>> "Curtis L. Russell" <cur...@md-bicycling.org> wrote in message
>> news:va7c52dfjtmbdvieu3i5hhmpqqnfre9t76@4ax.com...
>>> On Mon, 01 May 2006 16:22:34 +0200, Sandy <leu...@frreee.fr> wrote:

>>>>I have no intuition, but I'll bet you can find better data, from which
>>>>to derive opinions, from countries with national health insurance.  In
>>>>such an envirionment, people feel very free to use hospital facilities,
>>>>as there is not going to be a big charge.  This would pick up data on
>>>>the scrapes and bruises that may go unreported in the US.  Don't know

>>> EMT runs and emergency room reports are the U.S. equivalent of
>>> national health care in many areas. Many emergency rooms are not
>>> permitted to turn away a real case and one of the issues that I dealt
>>> with was a tendency for people in inner city Baltimore to use the
>>> emergency room rather than the health clinic (which raised expenses
>>> pretty much all the way around). So if you are talking about incidents
>>> requiring treatment, the e-room is a good barometer, at least in an
>>> urban setting.

>>> Curtis L. Russell
>>> Odenton, MD (USA)
>>> Just someone on two wheels...

>> It is difficult to compare US health care statistics with national health
>> systems.  In many industrialized countries with national health coverage
>> (most industrialized western countries) people are probably not only more
>> likely to go to a hospital for treatment, they are also more likely to go
>> to a primary care physician as well.  Most of the poor, working poor and
>> others in the US with no coverage frequently use the ER as their primary
>> point of medial care.   I'd be interested to see the statistical
>> differences whether related to cycling injuries or not.

> It isn't hard to compare national heath care in Great Britain, New
> Zealand, Canada or Australia now is it? Why do you suppose we haven't seen
> any "study" save the few rare one's that have massaged the data for minor
> injuries and extrapolate to serious injuries or deaths from that?

> The fact is that you CAN'T make statistical revelations with the largest
> numbers in any one country and if you combine the numbers from all first
> world countries there STILL isn't enough data to make any accurate
> prognostication of any changes in serios injuries or deaths prevented by
> helmets.

> If there is the odd man accident in which a helmet makes any detectible
> difference it is easily a freak accident and one that actually PROVES that
> we should be spending our money elsewhere.