Re: The Time Wasting of Jute
Andre Jute
Crocker never said what Krygowski claims: "Crocker of Austin Texas ...
found instead no detectable benefit for helmets."
So now Krygowski, forced to admit helmets do have a benefit, has come
up with a straw man to give him an out: anything less than 85% of
cyclists saved by helmets will not be enough: "But it certainly looks
like the benefit, if it appears, is not going to be large. It'll be
nowhere near the common "85%" claim. And it'll never hit the "helmets
save lives" claim of the simplistic crowd."
There's a much bigger study out there than Crocker's but Krygowski
refuses even to look at it. Here we go again:
The authorities in New York made a compilation covering the years 1996
to 2003 of all the deaths (225) and serious injuries (3,462) in
cycling accidents in all New York City. The purpose of the study was
an overview usable for city development planning, not helmet advocacy,
so helmet usage was only noted for part of the period among the
seriously injured, amounting to 333 cases. Here are some obvious
conclusions from the data:
• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
• Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
• Helmet use was only 3% in fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal
crashes
Source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
This concatenation of facts suggests very strongly that not wearing a
helmet may be particularly dangerous.
• It looks like wearing a helmet saved roundabout 33 cyclists or so
(of the 333 seriously injured for whom helmet use is known) from
dying.
• If those who died wore helmets at the same rate of 13% as those in
the study who survived, a further 22 or so could have lived.
• If all the fatalities had been wearing a helmet (100%), somewhere
between 10% and 57% of them would have lived. This number is less firm
to allow for impacts so heavy that no helmet would have saved the
cyclist. Still, between 22 and 128 *additional* (to the 33 noted
above) New Yorkers alive rather than dead for wearing a thirty buck
helmet is a serious statistical, moral and political consideration
difficult to overlook.
On Aug 23, 11:17 pm, Frank Krygowski <frkry...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 23, 11:51 am, Peter Cole <peter_c...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Frank Krygowski wrote:
> > > Let's remember: Crocker of Austin Texas thought that his study would
> > > show similar benefits for adult cyclists. He actually ran the study
> > > expecting it would give him ammunition with which to push for an all-
> > > ages mandatory helmet law. But he found instead no detectable benefit
> > > for helmets.
>
> > > And why? Because he included data on alcohol use. Including that
> > > confounding variable showed that it was the alcohol in the blood
> > > stream, not the lack of a helmet, that correlated with head injury.
> > > The helmets were not protecting to any statistically significant
> > > degree.
>
> > > This illustrates the problem with simplistic correlations like the one
> > > you - and that propaganda's authors - are making.
>
> > Has there been an update since 2008?
>
> >http://www.goodhealth.com/articles/2008/06/11/research_shows_biking_a...
>
> > "We found that bicycle riders who had been drinking or using drugs - far
> > away more alcohol than drugs - were four times more likely to have a
> > head injury. While riding the bike after consuming alcohol, only one out
> > of 40 patients was wearing a helmet, so it appears that one of the first
> > things that happens is that riders don't bother with helmets."
>
> > The study has been extended for another year to confirm another finding:
> > That cyclists without helmets are twice as likely to have a significant
> > head injury.
>
> > "We looked at experience of the rider, street conditions, weather
> > conditions, type of street, location in city and use of drugs or
> > alcohol. In all truthfulness, I suspect data will show that wearing a
> > helmet improves safety, but we won't know for sure until the study
> > reaches statistical significance," adds Dr. Crocker.
>
> > This article (are there newer ones?) doesn't seem to fully support your
> > claims.
>
> I probably should have said "no statistically valid benefit for
> helmets." Crocker is apparently referring to a slight apparent
> benefit that's likely random.
>
> I've got the original paper. In it, Crocker et. al. said "Although
> our data set
> did not find significance in relative risk of cycling without helmet
> (most likely due to small sample size), it did show a trend consistent
> with previous studies that form an over-whelming body of evidence that
> helmets prevent injuries and save lives, and laws should be passed to
> encourage cyclists to wear helmets."
>
> What they found was a slight trend, far below statistical significance
> - in other words, as far as Crocker's team can tell, the "benefit" due
> to helmet use was a random effect. P value was about 0.21.
> Typically, p values need to be below 0.05 to have an effect be
> considered significant.
>
> However, recall that Crocker is an enthusiastic promoter of all-ages
> helmet laws. The "overwhelming evidence" he's referring to
> doubtlessly consists of other case-control studies, almost all of
> which did not control for blood alcohol. So although his own study
> found strong correlation between alcohol and head injury, and no
> statistically sound correlation between helmet use and head injury,
> he's essentially claiming that if he gets many more cyclists in the
> study, the p value will drop.
>
> Will it? Perhaps. I guess we should say "we'll see, we'll see." But
> it certainly looks like the benefit, if it appears, is not going to be
> large. It'll be nowhere near the common "85%" claim. And it'll never
> hit the "helmets save lives" claim of the simplistic crowd.
>
> - Frank Krygowski
LawBoy01
Andre Jute
"MikeWhy" <boat042-nos...@yahoo.com>:
> Here's some more data you'll probably refuse to examine. Can you
> point to the helmet benefit during this time of rapidly rising helmet
> use? I don't see it.
>
> http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1041.html
>
> - Frank Krygowski
Here's some data you keep refusing to view and discuss, Frankie-boy.
We all wonder why you're running scared of it. Can it be that you have
no answer?
Source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
Andre Jute
It is boring to be right all the time
Andre Jute
> "Fatalities in New York City in a few years" doesn't really qualify.
> Bike fatalities are damned rare - only 750 per year in the entire US -
> so the number in any one city is tiny. To get a handle on chaos, you
> need hundreds, perhaps thousands of data points.
>
> - Frank Krygowski
Countering Frank Krygowski's lies can consume one's life, so most of
us have just stopped bothering. But this example is too gross to let
pass.
Actually, Franki-boy, the New York study was of 225 cyclist
fatalities, of which only 3% wore helmets, and another 333 cyclists
seriously injured, of which 13% wore helmets. That is a total of 558
cases in whose data it is strongly suggested that wearing a helmet
gives a cyclist a 433% greater chance of surviving even a serious
accident.
Source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
Andre Jute
Reformed petrol head
Car-free and on my bike since 1992
Greener than thou!
Andre Jute
> it's
> possible for people who do wear helmets to truly believe that they are
> nearly 100% effective - falling for the propaganda of Thompson &
> Rivara, plus Jute.
That's a lie Krygowski tells. I never said helmets are 100% effective.
Conjoining my name to Thompson & Rivara is another attempted lie, now
exposed, by Krygowski. I've never quoted Thompson and Rivara.
> the rude non-mathematical silliness coming
> from Jute
>
> - Frank Krygowski
That's yet another lie by Frank "Kreepy" Krygowski. As everyone knows
by now, on cycling safety poor old Krygo has to work on my numbers
because his own were so incomptently derived that I took pity on him
and gave him a clean set of number. (Guess why Krygowski won't argue
directly with me but instead snipes from the sidelines, all innuendo
and childish tantrums: poor Franki-boy can't argue with me because his
numbers are actually my numbers!)
Here is the only certified truth in this discussion:
THE CASE FOR A MANDATORY CYCLE HELMET LAW
(IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)
by Andre Jute
It is a risible myth that your average American is a tall-walking free
individual untrammeled by government: he is in fact just as much
constricted as a European soft-socialist consumerist or Japanese
collective citizen, though it is true that the American is controlled
in different areas of his activity than the European or the Japanese.
To some the uncontrolled areas of American life, for instance the
ability to own and use firearms, smacks of barbarism rather than
liberty. In this article I examine whether the lack of a mandatory
bicycle helmet law in the USA is barbaric or an emanation of that
rugged liberty more evident in rhetoric than reality.
Any case for intervention by the state must be made on moral and
statistical grounds. Examples are driving licences, crush zones on
cars, seatbelts, age restrictions on alcohol sales, and a million
other interventions, all now accepted unremarked in the States as part
of the regulatory landscape, but all virulently opposed in their day.
HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING?
Surprisingly, cycling can be argued to be "safe enough", given only
that one is willing to count the intangible benefits of health through
exercise, generally acknowledged as substantial. Here I shall make no
effort to quantify those health benefits because the argument I'm
putting forward is conclusively made by harder statistics and
unexceptional general morality.
In the representative year of 2008, the last for which comprehesive
data is available, 716 cyclists died on US roads, and 52,000 were
injured.
Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
The most convenient way to grasp the meaning of these statistics is to
compare cycling with motoring, the latter ipso facto by motorists'
average mileage accepted by most Americans as safe enough.
Compared to a motorist a cyclist is:
11 times MORE likely to die PER MILE travelled
2.9 times MORE likely to die PER TRIP taken
By adding information about the relative frequency/length/duration of
journeys of cyclists and motorists, we can further conclude that in
the US:
Compared to a motorist, a cyclist is:
3 to 4 times MORE likely to die PER HOUR riding
3 to 4 times LESS likely to die IN A YEAR's riding
It is the last number, that the average cyclist is 3 to 4 times less
likely to die in a year's riding than a motorist, and enjoys all the
benefits of healthy exercise, that permits us to ignore the greater
per mile/per trip/per hour danger.
This gives us the overall perspective but says nothing about wearing a
cycling helmet.
HELMET WEAR AT THE EXTREME END OF CYCLING RISK
What we really want to know is: what chance of the helmet saving your
life? The authorities in New York made a compilation covering the
years 1996 to 2003 of all the deaths (225) and serious injuries
(3,462) in cycling accidents in all New York City. The purpose of the
study was an overview usable for city development planning, not helmet
advocacy, so helmet usage was only noted for part of the period among
the seriously injured, amounting to 333 cases. Here are some
conclusions:
• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
• Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
• Helmet use was only 3% in fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal
crashes
Source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
This concatenation of facts suggests very strongly that not wearing a
helmet may be particularly dangerous.
