Oh. Wrong helmet. Still good advice for bicyclists!
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I and all my friends rode bikes in our youth and no one ever got a head injury. I went to the biggest grade school and high school in the state and no one got a head injury. They look silly and are not needed. I am sure someone will pipe up and make claim that "they know someone" who supposedly avoided a head injury but of course it is anonymous. And if that is the theory then require them for riding in cars. Just as many will be saved.

and that was in a low velocity crash. Pretty clear that I would have had a good thunking on my noggin without it.

I rode without a helmet growing up and didn't die, but IMHO it's a cheap enough precaution that I wear a helmet now. The worst thing about it is that is flattens my hair.

He was riding legally through a green light. He does not remember the half hour before the accident. His helmet was crushed in two places, opposite sides. Eyewitnesses said he bounced twice on his head twice and scans confirmed injury to both sides of his head. His bicycle was mangled. His doctors told him that his helmet saved his life.

In a car, you have the car surrounding you, as long as you wear the seat belt so you don't get ejected. On a bicycle, you have nothing but your helmet.

Your arguments are ridiculous and dangerous. I sincerely hope no one actually considers what you said to be of any value.

If you want this to be not "anonymous" please post your name and address and I will gladly give you mine.

No thanks, I'm not that stupid.

Given what you posted about bike helmets, I think you are wrong about that last part.

Interesting.

And someone right here with 18,000+ posts, too.

The more you know!

But I was not complaining about that. I was pointing something else out that DU has a rule against.

I'm not familiar with that one.

If I pointed out the rule it would be a call out of a poster which is a violation of another rule so I'm not going to do that.

Or are all low post count RW plants?

"disagree with me, and you are not just wrong, you are an idiot".

I have put over 25,000 miles on my bicycles and been in a number of accidents as well - all without a helmet.

Yes, sure, I am a complete moron for not wearing one, because there is no possible way I could be as lucky in the next 100 miles as I have been on the last 25,000+.

You brought it up, put up or shut up. I'm more than willing to give you my name to counter your bullshit.

Only problem, you first.

Try another sucker.

Like I thought, you are you are full of bravado and hypocrisy, hiding behind your anonymity, while deriding others.

Feel free to not "look silly" while biking around with complete lack of understanding of relative risks.

I live in a college town where there are thousands of kids biking to and from campus everyday. About 1-2% of them wear helmets. But they are stupid and you are smart. Have a great risk free life!

nt

I bet some of the injured wished they were wearing a helmet.

http://www.rospa.com/roadsafety/adviceandinformation/cycling/facts-figures.aspx

(for the record I wear a motorcycle helmet but not a bike helmet but i know it's a good idea and i am being stupid without one)

WERE wearing helmets.

And I have been injured in a number of bicycle accidents. Not once did I wish I was wearing a helmet.

Given that I have gone on about 3,000 bicycle rides without wearing a helmet, I don't think I am being stupid if I do not wear one. Apparently the odds of me sustaining a head injury are less than 1 in 3,000.

Those are pretty good odds.

No personally identifiable material.

He initiated the discussion with his derisive "Anonymous" bullshit.

OTOH, he has previously said that he held minor public office in the 9th ward of Chicago and IIRC, that claims he he now works as an attorney in Tempe, AZ. Can't help but feel sorry anyone represented by anyone with the lack of reasoning skills on display in this post.

They don't seem to have a problem with my reasoning skills. Of course they are actual real people.

possibly because to them, they are not listening to an anonymous troll giving horrible advice and displaying serious lack of reasoning skills.

Have you been appointed to speak for DU?

Since you put quotes around it. The poster attacked me. So I'm supposed to stay silent? Not in my world maybe yours.

Did my post (#107 in this thread) violate site rules?

I assumed it was OK to post personally identifiable material about oneself. The back-and-forth you're responding to was DUers urging other DUers to do precisely that.

I was twelve years old riding my 24" Schwinn, racing my sister, hit a piece busted asphalt in the road, went over the handlebars, hit the curb headfirst, fractured my skull, got a concussion, an ambulance ride, 13 stitches in my head and woke hours later. I still have the scar on my forehead 'cause hair won't grow there and an MRI shows a black spot there. I've had some mental issues because of it. Don't believe because you haven't seen that it doesn't happen.

How in the world did the youth before 1990 survive? It seems they did.

And it's not just kids that need to wear bicycle helmets. Adults can just as easily suffer traumatic brain injury from a spill.

But back to the OP, if people are going to insist on not wearing helmets, at least they need to fill out their organ donor card.

Dead people are unstrapped from their seat belts everyday. Ask a medic. And I have no problem with lawn darts. I don't need to be protected from myself. Others may differ.

Accidents right and left. I guess I lived in a magical world.

That's a good thing.
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There is a whole continent of people who don't wear helmets. But I guess we are the smart ones, right?

