Helmets - personal experience

Envee NV wrote:

Mid winer in devon. Tried to make the green light so i can make the right turn. Helmet strapped to the handlebar. I know. Dont say anything. Slipped on ice going around the corner. Came down just as you did. Smacked my head near the temple. I woke up once when the paramedics were there attending to me and i said i was cold. Next thing i know is that i woke up in the hospital in a bed. I was out for three hours. This injury, smacking my head on the asphalt, disturbed the three pools of water in your ear that are responsible for your equilibrium. Now every time i turn my head in a funny fast way at a certain angle i start spinning like i drank too much and am just about to puke. Let this be a lesson to you all about, not, wearing a helmet

My wife had very similar symptoms a while ago (cause unknown) and we managed to treat it surprisingly well with the Epley Maneouvre. The idea is that there are errant canaliths (small bits of calcium carbonate) that are moving around in your inner ear and triggering your movement/balance senses when you perform certain moves (e.g. lying down, bending over, sitting up etc) and the Epley maneouvre is a series of movements that aims to move the canaliths out of the way.

It's worth giving it a try as it's very unlikely to make things worse and there's several youtube videos showing you how to do it (best get someone to help you, though). Here's the steps:

1. Ask someone to sit on the exam table with their eyes open and then turn their head 45 degrees to the right.
2. While supporting the back of the head, they will then ask someone to quickly lie down on their back, coming to a resting position with the head hanging 20 degrees off the end of the exam table.
3. Turn the person's head 90 degrees to the left.
4. Wait 30 seconds.
5. Turn the head an additional 90 degrees to the left while asking the person to also rotate their body 90 degrees to the left.
6. Wait 30 seconds.
7. Ask the person to get up or sit up on the left side of the table.

Envee NV wrote:

Mid winer in devon. Tried to make the green light so i can make the right turn. Helmet strapped to the handlebar. I know. Dont say anything. Slipped on ice going around the corner. Came down just as you did. Smacked my head near the temple. I woke up once when the paramedics were there attending to me and i said i was cold. Next thing i know is that i woke up in the hospital in a bed. I was out for three hours. This injury, smacking my head on the asphalt, disturbed the three pools of water in your ear that are responsible for your equilibrium. Now every time i turn my head in a funny fast way at a certain angle i start spinning like i drank too much and am just about to puke. Let this be a lesson to you all about, not, wearing a helmet

Can I suggest that if you weren’t trying to beat the lights and n the depths of winter you would never have dropped your bike.  There is absolutely no guarantee that you would have escaped damage to your inner ear through the wearing of a helmet. 

All sports that require the wearing of a helmet still see the players suffer from head injury. Some of these sports are better regulated than others in the dealing with such cases.

It is kind of ironic that it is stipulated that a helmet should be worn when cycle racing yet there is no check whatsoever after a crash. How many riders do you see carry on whilst still stunned without their being checked by either their own medic or the race doctor?  Or how many do you see swap out their helmets after a crash? After all we are told that a helmet is only good for one crash.  I actually don’t even think the team cars carry extra helmets. 

mattsccm wrote:

It' s no one elses business but mine if I wear a helmet and suffer if I am hurt because I don't. Our government has a moral duty NOT to have any influence on us. 

Unless the government provides the NHS to patch you up again.

mattsccm wrote:

Now we have wandered into car safety I can rant a bit more. Why the hell can I not, should I wish to, buy a car without all these silly safety feature?  Best car owned. Landrovers. Sodding great big bumper stopped silly expensive scratches for example. 

They were a great idea and people avoided coming so close to my LR. 

Don't accept, before some one starts, the idea that pedestrian safety is an issue. I can't find the link but a year or two back it was published that something like 90% + of all pedestrian/car collisions were the pedestrians fault so why should a car driver have to pay for that?  Same with a cyclist. A nudge with a feather pillow will still knock you off you bike. 

The pro helmet people are actually missing a point. It' s no one elses business but mine if I wear a helmet and suffer if I am hurt because I don't. Our government has a moral duty NOT to have any influence on us. 

