Are you part of the "Culture of Fear"?

[ibisman]

wooHoo! Durand! Green acres in person. Thats where my daughter lives. As for the amtrak thingee its 452.00 because the other 341.77 is subsidized by tax payers. Enjoy the ride.

[dirtjunkie]

It seems to me that the only reason "studies" like this exist is for the sheeple (sheeple exist on both sides of the coin) that follow the logic "if it's written and claims to be sceintific, then by golly it's gotta be true"......

If cycling is seeing any type of decline, it's because parents aren't buying their kids bikes. It's easier to buy them a video game (DS, Wii, Xbox...take your pick). Then, their kid(s) sit quietly and play away. I don't believe that safety and "looks" have anything to do with it. And I could care less how many "studies" claim to show otherwise.

Adding to the culture of fear argument just fires up the proponents who jump up-and-down in protest to post on their collective message boards. The rest of us are buying our kids bicycles....and a helmet to wear.....and sharing in the fun of riding a bike.

[Scotty]

Adding to the culture of fear argument just fires up the proponents who jump up-and-down in protest to post on their collective message boards.

that then includes you.

The rest of us are buying our kids bicycles....and a helmet to wear.....and sharing in the fun of riding a bike.

does your did wear a helmet in the car, walking to school and on the playground?

I hope so.

[dirtjunkie]

Adding to the culture of fear argument just fires up the proponents who jump up-and-down in protest to post on their collective message boards.

that then includes you.

The rest of us are buying our kids bicycles....and a helmet to wear.....and sharing in the fun of riding a bike.

does your did wear a helmet in the car, walking to school and on the playground?

I hope so.

A real zinger there! What a genious.

Nope, amazingly Scooter, my kids where their seat belts in the car. No helmets. They have a blast on the playground too....sans helmets. They do wear a helmet when riding a dirt bike though. And my son wears one while on his mtn bike too. I watched him go down pretty hard in the driveway this past summer....hit his head pretty good. We brushed off the knees and palms, sucked it up and rode his bike back to the garage to go clean the gravel out of the wounds. Glad he his lid on....so was he......and could care less what YOU think that makes me.

Amazes me when DINKS go all nuts and expound their wisdom on all things "kids".

[jajones]

Hey Scotty,

I read this and thought it would really make your day.

http://www.thejakers.com/god/bike-helmet-for-jesus

Please accept my apology in advance. I owe you one for making you read it.

[Scotty]

Nope, amazingly Scooter, my kids where their seat belts in the car. No helmets. They have a blast on the playground too....sans helmets. They do wear a helmet when riding a dirt bike though. And my son wears one while on his mtn bike too. I watched him go down pretty hard in the driveway this past summer....hit his head pretty good. We brushed off the knees and palms, sucked it up and rode his bike back to the garage to go clean the gravel out of the wounds. Glad he his lid on....so was he......and could care less what YOU think that makes me.

Please complain again about people who post in this thread. Cause that would be really funny. Like the last time you posted in this thread... after complaining about this thread....

[Scotty]

Hey Scotty,

I read this and thought it would really make your day.

http://www.thejakers.com/god/bike-helmet-for-jesus

Please accept my apology in advance. I owe you one for making you read it.

If cycling is so dangerous, the guy would think of his family first and not ride a bike at all. Sounds like he's using his religion as justification to take unnecessary risks.

[jajones]

Hey Scotty,

I read this and thought it would really make your day.

http://www.thejakers.com/god/bike-helmet-for-jesus

Please accept my apology in advance. I owe you one for making you read it.

If cycling is so dangerous, the guy would think of his family first and not ride a bike at all. Sounds like he's using his religion as justification to take unnecessary risks.

WWJD? Would he where a helmet? Not that he'd "need" it, but would he wear it just to set the right example for the flock? Compelling.

[dirtjunkie]

Nope, amazingly Scooter, my kids where their seat belts in the car. No helmets. They have a blast on the playground too....sans helmets. They do wear a helmet when riding a dirt bike though. And my son wears one while on his mtn bike too. I watched him go down pretty hard in the driveway this past summer....hit his head pretty good. We brushed off the knees and palms, sucked it up and rode his bike back to the garage to go clean the gravel out of the wounds. Glad he his lid on....so was he......and could care less what YOU think that makes me.

Please complain again about people who post in this thread. Cause that would be really funny. Like the last time you posted in this thread... after complaining about this thread....