• It looks like wearing a helmet saved roundabout 33 cyclists or so
(of the 333 seriously injured for whom helmet use is known) from
dying.
• If those who died wore helmets at the same rate of 13% as those in
the study who survived, a further 22 or so could have lived.
• If all the fatalities had been wearing a helmet (100%), somewhere
between 10% and 57% of them would have lived. This number is less firm
to allow for impacts so heavy that no helmet would have saved the
cyclist. Still, between 22 and 128 *additional* (to the 33 noted
above) New Yorkers alive rather than dead for wearing a thirty buck
helmet is a serious statistical, moral and political consideration
difficult to overlook.
SO HOW MANY CYCLISTS CAN HELMETS SAVE ACROSS THE NATION?
New York is not the United States but we're not seeking certainly,
only investigating whether a moral imperative for action appears.
First off, the 52,000 cyclists hurt cannot be directly related to the
very serious injuries which were the only ones counted in the New York
compilation. But a fatality is a fatality anywhere and the fraction of
head injuries in the fatalities is pretty constant.
So, with a caution, we can say that of 716 cycling fatalities
nationwide, helmet use could have saved at least 70 and very likely
more towards a possible upper limit of around 400. Again the
statistical extension must be tempered by the knowledge that some
impacts are so heavy that no helmet can save the cyclist. Still, if
even half the impacts resulting in fatal head trauma is too heavy for
a helmet to mitigate, possibly around 235 cyclists might live rather
than die on the roads for simply wearing a helmet. Every year. That's
an instant reduction in cyclist road fatalities of one third. Once
more we have arrived at a statistical, moral and political fact that
is hard to ignore: Helmet wear could save many lives.
THE CASE AGAINST MANDATORY HELMET LAWS
• Compulsion is anti-Constitutional, an assault on the freedom of the
citizen to choose his own manner of living and dying
• Many other actitivities cause fatal head injuries. So why not insist
they should all be put in helmets?
• 37% of bicycle fatalities involve alcohol, and 23% were legally
drunk, and you'll never get these drunks in helmets anyway
• We should leave the drunks to their fate; they're not real cyclists
anyway
• Helmets are not perfect anyway
• Helmets cause cyclists to stop cycling, which is a cost to society
in health losses
• Many more motorists die on the roads than cyclists. Why not insist
that motorists wear helmets inside their cars?
• Helmets don't save lives -- that's a myth put forward by commercial
helmet makers
• Helmets are too heavily promoted
• Helmet makers overstate the benefits of helmets
• A helmet makes me look like a dork
• Too few cyclists will be saved to make the cost worthwhile
THE CASE FOR A MANDATORY HELMET LAW IN THE STATES
• 235 or more additional cyclists' lives saved
• 716 deaths of cyclists on the road when a third or more of those
deaths can easily be avoided is a national disgrace
• Education has clearly failed
• Anti-helmet zealots in the face of the evidence from New York are
still advising cyclists not to wear helmets
• An example to the next generation of cyclists
• A visible sign of a commitment to cycling safety, which may attract
more people to cycling
© Copyright Andre Jute 2010. Free for reproduction in non-profit
journals and sites as long as the entire article is reproduced in full
including this copyright and permission notice.
Frank Krygowski
>
>
> Actually, Franki-boy...
Jute, some fourth grader has slipped into your computer room. Or
perhaps your mind. Restrain him, would you?
> the New York study was of 225 cyclist
> fatalities, of which only 3% wore helmets, and another 333 cyclists
> seriously injured, of which 13% wore helmets. That is a total of 558
> cases in whose data it is strongly suggested that wearing a helmet
> gives a cyclist a 433% greater chance of surviving even a serious
> accident.
In essence, you claim that since 74% of cyclist deaths "involved head
injuries" and few cyclists who died wore helmets, the helmets are
proven to save lives.
Yet in Harruff, R. C. et. al., "Analysis of Circumstances and Injuries
in 217 Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities," Accid. Analysis & Prevention,
Vol 30, No 1, pp. 11-20, 1998, it's seen that 73% of pedestrian
fatalities also involved head injuries.
Furthermore, in contrast to the New York "study" and the Thompson &
Rivara "85% benefit" paper, the injuries Harruff counted as head
injuries were actually serious. T&R literally counted things such as
ear scratches as "head injuries." The New York study may have done
the same. Harruff, etc. counted only truly serious things as head
injuries: skull fractures, subdural hematomas and contusions and
lacerations of the brain itself (cerebrum, brain stem, mid-brain).
So in for cyclists, 74% involve _some_ injury above the neck. In
pedestrians, 73% involve truly serious head and brain injuries.
Cycling is therefore nothing special regarding head injury. (And BTW,
I have other data showing the typical severity of head injury is
significantly greater in pedestrians than in bicyclists.)
Now let's compare the risk of fatality between peds and cyclists. You
claim this New York paper is a large study because it involves 225
cyclists. But how odd that nobody is looking harder at the
pedestrians! After all, the paper says cyclists are only 6% of New
York's traffic fatalities; pedestrians are 49%! That works out to
over 1800 lives potentially saved, if we could just do something about
all those pedestrians!
Of course, this is similar to national data. In a given year in the
US, there are roughly 750 bicycle fatalities. There are typically
about 4000 pedestrian fatalities. Now, in a country the size of the
US, 750 fatalities is a large number only if you're a confirmed hand-
wringer. That's usually fairly similar to the number killed by the
accidental inhalation of poison gases. (Hear much about that
problem? I thought not.) In Canada, in most years, more people die
by falling out of bed than by crashing bicycles. By any rational
comparison, cycling fatalities are relatively rare.
And as we've mentioned, the risk per mile traveled has been computed.
Turns out walking a mile in the US is over three times as dangerous as
cycling a mile. And again, the main trauma danger for pedestrians is
head injury (as with most modes of accidental death). Why would
anyone portray cycling as unusually dangerous?
Finally, Jute, you've wound on and on about the fact that of the New
York cyclist fatalities whose helmet use was known, only 3% wore
them. But several of us have noted apparent bias in observation. For
example, in the very few cycling fatalities in my metro area, I've
noted that the newspaper reports have included "he was not wearing a
bike helmet" when that was known to be true; but they omitted the
phrase "both mother and daughter were wearing bike helmets when
killed" in the incident for which that was true. Furthermore, Riley
Geary of the Institute for Traffic Safety Analysis has reported
similar discrepancies in official data regarding helmet use in injured
cyclists. His explanation was more detailed, and involved largely
treatment of the "unknown" cases, the design and processing of report
forms, etc. Still, he clearly showed bias occurred in the reporting
an analysis system.
No matter. Since I'm sure you'll discount that, let's go beyond it.
Let's assume that it's true that for the fatally injured cyclists
where helmet use was "known" (and admitted), that 97% wore no helmets.
Fine. The parallel figure for pedestrians is 100%.
Over 1800 pedestrians in the time of the study were killed, compared
ot only 225 cyclists. For both pedestrians and cyclists, roughly 74%
of the fatalities "involved" head injuries. Pedestrian head injuries
tend to be worse than cyclist head injuries. And yet 100% of
pedestrians refuse to wear a helmet - and nobody seems to care!
Personally, I'm never going to call for helmet use by pedestrians -
although others have done that, with total seriousness. I think the
helmet nannies such as yourself are already way too deep into total
nonsense.
I will, however, point out that if you, Jute, are going to continue to
promote bike helmets based on this simplistic New York paper, you need
to promote pedestrian helmets at least as obnoxiously.
- Frank Krygowski
Frank Krygowski
>
>
> That's yet another lie by Frank "Kreepy" Krygowski.
Jute, some fourth-grader has slipped into your computer room. Or
possibly your mind. Restrain him, would you?
- Frank Krygowski
Edward Dolan
"Frank Krygowski" <frkr...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:62df2f85-5ffc-4933...@i31g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
- Frank Krygowski
Admit it Frank, you do not wear a helmet because it messes up your hair. In
my discussions with cyclists I have found that to be the number one reason
why they do not wear helmets.
Regards,
Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota
aka
Saint Edward the Great - Order of the Perpetual Sorrows - Minnesota
Jay Beattie
> "Frank Krygowski" <frkry...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:62df2f85-5ffc-4933...@i31g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
> On Aug 27, 2:45 pm, Andre Jute <fiult...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > That's yet another lie by Frank "Kreepy" Krygowski.
>
> Jute, some fourth-grader has slipped into your computer room. Or
> possibly your mind. Restrain him, would you?
>
> - Frank Krygowski
>
> Admit it Frank, you do not wear a helmet because it messes up your hair. In
> my discussions with cyclists I have found that to be the number one reason
> why they do not wear helmets.
Whereas a too small vintage Euro team racing cap does not mess up the
hair. http://www.faston2wheels.com/f2/2009/12/17/ha-explanatory-diagram-of-a-hipster-biker-fixtr/
-- Jay Beattie.
Tom Sherman °_°
>[...]
--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007
I am a vehicular cyclist.
andre...@aol.com
You mean existing?
Andre Jute
> On Aug 27, 12:56 pm, Andre Jute <fiult...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > the New York study was of 225 cyclist
> > fatalities, of which only 3% wore helmets, and another 333 cyclists
> > seriously injured, of which 13% wore helmets. That is a total of 558
> > cases in whose data it is strongly suggested that wearing a helmet
> > gives a cyclist a 433% greater chance of surviving even a serious
> > accident.
>
> In essence, you claim that since 74% of cyclist deaths "involved head
> injuries" and few cyclists who died wore helmets, the helmets are
> proven to save lives.
No, that isn't what I said. Read the comparison I made again. Don't
try to put words into my mouth; it is a childish debating trick.
> Yet in Harruff, R. C. et. al., "Analysis of Circumstances and Injuries
> in 217 Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities," Accid. Analysis & Prevention,
> Vol 30, No 1, pp. 11-20, 1998, it's seen that 73% of pedestrian
> fatalities also involved head injuries.