I don't agree with the government having a moral duty.. If society had discipline I'd be wrong but a blind man can see the choice to misbehave is rewarded on a lot of continents.
Governments are like large slices of big tree trunks trying to keep us warm by governing man into a sit around a friendly camp fire to mutually enjoy but the trunks aren't taking to the idea sparks and lots of people are stupid via laziness.. Kindling? They wouldn't know what kind is! If they knew their kind they would have better chance of eating cake rather than meals of the sugary cake topping icing..
Glad I cycle too.. I eat more, food tends towards rice, herbs, spices, vegetables, beans.. Hence cheaper type food. ...and government (IMO) relax a little better realizing that people need although they often voice want.
We don't need plastic, we want.. Earth needs opposite of our want.
We need earth. And probability that I'm wrong regarding the start of this post exists.

Life to ride, ride to life.
Within Arms Reach is our natural gift.
Govern meant try to help strong and the dregs.
Feeling great cycling because tri strength of legs.

alansmurphy wrote:

Rich, flip your 'argument' on it's head - how do you propose that seatbelts reduced the number of accidents? Are seatbelts reducing speed, increasing visibility, improving the brakes on cars? Groundbreaking stuff!

I haven't proposed that seatbelts reduce the number of accidents.

I've merely observed that after a huge increase in seatbelt wearing rates there was no increase in the accident rate.

Which doesn't really fit with the idea that seatbelts increase risk taking.

Xenophon2 wrote:

ClubSmed wrote:

I am (un)lucky/stupid enough to have fairly good data on a scenario similar to the OPs both with and without a helmet

Last year in winter (a few months apart) I came off my bicyle when hitting black ice in the exact same location on my way home from work. The 1st time I was wearing a helmet and the 2nd time I wasn't.

The first time my helmet hit the ground, was damaged and resulted in some pain in the head for me (along with some neck pain & similar road rash described by the OP).

The second time my head did not impact with the ground as the reduced circumference meant that it did not get past my shoulder. I still had road rash & neck pain but no head injury or headache.

 

Takeaway:

Just because you damage your helmet does not mean that it saved your head.

 

Hmmm, I'm not argueing the point and you'll understand that I have zero inclination to attempt a rerun sans helmet.  When it happened it was simply so fast that I can't honestly say if my head would have made that bounce on the tarmac without wearing one.  What I do concede is that I was simply going too fast, slippery tyres or not.  I took a look at my Edge data and the last speed recording before speed dropped off a cliff and yours truly on the tarmac was 36 kmph.  That was foolish.  I appear to have been hitting that speed routinely in that spot, traffic allowing...but last time the road was wet and the tyres new. The laws of physics remained the same.

I too was going at speed, it is at a spot after a steep downhill and imediately before a steep uphill so I get my speed up considerably to enable me to make it up the hill. I would assume I was probably going around the same sort of speed as you if not a little faster. I know on the reverse way (I only record in one direction) I get up to 25mph so ~40kph

Try this simple excercise,  lie on your side on the carpet with a helmet on and try and hit your head on the floor hard. It is pretty easy. Now try the same again without a helmet and you will see it is practically impossible to create a big enough impact.

ClubSmed wrote:

Xenophon2 wrote:

ClubSmed wrote:

I am (un)lucky/stupid enough to have fairly good data on a scenario similar to the OPs both with and without a helmet

Last year in winter (a few months apart) I came off my bicyle when hitting black ice in the exact same location on my way home from work. The 1st time I was wearing a helmet and the 2nd time I wasn't.

The first time my helmet hit the ground, was damaged and resulted in some pain in the head for me (along with some neck pain & similar road rash described by the OP).

The second time my head did not impact with the ground as the reduced circumference meant that it did not get past my shoulder. I still had road rash & neck pain but no head injury or headache.

 

Takeaway:

Just because you damage your helmet does not mean that it saved your head.

