Thank you for taking the time to make hog wash of that so called
report...i think mark lewis is way off base and that report that he
found is just a special interest group or person making facts and/or
nonfacts say what is in "their" best interest
--- In
DSN_klr650@yahoogroups.com, Zachariah Mully
wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-05-20 at 10:39, Mark Lewis wrote:
> > Compare Florida, a helmet state, with Iowa, a no-helmet state.
> > Florida has a beautiful, year-round riding season. Iowa has a
long,
> > brutal winter. Yet Iowa has more than three times the number of
>
>
> First, it is considered good form, not to mention illegal not to,
to
> provide an attribution to your copy-paste.
>
> Another interesting statistic:
> Iowa ppl per sq mi: 52
> Fla ppl per sq mi: 296
> Cal ppl per sq mi: 217
> nat'l avg: 79
>
> (2000 US census)
>
> And, whomever you took this from got Florida wrong, you can ride
> helmetless as long as you're carrying extra insurance.
>
> > otherwise. During the seven-year period from 1987 thruogh 1993,
> > states with no helmet laws or partial laws (for riders under 21)
> > suffered fewer deaths (2.89) per 100 accidents than those with
full
> > helmet laws (2.93 deaths).
>
> For this to be persuasive you'd want to show several things:
> population density in each state, # of registered
> motorcyclists/motorcycles, # of registered car drivers/cars,
number of
> MSF certified riders. Incomplete statistical analysis is great fun
to
> ignore.
>
> > How can this be true? Is it possible that helmets don't work? Go
to a
> > motorcycle shop and examine a Department-of-Transportation
approved
> > helmet. Look deep into its comforting plush lining, and hidden
amidst
> > the soft fuzz you'll find a warning label: "Some reasonably
> > forseeable impacts may exceed the helmet's capability to protect
> > against severe injury or death."
>
> Hello?! Does somebody need to slap the same sticker on the author's
> forehead as well? Of course the helmet isn't going to protect you
for
> *all* foreseeable impacts! Neither is your head!
>
> > A typical
> > motorcycle accident, however, would be a biker traveling at, say
30
> > mph, and being struck by a car making a left turn at, maybe 15
mph.
> > That's an effective cumulative impact of 45 mph. Assume the
biker is
> > helmet-clad, and he is struct directly on the head. The helmet
> > reduces the blow to an impact of 31.34 mph.
>
> Again, this is a nice dodge around using any physics to accurately
> describe an impact (and since when was t-boning a car turning left
at
> 15mph, equal 45mph??? high school physics, anyone?). What he
doesn't say
> (for a good reason, probably because he wears a "DOT" beanie) is
that
> the most all name brand helmets are both SNELL and DOT certified,
and
> that a certification only describes A MINIMUM. Any helmet
manufacturer
> is free to make a helmet that far exceeds the ceritification test,
there
> is no law against it, and most dual cert helmets probably exceed
the DOT
> tests.
>
> As per the Hurt report, the median crash speed is ~20mph.
>
> > Still enough to kill him. The collisions that helmets cushion
> > effectively - say, 7 mph motorcycles with 7 mph cars - are not
only
> > rare, but eminently avoidable.
>
> Again, he makes another nice, unsaid assumption, that motorcyclist
is
> able to avoid the accident. Unfortunately, as the Hurt report
points
> out, alcohol plays a part in nearly 50% of motorcycle accidents.
And
> whereas a 7mph collision with a helmet is emminently survivable, I
doubt
> the same can be said whilst helmetless.
>
> > . Goldstein found that helmets begin
> > to increase one's chances of a fatal neck injury at speeds
exceeding
> > 13 mph, about the same impact at which helmets can no longer
soak up
> > kinetic energy. For this reason, Dr. Charles Campbell, a Chicago
> > heart surgeon who performs more than 300 operations per year and
> > rides his dark-violet, chopped Harley Softail to work at Micheal
> > Reese Hospital, refuses to wear a helmet. "Your head may be
saved,"
> > says Campbell, " but your neck will be broken."
>
> This is an interesting argument. While I agree that the physics of
> helmet wearing do cause complications, the author doesn't speak of
the
> survivablity of either head or neck injuries. Look at this way: if
neck
> injuries were 10x less survivable, then yes, one might agree that
riding
> helmetless had survivablity advantages. BUT I would imagine that a
head
> injury would be less survivable due to the fact that it's large,
> contains a shitload of very complicated organs and nerves and
sticks out
> at the end of your body. Either way, he doesn't make any argument
for
> why a head injury is any better than a neck injury, so the "head
safe,
> neck broken" argument has no weight.
>
> > John G. U. Adams, of University College, London, cites another
reason
> > not to wear a helmet. He found that helmet wearing can lead to
> > excessive risk taking due to the unrealistic sense of
invulnerability
> > that a motorcyclist feels when he dons a helmet.
>
> It's called stupidity. And retarded ABATE riders suffer from the
same
> symptom. Again, a great slight of hand by the author.
>
> What I find complete hysterical about this article is that the
author
> cites an example (hitting a left turning car) and how a helmet
will only
> reduce the impact by 15mph BUT he never talks about the same impact
> without a helmet! WTF! In that situation, I doubt he could pull any
> retarded ABATE arguments out of his ass:
>
> *"But without a helmet, I would have seen the car and avoided the
> accident"
> Yeah, and that last shot of Jager you did at bar is helping you
out as
> well.
>
> *"Without a helmet, I can jump off the bike and roll out of the
> accident"
> please see accident: an unforeseen and unplanned event or
circumstance,
> it's kinda hard to jump off a bike and roll when you don't know
you're
> supposed to, isn't it?
>
> *"But a helmet causes neck injuries!"
> Fine, I'll keep my neck injuries and you can have your:
> massive brain trauma
> hamburger face
> lack of jaw
> caved in skull
> lack of: eyes/ears/nose/lips/chin/cheekbones/forehead/scalp/teeth
> eating out of a straw for the rest of your life
>
> I support people's right to ride helmetless. But I really hate it
when
> it's backed up with pseudo science and misleading statistics.
>
> Tell you what, find me an ABATEr who'll go head to head with me.
The
> test will be to slam our heads into a wall at 14 mph, me with
helmet,
> him w/o. After that, we'll have another test, our respective
noggins get
> dragged across pavement at 30mph. Any takers? I didn't think so.
>
> Z
> DC
> A5X
> A12X
Reminds
me of all the crashes I have seen while watching professional
motorcycle racing over the years. While there certainly have been
deaths, the number of times the racers just get up and walk away far
outnumber those rare fatalaties. I haven't seen a racer in a neck
brace either.
Seriously, add me to the list of those that can tell you the exact
date they would have died if not wearing a helmet. Mine was November
12, 1992, after tee boning a deer while riding my Concours.Flew over
the front of the bike, landed face first on the asphalt, slid a long
way. Totalled Concours, totalled Shoei helmet, broken collarbone for
me. A sound I'll never forget is the helmet being ground away as I
slid down the asphalt. I got up and walked away and my neck wasn't
even sore.
- Keith A7