So what?
> Furthermore, in contrast to the New York "study"
What are those quotation marks intended to imply? The New York study
is a compilation of an entire large universe over a period of eight
years but you, Frank Krygowski, want to sneer at it without ever
arguing it's numbers? I don't think so, sonny.
>and the Thompson &
> Rivara "85% benefit" paper,
More sneering quotation marks around a study that I never once quoted.
I've already called Krygowski on his attempted lie in trying to tie me
to Thompson & Rivara. *I* made no 85% claim, Krygowski, so stick your
insinuations up your arse.
>the injuries Harruff counted as head
> injuries were actually serious. T&R literally counted things such as
> ear scratches as "head injuries."
Here we go with Krygowski's smear tactics again.
>The New York study may have done
> the same.
Crap. Prove it. The New York study at
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
dealt with serious injuries. Your scare and smear tactics don't work
here, Krygowski.
>Harruff, etc. counted only truly serious things as head
> injuries: skull fractures, subdural hematomas and contusions and
> lacerations of the brain itself (cerebrum, brain stem, mid-brain).
Good for them. But what has it to do with the New York study?
> So in for cyclists, 74% involve _some_ injury above the neck. In
> pedestrians, 73% involve truly serious head and brain injuries.
> Cycling is therefore nothing special regarding head injury. (And BTW,
> I have other data showing the typical severity of head injury is
> significantly greater in pedestrians than in bicyclists.)
Once more, so what? What does all this smoke have to do with cyclists?
> Now let's compare the risk of fatality between peds and cyclists. You
> claim this New York paper is a large study because it involves 225
> cyclists. But how odd that nobody is looking harder at the
> pedestrians! After all, the paper says cyclists are only 6% of New
> York's traffic fatalities; pedestrians are 49%! That works out to
> over 1800 lives potentially saved, if we could just do something about
> all those pedestrians!
More smoke. We're concerned with cyclists, not pedestrians. It is no
excuse not to save cyclists from death that we aren't first saving
pedestrians or elephants or water voles in Louisiana or hedgehogs in
my lanes.
> Of course, this is similar to national data. In a given year in the
> US, there are roughly 750 bicycle fatalities. There are typically
> about 4000 pedestrian fatalities.
Krygowski's smoke bellows are working overtime now!
YO, KRYGO, WHAT ABOUT THE CYCLISTS BEING KILLED WHO COULD BE SAVED
WHILE YOU WAFFLE ON ABOUT PEDESTRIANS YOU DON'T WANT TO SAVE EITHER?
>Now, in a country the size of the
> US, 750 fatalities is a large number only if you're a confirmed hand-
> wringer.
It is one thing to be sanguine about unavoidable deaths, it is quite
another to set yourself up as an anti-helmet advocate and thereby
murder cyclists who could be alive if they wore a helmet. In that case
even one dead cyclist who needn't be is enough to condemn your soul
forever, Krygowski.
>That's usually fairly similar to the number killed by the
> accidental inhalation of poison gases. (Hear much about that
> problem?
More poor quality smoke, called equivalence, the argument of a weak
mind.
>I thought not.) In Canada, in most years, more people die
> by falling out of bed than by crashing bicycles. By any rational
> comparison, cycling fatalities are relatively rare.
More equivalence.
> And as we've mentioned, the risk per mile traveled has been computed.
> Turns out walking a mile in the US is over three times as dangerous as
> cycling a mile.
So what? That parachuting is more dangerous than cycling is no reason
for us as cyclists concerned with cyclists to run out and concentrate
on parachutists to the detriment of cyclists. You're blowing smoke
through your ass, Krygowski.
>And again, the main trauma danger for pedestrians is
> head injury (as with most modes of accidental death). Why would
> anyone portray cycling as unusually dangerous?
Hey, Krygowski, I'm the one who had to prove to you that cycling is
even safer than you thought, remember, because you did the math so
incompetently. Why are you trying to distract us with dumb claims that
someone is saying cycling is "unusually dangerous" when we all know no
one here is saying so? Or do you just lie from habit?
It doesn't matter precisely how dangerous cycling is, if we carelessly
permit 70 or more cyclists to die every year, that is 70 too many.
Your callousness is amazing, Krygowski. What do you think you are, a
Russian general sending his infantry to clear a minefield by walking
across it?
Next Krygowski returns to trying to smear the New York study with
vague mutterings and conspiracy theories. First I'll let you read the
whole paragraphs so you can see how he does it by juxtaposition, then
I'll deconstruct Krygowski's poor quality crap:
> Finally, Jute, you've wound on and on about the fact that of the New
> York cyclist fatalities whose helmet use was known, only 3% wore
> them. But several of us have noted apparent bias in observation. For
> example, in the very few cycling fatalities in my metro area, I've
> noted that the newspaper reports have included "he was not wearing a
> bike helmet" when that was known to be true; but they omitted the
> phrase "both mother and daughter were wearing bike helmets when
> killed" in the incident for which that was true. Furthermore, Riley
> Geary of the Institute for Traffic Safety Analysis has reported
> similar discrepancies in official data regarding helmet use in injured
> cyclists. His explanation was more detailed, and involved largely
> treatment of the "unknown" cases, the design and processing of report
> forms, etc. Still, he clearly showed bias occurred in the reporting
> an analysis system.
>
> No matter. Since I'm sure you'll discount that, let's go beyond it.
Holy shit! This crap of Krygowski's is an insult to every cyclist.
Let's see it sentence by sentence:
> Finally, Jute, you've wound on and on about the fact that of the New
> York cyclist fatalities whose helmet use was known, only 3% wore
> them.
Krygowski lies by omission. What I've noted again and again is the
significant discrepancy between only 3% of the fatalities in the New
York study wearing helmets and 13% of those surviving but seriously
injured wearing helmets. The implication is that not wearing a helmet
may be seriously detrimental to a cyclist's health by around 433%.
This is the killer statistic that Krygowski must somehow undermine if
he is not to look stupid. Let's see how stupid he looks when he
botches the job:
> But several of us have noted apparent bias in observation.
Unspecified. If you can prove bias in the New York study, why haven't
you, Krygowski?
>For
> example, in the very few cycling fatalities in my metro area, I've
> noted that the newspaper reports have included "he was not wearing a
> bike helmet" when that was known to be true; but they omitted the
> phrase "both mother and daughter were wearing bike helmets when
> killed" in the incident for which that was true.
The New York study didn't count newspaper crap, they counted police
reports and medical reports of all the incidents in which cyclists
died or were seriously injured in New York over a period of eight
years. Krygowski is blowing poor quality smoke. Again.
> Furthermore, Riley
> Geary of the Institute for Traffic Safety Analysis has reported
> similar discrepancies in official data regarding helmet use in injured
> cyclists.
Has he really? WTF does this have to do with the New York study? What
do you want, Krygowski, a notarized statement from the Mayor of New
York that his Police, Health and Transport Commissioners not only
weren't conspiring against you but never heard of you?
>His explanation was more detailed, and involved largely
> treatment of the "unknown" cases, the design and processing of report
> forms, etc. Still, he clearly showed bias occurred in the reporting
> an analysis system.
Wow. You really are a statistical moron, Krygowski. It is widely
known, and even statistical tenth-raters like you should make it their
business to discover this before they risk lives by claiming that
helmets don't matter, that the larger the study, the more small
difficulties even out; that is one of the fundamental essences of
statistics, and the main reason for preferring large studies to small.
The exemplary New York study is of nearly 4000 serious cycling
accidents, a full universe over eight years. What you are in effect
claiming is that tens of thousands of policemen and medical staff all
conspired in a pro-helmet manner. You're wanking, Krygowski.
>
> No matter. Since I'm sure you'll discount that, let's go beyond it.
Not only do I discount that waffle, I reject it contemptuously as the
desperate and hysterical smoke of a man who knows he has lost the
argument, and now descends to immoral smear tactics.
> Let's assume that it's true that for the fatally injured cyclists
> where helmet use was "known" (and admitted), that 97% wore no helmets.
Here we go with those perjorative post-modern, morally relativistic
quotation marks again. Once more Krygowski tries for a smear. Once
more such tactics only highlight how desperately and hysterically
Krygowski needs to undermine the New York study to have even a few
shreds of his anti-helmet case left.
> Fine. The parallel figure for pedestrians is 100%.
Okay, so now Krygowski agrees 97% of the New York fatalitites did not
wear a helmet. Now he'll go on to claim we should have saved the
pedestrians first rather than try to improve the lot of cyclists.
> Over 1800 pedestrians in the time of the study were killed, compared
> ot only 225 cyclists.
Those "only" (Krygowski's sneer, not mine) 225 dead cyclists include
every dead cyclist in New York in eight years. That's a full universe.
It tells us what we need to know about cycling fatalities. The number
of pedestrians who died in the same period is irrelevant to the
implications of the New York study.
>For both pedestrians and cyclists, roughly 74%
> of the fatalities "involved" head injuries. Pedestrian head injuries
> tend to be worse than cyclist head injuries. And yet 100% of
> pedestrians refuse to wear a helmet - and nobody seems to care!
So what? What's your point with all these iterative irrelevances,
Krygowski. WE'RE TALKING ABOUT SAVING THE LIVES OF CYCLISTS. NOT
PEDESTRIANS, NOT PARACHUTISTS, NOT ELEPHPANTS, NOT VOLES, NOT
HEDGEHOGS. CYCLISTS!
> Personally, I'm never going to call for helmet use by pedestrians -
Another straw man. WE'RE TALKING ABOUT CYCLISTS, KRYGOWSKI.
> although others have done that, with total seriousness. I think the
> helmet nannies such as yourself are already way too deep into total
> nonsense.
"Helmet nannies such as yourself", eh? Prove that I have ever told
anyone (except my own son when he was small) to wear a helmet, or
advocated helmet use, or called for a mandatory helmet law. You're
lying again, Krygowski, trying to put words in my mouth that I didn't
speak. ALL I'm doing is putting honest numbers on the table to stop
the anti-helmet zealots like you, Frank Krygowski, lying about the
facts.
