If anything is "typical smoke", it's the stuff in the above link. This is not a research study, but rather a summary of results from different studies. I can't be bothered to dismantle them all one by one, but let's focus on one just one. As the author of the summary states, "One of the best and most comprehensive of such studies has been the Australian one by McDermott et al (1993)." So, what are we told about this study? Not nearly enough to draw any conclusions, just a brief mention of a 45% injury reduction rate plus a riduculous assertion: "As noted, and as the authors acknowledge, this sampling misses many of those wearers who avoided head injury because the helmet was effective, and therefore underestimates the risk reduction effect to an unknown extent." This automatically makes one incredibly suspicious, because the authors clearly assume that helmets do reduce injury and are biased from the start. In truth, we also don't know the following:
- How many cyclists were more likely to have an injury because of a helmet due to taking increased risks (a well-documented phenomenon known as risk compensation has been showed to occur again and again, and not just in context of cycling injuries but in context of any safety equipment)
- How many cyclists had a more severe head injury as a result of wearing a helmet. If you are really honest and unbiased, you can't just *assume* before the start of your study that helmets will reduce injury to some extent, and your job is simply to determine to what extent. Tobacco once was thought to be a medicine, yet we know today of its harmful effects on health. There is some evidence that helmets actually can make some types of injuries worse (ironically, it's the more severe types of brain injuries) -- and while I will not claim that this is well-documented or by any means proven, it at least confirms that there is room for doubt and debate, and everyone who simply assumes helmets must work is not intellectually honest.
- Whether helmeted cyclists were more likely to get a post-collision medical check-up following a minor bump, thus skewing the statistics and making it look as if helmet wearers suffer, on average, less severe injuries following a collision. This is not an unreasonable hypothesis, since wearing a helmet probably correlates with overall concern for health. This, in fact, was a major problem with a study that claimed 85% reduction in head injury... when the numbers were analyzed, it turned out that according to that study wearing a helmet also reduces injury to other body parts by 74%! Clearly something has been mucked up there.
> So I would really like to see a study that states that > a helmet hurts something
The very study quoted above actually shows an increased risk of neck injury for helmeted cyclists. Now, I don't think it proves anything given that the study is poorly designed and many factors are completely unaccounted for, but it is especially ridiculous to accept this study does demonstrate head injury reduction and write off neck injury increase as a statistical glitch.
The fact that helmet laws do decrease cycling is also documented in a variety of cases. http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1108.html
The onus, at any rate, is on helmet advocates to supply evidence that helmets work, and I'd like to see one single valid study that it works. So far, I have not seen it.
> I have personally been in unlikely, albeit not bicycle, > accidents where I hit my head, and was either was wearing > a helmet, or got really supremely lucky and my head hit > something soft.
Well, this is another point: how come cycling gets singled out. It's not a particularly high-risk activity, especially for adults. It is quoted to death that "the most common cause of death in cycling accidents is head injury", but guess what it is in pedestrian and motorist deaths? Ta-da HEAD INJURY! Cycling is not significantly more dangerous than walking or driving (in fact, walking is apparently the most dangerous of the three per mile travelled, while driving is most dangerous per hour), yet we don't wear helmets while walking or driving, despite potential head injury reduction.
no subject
If anything is "typical smoke", it's the stuff in the above link. This is not a research study, but rather a summary of results from different studies. I can't be bothered to dismantle them all one by one, but let's focus on one just one. As the author of the summary states, "One of the best and most comprehensive of such studies has been the Australian one by McDermott et al (1993)." So, what are we told about this study? Not nearly enough to draw any conclusions, just a brief mention of a 45% injury reduction rate plus a riduculous assertion: "As noted, and as the authors acknowledge, this sampling misses many of those wearers who avoided head injury because the helmet was effective, and therefore underestimates the risk reduction effect to an unknown extent." This automatically makes one incredibly suspicious, because the authors clearly assume that helmets do reduce injury and are biased from the start. In truth, we also don't know the following:
- How many cyclists were more likely to have an injury because of a helmet due to taking increased risks (a well-documented phenomenon known as risk compensation has been showed to occur again and again, and not just in context of cycling injuries but in context of any safety equipment)
- How many cyclists had a more severe head injury as a result of wearing a helmet. If you are really honest and unbiased, you can't just *assume* before the start of your study that helmets will reduce injury to some extent, and your job is simply to determine to what extent. Tobacco once was thought to be a medicine, yet we know today of its harmful effects on health. There is some evidence that helmets actually can make some types of injuries worse (ironically, it's the more severe types of brain injuries) -- and while I will not claim that this is well-documented or by any means proven, it at least confirms that there is room for doubt and debate, and everyone who simply assumes helmets must work is not intellectually honest.
- Whether helmeted cyclists were more likely to get a post-collision medical check-up following a minor bump, thus skewing the statistics and making it look as if helmet wearers suffer, on average, less severe injuries following a collision. This is not an unreasonable hypothesis, since wearing a helmet probably correlates with overall concern for health. This, in fact, was a major problem with a study that claimed 85% reduction in head injury... when the numbers were analyzed, it turned out that according to that study wearing a helmet also reduces injury to other body parts by 74%! Clearly something has been mucked up there.
> So I would really like to see a study that states that
> a helmet hurts something
The very study quoted above actually shows an increased risk of neck injury for helmeted cyclists. Now, I don't think it proves anything given that the study is poorly designed and many factors are completely unaccounted for, but it is especially ridiculous to accept this study does demonstrate head injury reduction and write off neck injury increase as a statistical glitch.
The fact that helmet laws do decrease cycling is also documented in a variety of cases. http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1108.html
The onus, at any rate, is on helmet advocates to supply evidence that helmets work, and I'd like to see one single valid study that it works. So far, I have not seen it.
> I have personally been in unlikely, albeit not bicycle,
> accidents where I hit my head, and was either was wearing
> a helmet, or got really supremely lucky and my head hit
> something soft.
Well, this is another point: how come cycling gets singled out. It's not a particularly high-risk activity, especially for adults. It is quoted to death that "the most common cause of death in cycling accidents is head injury", but guess what it is in pedestrian and motorist deaths? Ta-da HEAD INJURY! Cycling is not significantly more dangerous than walking or driving (in fact, walking is apparently the most dangerous of the three per mile travelled, while driving is most dangerous per hour), yet we don't wear helmets while walking or driving, despite potential head injury reduction.