Hey pot....kettle is calling.

[Tom L.]

We could look at the actual numbers about what's involved in injuring and killing people in the USA instead of making wild out of the blue speculations about why people should wear helmets. Not to minimize the seriousness of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) related stuff but TBIs are only 1.4% of all emergency dept. visits. 0.7% of all hospitalizations and 2.1 % of all emergency dept. deaths. This includes ALL TBIs though so if all bicyclists wore helmets how much would this tiny percentage be reduced considering bicyclist injuries are a small part of all head injuries? TBI AS A PROPORTION OF ALL INJURIES: Table A, page 14 http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury ... e_book.pdf

Interestingly it looks like you're way more likely to DIE from an auto-related TBI than a TBI from a fall but I have seen no initiatives yet to have people wear helmets while driving. Table D page 19: http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury ... e_book.pdf

It looks like one may be much more likely to suffer a TBI as a pedestrian than a pedal-cyclist though. Yet we see no movements to have pedestrians wear helmets. Table 17, page 41: http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury ... e_book.pdf

And what is really injuring and killing people at a much higher rate than traumatic head injury? All accidents combined do not even begin come close to the amount of deaths caused by heart disease and cancer and regular exercise may reduce the occurrence of those two main killers in the USA. I'd say that once we have deaths from heart disease and cancer to where they're roughly equal to ALL accidents then let's worry about having people on bicycles wear helmets. Let's put our resources where they will save the most amount of lives.

Number of deaths for leading causes of death

* Heart disease: 616,067
* Cancer: 562,875
* Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 135,952
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 127,924
* Accidents (unintentional injuries): 123,706
* Alzheimer's disease: 74,632
* Diabetes: 71,382
* Influenza and Pneumonia: 52,717
* Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 46,448
* Septicemia: 34,828

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/NCHS/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_19.pdf

TBIs are a significant cause of disabilities however, especially among the young and old so we could strongly suggest or require that all these people wear helmets at all times and even subsidize their helmet use if it saves the taxpayers money. Honestly though what would be the rate of compliance be with or without compulsion by law? Probably very low. It appears that degenerative disease is the leading cause of disability anyway:

The three most common causes of disability continued to be arthritis or rheumatism (affecting an estimated 8.6 million persons), back or spine problems (7.6 million), and heart trouble (3.0 million). http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5816a2.htm

So again advocating helmets for all TBIs including bicycling related ones make little sense there.

It looks like firearms are a much higher cause of TBI deaths than any other causes by the way (figure 1 and figure 5). Firearms are way ahead of falls and quite a bit higher than TBIs from transportion. http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury ... ess.html#5 and Arizona (big surprise) leads the country in TBIs (figure 6). http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury ... ess.html#5 Didn't a very well publicized one happen there just this weekend?

Public Health Goals

The data in this report clearly demonstrate the importance of traumatic brain injury as a public health problem. Consequent to these injuries, each year more than 50,000 Americans die, nearly 230,000 are hospitalized and survive, and an estimated 80,000 to 90,000 experience the onset of long-term or lifelong disability. We have much work to do in these areas: primary prevention, acute care and rehabilitation, and improved data systems. This work requires that we better define groups with an increased risk of injury or adverse outcomes based on population characteristics, e.g., age, sex, and race or ethnicity.

Primary Prevention

Primary prevention of TBI is an important goal of public health efforts. Accomplishing this goal requires attention to each of the major external causes of these injuries: transportation, violence, and falls.

* Transportation crashes are the leading cause of TBI-associated death among women and persons under 15 years of age. Fortunately, the rate of TBI-associated death due to transportation crashes has decreased approximately 40 percent since 1980. This drop is likely because of a combination of factors: an increase in seat belt and child safety seat use, an increase in the number of vehicles equipped with air bags, and a decrease in the incidence of driving while intoxicated. These positive changes should receive continued support. In addition, recent changes in speed limits and in seat belt and helmet use requirements should be evaluated to determine their impact on TBI incidence and death.
* Violence is a leading cause of TBI--especially among males--and violence with firearms is the leading cause of TBI-associated death. Effective programs designed to decrease the occurrence of interpersonal and self-directed violence would help address this cause.
* Falls are the third leading cause of TBI-associated death. Among women over 75 years of age and men over 85 years of age, falls are the leading cause of TBI-associated death. Falls are also a major cause of nonfatal TBI. Risk factors for falls among older persons may include the use of sedative, antidepressant, or other psychotropic medications; and impairments of balance or lower extremity function. Although better data are needed to define the circumstances of fall injuries among older persons, effective interventions may involve modifying the environment to reduce fall hazards and the impacts of falls and, where possible, reducing the use of medications with side effects that increase the risk of falling.