> I will, however, point out that if you, Jute, are going to continue to
> promote bike helmets
Wow, now Krygowski's lies have become axiomatic! Even the Pope doesn't
claim such infallibility. Nope, Krygo, I'm not promoting bike helmets,
I'm just promoting honest statistics, clearly a concept totally alien
to your obsessive hatred of helmets and helmet-wearers. I wouldn't
even be in this discussion if I hadn't first seen you lying your head
off about the statistics I in good faith provided you with.
>based on this simplistic New York paper,
This unbelievably ignorant statement of Krygowski's reminds me of a
clown I knew at one of my colleges who claimed that without footnotes
no paper could be an academic paper, it was the footnotes that made it
an academic paper. Yo, Krygowski, you poor statistical illiterate,
what makes a statistical study good is not, repeat after me NOT, all
kinds of adjusments; those are just required to compensate for
inadequate size; they are the mark of an inadequately conceived and
funded study. What makes a statistical study good is size, obviating
the need for adjustments which inevitably introduce the bias of the
adjusters. The New York study appears "simplistic" to morons like you
because you have no grasp of statistics, so you mistake the tinkering
of little men on little studies for the essence. The New York study
doesn't need all this because it counted the whole universe over a
more than adequately long period, and the number of people involved
are too large for bias or conspiracy. The New York study is the gold
standard exactly because no one has adjusted it to suit his
prejudices.
>you need
> to promote pedestrian helmets at least as obnoxiously.
Oh, I'm only obnoxious because you lie -- difficult not to be
obnoxious to someone as willfully stupid and dishonest as you
Krygowski --, and because I'm not committed to either side. My
commitment is to the purity of the numbers.
> - Frank Krygowski
Andre Jute
Charisma is the art of infuriating inadequates by merely doing one's
homework
Andre Jute
Are you going to apologize for these lies you told about what I said,
Krygowski?
Here is my post, listing three lies Krygowski told, which Krygowski
snipped in its entirety to make his petty point above. There is also a
lot of information about cycling fatalities on the roads, which is in
danger of becoming lost in Krygowski's lies and the personalities he
tries to substitute for substantive argument all the time.
****
On Aug 27, 7:03 pm, Frank Krygowski <frkry...@gmail.com> wrote:
> it's
> possible for people who do wear helmets to truly believe that they are
> nearly 100% effective - falling for the propaganda of Thompson &
> Rivara, plus Jute.
That's a lie Krygowski tells. I never said helmets are 100% effective.
Conjoining my name to Thompson & Rivara is another attempted lie by
Krygowski, now
exposed. I've never quoted Thompson and Rivara.
> the rude non-mathematical silliness coming
> from Jute
>
> - Frank Krygowski
That's yet another lie by Frank "Kreepy" Krygowski. As everyone knows
by now, on cycling safety poor old Krygo has to work on my numbers
because his own were so incomptently derived that I took pity on him
and gave him a clean set of number. (Guess why Krygowski won't argue
directly with me but instead snipes from the sidelines, all innuendo
and childish tantrums: poor Franki-boy can't argue with me because his
numbers are actually my numbers!)
Here is the only certified truth in this discussion:
****
Bill Sornson
news:d52839e7-9409-4f2e...@h19g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
> On Aug 27, 7:03 pm, Frank Krygowski <frkry...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> it's
>> possible for people who do wear helmets to truly believe that they are
>> nearly 100% effective - falling for the propaganda of Thompson &
>> Rivara, plus Jute.
>
> That's a lie Krygowski tells.
Oh, I don't know. I asked about 15 helmeted cyclists today why they chose
to ride lidded, and to a man they all replied, "Why, Thompson & Riviera,
plus Jute of course."
Case closed.
BS
**************************************
Andre Jute
>
> ... Jute, but he is negligible ... propose 97% prevention of death
> by head injury in New York City, at least.
Tim McNamara lies just like his capo, Franki "Shavelegs" Krygowski. I
did not say that helmets will prevent 97% of head injuries in New York
City or anywhere else.
Here is what I did say, the only authorized, certified truth in these
threads:
***
Andre Jute
> the claim you and
> Jute have been making of helmets providing 97% prevention of fatal brain
> injuries.
Still Tim McNamara lies lie. Neither Mike nor I have made any such
claim and we've told Timmie so, so he lies knowing that he lies. Here
are the correct numbers, with thanks to Timmy for another opportunity
to republish this important information:
Tom Sherman °_°
>[...]
Edward Dolan
"Tom Sherman °_°" <twsherm...@THISsouthslope.net> wrote in message
news:i59us4$bi1$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> On 8/27/2010 10:10 PM, André Jute wrote:
>>[...]
> TLDR
I second the motion. Things must really be dull in sodden old Ireland.
Edward Dolan
"Tom Sherman °_°" <twsherm...@THISsouthslope.net> wrote in message
> On 8/27/2010 1:45 PM, André Jute wrote:
>>[...]
[ditto]
Edward Dolan
[...]
> More smoke. We're concerned with cyclists, not pedestrians. It is no
excuse not to save cyclists from death that we aren't first saving
pedestrians or elephants or water voles in Louisiana or hedgehogs in
my lanes.
[...]
I would like to hear more about those hedgehogs in the lanes of sodden old
Ireland.
Andre Jute
>Jute's [posts] are long on mockery, indignation and
> sarcasm. They're short on facts and data.
Krygowski lies again. The only facts in this conversation were put up
by me at http://groups.google.ie/group/rec.bicycles.tech/msg/a557a3e617d06ca8?hl=en
and assiduously ignored by Krygowski and his sidekick McNamara.
Krygowski himself has to work with my numbers because he is too
incompetent to interpret the statistics. (For instance, when Krygowski
tried to dig out numbers to make cycling seem safe, he clumsily made
it seem more dangerous than it really is.)
> Seriously, since Jute is by profession a fantasy writer
Yet another lie from Frank Krygowski. Among my engineering and
technical books are DESIGNING AND BUILDING SPECIAL CARS, a book about
automobile design; GRIDS, THE STRUCTURE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN, about the
esoterics of reprographics; a book about one of the first portable
computers, the EPSON PX8, textbooks in graphic design, marketing and
literature, and so on. Even my novels are widely regarded a textbooks,
REVERSE NEGATIVE as a text for psychological reaction forecasting,
IDITAROD as a training manual for dogsled racers, THE INSURRECTIONIST
as such an effective manual for revolutionaries that the apartheid
government in South Africa sent assassins after my life for it. But
Kreepy Frank Krygowski, an all-round tenth-rater, claims to have such
literary judgement that he can tell from books he hasn't read that I'm
a "fantasy-writer". What a pointless wanker this Frank Krygowski is.
Andre Jute
Visit Andre's books at
http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/THE%20WRITER'S%20HOUSE.html
Andre Jute
> On Aug 27, 5:41 pm, Frank Krygowski <frkry...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Aug 27, 3:45 pm, Dan O <danover...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I don't think anyone here is saying
> > > that bicycle helmets provide absolute protection for anyone.
>
> > Jute seems to be claiming that they are nearly 100% effective. Do you
> > buy that?
>
> What do you think I think abut that? (Are you even reading anything
> that I write?)
Here Krygowski tries to bludgeon someone -- who already said he
doesn't believe I said anything as stupid as Krygowski claims -- into
agreeing with his lie.
Anyone wondering why Krygowski needs to descend to these childish
smear tactics? It is because he can't argue with me. You see, my
numbers are also the numbers Krygowski needs to make his argument, so
Krygowski would first have to admit I'm right. This argument isn't
about the facts -- I own all of those -- but about Krygowski's hatred
of me for not toeing his line, for not lying for him, for not lying
"for the Cause", and about Krygowski's sick desire to be sole
"spokesman" for cyclists.
Andre Jute
Just the pure,unadulterated facts, Mam
Tom Sherman °_°
> [...]
Written by Mini-André I through IV, no doubt.
Tom Sherman °_°
> [BORING]
Kevan Smith
> Even my novels are widely regarded a textbooks,
> REVERSE NEGATIVE as a text for psychological reaction forecasting,
Amazon review:
"Hackneyed and overblown, and lacking any characters of interest,
originality or wit. Has chapter titles like "Synthesis 9: Lausanne". A
reader who doesn't grin at that may enjoy this book, otherwise not.
"I only read it because Jute wrote a not-very-good book about how to
write, and mentioned this book of his as an example. I wanted to see his
qualifications, and they are weak, except as an encouraging example that
you need not be a good writer to get published."
http://www.amazon.com/Reverse-Negative-Suspense-Andre-Jute/dp/0393012166/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_5
Andre Jute
of books they hadn't read written to intimidate me in my living by the
little scumballs on rec.audio.tubes, and threatened by the little
scumballs on rec.bicycles.tech when i arrived here. However kosher or
faux it may be, thanks for it, it's amusing. REVERSE NEGATIVE was
published simultaneously in three separate English editions
(Australian, British, American) by the leading literary publisher in
each country, then widely translated and book-clubbed; every one of
the 103 newspapers of record on my checklist of the most important
opinion-formers around the world reviewed it favourably. So much for
amateur opinion Amazon. I don't know which of my books for other
writers your little Amazon friend refers to; I've written several.
Possibly WRITING A THRILLER. Over a quarter-century WaT went into
several ever-larger editions, was extracted and anthologized by
everyone who matters, created an entire new structural dispensation in
novels of suspense, and is still the standard text for aspirant
writers in Italian, French, Spanish, etc. You might stop to reflect on
the reasons a text in English literature becomes a universal handbook
for writers even in languages with admirable literatures of their own.
Once more: so much for amateur opinion. Further down I'll restore the
surprising context Kevan snipped), but first let's enjoy the snippy
review Kevan found:
> http://www.amazon.com/Reverse-Negative-Suspense-Andre-Jute/dp/0393012...
