Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

For all discussions about this "lively" subject. All topics that are substantially about helmet usage will be moved here.
drossall
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by drossall »

drossall wrote:My impression is that many threads are started by someone coming along and saying (yet again) something to the effect of "Why don't more people wear helmets"? There has to be a place for the answers, and the repetition was getting annoying in the wider forum. (It's a bit tedious here but, short of getting one of those support-forum systems that force you to check for duplicate threads before starting a new one, it's hard to see what to do.)


fishfright wrote:I wear a helmet on a bike due to many years mountain biking wearing a helmet and falling of enough to know they work well enough to make wearing one an automatic choice when riding a bike.


Here we go again :(
Phil Fouracre
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by Phil Fouracre »

Ooooh goody! Another bloody helmet thread! Happy New Year :-)
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
Steady rider
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by Steady rider »

A recent report detailed that cyclists wearing helmets had more than twice the odds of suffering an injury than cyclists not wearing helmets, with an OR value 2.81, 95% CL =1.14, 6.94.

Porter AK, Salvo D, Kohl HW, Correlates of Helmet Use Among Recreation and Transportation Bicyclists, AJPM 2016.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27866599

So helmet wearers have a higher accident rate according to this and other indicators. Say 6 million ride bikes in the UK, say half wear helmets, 3 million, say 2% have accidents, 60,000 per year for helmet wearers. For non wearers say 1% have accidents, 30,000 per year.

For helmet wearers they would average more than 1000 per week, so we can expect a proportion to send in messages saying they have fallen off and hit their helmet that saved them. From these estimates helmet wearers could be costing the nation an extra 30,000 treatments per year.
ps Happy New Year
Phil Fouracre
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by Phil Fouracre »

Fantastic, now that has made my year :-)
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
Mistik-ka
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by Mistik-ka »

Steady rider wrote:A recent report detailed that cyclists wearing helmets had more than twice the odds of suffering an injury than cyclists not wearing helmets, with an OR value 2.81, 95% CL =1.14, 6.94.

Porter AK, Salvo D, Kohl HW, Correlates of Helmet Use Among Recreation and Transportation Bicyclists, AJPM 2016.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27866599


Um…………have you given us the wrong link? :?:
The study you linked to compares helmet use between adult recreation and transportation cyclists in the U.S., concluding that different factors correlate with helmet use in the two groups. Higher income, more education, and safety training are positively related to helmet use in both groups.

Neither this study, nor any other I could find in a brief perusal of the internet, presented conclusive date concerning the likelihood of injury when cycling with one's tongue protruding into one's cheek. 8)
geocycle
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by geocycle »

As far as I can tell the only strong data suggests that compulsion results in lower numbers of cyclist so I'm definitely pro choice. I've not yet seen conclusive evidence that I can relate to my use age that helmets either reduce or increase injury. So I wear one one when battling traffic on the way to work but don't usually both when going to the shops. Each to their own.
Steady rider
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by Steady rider »

http://www.cycle-helmets.com/helmet_statistics.html
another link - it also links to the full paper
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Cunobelin
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by Cunobelin »

The important point is that it is an informed choice

When you get the uninformed, "wear a helmet or your family will be feeding you through a straw and wiping your bottom" claims then they need to be challenged
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by [XAP]Bob »

geocycle wrote:As far as I can tell the only strong data suggests that compulsion results in lower numbers of cyclist so I'm definitely pro choice. I've not yet seen conclusive evidence that I can relate to my use age that helmets either reduce or increase injury. So I wear one one when battling traffic on the way to work but don't usually both when going to the shops. Each to their own.


Which is interesting because it's exactly not what cycle helmets are designed to deal with (battling with traffic).
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
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pjclinch
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by pjclinch »

[XAP]Bob wrote:
geocycle wrote:As far as I can tell the only strong data suggests that compulsion results in lower numbers of cyclist so I'm definitely pro choice. I've not yet seen conclusive evidence that I can relate to my use age that helmets either reduce or increase injury. So I wear one one when battling traffic on the way to work but don't usually both when going to the shops. Each to their own.


Which is interesting because it's exactly not what cycle helmets are designed to deal with (battling with traffic).


Up to a point, Lord Copper. They're certainly not designed to take the full energy of a motor vehicle striking your head at speed, but OTOH a low speed SMIDSY, news-topical dooring etc. that knocks a rider off their bike might well have no more impact energy for the rider's head (assuming they do hit it) than the sort of plain fall a helmet is designed for.

The "it's traffic, they're pointless" and "you're travelling at more than 12 mph, they're pointless" is all rather binary thinking and the world doesn't really work that simply in practice. Not that that persuades me I want to ride in traffic with a helmet on, mind.

Pete.
Often seen riding a bike around Dundee...
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by [XAP]Bob »

pjclinch wrote:
[XAP]Bob wrote:
geocycle wrote:As far as I can tell the only strong data suggests that compulsion results in lower numbers of cyclist so I'm definitely pro choice. I've not yet seen conclusive evidence that I can relate to my use age that helmets either reduce or increase injury. So I wear one one when battling traffic on the way to work but don't usually both when going to the shops. Each to their own.


Which is interesting because it's exactly not what cycle helmets are designed to deal with (battling with traffic).


Up to a point, Lord Copper. They're certainly not designed to take the full energy of a motor vehicle striking your head at speed, but OTOH a low speed SMIDSY, news-topical dooring etc. that knocks a rider off their bike might well have no more impact energy for the rider's head (assuming they do hit it) than the sort of plain fall a helmet is designed for.