"At about the same time in Sweden, hospital accident records on cyclists injured in urban traffic accidents were studied for the years 1983-4 (Kroon et al, 1986). There were 36 helmeted riders in the study, 31 of whom had injuries which were more than minor. Two-thirds of these riders had not collided with another vehicle. A matched pair comparison method was used, with each helmeted rider being matched with an un-helmeted rider who had attended hospital following a similar accident. It was estimated by these authors (in what again was an early stage and rather limited study) that the risk of minor injury would be reduced by a factor of three if a helmet was worn, and for moderate injuries the risk of injury would be halved if a helmet was worn. "

Ignored by anonymous electrons on the internet. Please No!!!

That was the problem.

Helmet increases the odds. That you are an exception doesn't mean anything. It's called an anecdote. I didn't wear a helmet as a kid. Didn't turn out to need it. Got lucky. I wear one now. Still haven't needed it. But if I do, it's there, on my melon.

I was the rule. What you are talking about is the exception and a very minor one at that. 35,000 people die in auto accidents every year but since that is the exception and not the rule we go out and get in a car every day.

seatbelts, airbags... you know.


Shit roughly analogous to a FUCKING HELMET.

But yes, grammatically, you got me there. Exception was the wrong word.
The correct word, I cannot use, because there are preschool toys present.

Just because you didn't know them personally does not prove it never happened.

they weren't wearing a bike helmet. I have been to the funeral of a childhood playmate. Ahhhh... the good old days. /sarcasm

And that means what exactly???

So, figure it out.

How many died because they were not wearing helmets?

None of those links give any indication of that. But even with your 155 a year figure -- how many tens of millions of bike rides are there everyday? I think you will find you have a much greater chance dying in a plane crash than not wearing a helmet during a bike ride. Yet people get into planes everyday with no protection whatsoever.

Apples with apples.

Seriously, that's your argument??

Your argument against them is that they look silly and you don't know anyone personally who got a traumatic brain injury?

A lot of youth didn't survive easily survivable biking accidents before 1990 and far more suffered debilitating injuries which could have been easily prevented.

Series? I have no idea what that means.

1, 5, hundreds of thousands?

It does not say if helmets would have prevented the traumatic brain injury. Also there are no numbers involved -- and yes to rational people numbers count. It is measure of risk. Do you ride in a car? No matter what there is risk of death in any given car trip. Medics unbuckle dead people from their seat belts everyday. Does that mean we should not be in cars? Of course not. It is rationally measuring risk. That is why in Europe few people wear helmets. They are able to rationally measure risk. The dumbing down of America means most in the U.S. are no longer able to do that.

Of the vast majority of those who weren't wearing helmets do you think they would be better off had they been wearing a helmet? The answer is pretty clear to the American Academy of Pediatrics who I'm pretty sure do have an authoritative opinion on the subject. It's not about eliminating the risk, it's about mitigating it. Walking outside your front door incurs more risk than not. Not all risk needs to be addressed. Significant risk does need to be addressed. Child bicycle injuries are a huge problem and always have been despite your anecdotal belief to the contrary.

As far as critical thinking goes, this is round peg round hole kind of stuff.

Just sayin'

Or maybe you did. Its 23,000 head injuries a year NOT traumatic brain injuries. Do you really think no one was going to catch that?

As if I didn't quote it, source it, and link it carefully enough the first time, but I'll highlight the relevant text so you can catch it this time, perhaps.

So either you are feigning illiteracy and refusing to read what I specifically quoted no less than 3 times from two independent sources which most certainly did say "traumatic brain injury", or you're simply being disingenuous. Either way I'm not playing this game anymore.

Cheers!

I just looked up what they call "traumatic brain injury." It is basically every injury, no matter how minor, to the head.

In 2010 2.5 million TBIs occured either as an isolated injury or along with other injuries.
A TBI is caused by a bump, blow or jolt to the head or a penetrating head injury that disrupts the normal function of the brain. Not all blows or jolts to the head result in a TBI. The severity of a TBI may range from “mild,” i.e., a brief change in mental status or consciousness to “severe,” i.e., an extended period of unconsciousness or amnesia after the injury. \

So 2.5 million! a year. What unscientific garbage statistics. Meant to scare and nothing else. Everything is a TBI now.

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

because I think it may require attention or stitches I have suffered a TBI under that definition. If you are good with that dumbing down of definitions then fine, have it.

Evidently it wasn't dumbed down enough for you.

A TBI diagnosis requires a neurological event like loss of consciousness, or some other altered mental state like memory loss. It has nothing to do with external soft tissue injuries. The term "mild" is relative. You can die from TBI and millions of people do every year. A concussion is considered "mild" TBI, which is by no means a trivial injury. Regardless of what you think, 23-26,000 kids and teens with TBI from bike riding is a serious health problem, of which virtually all can be mitigated by proper helmet use.