facetious accusation

For all discussions about this "lively" subject. All topics that are substantially about helmet usage will be moved here.
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mjr
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Re: facetious accusation

Post by mjr »

fast but dim wrote:You aren't the one still on crutches, can't work, can't walk and will miss the rest of the summer on his bike. I'll be looking at a financial loss of around a grand, and a ruined holiday. To suggest I repeat it is not even close to being appropriate..

Well, the opening comment "I won't be riding again without a helmet. The only reasons not to are vanity / overheating / laziness, which in now way outweigh the pros" in the other thread was not even close to being appropriate to people who have suffered neck injury from cycle helmets. Yes, pinched nerves are so vain and lazy, aren't they?

I suggested a similar but more reasonable idea in that other thread, that there should be some full car-style crash test dummy studies of helmets, to give a better idea of what effect they have. [XAP]Bob just put it a bit more directly: we can't tell anything from individual crashes.

Meanwhile at the population level, increasing helmet use doesn't seem to correlate with improving public health. Not even TRL's recent report could support such a conclusion with any evidence.
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
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thirdcrank
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Re: facetious accusation

Post by thirdcrank »

A helmet thread about a helmet thread.

Even the contribution from horizon doesn't make the point that this arose from an accusation of being facetious, rather than a facetious accusation. I suppose it just goes to show the dangerous side-effects of helmet threads. Is there no protective equipment available? I'll use it if there is.
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pjclinch
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Re: facetious accusation

Post by pjclinch »

mjr wrote:I suggested a similar but more reasonable idea in that other thread, that there should be some full car-style crash test dummy studies of helmets, to give a better idea of what effect they have.


I suspect the devil is in the detail. For your CTD in a car crash all they have to do is sit there because the environment is relatively static and doesn't involve much in the way of reactions beyond the Newtonian. One of the more common cycle prangs is a sideways slide accompanied by reflexive arm and head movements... A really useful cycling CTD would need musculature and reflexes etc. etc.

In other words, it remains the fact that doing it properly is going to be damn difficult, quite possibly to the point where results you get are going to be of little more use than the existing headform type tests.

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Bicycler
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Re: facetious accusation

Post by Bicycler »

thirdcrank wrote:A helmet thread about a helmet thread.

Even the contribution from horizon doesn't make the point that this arose from an accusation of being facetious, rather than a facetious accusation. I suppose it just goes to show the dangerous side-effects of helmet threads. Is there no protective equipment available? I'll use it if there is.

:lol:

Well segregation hasn't worked. Maybe we should rename this section the Helmet sub-farcility :wink:
AlaninWales
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Re: facetious accusation

Post by AlaninWales »

fast but dim wrote:
[XAP]Bob wrote:About 6 pages back in another thread I was accused of being facetious when I suggested that assertions of injuries saved required a control experiment.

I'd just like to state that I wasn't being facetious at all.
I was doing the normal thing and equating hospital treatment with more than just a couple of stitches (which don't require a hospital), but I wasn't being facetious.

To know what injuries, minor or otherwise, you may have avoided you need to redo the accident, or present other evidence. e.g. torn gloves probably imply scratches and scrapes.

Of course you might not go as fast, or take your hands off the bars, or any of a myriad of other contributory behaviours (where applicable) and therefore might avoid all injuries...



Oh, and what you actually put was not quite so reasoned or eloquent.
[XAP]Bob wrote:surely to cinfirm thatit saved you from head you've repeated the incident without a lid?

Don't dress it up like it's not mate

Seems to me a perfectly reasonable way of pointing out the fallacy in your suggestion that you've learned an appropriate lesson from the incident as described.
MartinC wrote:Fast but dim. I'm sure everyone here including me has sympathy for your accident. I'm also sure that you're reading far more into Bob's post than is either there or intended. Please also remember that you're the poster who called everyone who didn't agree with you about hi vis pillocks.

I have a rapidly decreasing degree of sympathy regarding the original incident. If f'b'dim continues to practice no-hands riding but with a helmet to save him (as he has indicated) then I will have zero sympathy should he injure himself so seriously again.

Edit to add: I do practice no-hands rinding - carefully and in appropriate circumstances, without a helmet. Three times the abiltiy to manoevre a bike without handlebars has save me from serious injury :) .
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: facetious accusation

Post by [XAP]Bob »

fast but dim wrote:I really have no interest in This part of the forum,just a personal problem with your post I've sent a couple pm s, with no reply, so shan't return to this thread.

This is the reply - both PM's basically said the same as you said in the thread.

That you were hospitalised, and hurt your hip.

Quite why you therefore think that a helmet saved you from being hospitalised I cannot fathom. You are taking a single data point (I've never been attacked by a bear whilst walking on ice) and extrapolating it beyond any sense (walking on ice must protect me from bears, I'll take a stroll in the arctic).

The lesson learnt should be to keep control of your vehicle. If you need to take both hands off the controls then I suggest you stop first - if you're in the TdF then the risk/reward might be different, but ask Contador what the risk is - Nibali got the reward.
On the road you just need to be grateful there wasn't a bus behind you, because it wouldn't have been able to stop.

Observations which look at populations over the course of years (I.e. billions of miles, not one incident) fail to show even a marginal benefit (although a marginal benefit is often within the statistical confidence). The benefits are small, non existant or somewhat negative - the penalty for helmet promotion (not even compulsion) is a reduction in cyclist numbers, a reduction in safery associated with increased motor vehicle usage and lower cyclist awareness, and an increase in sedentary diseases - ironically including strokes, which are already a major source of serious brain injury.

Analysing hospitalisation records for head injuries cyclists don't even show up...
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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