Warning anecdotal helmet comment!

[Cunobelin]

HI,
Well would you rather be wearing a helmet or not When your head hits the tarmac?

Can you in all certainty say that the next time you fall off your head will not hit the ground?

Some statistics if you can.
We will never know till we fall off will we.

I'd rather not hit my head whilst not wearing one than to hit it whilst wearing one - which is rather the point of this comment thread.

A larger, heavier, object on my neck is more likely to get to the ground than my bare head would be...

Does this also apply to the next time you use a set of stairs?

3 times as many head injuries are admitted fro injuries on stairs than on cycles......do you wear a helmet on stairs?


Would you rather be wearing a helmet or not When your head hits the stairs?

Can you in all certainty say that the next time you fall on a stair that your head will not hit the stairs?

[Cugel]

HI,
Well would you rather be wearing a helmet or not When your head hits the tarmac?

Can you in all certainty say that the next time you fall off your head will not hit the ground?

Some statistics if you can.
We will never know till we fall off will we.

I'd rather not hit my head whilst not wearing one than to hit it whilst wearing one - which is rather the point of this comment thread.

A larger, heavier, object on my neck is more likely to get to the ground than my bare head would be...

Does this also apply to the next time you use a set of stairs?

3 times as many head injuries are admitted fro injuries on stairs than on cycles......do you wear a helmet on stairs?


Would you rather be wearing a helmet or not When your head hits the stairs?

Can you in all certainty say that the next time you fall on a stair that your head will not hit the stairs?

Coherent, integrated, co-ordinated and consistent behaviours are not a feature of the human. The human acquires habits at random, caught from various sources:

* often hysterical parental directives and, later, those of the skool;
* mass-media norms, including those crazy ones from the advert;
* copycatting one's peers, celebs and other glamour golums;
* all sorts of olde wifey tales and daft-bloke pub-jabber.

These habits are often a sort of Brownian Motion, which may or may not propel the human to safe havens in this wild world.

Many modern habits are generated by the various fear-memes put about by the new politics - "We are no longer increasing your opportunity for a better future but instead spoiling your life today with draconian restrictions and oversights, for security reasons". The fearful things are selected from a large barrel full of such things. Most of them are made of cardboard or badly-knitted lumps of old string left in the attic by one's great grandparents, since 1909.

Cugel

[The utility cyclist]

I think you forgot to say In your opinion....

I couldn't agree more with everything you say.(this isn't strictly true but the rest of my post was deleted )

What I said isn't opinion, it is fact.
Fact, people including children take greater risks when adorned with a safety aid, this is incontrovertible despite so called plastic hat experts denying this (back to the denialist thread!), it is a human psychology issue and tested time and time and time again and found to be so, not just for adornments worn on the head. Thus from that the probability of an incident occurring is increased, this is again a certainty not opinion.

Fact, a helmet increases your head size, also fact is that by definition of that size increase it will increase the probability of you striking your head compared to not wearing in any given scenario. again, not opinion.
Fact, headgear in boxing has not decreased TBIs, in fact it has increased TBIs significantly.

Fact, concussions/TBIs in American Football/gridiron increased massively with the onset of the Naismith helmet, far from actually protecting participants, he and others have actually increased the injuries 9of all types) and TBIs over the years to such a point that there are hundreds of thousands of former players suffering with the long term effects of multiple traumatic brain injury and other injuries caused by the reckless and unadulterated play style. Fact, this level of TBI is not seen in rugby, the injury level of gridiron is not seen in rugby, why? Because headgear was not worn, the rules of the game were changed, spear tackling/leading with the head or shoulder to the head was nowhere near as common place, why, because players did not feel protected by a helmet/headgear to be as reckless, again this is uncontrvertible fact not opinion.

Even now the rulers in gridiron will not remove helmet to helmet contact when a player is deemed to be a 'runner' though they have outlawed head contact when a player is deemed to be defenceless. Rugy has evolved far quicker in terms of looking at preventing even just arm swing tackles never mind directly striking an opponent at full speed with your head, shoulder charging/barging was outlawed simply because there was a high chance of direct head contact and also the whiplash effect. Again, this changes the environment instead of trying to 'armour' up.

Fact, those who road race at the top level are at least twice as likely to suffer a traumatic injury comparative to those in the 1980s/early 90s, this was a study undertaken only a few years ago which took data from professional riders of two eras. the helmet wearing era were over twice the level for suffering traumatic injuries as the non helmet wearing era. We already know that despite better on course H&S, more marshals, barriers on courses, better grippier tyres, better brakes and helmets, more riders die in the pro road racing ranks post helmet rules than pre. Again, this is fact not opinion.

As i said, there are certainties and not opinion that say helmets are not helping but hindering and exposing the wearer to greater risk, that doesn't even take into account the other variables that ad up to a much worse situation for all of us.

Again in your opinion.
I would like to add to that comment but unfortunately the Moderators will again edit my post.
Stop cherry picking "facts" to back up your opion.I too could do that to back up my opinion that wearing helmets saves lives.For every "fact" you list I could find a counter "fact" dismissing it.This could then go on and on.
We all get that you are anti-helmet as you like to tell everyone as often as you can get it into to any topic.As anti you are I am pro.The difference is I don't try to insinuate than non users are somehow less intelligent or less informed than me.

You said what I said was an opinion, why do you think it's opinion and not fact? As a rugby player myself from a young age and having played a bit of gridiron as well back in the day and looking at the numbers and behaviour of players I have first hand experience and the figures to back what I've said, these aren't random picked out of the air stuff these are actual figures given by people within the sports. My brother was a decent level amateur boxer both pre and post headgear wearing, the ABA produced the numbers that prove without a doubt that headgear wearing was a massively bad thing with regards TBI.
But please do put up some facts of your own to counter what I said.
Just because you keep saying it's an opinion doesn't change matters.
Little point continuing any discussion with people like you who simply want to devolve things and ignore realities, FACT!

