Event helmet cobblers

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mjr
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by mjr »

Cunobelin wrote:One of the other "Great MYTHS" and screaming hypocrisies

Apparently the "evidence" that professional racing cyclists wear helmets is unequivocal proof that ALL cyclist should work wear helmets...


Yet hypocritically the same argument that professional racing drivers were helmets, fireproof clothing and additional protection is very, very silly

Isn't it the case that the racing cycling rule was pushed through by emotively exploiting a single off-camera death caused by a collision outside the test parameters, while the racing driving rules resulted from a series of thoroughly studied events? Is it just coincidence that the cycling rule benefits some sponsors while the motorsport sponsors would probably prefer not to be so associated with danger and death?
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The utility cyclist
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by The utility cyclist »

meic wrote:
it certainly isn't law to have reflectors

It certainly is law to have reflectors in the way that Martinn described.

No it isn't, it's an act of parliament, it's legalise not law, there's a difference, it's also unlawful legalise as it's discriminatory, it's yet more detrimental guff to the vulnerable/victims of those with killing machines and used as another victim blaming tool/way to take responsibility for safety away from those operating those killing machines.
given the power of motor vehicle headlights it should be no problem whatsoever for motorists to be able to see anything in the road that they present a hazard to or to them that is not lit at all IF they are obeying HC 126 and driving at a safe speed for the conditions and doing basics such as hazard perception.
We keep absolving motorists and pushing more focus on the vulnerable and the results keep showing us that this does not work, and event organisers are part of the wider problem, they perpetuate the need to wear helmets on a safety basis and yet it does diddly squat re safety, rather the opposite and indeed puts in the minds of everyone that this is normal/should be the done thing. And round and round we go so that all the time insurers of killers/those that maim will attempt to wriggle out of damages and put blame on the victim, just like the MET police did with Michael Mason. THAT disgraceful outcome is a direct result of what's happening with regards to forced helmet wearing, it makes me want to puke :twisted:
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gaz
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by gaz »

The utility cyclist wrote:given the power of motor vehicle headlights ...

Would those be the headlights that are required under the same non-law as a red rear reflector on a bicycle? :?

I agree with the broad sweep of your statements vis-a-vis victim blaming but arguing that the requirements of RVLR aren't "the law" because statute law itself isn't "the law" is at very best both an unhelpful and an unnecessary distraction.
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The utility cyclist
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by The utility cyclist »

gaz wrote:
The utility cyclist wrote:given the power of motor vehicle headlights ...

Would those be the headlights that are required under the same non-law as a red rear reflector on a bicycle? :?

I agree with the broad sweep of your statements vis-a-vis victim blaming but arguing that the requirements of RVLR aren't "the law" because statute law itself isn't "the law" is at very best both an unhelpful and an unnecessary distraction.

It's not a distraction, it's to point out that a group of people who have no authority over me, clearly aren't/weren't savvy enough to understand matters or at worst simply wanted to divert responsibility from one group to another re safety.
They also missed the fact this rule is unfairly applied in terms of what it's supposed to do with regards to other similar scenarios in the wider sphere, it's contra to another rule which SHOULD be a law because those not obeying that rule do directly put others in harms way, lack of reflectors do not do that, the inequity is massive!
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by Lance Dopestrong »

The utility cyclist wrote:No it isn't, it's an act of parliament, it's legalise not law, there's a difference, it's also unlawful legalise as it's discriminatory...


Not a good start I'm afraid. Law can be created in many ways, including common law, law laid down from time immemorial before parliament even existed. It is still law. To suggest otherwise is simply pedantry, and if you want to test this by breaking one of these non-laws and arguing the toss with a Judge then I would be only too happy to come and wish you godspeed.

Discrimination per se is not an offence, and is not unlawful. It is only unlawful when the discrimination is with respect to certain protected characteristics, such as race, nationality, disability, etc, none of which have been under discussion thus far.