http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury ... ess.html#7

[SpecNeon74]

We could look at the actual numbers about what's involved in injuring and killing people in the USA instead of making wild out of the blue speculations about why people should wear helmets. Not to minimize the seriousness of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) related stuff but TBIs are only 1.4% of all emergency dept. visits. 0.7% of all hospitalizations and 2.1 % of all emergency dept. deaths. This includes ALL TBIs though so if all bicyclists wore helmets how much would this tiny percentage be reduced considering bicyclist injuries are a small part of all head injuries? TBI AS A PROPORTION OF ALL INJURIES: Table A, page 14 http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury ... e_book.pdf

How much? well the estimates are in your source: 1.7 million total TBIs of which cyclists are hospitalized 1,524 times (page 36), visit the ER 1,113 times (page 30), and die 312 times (page 41) per year. That's 2949 per year. I think the absolute numbers here are more powerful than the percentage since TBIs are caused by everything from falls to domestic violence. We're trying to keep the brains of about 3000 people intact per year.

Interestingly it looks like you're way more likely to DIE from an auto-related TBI than a TBI from a fall but I have seen no initiatives yet to have people wear helmets while driving. Table D page 19: http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury ... e_book.pdf

The helmet comparison here does not apply because we have taken more practical approaches to preventing head injury in passenger cars than helmets, none of which are practical for bikes. We now have head curtain air bags, seat belts, and new for 2009 roof crush standards. You're making the analogy that if helmets are good for bikes, they should be good for cars which is silly. By the same logic, do you think seat belts and airbags should be mandated for all new bikes sold? Of course not, its not practical. My point is you reduce risk of injury in the most practical way which you point out later has worked well in cars. The better analogy is wearing a seat belt in a car is equivalent to wearing a helmet on a bike. Its easy to do and greatly reduces the risk of head injury when an accident occurs. If you don't like the seat belt analogy, how about a condom analogy? Lots of behavior involves risk. If you don't like the consequences (and who likes 3000 busted heads a year), take the proactive step of mitigating them.

It looks like one may be much more likely to suffer a TBI as a pedestrian than a pedal-cyclist though. Yet we see no movements to have pedestrians wear helmets. Table 17, page 41: http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury ... e_book.pdf

Of course this is true only because there are far more pedestrians than pedal-cyclists. This in no way means that a pedestrian is more likely to suffer a TBI than a cyclist who travels the same distance, only that far more people are pedestrians than cyclists. We need a metric for TBI's per mile traveled which I can't find at the moment. What we do know is there are 6 times more TBIs for pedestrians than cyclists, and at any given time, I'm willing to wager that pedestrians out number cyclists by more than a factor of 6.

And what is really injuring and killing people at a much higher rate than traumatic head injury? All accidents combined do not even begin come close to the amount of deaths caused by heart disease and cancer and regular exercise may reduce the occurrence of those two main killers in the USA. I'd say that once we have deaths from heart disease and cancer to where they're roughly equal to ALL accidents then let's worry about having people on bicycles wear helmets. Let's put our resources where they will save the most amount of lives.

Really now, do you want to compare the billions spent on cancer research and development to helmet safety campaigns? I'm sure its not equivalent. Considerable resources are going to fight those battles and rightfully so. I object to the notion that we can't promote cycling in a safe manner with a helmet. Let's get those people at risk for heart disease biking with a helmet so we don't have any more than 3000 TBIs.

It looks like firearms are a much higher cause of TBI deaths than any other causes by the way (figure 1 and figure 5). Firearms are way ahead of falls and quite a bit higher than TBIs from transportion. http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury ... ess.html#5 and Arizona (big surprise) leads the country in TBIs (figure 6). http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury ... ess.html#5 Didn't a very well publicized one happen there just this weekend?

Sure firearms cause lots of TBIs (as well as domestic violence and other things) but just like with cars there are more practical solutions (mental health care, background checks, ect.) that are debated elsewhere on the internet. Just because helmets are the most practical protection for cyclists it does not apply to other circumstances. Don't take this personally, but the logic that helmets are good for bikes means that helmets are good for random violence is flawed and I bet you're smarter than that.

