Quote:
Originally Posted by 202_Cyclist
Bikemike:
This is a ridiculous statement. Although I don't think bike helmets should be mandatory, there is ample evidence supporting the efficacy of wearing bike helmets.
"We conclude that bicycle safety helmets are highly effective in preventing head injury. Helmets are particularly important for children, since they suffer the majority of serious head injuries from bicycling accidents..."
A Case-Control Study of the Effectiveness of Bicycle Safety Helmets
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056...98905253202101
"Head injuries are among the most severe injuries in cyclists comprising one third of emergency department visits and two thirds of bicycling deaths.1,2 Use of bicycle helmets can prevent or lessen the severity of brain injury during a bicycle crash. In a recently published Cochrane systematic review, Thompson et al provided evidence that bicycle helmets reduce the risk of head injury between 63% and 88%."
Effectiveness of bicycle helmet legislation to increase helmet use: a systematic review
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2564454/ |
That's a well known OLD (1989) study known for being extremely flawed. The study makes its conclusion based on cherry-picking data from two completely incomparable sources - helmet wearers who tended to be white children, middle-class, and tended to ride in parks under supervision by parents versus the "non-helmet wearers" who were more often minorities and tended more to ride on busy streets. This "case control study" was cited by Carol Liu in her extremely flawed SB 192 bill. It's probably the only "study" on bike helmet safety ever cited by proponents of bike helmet laws because it's the only existing study to "prove" the safety benefits of helmets
Here's a more detailed critique of the "study"
Quote:
The most serious criticism concerns the considerable differences between the two main groups of cyclists upon which the research is based. Case-control studies are valid only if the 'control' group is representative of the population at risk (the cyclists who might suffer head injuries).
In this study, a comparison was made between 145 children treated in hospitals in Seattle for a head injury (the 'cases'), and a 'community control' group of 480 children who had, in one way or another, simply fallen from their bikes. A comparison of the two groups based mainly on helmet use of children under 15 years (21.1% of ‘control’ vs 2.1% of ‘case’ children) leads to the frequently quoted claim that the reduction in head injury due to helmets is 85%.
However, at the same time as this research was being carried out, there was a much more extensive survey of helmet use in the city of Seattle (DiGuiseppi, Rivara, Koepsell and Polissar, 1989). Of 4,501 child cyclists observed cycling around Seattle, just 3.2% wore helmets. This is not statistically different from the 2.1% of the hospital cases who were wearing helmets.
As well as having a helmet wearing rate 7 times that of the cyclists riding round Seattle, the ‘community control’ group came from higher income households and had parents with higher educational levels. The observational survey of child cyclists riding in Seattle found that helmet wearers were predominantly white, middle class, riding with their parents in parks, whereas the non-wearers were more often black or other races riding alone on busy city streets. The risk profile of these two groups would be quite different.
|
Source:
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1068.html
Here's Calbike's supporting references:
https://calbike.org/sb192quickfacts/
The weakness of this study is what prompted Liu to give up her bill. I personally don't fault helmets and believe they have a VOLUNTARY role. But no convincing data exists to support an across-the-board mandate for bike helmets. In contrary to this single study, multiple studies suggest bike helmets DO NOT reduce mortality appreciably at all. As a matter of fact, most studies suggest bicycling is made safer by increasing participation and visibility and explains why despite having almost no helmet usage the safest bicycling cities in the country and world (Davis or Amsterdam for example) have extremely low fatality and head injury rates, which basically disproves this "study". If anything, mandatory helmet laws have been proven to diminish bicycling rates and by extension, overall safety.
The second "study" you posted isn't really a study on safety. It's a paper on whether mandatory helmet laws actually increase helmet use. WELL DUH! of course they do.
Prev
Linear Mode
