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Helmets helmets helmets

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wknight | 7 years ago
3 likes

Time for SuperPython59 to go back to school and learn how to compose a sentence without the need for so many swear words. 

On the way, stop off at your local A&e and ask them to show you what happens to people with head injuries. 

Helmets are are like insurance, you hope you never need one, but if you hit the road the wrong way you will definitely be better off wearing one than without. 

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davel replied to wknight | 7 years ago
1 like
wknight wrote:

Time for SuperPython59 to go back to school and learn how to compose a sentence without the need for so many swear words. 

On the way, stop off at your local A&e and ask them to show you what happens to people with head injuries. 

Helmets are are like insurance, you hope you never need one, but if you hit the road the wrong way you will definitely be better off wearing one than without. 

Superpython's already made this point, but do you wear a helmet to use a ladder, put shelves up, walk down the stairs in the morning, walk on the pavement in winter, go into a kebab shop at midnight.... drive a car?

If not, I assume you've performed a risk assessment and know the probability of head injuries in all of the other scenarios that you don't wear a helmet, and are happy with the lack of insurance in those?

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Griff500 replied to davel | 7 years ago
1 like

davel wrote:
wknight wrote:

Time for SuperPython59 to go back to school and learn how to compose a sentence without the need for so many swear words. 

On the way, stop off at your local A&e and ask them to show you what happens to people with head injuries. 

Helmets are are like insurance, you hope you never need one, but if you hit the road the wrong way you will definitely be better off wearing one than without. 

Superpython's already made this point, but do you wear a helmet to use a ladder, put shelves up, walk down the stairs in the morning, walk on the pavement in winter, go into a kebab shop at midnight.... drive a car? If not, I assume you've performed a risk assessment and know the probability of head injuries in all of the other scenarios that you don't wear a helmet, and are happy with the lack of insurance in those?

 

No 3rd party is going to come into my garden and knock my ladder away, interfere with my shelf installation or push me down the stairs, all of these are within my control. As for driving a car, drivers are already very well protected, with a combination of design, interior materials and airbags make a crash helmet all but unnecessary except in the unlikely event of rolling the car. Not sure if  I understand the kebab shop argument. None of your examples come close to cycling on busy roads with stressed out drivers texting, looking at girls in mini skirts, and thinking its OK to overtake acyclist when there is oncoming traffic. 

 

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davel replied to Griff500 | 7 years ago
0 likes
Griff500 wrote:

davel wrote:
wknight wrote:

Time for SuperPython59 to go back to school and learn how to compose a sentence without the need for so many swear words. 

On the way, stop off at your local A&e and ask them to show you what happens to people with head injuries. 

Helmets are are like insurance, you hope you never need one, but if you hit the road the wrong way you will definitely be better off wearing one than without. 

Superpython's already made this point, but do you wear a helmet to use a ladder, put shelves up, walk down the stairs in the morning, walk on the pavement in winter, go into a kebab shop at midnight.... drive a car? If not, I assume you've performed a risk assessment and know the probability of head injuries in all of the other scenarios that you don't wear a helmet, and are happy with the lack of insurance in those?

 

No 3rd party is going to come into my garden and knock my ladder away, interfere with my shelf installation or push me down the stairs, all of these are within my control. As for driving a car, drivers are already very well protected, with a combination of design, interior materials and airbags make a crash helmet all but unnecessary except in the unlikely event of rolling the car. Not sure if  I understand the kebab shop argument. None of your examples come close to cycling on busy roads with stressed out drivers texting, looking at girls in mini skirts, and thinking its OK to overtake acyclist when there is oncoming traffic. 

 

FFS. Exactly.

Explain to me how helmets stop drivers getting stressed, looking at phones, miniskirts, whatever the fuck distraction. How do helmets stop drivers colliding with cyclists?

You don't know how to fix anything, do you - just pray that a plaster will sort the aftermath.

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OnTheRopes replied to wknight | 7 years ago
1 like

wknight wrote:

Time for SuperPython59 to go back to school and learn how to compose a sentence without the need for so many swear words. 

On the way, stop off at your local A&e and ask them to show you what happens to people with head injuries. 