If you would have asked me a year ago about this, I would have told you its my head and I'll protect it (or not) any way I see fit. Then in May a helmet kept me from becoming one of the 3000 statistics above. Now, the thought of my children (if I ever have any) riding without a helmet scares the heck out of me. It took a hard fall for me to realize that my pride wasn't worth a TBI and fortunately it only cost me an old helmet and a mild concussion.

Link to my mangled face:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/y_-PICPGudhEeyMrMXQGng?feat=directlink

I don't think 3000 is a trivial number when the prevention is so cheap and easy. If the problem is access to helmets or they aren't cool, lets solve those problems and not confuse them with advocating helmet use. I object to the notion that it can't be done without scaring people away from cycling. Advocating seat belts and condoms doesn't deter people from those activities.

[Tom L.]

We could look at the actual numbers about what's involved in injuring and killing people in the USA instead of making wild out of the blue speculations about why people should wear helmets. Not to minimize the seriousness of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) related stuff but TBIs are only 1.4% of all emergency dept. visits. 0.7% of all hospitalizations and 2.1 % of all emergency dept. deaths. This includes ALL TBIs though so if all bicyclists wore helmets how much would this tiny percentage be reduced considering bicyclist injuries are a small part of all head injuries? TBI AS A PROPORTION OF ALL INJURIES: Table A, page 14 http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury ... e_book.pdf

How much? well the estimates are in your source: 1.7 million total TBIs of which cyclists are hospitalized 1,524 times (page 36), visit the ER 1,113 times (page 30), and die 312 times (page 41) per year. That's 2949 per year. I think the absolute numbers here are more powerful than the percentage since TBIs are caused by everything from falls to domestic violence. We're trying to keep the brains of about 3000 people intact per year.

I think you're misreading that data. First of all it's only traffic related, to be honest. If you look on page 36 you can see that if you're a motor vehicle occupant you have TBIs at a rate of 13 per 100,000 (wow!) , motorcyclists have a rate of 2.2 per 100,000, being a pedestrian it's almost as bad as in cars: 12.7 per. Being a pedal-powered bicyclist it's only a 0.5 rate. Granted there's less cyclists but clearly we need to advocate more to protect pedestrians and motor vehicle occupants more because that's where the big numbers of injuries are occurring!

Being in a motor vehicle or being a pedestrian is far more dangerous as far as TBIs than being a cyclist. So are you saying that all pedestrians should wear helmets too? If not, why not? I almost always wear a helmet when bicycling and it's a good idea but you're not going to make the tiniest of dents in the total number of TBIs if you advocate helmet use for bicyclists only. Don't you even care about the other injured groups? You probably are among their ranks too and at serious risk when engaging in those activities.

http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury ... e_book.pdf

[jajones]

The helmet comparison here does not apply because we have taken more practical approaches to preventing head injury in passenger cars than helmets, none of which are practical for bikes. We now have head curtain air bags, seat belts, and new for 2009 roof crush standards. You're making the analogy that if helmets are good for bikes, they should be good for cars which is silly. By the same logic, do you think seat belts and airbags should be mandated for all new bikes sold? Of course not, its not practical. My point is you reduce risk of injury in the most practical way which you point out later has worked well in cars. The better analogy is wearing a seat belt in a car is equivalent to wearing a helmet on a bike. Its easy to do and greatly reduces the risk of head injury when an accident occurs. If you don't like the seat belt analogy, how about a condom analogy? Lots of behavior involves risk. If you don't like the consequences (and who likes 3000 busted heads a year), take the proactive step of mitigating them.

Your logic is flawed here. Even with air bags, seat belts and other car "safety" equipment, auto accidents are still a leader for traumatic head injuries. What would make wearing a helmet in a car any more "silly" or "impractical" than using one on a bike? You have your lids in your car, you throw them on when you turn the key and you go. They reason it seems "silly" to you is because nobody does it in our society because there hasn't been a social push even though statistics merit their use.

This is my point (and the point of others in a small minority). Statistics don't necessarily govern our behaviors. The cycling subculture (and, really, our American culture in general) now has everyone wired to think that you are out of your mind to ride a bike without a lid. Yet, if you were to don a lid behind the wheel -- a practice that arguably would have just as safety merit, if not more, than wearing one on a bike -- you would be mocked an ridiculed. Ditto if a guy put on a Pro-Tec to clean the leaves out of his gutter, walk across the streets of the city or adjust the antenna on his roof.

