On Mar 16, 2011, at 6:48 PM, Anne Paulson wrote: >> Bottom line, I don't care what statistics show, either in favor or >> against, nor will I EVER. I will ignore them over my own gut intuition
That stance is always at some risk of becoming "I know what I know, don't confuse me with the facts." Which sort of thing has had all sorts of consequences in American political and economic life. > I am the complete opposite-- I believe statistics-crazed sports nerd > is the term of art here. My gut would like to be informed by accurate > statistics on the increased risk posed by my cycling without a helmet, > before it supplies me with intuition on whether to wear one. My gut > already knew that some cyclists have had head injuries, and other > cyclists have not. My gut is therefore markedly unimpressed by > anecdata from neurologists who only see people with head injuries and > do not treat the many perfectlly healthy cyclists who return from > rides without having injured their heads, and equally unpersuaded by > cyclists who announce that they ride without a helmet and haven't had > a head injury. The available statistics have some trends which have probably already been covered and, if not, such discussion is readily available in less pleasant and more contentious forums (fora?). Check Google Groups for rec.bicycles.tech and read any one of the dozens of helmet threads, which are incredibly tedious and repetitive FWIW. One of them will be enough. The interested reader can also check www.cyclehelmets.org for a broad perspective on the helmet issue. I don't care to repeat that stuff, I've been in enough discussions about helmets that I have had a bellyful. No longer interested in the debate. The fundamental problem is that bike crashes are chaotic events. One can tumble down the road or trail and never bump your head. Or you can hit it 11 times. You can hit your head and get nothing but a bump or a cut; you can hit your head and squash part of your brain. Helmets can only protect against certain kinds of brain injuries, if they provide any protection at all. You can die from a traumatic brain injury without your head ever touching anything (e.g., shaken brain syndrome) and a helmet can't help at all with that. The extra weight may even make matters worse. There's just no way to know in any given crash whether the helmet helped significantly or not. It might have; it might not have. In the past few years around here, almost every cyclist killed while riding was wearing a helmet as reported in the news; most died from non-head injury causes and most from being struck by a motor vehicle. One of the oddest was two helmeted cyclists who collided headfirst in a bike path tunnel, killing one of them on the spot. So, you pay your money and you take your chance. Go for a ride. With or without a helmet it is overwhelmingly likely to be a nice thing to do and the likelihood of dying while doing it is extremely small. Probably on the order of one death for every 1,000,000 rides. If you get to 999,999 maybe be extra careful on that next ride. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
