Mick F wrote:Cugel wrote:If only them chainsaw users would put on the protective gear. It would save not just their hearing, a finger or three and the odd eye but also whole legs!
If only the same could be said for those polystyrene cycling hats.
Chainsawing. I'm very familiar with.
I wear ear defenders because my Husqvarna is very noisy.
I wear overalls, gloves and boots, but all I'm doing is cutting up logs on a logging horse or cutting down a tree in our wood. No lumberjacking for me!
I could be chainsawing naked.
If so, I'd be very careful indeed.
Could it be possible ........... an argument here? ............ that making yourself more vulnerable makes you more careful?
Could it be possible that wearing a cycling helmet makes you cycle more aggressively?
Could it be possible, that cycling completely naked top-to-bottom would make you very careful indeed?
Risk compensation or whatever we care to call it in various circumstances, certainly exists as a common human behaviour when the human feels safer (whether the human is actually safer of not). No doubt chainsawing fellows wearing every chainsaw protection thingy (and there's a whole suit, gloves, shoes, helmet, face guards, etc.) will be a bit more blase as they wield their buzzing choppers.
However, the difference between chainsaw safety clothing and bicycle helmets is that the former actually do offer significant protection whilst the latter seem to offer very little; and only in low-speed impacts. At best a cycling helmet will absorb 7N of force (many don't manage that) which is not much. Chainsaw trousers will prevent the thing chewing off your leg even if it'll still hurt a great deal if you drop the buzzing blade into a quadricep.
You could saw nekkid and you would, no doubt, be very careful. But, as with riding a bike, things can occur that are out of your control which result in an accident. A chainsaw accident is rarely a small or insignificant event, unlike falling off your bike and getting gravel rash, bad bruising or even a broken collar bone. A chainsaw bites deep and then you bleed to death, arteries a-squirting-oh!
What about a broken head from a bike fall? Possible, I suppose, but relatively rare. In 60 years cycling I've banged just about everything but my head by falling off. I've banged my head in other activities, though. Perhaps we should all wear one when fell-walking, ice-skating or gardening?
On the other hand, my skull is quite thick, like the thing inside it.
Would the absorption of 7N of initial headbang by some polystyrene stop a serious concussion or similar? Perhaps ... but it won't do much with the 45-70N typically imparted to a human body during a car-smack.
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes