hit your head pretty often to
wear away the excess height!

Tom Crispin wrote on 01/05/2007 14:25 +0100:

Quoted message said:

I remember
nothing until my bang to the head, and thinking, "I hope my skull's up
to this."

Oh ye of little faith. You should have been thinking "this is less than
a 1000J incident so the data from Tony tells me my skull will be fine"
;-) ;-)

--
Tony

"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there
is no good evidence either way."
- Bertrand Russell