Professor likens anti-helmet advocates to climate change deniers

brooksby wrote:

Quote:

the number of cyclists killed in road traffic collisions has fallen by 46 per cent since the legislation was brought in

And the number of cyclists on the roads has fallen by how much since the legislation was brought in?

I feel that without that figure, the casualty numbers are not exactly as meaningful as they could be... 

Exactly, and this very obvious misrepresentation of linking injuries/head of population instead of actual meaningful injuries/cycle unit of time or distance  traveled is so dishonest that it makes it impossible to take anything they say seriously.

WashoutWheeler wrote:

The IMHO somewhat silly helmet debate, has always reminded me of the old lady ouside the Synagoue. A man is run over on the zebra crossing he does not look good, an old lady comes out of the Synagogue "What happened?" she said "he was hit by a car that did not stop" says a fellow worshiper,  Give him some Chicken Soup" says the old woman, "How will that help" says one of the people helping the man, "How can it hurt" says the old woman!

The Moral? Until someone can give me an unassailable reason that helmets can make an injury worse I will continue to eat Chicken Soup have a nice day!

Your conclusion does not follow from your story. If you pursue the analogy with your story it is that helmets have no effect, so you have wasted money on the soup/helmet.

There's a benefit at low speeds in an urban environment, however this has to balanced against the fact your head is now bigger and more likely to hit things, rotational neck injuries, some studies suggest motorists give you less room so your are more likely to be in a collision or run off the road, in general people take more risk where there is use of safety equipment.
Whether you wear a helmet should be around your journey environment and speed and general risk appetite, but what you do should not imply all cyclists should follow suit.

WashoutWheeler wrote:

The IMHO somewhat silly helmet debate, has always reminded me of the old lady ouside the Synagoue. A man is run over on the zebra crossing he does not look good, an old lady comes out of the Synagogue "What happened?" she said "he was hit by a car that did not stop" says a fellow worshiper,  Give him some Chicken Soup" says the old woman, "How will that help" says one of the people helping the man, "How can it hurt" says the old woman!

The Moral? Until someone can give me an unassailable reason that helmets can make an injury worse I will continue to eat Chicken Soup have a nice day!

Your story just tells me if i want chicken soup then maybe i should get run over.

Also there is evidence, you are more likely to get close passed when wearing a helmet and your helmeted head is more likely to hit something than a non helmeted one. Step away from the soup.

WashoutWheeler wrote:

The IMHO somewhat silly helmet debate, has always reminded me of the old lady ouside the Synagoue. A man is run over on the zebra crossing he does not look good, an old lady comes out of the Synagogue "What happened?" she said "he was hit by a car that did not stop" says a fellow worshiper,  Give him some Chicken Soup" says the old woman, "How will that help" says one of the people helping the man, "How can it hurt" says the old woman!

The Moral? Until someone can give me an unassailable reason that helmets can make an injury worse I will continue to eat Chicken Soup have a nice day!

This is a popular line of reasoning, but it's rationalisation.  How can I say that so surely?  Because the same rationale should apply to Britain's greatest producer of traumatic head injury, the car crash.  And in a car you're not doing any work and are in a climate controlled environment and you have an easy place to store your helmet, so why isn't everyone wearing helmets to drive?

And the answer is that in UK driving culture driving is a safe enough normal, everyday thing that nobody can be bothered.  Dutch cycling culture is like UK driving culture: it's safe enough not to bother with the faff.  UK cycling culture is dominated by sports cycling where there is a culture of helmet wearing and an assumption that cycling is highly productive of head injuries.  It might be if you're in bunch sprints every weekend, but for A to B transport it simply isn't true.  For utility cycling safety is about the same things as it is for pedestrians: do not collide with moving motor vehicles, and anything else is window dressing.  Adding a lightweight helmet based on a standard that expressly said that it was not for collisions with (motor) vehicles  and where the test spec is a plain fall to the ground is window dressing.

lesterama wrote:

The report conclusion says: "In the absence of robust evidence showing a decline in cycling exposure following helmet legislation or other confounding factors, the reduction in Australian bicycle-related fatality appears to be primarily due to increased helmet use and not other factors." I don't fancy paying £28 to access the full report, but that sounds like they didn't look too hard at bicycle use before and after mandatory helmet use.

I have access. They add the following. I'm assuming the references are given on the linked to page, even with a paywall (they usually are).

Quote:

With some exceptions, Australia has not routinely collected reliable cycling exposure data and there is a paucity of such data around the time bicycle helmet legislation was introduced. Two US studies, using the same data source, found that children slightly reduced cycling19 or found evidence in both directions, depending on location or choice of control.26 However many studies, both in Australia and overseas, do not support the hypothesis that the introduction of bicycle helmet legislation deters cycling. This includes a Cochrane systematic review7 and a recent systematic review,17 and individual studies have also not found strong supportive evidence for this hypothesis.8–10,20–25 Counts of cyclists from NSW helmet use surveys have been used to argue that helmet laws deter cycling18; however, these studies were not designed to estimate cycling exposure, they did not have enough pre-law observations to estimate existing trends and they suffered from coverage bias due to very few observation locations.39

and

Quote:

A recent review of bicycle helmet effectiveness estimates a 65% reduction in the odds of a fatal head injury if a helmet is worn,3 and an earlier review found helmet use associated with a 73% reduction in cycling fatality.2 There are no Australia-wide estimates of changes in helmet wearing, although state-level estimates in Table 1 indicate that helmet wearing is estimated to have increased from about 20% to 80% following helmet legislation.5,43–48 Using estimates of reduced cycling fatality for helmet wearers, an estimated change in helmet wearing and assuming the odds ratio accurately estimates the relative risk, a decrease in cycling fatality of 44% [odds ratio (OR-1) × (change in helmet wearing) = −0.73 × 0.60)]would be expected following bicycle helmet legislation. That is, external knowledge gives a similar estimate for the impact of bicycle helmet legislation on cycling fatalities, which further indicates that unmeasured confounding is unlikely to be influential in our statistical results.

They also do similar rough estimate comparisons to discount things like improved road safety.

IMO, the comments by the authors outside of the publication seem very strong compared to the findings they published.

yourealwaysbe wrote:

lesterama wrote:

However many studies, both in Australia and overseas, do not support the hypothesis that the introduction of bicycle helmet legislation deters cycling. This includes a Cochrane systematic review7 and a recent systematic review,17

They also do similar rough estimate comparisons to discount things like improved road safety. IMO, the comments by the authors outside of the publication seem very strong compared to the findings they published.

Thank you for those quotes.

Any report which references the Cochrane review without pointing out that it was a travesty which didn't follow any of the guidelines for Cochrane reviews and was done by the world's greatest helmet proponents can safely be filed in the bin.

Freshmn09 wrote:

I feel this should be then compared to the number of acual cyclists too. 

I get the feeling there was probably a 46% drop in number of cyclists too. 

during my breif (5 month) visit to the land down under I think I could have counted the number of cyclists i saw each week on one hand. and that was in brisbane during the summer-autumn!

Having read the paper, they focus on injuries by total population but NOT by the number of people cycling, and in the conclusion they dismiss the evidence suggesting that helmet laws decrease cycling rates, but don't assess it themselves. This is a huge methodological error, and I'm suprised it got published