The end of the story is this. Helmets help to mitigate risk in all types of life activities. Some people wear them, some don't. Some wear them for activities when they perceive them to have a high or low risk of head injury, and some don't. If you want to wear a lid for anything, go for it. I'm not going to ridicule you for trying to be safe. But, my message to the cycling subculture is to STFU already with the lid preaching and all the bombast and zealotry that goes with it. It is out of control, and the culture has literally created a Helmet Gestapo out there. You've got people in the subculture who literally wouldn't kick or scream about a child hanging upside down on a tree branch 20 feet up, but they will shat there pants if they see me riding away from the Saturday Farmer's Market in Kerrytown Ann Arbor without a helmet. It is weird and unseemly.

The only one who I accept ranting and raving about helmet usage from are bicycle dealers and manufacturers. It is business for them. I mean, they are going to sell a $300 hybrid bike and make what, $150?, $100? peak season with good inventory management?? (With many dealers probably going to make $25 late season off the same sale instead because of stellar business practice and inventory management ) They can get another $50 of margin on a keystoned $100 msrp helmet to go along with your purchase. Why the *beep* wouldn't they push it down your throat? Some probably make more margin on the lid than on the bike.

[Paul Brown]

But, my message to the cycling subculture is to STFU already with the lid preaching and all the bombast and zealotry that goes with it. It is out of control, and the culture has literally created a Helmet Gestapo out there. You've got people in the subculture who literally wouldn't kick or scream about a child hanging upside down on a tree branch 20 feet up, but they will shat there pants if they see me riding away from the Saturday Farmer's Market in Kerrytown Ann Arbor without a helmet. It is weird and unseemly.

Rode ILRA Sat am, I happened to be lid free, one of these Gestapo types naturally could not control their engrained, programmed urge to let me know how wrong I was to be out in such a state, you are spot on with this observation IMO. Even my wife, who doesn't ride, is programmed to recoil in horror when she gets word her husband was out there risking life and limb on Hines Dr for g.o.d. sakes. My kid rides the neighborhood on unicycle, BMX and MTB bikes old school. Can't tell you how many neighbors have either looked at or stated how unfit of a parent I am. So programmed are they that they think a unicycle is more dangerous than a two wheeled bike. Even after watching her "fall" feet first 10 out of 10 times. This coming from parents who's kid has a helmet listing to one side and barely strapped on. Same parent who runs underneath their bubble kid as they traverse my zip line, not even knowing they will probably cause more injury trying to catch their kid as opposed to letting them free fall the huge 6 ft drop . The helmet assumption speaks loudly and clearly to the "culture of fear", like it or not. And yea, when my kid is trail riding she has a lid on, and when I teach her how to road ride she will have one on as well. She will not live in fear of injury however, and yea JAJ, you will find her hanging from some stupid heights, she can't help herself. Just gotta know how to properly rig stuff.

[SpecNeon74]

Your logic is flawed here. Even with air bags, seat belts and other car "safety" equipment, auto accidents are still a leader for traumatic head injuries. What would make wearing a helmet in a car any more "silly" or "impractical" than using one on a bike? You have your lids in your car, you throw them on when you turn the key and you go. They reason it seems "silly" to you is because nobody does it in our society because there hasn't been a social push even though statistics merit their use.

My logic isn't flawed, you can't compare bike riding to driving in the way you propose. Sure cars and pedestrians have more TBIs because there are more of them. You can't compare how potentially dangerous an activity is by the raw injury numbers. By that measure, sky diving and bungee jumping are safe activities because the injury numbers are so low. Those numbers are low because so few people participate. I wear helmets in cars most days I'm at work, it doesn't feel silly to me at all. The reason we don't need to advocate helmet wearing in a cars is because air bags, crumple zones, ESP, ect work better. They protect against a wide array of injuries not just TBIs, they don't take any time put on, and the driver is less likely to forget to use them. If any of these were practical for bikes perhaps they'd be considered.

Seat belt in car = helmet on bike
Why? Because both are the most convenient and effective form of safety equipment for their perspective mode of transportation. Seat belts don't work on bikes. However, seat belts, air bags etc are effective in cars at preventing all forms of injury.

For the record, I've never told any adult on a trail they need to find helmet. I did make a polite suggestion to a couple of lid-less teens riding the wrong way at Lakeshore once.