[Cugel]

You said what I said was an opinion, why do you think it's opinion and not fact? ........

But please do put up some facts of your own to counter what I said.

Just because you keep saying it's an opinion doesn't change matters.

Little point continuing any discussion with people like you who simply want to devolve things and ignore realities, FACT!

Realities can be constructed. Indeed, they ALL are constructed by the human mind and we'll never be able to apprehend the entirety of whatever it is that constitutes Reality (or The Truth).

However, some constructed human realities are better than others. How is "better" measured?

If the constituents of a constructed reality (which include language, maths and other basics, as well as the tests-for-truth procedures) are:

* coherent (not full of self-contradictions);
* practical (can be used not just to form intents but to realise them); and
* transferrable (they work across different and diverse cultures)

then that reality is going to have a lot more force than Uncle Wally's latest conspiracy theory or The World According to Trump Tweet.

The various realities can and do also construct facts. There really are alternative facts, which are simply sets of human experiences wrapped in already installed human belief-systems in different ways. "Miracle occur and here is my evidence for one" is currently a news item going the rounds. If those involved prefer their miracle fact to the alternative fact that they just got lucky .......

But within a culture like ours, we do generally accept certain truth-tests and certain facts emergent from those tests as "correct belief". All of us. So it is remarkable that we humans can nevertheless put our fingers in our ears and go LAH LAH LAH whenever such a fact is presented to us but we feel it inconvenient to some belief or behaviour we wish to cling to for the usual emotional reasons. Yet we all do that. Yes, even me & thee!

Still, some of us come to our senses and accept we must put an erroneous belief to the side in favour of a better-constructed one. The alternative is to go the full fruit-loop and join a cult where whatever you want to believe can be true.

Cugel

[The utility cyclist]

If X occurs and it is noted to occur by many it is a reality, it is something that has happened and cannot therefore be disputed to not have happened. People can observe in different ways but when you use x number against y number and people who spend many long years studying particular events saying yes this is a thing, that becomes an accepted fact, otherwise we might as well say the earth being roughly spherical in nature is only opinion, gravity is only opinion, that we are sentient beings is only opinion, Elvis is dead is only an opinion ...

[Cugel]

If X occurs and it is noted to occur by many it is a reality, it is something that has happened and cannot therefore be disputed to not have happened. People can observe in different ways but when you use x number against y number and people who spend many long years studying particular events saying yes this is a thing, that becomes an accepted fact, otherwise we might as well say the earth being roughly spherical in nature is only opinion, gravity is only opinion, that we are sentient beings is only opinion, Elvis is dead is only an opinion ...

Hilariously, there are people who hold those beliefs and yet manage to go about functioning anyway. Often they do so by accepting the disliked fact in practice even whilst railing against it verbally. More often, they follow a mad belief with the actions it dictates and come a cropper, perhaps bringing others down with them. "Let's go to war to show that other lot only we have the right religion/ideology/superman genes/whatever".

For many it's more important to cling to certainties and to appear intransigent (I am right and never wrong) rather than to align their actual practices or their obvious self-interests with their mental constructs.

As I mentioned, humans are queer beast and rather flawed. It's them memes - metaphysical parasites infesting our brains and making us daft, like one of those parasites that gets it's host to be madly reckless so it gets eaten by a predator and the parasite spreads. In this case the cycling helmet meme is promising wonderful things it can't do whilst threatening dire consequences for non-believers. This is a meme survival feature found in both religions and ideologies, which is perhaps why the helmet debate amongst it's human hosts is so heated.

Cugel

[[XAP]Bob]

HI,
Well would you rather be wearing a helmet or not When your head hits the tarmac?

Can you in all certainty say that the next time you fall off your head will not hit the ground?

Some statistics if you can.
We will never know till we fall off will we.

I'd rather not hit my head whilst not wearing one than to hit it whilst wearing one - which is rather the point of this comment thread.

A larger, heavier, object on my neck is more likely to get to the ground than my bare head would be...

Does this also apply to the next time you use a set of stairs?

3 times as many head injuries are admitted fro injuries on stairs than on cycles......do you wear a helmet on stairs?


Would you rather be wearing a helmet or not When your head hits the stairs?

Can you in all certainty say that the next time you fall on a stair that your head will not hit the stairs?

If that's a question at me... then I can say that the next time I fall over is likely to be in the next 3-4 hours, and there is a reasonable chance it will be on a stair (though a better chance if I had any ramps to negotiate).

I don't perpetually wear a helmet, because even without any functioning vestibular system I am still miraculously </s> able to protect my head as ${deity}/nature intended. Indeed the design of the skull means that a simple fall is unlikely to do any serious damage anyway... but I digress.

I will fall over today, likely several times. I can also say that I can't recall when I last hit my head falling over. I cannot categorically say that I won't hit my head later today, but I can say that I worry more about where I might land on other bits of my body.

[mjr]

It is perhaps worth considering that if the placebo effect is sufficient for some people to feel safe enough to cycle when wearing a helmet (but not otherwise) then this is arguably a good thing because more cyclists really does lead to better safety for cyclists

Or arguably a bad thing if helmet wearing leads to cyclists choosing roads with heavier traffic because they feel safer.

Or arguably a bad thing if helmet use leads to more crashes overall, or if helmet users then go to [inappropriate word removed] all over the internet about how their helmet wrecked in a minor avoidable fall saved their life, or the helmet users simply crash into other riders through more poor decision-making... there really are a lot of potential drawbacks. This may be part of why real-world casualty rates don't correlate with helmet use rates.