Comment by Jemaclus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jemaclus | Hacker News Reader

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Came here to point this out. This is a wildly popular argument for no-helmeters, but it's just flat out inaccurate. If you control for the percentage of people who drive, walk, and cycle, the percentage of head injuries from walking would pale in comparison to head injuries from cycling.

This is like the statistic that says that 80% of all automobile accidents happen within 10 miles of home. It's not because the area around your home is more dangerous, it's because you drive near your home more than you drive anywhere else. It's basic statistics.

The reason car drivers don't wear helmets is because of the insane number of safety features that are built into a car, from seatbelts to airbags to varying strengths of materials, that bikes simply don't have. If another car hits your car, a number of things jump into play to save your life. If a car hits you on your bike, you're gonna have a head injury at a minimum.

THEY DO CONTROL FOR PERCENTAGE!

read the paper he quoted (emphasis mine):

"The severe TBI of 1238 patients were described. The annual incidence and mortality of severe TBI were, respectively, 13.7 per 100,000 and 5.3 per 100,000. The fatality rate increased from 20% in childhood to 71% over 75-year-old. Compared to restrained car occupants, the odds ratio for having a severe TBI was 18.1 (95% confidence interval, CI = 12.8–25.5) for un-helmeted motorcyclists, 9.2 (95% CI = 7.5–11.3) for pedestrians, 6.4 (95% CI = 4.7–8.8) for un-helmeted cyclists, 3.9 (95% CI = 3.1–4.8) for unrestrained car occupants and 2.8 (95% CI = 2.2–3.5) for helmeted motorcyclists."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457505...

Per 100,000 what? People who cycle? People in general? Patients with head injuries?

no-helmeters??

Of course something like that exists. Of course there's a group of people up in arms over helmet use.

Of course. Fuck me, nothing should surprise me anymore.

They are a rather big and rabid group on Germany.

Another argument by them: sure, having your skull split open when falling and hitting the head on the pavement is bad, but it's really bad when you're falling and instead of a clean hit, your neck is subjected to particularly strong rotational forces due to the helmet enlarging your head, thus moving the point of impact outwards.

They are a nasty bunch.

You supplied pejoratives, but not a single counterargument.

I did: having your skull cracked open and your brain distributed on the pavement is certainly worse than having some strain put on your neck.

Both can be lethal. The former is very much so, the latter usually not.

No-helmet crowd claims the severity is the the other way around.

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