 

Hmmm, I'm not argueing the point and you'll understand that I have zero inclination to attempt a rerun sans helmet.  When it happened it was simply so fast that I can't honestly say if my head would have made that bounce on the tarmac without wearing one.  What I do concede is that I was simply going too fast, slippery tyres or not.  I took a look at my Edge data and the last speed recording before speed dropped off a cliff and yours truly on the tarmac was 36 kmph.  That was foolish.  I appear to have been hitting that speed routinely in that spot, traffic allowing...but last time the road was wet and the tyres new. The laws of physics remained the same.

I too was going at speed, it is at a spot after a steep downhill and imediately before a steep uphill so I get my speed up considerably to enable me to make it up the hill. I would assume I was probably going around the same sort of speed as you if not a little faster. I know on the reverse way (I only record in one direction) I get up to 25mph so ~40kph

Try this simple excercise,  lie on your side on the carpet with a helmet on and try and hit your head on the floor hard. It is pretty easy. Now try the same again without a helmet and you will see it is practically impossible to create a big enough impact.

I'm not sure if I'm following correctly.
With a helmet =impact.
Without a helmet and including momentum = a force of great mass (we all have big heads) generated at a distance from a neck. Surely such a lever is reduced hence not only does a helmet protect ones noggin it also helps reduce torque on a vulnerable portion of ones spine. At slow momentum speeds, yay.. Slight damage on a perishable item such as a helmet in lue of a complete avoidance. At larger momentum moments, maybe such is why we walk as well as continue to coordinate ourselves.

I knew a man that had coordination to the 31st degree. He's so happy using 1 dimension coordination.. Eg a unit.
I like your point about helmets reducing neck torque. I hadn't thought about that.

4 dimensions. Point, line, shape, time.
Happy to wear a helmet, happy to ride less hazardous journeys without. Risk of hurtful injury is reduced with the wearing of a helmet..
Inclusive if your a taxi driver although your helmet is more of a drivers cage with a poking hole to place money in.

mattsccm wrote:

Bit like seat belts I guess. My fathers generation need to be reminded to use them, mine sticks them on most of the time and my neice would put her on like she picks up her phone. 

Compulsion and fear of getting caught has brought this about.

And just like helmets, the benefits have yet to be proved.  Sure, they save some drivers and passengers, but because of risk compensation, more pedestrians and cyclists die.  The safest car wouldn't have seat belts, air bags, side impact bars or any other kind of preservation device for the driver, but it would have a rusty 14" bayonet sticking out of the steering wheel.

Basically, we've approached road safety from completely the wrong angle, and instead of making it safer, we've made driving more survivable so that people drive more recklessly, putting vulnerable road users at greater risk.

burtthebike wrote:

And just like helmets, the benefits have yet to be proved.  Sure, they save some drivers and passengers, but because of risk compensation, more pedestrians and cyclists die.  The safest car wouldn't have seat belts, air bags, side impact bars or any other kind of preservation device for the driver, but it would have a rusty 14" bayonet sticking out of the steering wheel.

Basically, we've approached road safety from completely the wrong angle, and instead of making it safer, we've made driving more survivable so that people drive more recklessly, putting vulnerable road users at greater risk.

As with pretty much every 'fact' you post this is not really true.

If seat belts actually induced more risk taking then the number of car accidents and cyclist KSIs would both have risen the year after seat belts became mandatory in the UK.

They both fell after 1991 and the accident rate fell after 1983.

Rich_cb wrote:

burtthebike wrote:

And just like helmets, the benefits have yet to be proved.  Sure, they save some drivers and passengers, but because of risk compensation, more pedestrians and cyclists die.  The safest car wouldn't have seat belts, air bags, side impact bars or any other kind of preservation device for the driver, but it would have a rusty 14" bayonet sticking out of the steering wheel.

Basically, we've approached road safety from completely the wrong angle, and instead of making it safer, we've made driving more survivable so that people drive more recklessly, putting vulnerable road users at greater risk.