As for Michael Mason, that matter is so misreported and shrouded in opinion it's become obscene. For example, the Met were criticised by the family's solicitor for "an insultingly soft interview." Er, it ain't the Sweeney. An interview is a discussion with a suspect in order to try and gather evidence. It is not a punitive process. Right from the off reporting of that one has relied too much on emotion and opinion, much as you just did just now. The Met's actions may or may not have been lacking, but stop presenting emotional response as a fact.






PS, I've no particular love for the Met, having gotten into disciplinary bother when down at Hendon on a course (and later being found having no case to answer), but let's stick to verifiable matters, not emotion.
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by pjclinch »

mjr wrote:
Cunobelin wrote:One of the other "Great MYTHS" and screaming hypocrisies

Apparently the "evidence" that professional racing cyclists wear helmets is unequivocal proof that ALL cyclist should work wear helmets...


Yet hypocritically the same argument that professional racing drivers were helmets, fireproof clothing and additional protection is very, very silly

Isn't it the case that the racing cycling rule was pushed through by emotively exploiting a single off-camera death caused by a collision outside the test parameters, while the racing driving rules resulted from a series of thoroughly studied events? Is it just coincidence that the cycling rule benefits some sponsors while the motorsport sponsors would probably prefer not to be so associated with danger and death?


It strikes me that the cycling rules were the result of the usual trickle of fatalities but in an era where suddenly lots of people were labouring under the misapprehension that a poystyrene helmet was anything more than a better hairnet. In the circumstances that gave credence to a "we've got to do something... this is something, we'll do this" moment.

I suspect motor racers were in helmets long before anyone was analysing crashes, because it was obviously getting quite a lot of people dead. Motor racing used to be significantly more dangerous than it is today, and it was always regarded as dangerous which was part of the attraction (or the TV trailers for motorsport wouldn't almost invariably feature spectacular crashes). There has long been a disconnect between actual racing and day to day driving, however.

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Lance Dopestrong
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by Lance Dopestrong »

Motor racers are an interesting example of the law of sod coming back to bite you.

In some of the really high energy racing series drivers have died in otherwise survivable collisions because the mass of the helmet caused the head to pivot forward and sever the spinal common. Hence the HANS device being invented. Great, HANS works, but a safety device to protect users from the dangerous effects of another safety advice seems to be an irony so massive that no designer has been able to see a way around it.
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The utility cyclist
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by The utility cyclist »

On one study where it approached retired pros it showed that modern day helmet wearing pros had 50% more traumatic injuries than those in the late 80s onwards to before helmet wearing rules. I've been desperately trying to find the study again but when you look at how often the pros crash now compared to even the early 00's it's utterly ridiculous, then you have the death rate per year since the rules were changed been higher.
So more incidents, more injuries, more deaths, this despite more on course safety protocols, more barriers, more marshals, quicker medical attention and of course better/more powerful brakes and grippier tyres.
So all the advantages to make cycling safer both environmental, procedure and equipment wise yet despite that AND the helmets the safety of cycling in the pro racing ranks is actually worse! :roll:

If I had a £1 for every time I heard the well I need a helmet in case I crash ... again, I'd be a millionaire pretty damn sharpish. Helmet wearers sure as hell crash a lot even when not racing!
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by pjclinch »

The utility cyclist wrote:On one study where it approached retired pros it showed that modern day helmet wearing pros had 50% more traumatic injuries than those in the late 80s onwards to before helmet wearing rules.


The 2013 BMJ editorial by Goldacre and Spiegelhalter laid out a whole pile of reasons why research suggesting helmets are Wonderful can't be entirely trusted, but exactly the same arguments apply to similar attempts (usually case/control) to show they're Ghastly.

Particularly, you need to be sure that there are no confounding factors (i.e., other things that have changed over the same time period that can't be fully accounted for). That is remarkably difficult to do, and it's important to treat things you want to believe with the same scepticism as things you don't.

The proven effect of helmets on safety is "about zero, plus or minus error bars" (and we don't know big the error bars are). And the effect is very possibly not consistent across different sub-populations.

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The utility cyclist
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by The utility cyclist »

pjclinch wrote:
The utility cyclist wrote:On one study where it approached retired pros it showed that modern day helmet wearing pros had 50% more traumatic injuries than those in the late 80s onwards to before helmet wearing rules.