The above, incidentally, is Kevan Smith's entire response to my post
below, which deals with Frank Krygowski's lies; one wonders at Kevan's
motive for cutting my entire post and substituting the spiteful
irrelevance above. Here is my original post:
****
Frank Krygowski wrote:
>Jute's [posts] are long on mockery, indignation and
> sarcasm. They're short on facts and data.
Krygowski lies again. The only facts in this conversation were put up
by me at http://groups.google.ie/group/rec.bicycles.tech/msg/a557a3e617d06ca8?hl=en
and assiduously ignored by Krygowski and his sidekick McNamara.
Krygowski himself has to work with my numbers because he is too
incompetent to interpret the statistics. (For instance, when Krygowski
tried to dig out numbers to make cycling seem safe, he clumsily made
it seem more dangerous than it really is.)
> Seriously, since Jute is by profession a fantasy writer
Yet another lie from Frank Krygowski. Among my engineering and
technical books are DESIGNING AND BUILDING SPECIAL CARS, a book about
automobile design; GRIDS, THE STRUCTURE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN, about the
esoterics of reprographics; a book about one of the first portable
computers, the EPSON PX8, textbooks in graphic design, marketing and
literature, and so on. Even my novels are widely regarded a textbooks,
REVERSE NEGATIVE as a text for psychological reaction forecasting,
IDITAROD as a training manual for dogsled racers, THE INSURRECTIONIST
as such an effective manual for revolutionaries that the apartheid
government in South Africa sent assassins after my life for it. But
Kreepy Frank Krygowski, an all-round tenth-rater, claims to have such
literary judgement that he can tell from books he hasn't read that I'm
a "fantasy-writer". What a pointless wanker this Frank Krygowski is.
****
So tell us, Kevan, what has your spiteful little missive to do with
Krygowski's lies?
Kevan Smith
> So tell us, Kevan, what has your spiteful little missive to do with
> Krygowski's lies?
Nada, i just like poking big egos to watch them bluster and spume. As a
child, I also poked sticks into ant beds.
Andre Jute
Okay, you're a bully who as a child tortured small animals and as an
adult tries to do the same to people, and like all bullies when called
on it you whine "it is just a little fun kicking the foureye yid to
death".
It is now clear what your lipsmackingly spiteful little missive has to
do with Krygowski's lies; you're birds of a feather.
Frank Krygowski wrote:
>Jute's [posts] are long on mockery, indignation and
> sarcasm. They're short on facts and data.
Krygowski lies again. The only facts in this conversation were put up
by me at http://groups.google.ie/group/rec.bicycles.tech/msg/a557a3e617d06ca8?...
and assiduously ignored by Krygowski and his sidekick McNamara.
Krygowski himself has to work with my numbers because he is too
incompetent to interpret the statistics. (For instance, when
Krygowski
tried to dig out numbers to make cycling seem safe, he clumsily made
it seem more dangerous than it really is.)
> Seriously, since Jute is by profession a fantasy writer
Yet another lie from Frank Krygowski. Among my engineering and
technical books are DESIGNING AND BUILDING SPECIAL CARS, a book about
automobile design; GRIDS, THE STRUCTURE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN, about the
esoterics of reprographics; a book about one of the first portable
computers, the EPSON PX8, textbooks in graphic design, marketing and
literature, and so on. Even my novels are widely regarded a
textbooks,
REVERSE NEGATIVE as a text for psychological reaction forecasting,
IDITAROD as a training manual for dogsled racers, THE INSURRECTIONIST
as such an effective manual for revolutionaries that the apartheid
government in South Africa sent assassins after my life for it. But
Kreepy Frank Krygowski, an all-round tenth-rater, claims to have such
literary judgement that he can tell from books he hasn't read that
I'm
a "fantasy-writer". What a pointless wanker this Frank Krygowski is.
Andre Jute
Andre Jute
> if you get conflicting numbers (Jute's "97%"
Quite. I don't know what Krygowski means by 'Jute's "97%"' but it
certainly sounds hysterical enough to influence the more
impressionable cyclists, and the postmodern (i.e. morally
relativistic) quotation marks around the 97% certainly implies it is
not a real number but someone's fantasy. And so it is, Krygowski's
fantasy. I *am* Andre Jute, and I don't have a 97% attached to me
anywhere, nor stamped in indelible ink, nor tattooed, nor
spraypainted.
Just another typical example of the crap Krygowski tries to pass off
as science.
Andre Jute
"The first American car was sold to an American on April Fool's Day,
1898." -- Ralph Stein in "Vintage and Classic Cars", Bantam Books,
1977
Tom Sherman °_°
>[...]
TBDR [1]
[1] Too Boring, Didn't Read
Tim McNamara
Kevan Smith <dr.go...@gmail.com> wrote:
Ah, so there we go again with Jute's self-inflated ego striking another
blow against reality.
--
That'll put marzipan in your pie plate, Bingo.
Andre Jute
> A lot of us were once kill-filed by Andre Jute. Some of us were
> hoping he'd kill file the entire news group! Unfortunately, he's
> merely trying to kill it, instead. :-(
>
> It's a textbook example of the Tragedy of the Commons. Only with more
> malice than usual.
>
> - Frank Krygowski
Wow. Above Krygowski defines any difference of opinion with himself as
an attack on the newsgroup itself (in portentous tones as no less than
the Tragedy of the Commons!). In this particular instance, Krygowski
defines any discussion of a major study of bicycling fataltiesby the
City of New York as an attack on him, Frank Krygowski, and thus on the
newsgroup. What a self-important wanker Krygowski is.
This is exactly what I mean about Krygowski's fascism.
And it isn't just Krygowski, it is that entire anti-helmet zealotry
who are fascist. We've already seen that Sherman just wants to shut me
up by any means, and Berlin threatening to find out where I live. This
very thread was renamed "The Time Wasting of Jute" by another anti-
helmet zealot, Tim McNamara, to indicate that discussion of any
cycling safety study which contradicts or undermines the anti-helmet
zealots' prejudices is not permitted. (Ironically, in a thread that he
himself named "The Time wasting of Jute", McNamara then wasted time
sending dozens of messages. But hypocrisy is par for the course for
the anti-helmet zealots.)
Andre Jute
One really has to wonder who can possibly still believe these clowns
Kevan Smith
> One really has to wonder who can possibly still believe these clowns
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right .....
Bill Sornson
"Kevan Smith" <dr.go...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:vKSdnX1ZnYgq3ubR...@giganews.com...
> On 8/29/10 10:53 PM, Andre Jute wrote:
>> One really has to wonder who can possibly still believe these clowns
>
> Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right .....
Here I am...
Barry Taylor
"Tom Sherman °_°" <twsherm...@THISsouthslope.net> wrote in message
> On 8/28/2010 4:15 PM, André Jute wrote:
>> [BORING]
not only boring
but also a nimeity of outrecuidance
a veritable coronis replete with a distinctive mephitis ...
--
--
a friendly growl and a hug from
_--| \ __ __ __ _ __
/ \ /__/ / /__/ /__ /_\ /__/
\.-- *_/ /__/ _/ /__/ /__ / \ / \
v
by the pool at 34 58' 45.27" S 138 36' 47.89" E elev 281 ft
barry j taylor < tayl...@aapt.net.au>
************************************************
"Never be boastful, someone
may pass who knew you as a
child" karma bear
************************************************
Andre Jute
>
>the real
> discussion, which is "do helmets reduce the incidence or prevalence of
> brain injuries among bicyclists?"
Good heavens, Timmie, have you still not got it? See, the major New
York study of eight years of cycling fatalities and serious accidents,
almost 4000 serious cycling accidents, found among other things that:
• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
• Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
• Helmet use was only 3% in fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal
crashes
Source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
The implication is clear: helmets save lives. Surely it follows, even
to you, that if lives are saved, then brain injuries must be prevented
too. I've printed and reprinted a full report on RBT and other
cycling conferences again and again and can't understand why you
haven't seen it yet; you must be deliberately avoiding the truth.
Again. That's your choice of course, but why do you waste so much of
our time with your blindness?
Andre Jute
Just the straight math, Mam
Visit Jute on Bicycles at
http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/BICYCLE%20%26%20CYCLING.html
Andre Jute
MikeWhy:
> However, despite the claims and implications you and Jute continue to
> make
I'm just laying on the table the straight facts from an official
compilation by the authorities in New York covering the eight years
1996 to 2003 of all the deaths (225) and serious injuries (3,462) in
cycling accidents in all New York City. The purpose of the study was
an overview usable for city development planning, not helmet advocacy,
so your particular obsession of helmet usage was only noted for part
of the period among the seriously injured, amounting to 333 cases.
Here are some summary numbers from the study:
• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury (same as in every
other study, no surprise).
• Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
• Helmet use was only 3% in fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal
crashes
Source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
Clearly, helmets were effective life-savers in 9.62% or approximately
33 cases, and a larger lifesaving can reasonably be projected to New
York and the nation in the presence of mandatory helmet legislation
and enforcement.
> In real life, unlike in your favorite study, confounding factors do
> apparently matter. Competent and unbiased statisticians know this,
> and have written about it extensively - for those who are actually
> willing to read.
I do love the sneer of "for those who are actually willing to read".
Yo, Krygowski, you sad statistical illiterate, those "competent and
unbiased statisticians" musta been abducted by you and tortured by
repeated retellings of your life story until they would confess to
pedophilia, never mind contort statistics, because any competent
statistician will tell you that a full universe compilation of 3687
actual incidents over a period of eight years is not a sample, it is a
portrait, and it is definitely not confounded: All those 225
fatalities are dead, all the 3462 seriously injured cyclists are
seriously injured, whatever you say now. And it is guaranteed that of
the 225 fatalities only 3% wore helmets and of the 333 seriously
injured cyclists for whom helmet wear was noted, 13% wore helmets,
conclusion obvious: helmets save lives. Those are the facts,
regardless of whether you like them or not.
