the paper is here and free to access, it's such a massive crock
http://urbactiv.com/wp-content/uploads/ ... dyw153.pdfSue Knaup a civil engineer and founder of
one street has this to say about it.
"I was most struck by the authors’ glaring support of Thompson, Rivara, Thompson (appears 26 times, mostly positive) and their clear opposition to Elvik (appears 23 times, all followed by discredit). For a paper like this to positively reference a study so clearly debunked as Thompson et al, immediately throws up a red flag.
I also noted that the authors are from Australia and most of those in the acknowledgments are from either Australia, Sweden, or the U.S. – all countries burdened with bike helmet laws and thus with a need to defend their stance. Also, regarding Australia, the advocates fighting their bike helmet law are gaining traction, so the timing of this paper is noteworthy. They even include a section on page 10 supporting mandatory bike helmet laws.
Drilling down into the paper, I found that they are very proud of using 40 “studies,” (of course compared to Elvik’s 20). However, their studies include compilations of data as long as they were “medically reported.” As we know, medical reports are often, if not usually flawed. Oddly, they also note police reports, which are terribly flawed.
They also happily include all head and face injuries of any severity, which as we know, can spike findings by including simple cuts and bruises. On top of that, any fatality that included any head injury, even with severe injuries in other parts of the body, was categorized as a head injury! Here’s the quote from page 3 under Methods: “Cycling fatalities with multiple injuries including the head were categorized as a head injury.”
Also, concussions were not considered severe, thus skewing data on brain injuries, most importantly, those with helmets. I find the distinction between “head injury” and “brain injury” in any of these papers/studies to be extremely important, because helmets cannot prevent brain injury, yet most people do not make this distinction. And this paper certainly works that misconception, not only the usual way by throwing around the two as if they are the same, but by blatantly shifting concussion data out of the severe category."