The "it's traffic, they're pointless" and "you're travelling at more than 12 mph, they're pointless" is all rather binary thinking and the world doesn't really work that simply in practice. Not that that persuades me I want to ride in traffic with a helmet on, mind.

Pete.


Agreed - but when people suggest that they're only needed for when 'battling traffic' it does make the whole thing sound rather gladiatorial...

It also conjures images of high speed incidents (which are way outside the design criteria) rather than the simple, low speed collision (which you correctly point out may well be within the design criteria). I'm not sure that 'going to the shops' has any lower incidence of the lower speed opportunities than 'battling traffic'...

OTOH of course it is these low speed collisions which the skull is pretty well designed for...
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
Mistik-ka
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by Mistik-ka »

Steady rider wrote:http://www.cycle-helmets.com/helmet_statistics.html
another link - it also links to the full paper

Thanks for the link, Steady rider.
The caption for the graph at the top of the page indicates that cyclists who have been injured in the past two years are more likely to wear a helmet now. It doesn't tell us anything about the likelihood of being injured while wearing or not wearing a helmet.

It was a mathematics professor who introduced me to the aphorism that there are three levels of untruth: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I suspect that sometimes there are three contributors to confusion: statistics, statistics, and more statistics. :wink:
Steady rider
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by Steady rider »

I would treat the report as an indicator to helmet effects. Other reports can also be considered etc. Data from NZ is useful to consider with data on cycling levels and injuries.
One submission included the following;
H) Increased risk of injury per cyclist since helmet laws were introduced
Several analyses have compared numbers of injuries with the numbers of cyclists. They all suggest that injuries per cyclist have increased from what would have been expected without helmet laws.
In New Zealand, from 1989 to 2011, average time spent cycling (on roads and footpaths) fell by 79% for children aged 5-12 (from 28 to 6 minutes per person per week) and 81% for 13-17 year olds (52 to 10 mins/person/week).
Adult cycling declined from 8 to 5 minutes/person/week then trended back up to 8 minutes. Graphs of cycle use over time provide strong evidence that the requirement to wear a helmet discouraged cycling. The reductions in cycling were accompanied by increased injury rates. Between 1989 and 2012, fatal or serious injuries per million hours of cycling increased by 86% for children (from 49 to 91), 181% for teenagers (from 18 to 51) and 64% for adults (from 23 to 38). Robinson DL, Submission, No 411 Senate Inquiry into personal choice and community impacts http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Bus ... ubmissions

Another useful piece of information also came from Robinson;
http://www.cycle-helmets.com/robinson-head-injuries.pdf it gives details showing helmet wearers are more likely to hit their helmets when they do fall off.

Listing the pros and cons of helmet effects that may affect the accident rate tends to show they will likely add to the overall number of falls, see http://www.ta.org.br/site2/Banco/7manua ... Helmet.pdf

In addition other research also finds concerns, e.g. Erke and Elvik 2007 examined research from Australia and New Zealand and stated: "There is evidence of increased accident risk per cycling-km for cyclists wearing a helmet. In Australia and New Zealand, the increase is estimated to be around 14 per cent." The findings were based on six reports, four from when legislation was in place.
Erke A, Elvik R, Making Vision Zero real: Preventing Pedestrian Accidents And Making Them Less Severe, Oslo June 2007. page 28 https://www.toi.no/getfile.php/Publikas ... 7-nett.pdf

Of course research from the the 1980's to now should have considered this issue in detail. most of the research focus on if a helmet will provide protection in the event of an impact. If the accident rate changes with helmet use then the overall safety assessment becomes more uncertain. After 30 years of helmet research it cannot be proven that helmets improve safety overall. it can be shown that helmet legislation discourages cycling. These two issues do sit well with supporters of helmet legislation, because it is not justified.
The following is a reasonable overall guide.
http://www.cyclinguk.org/campaigning/vi ... le-helmets
axel_knutt
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Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by axel_knutt »

I haven't read anything to change my mind since I read Adams' Risk 10 years ago.
“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
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pjclinch
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Re: RE: Re: Productive section or I Reckon Repetition ?

Post by pjclinch »

[XAP]Bob wrote:
Agreed - but when people suggest that they're only needed for when 'battling traffic' it does make the whole thing sound rather gladiatorial...

It also conjures images of high speed incidents (which are way outside the design criteria) rather than the simple, low speed collision (which you correctly point out may well be within the design criteria). I'm not sure that 'going to the shops' has any lower incidence of the lower speed opportunities than 'battling traffic'...


Think of rush-hour not-quite-gridlock, with lots of small jerks, impatient folks nosing in at junctions, ministers getting out of not-parked cars, and that'd be the sort of thing I'd not associate with a supermarket run, at least in part as you have more choice of time about shopping.

[XAP]Bob wrote:OTOH of course it is these low speed collisions which the skull is pretty well designed for...


Indeed, and given lack of imperative to get back on and finish my race, or keep on enjoying the single track in order to e.g. take witness details and number plates etc., added to the pretty low risk based on both my personal track record and overall prang rates and the faff of using helmets, that's all part of why I'm typically protected by one of Walz's nice cycling caps allied to skill, knowledge, awareness and a bike in good order.

Pete.
Often seen riding a bike around Dundee...
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