The only one confounded, confused and constipated here, is you, Franki-
boy Krygowski. The only people here who are ignorant enough to want to
adjust a full universe compilation with a sample size so vastly over
3000 (go read up the meaning of the 3000 and amaze yourself) are you,
Franki Shavelegs, and the permanent RBT moron McNamara.
Hope this helps clear up the matter for you. I must admit that, like
Mike, I'm running out of patience with your obtuseness and inability
to learn anything at all.
Andre Jute
Pass me up a brick to knock Krygowski's brains into gear
Frank Krygowski
>
> Pass me up a brick to knock Krygowski's brains into gear
Andre, some fourth grader has gotten control of your computer. Or
perhaps your mind. I suspect the latter.
Restrain him, would you? He's really obnoxious.
- Frank Krygowski
Andre Jute
cyclist fatalities and serious injuries over an eight year period,
suggesting very strongly what we all know, that helmets save lives.
Krygowski cut my explanation of the New York numbers in total and
substituted this juvenile silliness:
> Andre, some fourth grader has gotten control of your computer. Or
> perhaps your mind. I suspect the latter.
>
> Restrain him, would you? He's really obnoxious.
>
> - Frank Krygowski
Here is what Krygowski cut restored:
***
Source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
Andre Jute
Pass me up a brick to knock Krygowski's brains into gear
***
Bill Sornson
http://www.engrish.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/08/suning-helmet.jpg
Bill "and some say the claims are exaggerated" S.
Andre Jute
Would that "fresh and hot impression" be the dent his head left in the
road when he was dropped on his noggin by his mama, with aftereffects
we still see? -- AJ
Andre Jute
> On Sep 1, 3:00 am, James <james.e.stew...@gmail.com> wrote:
All these cycling accidents studies depend on statistics. I've already
demonstrated the statistical incompetence (or crookery) of the anti-
helmet zealots repeatedly. Here we go with an appalling sample of
willful ignorance on a very basic matter.
James Stewart says:
> > Really, to say it's a certainty that
> > a helmet would have saved him is silly...
Okay, that is the correct way of describing the chance of an event
happening. Nothing is certain until after it has been observed to
happen. Until then it is merely more or less likely.
Then Krygowski replies to James with this stunning display of
ignorance:
> But even the _probability_ that a helmet would have saved him is
> silly.
Huh? There is no such thing as a "silly" probability. There is no such
thing as the zero probability that the form of Krygowski's statement
implies. Probability may be infinitely small but it is never, ever
zero.
Anyone who pretends to discuss the lives of cyclists really should not
make such fundamental statistical errors.
James then states the negative case as well:
> > ... just as saying a helmet could not have saved him is silly.
Once again, the correct way of stating the probability. If he didn't
wear a helmet, we don't know whether it could have saved him.
In reply Krygowski goes into contortionist overdrive:
> Saying a helmet could not have saved him is based on the nature of
> this crash, the certification standards for bike helmets, and the
> large volume of data that shows wide adoption of bike helmets has not
> reduced the serious or fatal head injury counts per bicyclist in any
> large population where helmet use has soared.
>
> This idea is not based on wishful thinking or wild imagining. It's
> based on numbers and data.
No, it isn't, Franki-boy, not when you claim complete certainty of one
outcome or the other. It is this sort of error on statistical *basics*
while at the same time you shriek "It's based on numbers and data"
that fatally undermines your credibility with anyone who has a high
school grasp of statistical theory and practice.
Now Krygowski turns disingenuous:
> Everyone on my side of this debate has stated that
> helmets can prevent scratches and minor bumps, and this is entirely
> consistent with their test standards.
Then how come you, Frank Krygowsky, so consistently refuse to look at
data which proves, beyond any possible juggling of statistics, that
wearing helmets saved 33 lives in New York? Here it is again:
• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
• Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
• Helmet use was only 3% in fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal
crashes
Source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
Krygowski then adds a patronizing wriggle:
> You need to review the history of bike fatality counts in your
> country, preferably per cyclist. See if you can spot any evidence of
> lives saved. Others have done this using pretty sophisticated math,
> and found no benefit.
James is an Australian. I've already demonstrated that Krygowski lied
about the report of a study into cyclist benefits from a mandatory
helmet law in Western Australia. Peter Cole has demontrated that
Krygowski lied about the American Crocker study which even after
applying "sophisticated math" didn't conclude what Krygowski said it
did.
But, once more, Krygowski, if that is the way you want it done, why do
you refuse to look at the result of a head count of fatalities and
serious accidents in New York -- in your own country? Here it is
again, proof that helmets save lives:
• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
• Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
• Helmet use was only 3% in fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal
crashes
Source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
Finally, Krygowski hauls out the old chestnut that helmets just don't
work because they aren't designed to work:
> Then you need to review the helmet certification standards. If you
> can understand the engineering, you'll see how weak these things are.
> That should allow you to understand a lot more.
We can however understand by studying reliable compilations of cycling
accident data how well helmets work even if they are not perfect. Once
more the New York data which Krygowski steadfastly refuses to look at
(because it kills his all his arguments stone dead) gives us an
insight:
• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
• Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
• Helmet use was only 3% in fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal
crashes
Source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
Those highlight the fact that around 33 New Yorkers are alive because
they wore a helmet rather than dead because they didn't. In addition,
those numbers show that many more New Yorkers could be alive rather
than dead, if only they had worn a helmet.
Let's see Krygowski work out how many lives a mandatory helmet law
will save in New York and nationally. That's how many he and the other
anti-helmet zealots are killing by telling people they don't need
helmets.
Andre Jute
Visit Andre's Gazelle Toulouse commuter at
http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/BICYCLE%20Bauhaus.html
Andre Jute
>James <james.e.stew...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Andre's study results do say wearing a helmet does
> > save lives, though not enough obviously for you.
>
> > You haven't refuted Andre's numbers yet, Frank.
>
> Good grief! If you can't see the shortcomings in that propaganda, you
> are demonstrating very conclusively that you have no idea at all about
> how scientific studies are conducted, nor how data is evaluated!
Empty waffle and insults. Get to the beef, Franki-boy. I'll take up
the stupidity of "propaganda" later.
> Admittedly, I'm no longer surprised that people would take something
> like that study seriously. No matter how much it pains Dan O to hear
> this, most people are admittedly innumerate, and will actually brag
> that they can't successfully balance a checkbook. On the other hand,
> I've tended to believe that most denizens of r.b.tech at least know a
> _little_ about numbers!
More knocking-shop bangs. Are you actually going to tell us anything
worth listening to, Franki?
> Here it is in a nutshell: That paper blindly assumes that correlation
> is causation. It assumes that because helmets were reportedly more
> rare on fatally injured cyclists, the helmets must have caused many
> fatalities to be prevented.
And correctly so. 3% of 225 fatalities wore helmets, 13% of 333
seriously injured cyclists wore helmets. It is pretty clear that 33
cyclists' lives were saved by wearing helmets.
Here's another number to keep in mind: 74% of fatalities had head
injuries, a number that matches national studies.
>It does not make the slightest effort to
> evaluate any confounding factors, as is done in all respectable
> studies of that type.
The New York report is a compilation of all the cycling fatalities and
all the cyclists seriously hurt over a long period. It's a pure
headcount. It comprises the entire universe. These "confounding
factors" Krygowski clings to like a liferaft are necessary to knock
the data into shape in smaller, cheaper studies; confounding factors
are avenues for introducing the bias of propagandists like Krygowski.
But let's hear Krygo out, and dispose of his "confounding factors" one
by one. Prepare for a giggle.
> What does "confounding factor" mean? It means some other factor,
> possibly unrecorded, that may have caused part or all the observed
> effect.
It had better be relevant. For instance, if it is a pro-helmet
conspiracy, which is what Krygowski means by "propaganda" above, it
has nothing to do with the statistics. For instance, if it is, "Bush
was in the White House," delivered with a knowing nod and wink, it has
nothing to do with the statistics.
> Possibilities are many.
Oh, they're endless. As long as there is some special interest group
that doesn't like what the statistics show, there will be new
"confounding factors" invented, some of them, as we shall see in a
minute, amazing and amusing. It is the absence of such wretched bias
that makes the New York compilation so good.
>Crocker showed that alcohol use correlates
> with lack of helmet in head injured cyclists, and that it's the
> alcohol, not the helmet, that was significant.
Drunks don't wear helmets and get head injuries. Okay, But so what?
The cyclists in the New York study that Krygowski is trying to talk
out of bounds *wore helmets and survived*.
> Other studies have
> indicated that helmetless riders are much less respectful of traffic
> laws, and tend to crash through red lights and stop signs, tend to
> ride facing traffic, tend to ride sidewalks then burst out into
> streets, tend to ride without lights, etc.
Fine, but we're not talking about "helmetless riders". The relevant
cyclists in the New York study *wore helmets*. We're talking about
them because their helmets clearly saved their lives.
> Did that paper even
> examine any of these possibilities, let alone control for them?
Huh? This is hysterical. Krygowski names two confounding factors
relating to riders *without helmets" -- but the point at issue is
precisely riders *with helmets* whose lives were saved!
NO CONFOUNDING FACTORS FOUND.
One would really expect a loud anti-helmet zealot, moreover one so
nasty about the shortcomings of reason and mathematics he ascribes to
others, to bring relevant points. What Krygowski does is shovel crap
and hope people will run away from the smell.
>Read
> it and see. But understand, really serious studies - as opposed to
> propaganda pieces - DO examine and control for such confounding
> variables.
If there are confounding factors, name them, Krygowski. But don't
shovel manure into our faces about *helmetless riders* when the very
point is *riders with helmets* who survived, and who clearly were
saved by their helmets.
>If they don't, they're unlikely to be published.
Stop blustering, Krygowski. The New York Study is published and widely
available. It was compiled for the Police, Traffic and Planning
Commissioners by the police and medical staffs.