As with pretty much every 'fact' you post this is not really true. If seat belts actually induced more risk taking then the number of car accidents and cyclist KSIs would both have risen the year after seat belts became mandatory in the UK. They both fell.

We've had this debate before.  Where are you getting this data from?  Because the data I posted then showed that the number of cyclist KSIs (and car accidents, come to that) did indeed rise the year after seat belts became mandatory in the UK.  As I recall your response was that you can't tell anything from one year because other things might have changed, and one-year fluctuation is just statistical noise.  I accept that might well be true, but it's the opposite of what you are saying now.

Perhaps we'll have to go through it again because I can't for the life of me remember where the discussion went last time.

I believe it started with the graphs here

http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2009/11/05/seat-belts-another-look-at-the-data/

  Personally I'm not anti-seat belt, particularly, but I am far less interested in increased safety devices for motorists than I am in just keeping cars the hell away from the rest of us.  There need to be far more restrictions on where the things can go and who can drive them.

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

We've had this debate before.  Where are you getting this data from?  Because the data I posted then showed that the number of cyclist KSIs (and car accidents, come to that) did indeed rise the year after seat belts became mandatory in the UK.  As I recall your response was that you can't tell anything from one year because other things might have changed.  That might well be true, but it's the opposite of what you are saying now.

Perhaps we'll have to go through it again because I can't for the life of me remember where the discussion went last time.

I believe it started with the graphs here

 

http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2009/11/05/seat-belts-another-look-at-the-data/

 

  Personally I'm not anti-seat belt, particularly, but I am far less interested in increased safety devices for motorists than I am in just keeping cars the hell away from the rest of us.  There need to be far more restrictions on where the things can go and who can drive them.

The data on car accidents is here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...

The issue with your link is the use of ratios, statistically it's meaningless.

If seat belts increased driver risk taking you would see a large spike in accidents when the seat belt wearing rate changed dramatically, for example in the years following mandatory wearing laws, there is no such spike.

Edit: Completely agree with your last sentence.

Rich_cb wrote:

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

We've had this debate before.  Where are you getting this data from?  Because the data I posted then showed that the number of cyclist KSIs (and car accidents, come to that) did indeed rise the year after seat belts became mandatory in the UK.  As I recall your response was that you can't tell anything from one year because other things might have changed.  That might well be true, but it's the opposite of what you are saying now.

Perhaps we'll have to go through it again because I can't for the life of me remember where the discussion went last time.

I believe it started with the graphs here

 

http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2009/11/05/seat-belts-another-look-at-the-data/

 

  Personally I'm not anti-seat belt, particularly, but I am far less interested in increased safety devices for motorists than I am in just keeping cars the hell away from the rest of us.  There need to be far more restrictions on where the things can go and who can drive them.

The data on car accidents is here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa... The issue with your link is the use of ratios, statistically it's meaningless. If seat belts increased driver risk taking you would see a large spike in accidents when the seat belt wearing rate changed dramatically, for example in the years following mandatory wearing laws, there is no such spike.

Except that the data there includes raw numbers as well as ratios.  The first graph clearly shows a falling trend being interrupted by the seatbelt law.  The trend is downward till the year the seatbelt law came in, then it flatlines for a period.    And if you consider the graph of ratios in conjunction with the first table, it seems an obvious conclusion that for cyclist deaths there was an uptick.

(Also, why do you say 'you would see a large spike in accidents'?  Where do you get that from?  It seems to presume there can be no such thing as a small increase in risk taking, it must be large or non-existent.  That again seems to indicate bias on your part, addding in hidden assumptions to try and get to the conclusion you want).

Also in declaring ratios to be 'meaningless' you are assuming there are no common factors that could affect both cyclist and motorist death rates.  That seems  highly implausible.   Conclusive, clearly not, but 'meaningless'?  That seems to suggest bias on your part.  The discontinuity at the moment of seatbelt law introduction is quite substantial - yet you are arguing it's totally random and coincidental and that there is nothing that would cause different road-user death rates to correlate at all?  Nah.