Helmets are are like insurance, you hope you never need one, but if you hit the road the wrong way you will definitely be better off wearing one than without. 

You want to wear a helmet, fine just don't preach.

The biggest cause of Traumatic Brain Injury is car crashes. I am starting a campaign to make it law to wear full face helmets in cars,  if you disagree you are clearly irresponsible.

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dougie_c | 7 years ago
2 likes

The validity of any systematic review depends on the assiduousness with which the authors identify the existing published research. I'm not happy with this article for several reasons:

1) it was published in a paywalled venue, excluding the general public, and also many interested professionals should their institution not subscribe to the journal. Good science is open science. Hiding your results from public scrutiny, in this day and age, is simply not acceptable. Happily there is sci-hub.cc...

2) Even once the article is obtained, the methods section lacks a clear description of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, which can only be obtained by requesting the study protocol from the first author. As the flowchart in figure 1 (results) makes clear, their initial search yielded 2393 "records"; the exclusion of duplicates took this to 1215 records (fair enough), BUT then the records are "screened" excluding 1124 records to yield 91 articles that were actually analysed at full-text level and THEN another 48 excluded ("with reasons") to yield the 40 studies that were actually included in the final analysis.

This screening process is NOT published. As, obviously, the choice of which data to analyse are crucial to the eventual results obtained, I am not a happy reader at this point.

3) Perhaps less important, but both authors declare that they are affiliated to a department of maths and statistics. I'm quite old-fashioned, but I like to see at least one medical degree among the authors when they presume to declare expertise on categorising the character and severity of injuries--in other words to have some clue about how the data were actually generated in the first place. This is particularly important when like is being compared with quite like, but not exactly. The specialist actually qualified to do this is a public health physician or medical epidemiologist. Now it may be argued that as this article has passed muster in the peer review process of the International Journal of Epidemiology, then it is OK, but given the opacity of the methods, I think reasonable doubt opens up.

4) Finally, the authors are Australian, and seem to have a vested interest in promoting the lamentable compulsion policy there. In their discussion they say that "the results of this review do not support arguments against helmet legislation from an injury prevention perspective." But we're not just interested in injury prevention: we're interested in overall health, and a decline in cycling participation is very clearly a decline in overall public health.

So I have serious doubts about the validity of their message.

 

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Ronald | 7 years ago
5 likes

Not necessarily bollocks SuperPython59... but very much a highly suggestive bit of research to suit someone's agenda (NSW government)!

 

The summary of this 'study' limits its scope to 'falls' - Which makes me think it completely filtering out motor vehicle caused accident data. I do believe in 1 sided accidents the conclusion is valid, bicycle helmets are designed for this scenario after all.

 

We all know the far bigger danger of very serious injury to cyclists are motor vehicles, and bicycle helmets don't provide anywhere near the protection some seem to think it gives... Motor cycle helmets however  3

 

 

 

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brooksby replied to Ronald | 7 years ago
1 like

Ronald wrote:

We all know the far bigger danger of very serious injury to cyclists are motor vehicles, and bicycle helmets don't provide anywhere near the protection some seem to think it gives... Motor cycle helmets however  3

I've always felt that a motorbike helmet would throw off your centre of gravity quite a bit if you were riding a bicycle while wearing one...

Have a look at this article, about how big a bicycle helmet actually needs to be to offer similar protection, if made out of bike helmet materials:  http://www.bhsi.org/concussionhelmet.htm

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fukawitribe replied to brooksby | 7 years ago
0 likes

brooksby wrote:

Ronald wrote:

We all know the far bigger danger of very serious injury to cyclists are motor vehicles, and bicycle helmets don't provide anywhere near the protection some seem to think it gives... Motor cycle helmets however  3

I've always felt that a motorbike helmet would throw off your centre of gravity quite a bit if you were riding a bicycle while wearing one...

Have a look at this article, about how big a bicycle helmet actually needs to be to offer similar protection, if made out of bike helmet materials:  http://www.bhsi.org/concussionhelmet.htm

That's an article about creating a helmet solely from EPS which yields less than 100g on all tests - not about one that offers similar protection to a motorbike helmet. (They also don't seem to have much of a clue about the causes of concussion or, if so, didn't mention it)

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