> Furthermore, as we've explained many times, the predictions of that
> paper, or the even wilder predictions by Jute, have simply not
> appeared in the history of increasing helmet use. We have national
> data from the US, from Australia and from New Zealand that examines
> significant jumps in helmet use and compares to bike fatality rates
> per cyclist. There is simply no improvement!
Perhaps your "confounding factors" have confounded the results,
Krygowski. In any event, as described above, I've caught Krygowski out
lying about the Australian results, someone else has caught him lying
about American results, and earlier, when I was determining how safe
cycling in America is, I discovered that Krygowski through statistical
incompetence *underestimated* the relative safety of cycling.
> How can one predict
> that wearing helmets would result in 400 saved lives per year when
> helmet use has risen from 15% to 50% without any drop in fatalities,
> serious head injuries, or percent hospitalized due to head injuries?
I can offhand name a dozen "confounding factors" to account for that
but we're only talking about the helmet-wears in New York who clearly
benefited by helmet-wearing through not dying.
[snipped some nonsense where Krygowski demands that James Stewart
refute some obscure paper -- more poor quality smoke]
> Propagandists and salesmen specialize in finding little data sets with
> numbers they like, and shouting them out as the last word. (Jute is
> firmly in that camp - as well as the troll camp, which is why I ignore
> almost all of what he writes.)
Actually, Krygowski tries to ignore me or sneer me out of bounds
because, as we see here, I dance on his bones and he has no answers
except pisspoor smoke, like his irrelevant "confounding factors".
>But reality isn't measured by hand-
> picked data sets, simplistically examined. Reality, and realistic
> predictions of future events, is best measured by large data sets,
> carefully analyzed.
The New York study is the biggest serious cycling accident headcount
ever conducted or likely to be conducted. Mark the word "headcount".
This isn't a sample, this is an addition of a universe, a complete
portrait of what happened to cyclists on the streets of a major city
over a period of eight years. There will never be any more reliable
data short of a national census of hospital data (anyone who thinks
that even possible lives on Planet Krygo).
KRYGOWSKI HAS ZERO VALID POINTS
• "Propaganda", meaning it's all a conspiracy of the pro-helmet lobby.
Yeah, tens of thousands of policemen and medical staff conspired
together. Pull the other one.
•"Correlation is causation". Yup, that's why we study correlation so
avidly. When it is this simple correlation is causation. 3% of
fatalities wore helmets, 13% of the non-fatally injured wore helmets,
so what saved them? Simple numbers, simple question, simple answer.
•"Confounding factors". Krygowski offered two, drunks and scofflaws,
both helmetless. But the argument is about *helmet-wearers* being
saved from death to a greater extent than non-helmet-wearers.
Krygowski's irrelevant smoke is just that, irrelevant.
•New York results not borne out in other studies. Crap. The NY study
closely follows other studies, particularly in the 74% of fatalities
having head injuries, seen as a control factor in many studies. In any
event, a study as large as the NY study (bigger than the largest
political poll or market research sample) demands that others match
it.
•Krygowski hates Jute. Yes, that's the sort of crap his arguments come
down to. Of course he hates me; he has to work with my numbers because
he isn't competent to generate his own, and he resents me for being
smarter than he is, and most of all he hates me for refusing to lie
for The Cause. Irrelevant.
Here are some relevant facts from the New York report for you to draw
your own conclusion:
• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
• Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
• Helmet use was only 3% in fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal
crashes
The full report is available here:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
Andre Jute
Reliable information freely available to all is the essence of the
liberties that underpin democracy
Andre Jute
> Andre Jute <fiult...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >On Sep 2, 1:59 pm, Phil W Lee <p...@lee-family.me.uk> wrote:
> >> "MikeWhy" <boat042-nos...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> >An exhaustive study showed 97% of those who died were not wearing bicycle
> >> >helmets.
>
> >> And that only 74% of them had any head injury at all,
>
> >Sure, you wouldn't expect a helmet to save a cyclist from a broken
> >knee, would you then?
>
> No,
Okay, we agree on that. So why did you make your irrelevant remark
about the 74% who had head injuries? Or do you just throw out these
irrelevances in the hope that everyone else will get tired of your
iterative stupidity and go away?
> but then if someone has been flattened by a truck, I'm not
> surprised if a head injury of some kind is included in their injuries.
They're dead. You haven't even grasped that this argument isn't about
the dead but the living, yet you want to throw around insults. In the
New York compilation it was seen that
• of the fatalities only 3% wore helmets but of the survivors of
SERIOUS crashes 13% wore helmets
• leading to the conclusion that it is likely helmets save lives
This argument is about the helmet-wearing differential between the
fatalities and the survivors (albeit seriously injured).
> Ascribing magic protective properties to helmets such that they reduce
> injury to other parts of the body is a specialty of the proponents,
> despite the fact that even you seem to be capable of accepting it is
> ludicrous.
You agree I don't do it, but you accuse me of it all the same. Why do
you insult my intelligence, Phil? Why do you blow such low-class
smoke?
> > I've seen some dud arguments from the anti-
> >helmet zealots but you, Phil, are second only to Krygowski for blowing
> >irrelevant smoke.
>
> You're not doing very well yourself.
I've in two successive posts now shown specifically where you blow
smoke out of your arse in all directions. You have yet to show a
single incident where I blew even a small puff of smoke. I give the
numbers and extremely cautious projections from the numbers. You just
waffle your merry mantras, relevant or not.
> >>and that the
> >> number with _serious_ (i.e. fatal or life changing) head injuries was
> >> apparently so embarrassingly low they didn't even report the figure.
>
> >Phil, you have been told personally, and it has been published several
> >times more in this thread, that only serious injuries and fatalities
> >were counted in the NY study and you were given the reference too --
> >pg 22 of
> >http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
> > For you to repeat this untrue excuse not to consider a major study
> >which contradicts your anti-helmet zealotry borders on lying.
>
> Actually, that part is on page 15, and it clearly doesn't limit the
> level of injury in any way beyond that it is "documented".
Once more a total, stupid, irrelevance to cover up your deliberate
lie. Who's talking about the fatalities? I'm talking about the
survivors of serious accidents. So is everyone else.
> Page 22 deals with non-fatal incidents.
Exactly. Survivors. Of whom 13% wore helmets, whereas of the
fatalities only 3% wore helmets. Conclusion obvious.
More stupid irrelevances, for which there is no matchable data in New
York, just the desperate wishful thinking of the anti-helmet zealots:
> It is also interesting that the study finds that there was no change
> in the rate of fatalities over the course of the study period.
"No change in the rate of fatalities" and "74% of fatalities with head
injuries" match the national data and are thus good controls on the
quality and applicability of the New York compilation. Thanks for
harping on those numbers so that I remembered to make this point.
> How much did helmet use increase to achieve this astounding result of
> bugger-all (and against a background of a reduction in incidents)?
I don't know. If you think it is so important, go find out. The
subject of the present engagement with the incorrigible anti-helmet
zealots' lying tactics is this:
•In the New York compilation only 3% of the fatalities wore helmets
while 13% of the survivors of serious crashes wore helmets, leading to
the conclusion that helmets save lives.
And no anti-helmet zealot post would be complete without a dash of
personal nastiness:
> If you write as well as you read,
Prove that I misread anything at all. I caught you out lying in your
teeth for your "cause" of anti-helmet zealotry, and you have the
effontery to attack my profession and my comprehension in English.
You're a self-lacerating idiot, Phil.
>it's a wonder you ever sold
> anything. That you ever did is a testament to the abilities of your
> proof-readers and editors.
No wonder you morons lose every argument.
Andre Jute
Never more brutal than he has to be -- Nelson Mandela
Andre Jute
> Granted, if a person really cannot see the
> weaknesses in something like the report Jute cites,
You've had five or six goes at proving your claims now, Frank, and
each time you've made a fool of yourself, as did your sidekicks
McNamara and Lee. So why don't you get a copy of the report, read it,
and give us a complete list of these alleged "weaknesses" that you
keep whining about. Specifics, Franki-boy, specifics, not smoke-
tarnished insinuations. Here's the report:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
and here are extracts from it...
• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
• Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
• Helmet use was only 3% in fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal
crashes
...from which the obvious conclusion may be drawn that helmets save
lives.
I look forward to your final list of alleged "weaknesses", Franki-boy.
Trying to teach an incorrigible slow learner like you statistics is
getting boring.
Andre Jute
Krygo, he say, Any old number is good number
Opus
>snip<
> You've had five or six goes at proving your claims now, Frank, and
> each time you've made a fool of yourself, as did your sidekicks
> McNamara and Lee. So why don't you get a copy of the report, read it,
> and give us a complete list of these alleged "weaknesses" that you
> keep whining about. Specifics, Franki-boy, specifics, not smoke-
> tarnished insinuations. Here's the report:
> http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
> and here are extracts from it...
> • Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
> • Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
> • Helmet use was only 3% in fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal
> crashes
> ...from which the obvious conclusion may be drawn that helmets save
> lives.
>
> I look forward to your final list of alleged "weaknesses", Franki-boy.
> Trying to teach an incorrigible slow learner like you statistics is
> getting boring.
>
> Andre Jute
> Krygo, he say, Any old number is good number
Actually I read that of the fatality statistics, all 4 of the cyclists
known to have been wearing helmets when killed were in the 49% of head
injury only fatalities, which indicates that helmets are useless in
preventing fatalities.
I also read that during the study period, helmet usage among the
general population of cyclists averaged 22% while among the cyclists
that had wrecks 13% with survivable injuries and 3% with non-
survivable injuries were wearing helmets, which indicates that wearing
styrofoam hats has magical properties to ward off wrecks. Or, what is
more likely is that cyclists that voluntarily wear helmets are also
more defensive cyclists who pay more attention to their surroundings
and avoid having wrecks.
And as for you not suggesting that helmets be made mandatory, might I
redirect your attention to the thread titled A Case for Mandatory
Helmet Laws you started a few days back? The internet has a short
attention span, but a very long memory...