Furthermore your own link shows your original statement here is incorrect.  The data in it clearly shows deaths and accidents went up between 83 and 84.  So that directly contradicts the statement you made when you claimed the previous poster was wrong (though I am not claiming that increase is statistically significant either way, it _is_ contradicting what you just said).

Seems to me fairly clear that there was a risk-compensation effect.  Whether it lead to a significant long-term effect compared to all the other factors causing deaths to decline, and whether the risk-compensation remains constant for all time (as people adjust to the new situation) is another question, but it appears to be there in the data, albeit small.

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

Except that the data there includes raw numbers as well as ratios.  The first graph clearly shows a falling trend being interrupted by the seatbelt law.  The trend is downward till the year the seatbelt law came in, then it flatlines for a period.    And if you consider the graph of ratios in conjunction with the first table, it seems an obvious conclusion that for cyclist deaths there was an uptick.

 

(Also, why do you say 'you would see a large spike in accidents'?  Where do you get that from?  It seems to presume there can be no such thing as a small increase in risk taking, it must be large or non-existent.  That again seems to indicate bias on your part, addding in hidden assumptions to try and get to the conclusion you want).

Also in declaring ratios to be 'meaningless' you are assuming there are no common factors that could affect both cyclist and motorist death rates.  That seems  highly implausible.   Conclusive, clearly not, but 'meaningless'?  That seems to suggest bias on your part.  The discontinuity at the moment of seatbelt law introduction is quite substantial - yet you are arguing it's totally random and coincidental and that there is nothing that would cause different road-user death rates to correlate at all?  Nah.

Furthermore your own link shows your original statement here is incorrect.  The data in it clearly shows deaths and accidents went up between 83 and 84.  So that directly contradicts the statement you made when you claimed the previous poster was wrong (though I am not claiming that increase is statistically significant either way, it _is_ contradicting what you just said).

 

Seems to me fairly clear that there was a risk-compensation effect.  Whether it lead to a significant long-term effect compared to all the other factors causing deaths to decline, and whether the risk-compensation remains constant for all time (as people adjust to the new situation) is another question, but it appears to be there in the data, albeit small.

Cyclist fatalities represent a tiny percentage of the overall number of car accidents.

Increased risk taking would cause an increase in both the overall accident rate and the cyclist fatality rate.

If the cyclist fatality rate jumps by 10 percent then you would expect a similar increase in the accident rate.

As a much smaller figure the cyclist fatality rate is far more likely to fluctuate by large percentages due to simple chance.

Without a corresponding increase in the overall accident rate a random fluctuation is a far more likely explanation for the increase in fatalities than seat belt induced risk taking.

The ratio is meaningless as you can infer nothing from it. If cars get safer the ratio can worsen without cycling getting any more dangerous so as a tool to assess cycling safety it's pointless.

I have edited my previous post for clarification re the Ksi figures as I didn't make it clear what year I was referring to.

Rich_cb wrote:

Cyclist fatalities represent a tiny percentage of the overall number of car accidents. Increased risk taking would cause an increase in both the overall accident rate and the cyclist fatality rate. If the cyclist fatality rate jumps by 10 percent then you would expect a similar increase in the accident rate.

Not sure why that would necessarily be the case.  Cyclist fatalities would relate to a specific sub-type of 'accident', not to 'accidents' in general.

Rich_cb wrote:

As a much smaller figure the cyclist fatality rate is far more likely to fluctuate by large percentages due to simple chance. Without a corresponding increase in the overall accident rate a random fluctuation is a far more likely explanation for the increase in fatalities than seat belt induced risk taking. The ratio is meaningless as you can infer nothing from it. If cars get safer the ratio can worsen without cycling getting any more dangerous so as a tool to assess cycling safety it's pointless. I have edited my previous post for clarification re the Ksi figures as I didn't make it clear what year I was referring to.