The 2013 BMJ editorial by Goldacre and Spiegelhalter laid out a whole pile of reasons why research suggesting helmets are Wonderful can't be entirely trusted, but exactly the same arguments apply to similar attempts (usually case/control) to show they're Ghastly.

Particularly, you need to be sure that there are no confounding factors (i.e., other things that have changed over the same time period that can't be fully accounted for). That is remarkably difficult to do, and it's important to treat things you want to believe with the same scepticism as things you don't.

The proven effect of helmets on safety is "about zero, plus or minus error bars" (and we don't know big the error bars are). And the effect is very possibly not consistent across different sub-populations.

Pete.

When you have many improvements elsewhere that prevent incidents, prevent serious injury and even death which in pro racing and indeed general cycling are easy to say what these things are that do make a difference (because some of them actually benefit other road users) yet the overall picture is a negative one then with a significant increase in helmet wearing and miles travelled remaining broadly static plus a widening gap to pedestrian safety since when helmets started to take off in this country (post UCI rules which affected amateur racers and from that club riders and it's snowballed ever since), it's pretty obvious to me where the stench is coming from.
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by [XAP]Bob »

Lack of policing?
Lack of (recent) cycling experience by motorists?
Roads design
Roads maintenance

Plenty of places to absorb the blame before resorting to blaming polystyrene.

I do think that they make things worse overall, and then improve the (probably not massively serious) consequences of a few collisions... resulting in the zero +/- effect described above.
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by pjclinch »

The utility cyclist wrote:When you have many... <snip> it's pretty obvious to me where the stench is coming from.


So if you have a rigorous way of demonstrating that, get it published in a peer reviewed journal.

As we all know, getting past peer review isn't necessarily that hard and it's certainly no proof in itself that the author is right. But I would suggest if your burden of proof is "it's pretty obvious to me" then that's unlikely to cut it.

For the n+1th time, your arguments take insufficient notice of possible confounders. I get the impression that you have a tendency to start with a preferred conclusion and rationalise the available evidence in to fitting it. Ironically, this is just what the pro-helmet lobby do.

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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by Steady rider »

The reductions in cycling in NZ 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).[28]
Two recent studies also associated helmet use with increased injury rates. 1) Individuals with
documented helmet use had 2.18 (95% CI = 1.22, 3.89) times the odds of non–helmet users of being
involved in an injury-related accident (Pedroso et al., 2106 [29]). 2) Helmet use by transport cyclists was
associated with being injured while cycling in the past 2 years (OR=2.81, 95% CI=1.14, 6.94, Porter et al.
(2016) [30])


https://s23705.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploa ... elmets.pdf

There may be many confounders but they are not forced to have much effect. Some have been shown to have a significant effect and often these are reported in the data with the research.
Weaknesses with a meta-analysis approach to assessing cycle helmets. Feb 2017 http://worldtransportjournal.com/wp-con ... eb-opt.pdf provides some information on confounders. Similar with Evaluating cycling fatality risk with a focus on cycle helmet use
http://worldtransportjournal.com/wp-con ... 4.4opt.pdf

Data from NZ is interesting because it provides both accident data and time spent cycling per year.
http://www.cycle-helmets.com) see NZ section and 121% increase.
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by charliepolecat »

As far as wearing helmets whilst cycling is concerned, I'd say wear one of you like to and if the event requires one and you don't want to wear one, don't enter the event. The world isn't going to change to satisfy any one of us.
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Re: Event helmet cobblers

Post by Cugel »

charliepolecat wrote:As far as wearing helmets whilst cycling is concerned, I'd say wear one of you like to and if the event requires one and you don't want to wear one, don't enter the event. The world isn't going to change to satisfy any one of us.


I feel I must mention that the world changes all the time. Of late, the change rate has accelerated greatly. Who knows what will and won't be fashionable with we humans next year? As to next decade....

Sometimes these changes satisfy me. For instance, I enjoyed the advent of fat tyres and disc brakes on road bikes. Some will be dissatisfied by that, mind.

Of course, you may live in a small time warp, where a groundhog does it's thing again and again and again and ..... :-)

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