Exccept that the graph plotting ratios shows no such large percentage fluctuation due to simple chance.  Over nearly 40 years it shows a coherent trend, with small year-to-year changes, except for the year where the law came in, when there was a change dramatically larger than between any other succesive years in the period.  That change is an outlier - is your position that something else happened that year to cause an usual change in the ratio?

And at the same time, contradicting your second point,  there's no decrease in overall casualties in that year that is large enough to cause such a large effect (in fact the total went up slightly) - which suggests it's not particularly about the denominator getting smaller, but more about a change in the distribution of casualties, with cycling getting relatively more dangerous.

Your responses just don't work, as far as I can see.  Which is not to say the increased risk for cyclists is a large effect or that it is even necessarily a permanent one.  But some measure of risk compensation does seem to be apparent in the figures.

It's also claimed here that the similar effects are visible in Australian and Canadian data, but I haven't found the papers referred to, so don't really know how convincing they are.

http://www.oocities.org/galwaycyclist/info/seatbelts.html#_ednref1

On balance I still think you are wrong.

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

Exccept that the graph plotting ratios shows no such large percentage fluctuation due to simple chance.  Over nearly 40 years it shows a coherent trend, with small year-to-year changes, except for the year where the law came in, when there was a change dramatically larger than between any other succesive years in the period.  That change is an outlier - is your position that something else happened that year to cause an usual change in the ratio?

And at the same time, contradicting your second point,  there's no decrease in overall casualties in that year that is large enough to cause such a large effect (in fact the total went up slightly) - which suggests it's not particularly about the denominator getting smaller, but more about a change in the distribution of casualties, with cycling getting relatively more dangerous.

 

Your responses just don't work, as far as I can see.  Which is not to say the increased risk for cyclists is a large effect or that it is even necessarily a permanent one.  But some measure of risk compensation does seem to be apparent in the figures.

 

It's also claimed here that the similar effects are visible in Australian and Canadian data, but I haven't found the papers referred to, so don't really know how convincing they are.

 

http://www.oocities.org/galwaycyclist/info/seatbelts.html#_ednref1

 

On balance I still think you are wrong.

If there was increased risk taking by drivers after seatbelts became mandatory then we would expect to see an increase in the number of accidents.

There was no such increase.

Unless you're suggesting that the increased risk taking took place exclusively around cyclists then I don't see how you can continue to claim there is any evidence for the proposed increase in risk taking.

The ratio is completely irrelevant to the argument, it's meaningless.

Rich_cb wrote:

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

Exccept that the graph plotting ratios shows no such large percentage fluctuation due to simple chance.  Over nearly 40 years it shows a coherent trend, with small year-to-year changes, except for the year where the law came in, when there was a change dramatically larger than between any other succesive years in the period.  That change is an outlier - is your position that something else happened that year to cause an usual change in the ratio?

And at the same time, contradicting your second point,  there's no decrease in overall casualties in that year that is large enough to cause such a large effect (in fact the total went up slightly) - which suggests it's not particularly about the denominator getting smaller, but more about a change in the distribution of casualties, with cycling getting relatively more dangerous.

 

Your responses just don't work, as far as I can see.  Which is not to say the increased risk for cyclists is a large effect or that it is even necessarily a permanent one.  But some measure of risk compensation does seem to be apparent in the figures.

 

It's also claimed here that the similar effects are visible in Australian and Canadian data, but I haven't found the papers referred to, so don't really know how convincing they are.

 

http://www.oocities.org/galwaycyclist/info/seatbelts.html#_ednref1

 

 

On balance I still think you are wrong.

If there was increased risk taking by drivers after seatbelts became mandatory then we would expect to see an increase in the number of accidents. There was no such increase. Unless you're suggesting that the increased risk taking took place exclusively around cyclists then I don't see how you can continue to claim there is any evidence for the proposed increase in risk taking. The ratio is completely irrelevant to the argument, it's meaningless.

Not in the context of an existing downward trend.  Insisting there must be an absolute increase is disengenuous when it wasn't a flatline to begin with.

I know you keep insisting "the ratio is meaningless", but that isn't an argument, it's making a noise.  Unless you can prove that the casualty rates are completely independent and have no common factors, which you haven't done.  Arbitrarily declaring anything that contradicts what you want to believe to be 'meaningless' makes rational debate kind of difficult.

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

Exccept that the graph plotting ratios shows no such large percentage fluctuation due to simple chance.  Over nearly 40 years it shows a coherent trend, with small year-to-year changes, except for the year where the law came in, when there was a change dramatically larger than between any other succesive years in the period.  That change is an outlier - is your position that something else happened that year to cause an usual change in the ratio?

And at the same time, contradicting your second point,  there's no decrease in overall casualties in that year that is large enough to cause such a large effect (in fact the total went up slightly) - which suggests it's not particularly about the denominator getting smaller, but more about a change in the distribution of casualties, with cycling getting relatively more dangerous.

 

Your responses just don't work, as far as I can see.  Which is not to say the increased risk for cyclists is a large effect or that it is even necessarily a permanent one.  But some measure of risk compensation does seem to be apparent in the figures.

 

It's also claimed here that the similar effects are visible in Australian and Canadian data, but I haven't found the papers referred to, so don't really know how convincing they are.

 

http://www.oocities.org/galwaycyclist/info/seatbelts.html#_ednref1

 

 

On balance I still think you are wrong.

If there was increased risk taking by drivers after seatbelts became mandatory then we would expect to see an increase in the number of accidents. There was no such increase. Unless you're suggesting that the increased risk taking took place exclusively around cyclists then I don't see how you can continue to claim there is any evidence for the proposed increase in risk taking. The ratio is completely irrelevant to the argument, it's meaningless.

 

Not in the context of an existing downward trend.  Insisting there must be an absolute increase is disengenuous when it wasn't a flatline to begin with.

 

I know you keep insisting "the ratio is meaningless", but that isn't an argument, it's making a noise.  Unless you can prove that the casualty rates are completely independent and have no common factors, which you haven't done.  Arbitrarily declaring anything that contradicts what you want to believe to be 'meaningless' makes rational debate kind of difficult.

Umm. My tree stump legged mate shaves his legs such that skin slides and grazes rather than tearing chunks.
Most people know it's gonna hurt and a helmet is merely an easily worn piece of riding kit. When wearing a helmet or not, that handle bar end can be a spear, those teeth are sharp; pedals, cogs, that bicycle can trap me, the list is probably long.. Helmets are a protection device which are easily worn during the heat or the cold, the brain is your rhythm coordinator, it makes sense to wear a disposal skull. Beat and breath; your pump and oxygenation systems are useful too but dude, that's your brain in a box in another box if wearing a helmet. It's similar to zits.. Don't take the hits if the zits above your nostrils. I don't know why, just sucked in because everyone loves squeezing zits.

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

Not in the context of an existing downward trend.  Insisting there must be an absolute increase is disengenuous when it wasn't a flatline to begin with.

 

I know you keep insisting "the ratio is meaningless", but that isn't an argument, it's making a noise.  Unless you can prove that the casualty rates are completely independent and have no common factors, which you haven't done.  Arbitrarily declaring anything that contradicts what you want to believe to be 'meaningless' makes rational debate kind of difficult.

If the ratio A:B increases it can mean two completely separate things.

Either A has increased or B has decreased.

In the context of the seatbelt question, have seatbelts made drivers safer or cyclists less safe?

It's impossible to know from the ratio therefore it is meaningless in this context.

In trying to answer the question 'Does increasing seatbelt use lead to an increase in risk taking behaviour?' we are faced with a problem in that directly measuring risk taking behaviour is impossible.

We are therefore forced to use measurable outcome data as a proxy for risk taking.

Accident rates are a good proxy as there are large numbers of accidents so they have greater statistical power and theoretically the accident rate should correlate with risk taking behaviour.

Fatality rates are a poor proxy as the numbers are far smaller leading to less statistical power and greater risk of random fluctuation.