Dan O
<snip>
>
> Actually I read that of the fatality statistics, all 4 of the cyclists
> known to have been wearing helmets when killed were in the 49% of head
> injury only fatalities, which indicates that helmets are useless in
> preventing fatalities.
>
... of those 4.
RobertH
Opus has written the first post in this thread that demonstrates any
braincells whatsoever. Here's hoping it's a thread killer.
Andre Jute
comments, and tries to substitute street corner gossip for facts.
4? Please give the source for the claims in this paragraph.
> I also read that during the study period, helmet usage among the
> general population of cyclists averaged 22%
22%. I would have thought higher. Please give us the source from which
you obtained this information.
>while among the cyclists
> that had wrecks 13% with survivable injuries and 3% with non-
> survivable injuries were wearing helmets, which indicates that wearing
> styrofoam hats has magical properties to ward off wrecks.
Yes, but better than garlic? And what about the voles under the
hedgerows?
>Or, what is
> more likely is that cyclists that voluntarily wear helmets are also
> more defensive cyclists who pay more attention to their surroundings
> and avoid having wrecks.
Right, a hidden benefit.
> And as for you not suggesting that helmets be made mandatory, might I
> redirect your attention to the thread titled A Case for Mandatory
> Helmet Laws you started a few days back? The internet has a short
> attention span, but a very long memory...
Here is the entire original text of "THE CASE FOR A MANDATORY CYCLE
HELMET LAW
(IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)
by Andre Jute". You are invited actually to read it all the way
through, and the section "THE CASE AGAINST MANDATORY HELMET LAWS"
twice -- oops, what's that, "the case against" as well? -- rather than
just guess at the contents; you will todiscover for yourself that the
article gives honest data and then proceeds to list the arguments of
both camps -- and does NOT conclude with any recommendation for or
against. If you can find any passage where I advise a mandatory helmet
law, do tell.
****
THE CASE FOR A MANDATORY CYCLE HELMET LAW
(IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)
by Andre Jute
It is a risible myth that your average American is a tall-walking free
individual untrammeled by government: he is in fact just as much
constricted as a European soft-socialist consumerist or Japanese
collective citizen, though it is true that the American is controlled
in different areas of his activity than the European or the Japanese.
To some the uncontrolled areas of American life, for instance the
ability to own and use firearms, smacks of barbarism rather than
liberty. In this article I examine whether the lack of a mandatory
bicycle helmet law in the USA is barbaric or an emanation of that
rugged liberty more evident in rhetoric than reality.
Any case for intervention by the state must be made on moral and
statistical grounds. Examples are driving licences, crush zones on
cars, seatbelts, age restrictions on alcohol sales, and a million
other interventions, all now accepted unremarked in the States as part
of the regulatory landscape, but all virulently opposed in their day.
HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING?
Surprisingly, cycling can be argued to be "safe enough", given only
that one is willing to count the intangible benefits of health through
exercise, generally acknowledged as substantial. Here I shall make no
effort to quantify those health benefits because the argument I'm
putting forward is conclusively made by harder statistics and
unexceptional general morality.
In the representative year of 2008, the last for which comprehesive
data is available, 716 cyclists died on US roads, and 52,000 were
injured.
Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
The most convenient way to grasp the meaning of these statistics is to
compare cycling with motoring, the latter ipso facto by motorists'
average mileage accepted by most Americans as safe enough.
Compared to a motorist a cyclist is:
11 times MORE likely to die PER MILE travelled
2.9 times MORE likely to die PER TRIP taken
By adding information about the relative frequency/length/duration of
journeys of cyclists and motorists, we can further conclude that in
the US:
Compared to a motorist, a cyclist is:
3 to 4 times MORE likely to die PER HOUR riding
3 to 4 times LESS likely to die IN A YEAR's riding
It is the last number, that the average cyclist is 3 to 4 times less
likely to die in a year's riding than a motorist, and enjoys all the
benefits of healthy exercise, that permits us to ignore the greater
per mile/per trip/per hour danger.
This gives us the overall perspective but says nothing about wearing a
cycling helmet.
HELMET WEAR AT THE EXTREME END OF CYCLING RISK
What we really want to know is: what chance of the helmet saving your
life? The authorities in New York made a compilation covering the
years 1996 to 2003 of all the deaths (225) and serious injuries
(3,462) in cycling accidents in all New York City. The purpose of the
study was an overview usable for city development planning, not helmet
advocacy, so helmet usage was only noted for part of the period among
the seriously injured, amounting to 333 cases. Here are some
conclusions:
• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
• Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
• Helmet use was only 3% in fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal
crashes
Source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
This concatenation of facts suggests very strongly that not wearing a
helmet may be particularly dangerous.
• It looks like wearing a helmet saved roundabout 33 cyclists or so
(of the 333 seriously injured for whom helmet use is known) from
dying.
• If those who died wore helmets at the same rate of 13% as those in
the study who survived, a further 22 or so could have lived.
• If all the fatalities had been wearing a helmet (100%), somewhere
between 10% and 57% of them would have lived. This number is less firm
to allow for impacts so heavy that no helmet would have saved the
cyclist. Still, between 22 and 128 *additional* (to the 33 noted
above) New Yorkers alive rather than dead for wearing a thirty buck
helmet is a serious statistical, moral and political consideration
difficult to overlook.
SO HOW MANY CYCLISTS CAN HELMETS SAVE ACROSS THE NATION?
New York is not the United States but we're not seeking certainly,
only investigating whether a moral imperative for action appears.
First off, the 52,000 cyclists hurt cannot be directly related to the
very serious injuries which were the only ones counted in the New York
compilation. But a fatality is a fatality anywhere and the fraction of
head injuries in the fatalities is pretty constant.
So, with a caution, we can say that of 716 cycling fatalities
nationwide, helmet use could have saved at least 70 and very likely
more towards a possible upper limit of around 400. Again the
statistical extension must be tempered by the knowledge that some
impacts are so heavy that no helmet can save the cyclist. Still, if
even half the impacts resulting in fatal head trauma is too heavy for
a helmet to mitigate, possibly around 235 cyclists might live rather
than die on the roads for simply wearing a helmet. Every year. That's
an instant reduction in cyclist road fatalities of one third. Once
more we have arrived at a statistical, moral and political fact that
is hard to ignore: Helmet wear could save many lives.
THE CASE AGAINST MANDATORY HELMET LAWS
• Compulsion is anti-Constitutional, an assault on the freedom of the
citizen to choose his own manner of living and dying
• Many other actitivities cause fatal head injuries. So why not insist
they should all be put in helmets?
• 37% of bicycle fatalities involve alcohol, and 23% were legally
drunk, and you'll never get these drunks in helmets anyway
• We should leave the drunks to their fate; they're not real cyclists
anyway
• Helmets are not perfect anyway
• Helmets cause cyclists to stop cycling, which is a cost to society
in health losses
• Many more motorists die on the roads than cyclists. Why not insist
that motorists wear helmets inside their cars?
• Helmets don't save lives -- that's a myth put forward by commercial
helmet makers
• Helmets are too heavily promoted
• Helmet makers overstate the benefits of helmets
• A helmet makes me look like a dork
• Too few cyclists will be saved to make the cost worthwhile
THE CASE FOR A MANDATORY HELMET LAW IN THE STATES
• 235 or more additional cyclists' lives saved
• 716 deaths of cyclists on the road when a third or more of those
deaths can easily be avoided is a national disgrace
• Education has clearly failed
• Anti-helmet zealots in the face of the evidence from New York are
still advising cyclists not to wear helmets
• An example to the next generation of cyclists
• A visible sign of a commitment to cycling safety, which may attract
more people to cycling
© Copyright Andre Jute 2010. Free for reproduction in non-profit
journals and sites as long as the entire article is reproduced in full
including this copyright and permission notice.
Andre Jute
a complete list of these alleged 'weaknesses' that you keep whining
muttered smoke in posts to others. In that time Krygowski has sent 8
messages to this thread, so he cannot claim not to have seen the
request. Krygowski, one is therefore justified in concluding, is a
wannabe backstabber and a coward. Ran, rabbit, run.
Frank Krygowski
> Frank Krygowski has now had a day to respond to my request ...
The problem with ignoring a refractory, obnoxious troll is that he can
pretend it isn't deliberate.
- Frank Krygowski
Andre Jute
Time to shit or get off the pot, Krygowski. If you can prove a single
weakness in that New York compilation
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
we'll give you another break in the long line of breaks we've given
you to make an even playing field for your many handicaps. If you
can't demonstrate any weakness, time to put a sock in it. Time long
overdue, actually.
On Sep 5, 1:59 am, Frank Krygowski <frkry...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sep 4, 5:18 pm, Andre Jute <fiult...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Frank Krygowski has now had a day to respond to my request ...
Here's my post that Krygowsky cut about to lie that I initiated the
exchange:
*****
***
After lying by selective snipping about the context of the exchange
and who initiated it, the scumbag Frank Krygowski continues lying:
> The problem with ignoring a refractory, obnoxious troll is that he can
> pretend it isn't deliberate.
I'm not trolling Krygowski, I'm challenging him to strut his stuff, if
he has any stuff to strut. We're many hundreds of messages in and all
we've seen so far from Krygowski is irrelevance, smoke, stupidity and
personal abuse.
Krygowski may well be trolling me. Incapable of challenging the New
York data referred to above, Krygowski has sent a dozen muttering
little digs in letters to others, each time with my name attached. The
above "weaknesses in something like the report Jute cites" is only a
small sample.
Time to shit or get off the pot, Krygowski. If you can prove a single
weakness in that New York compilation
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
we'll give you another break in the long line of breaks we've given
you to make an even playing field for your many handicaps. If you
can't demonstrate any weakness, time to put a sock in it. Time long
overdue, actually.
Andre Jute
Relentless rigour -- Gaius Germanicus Caesar
PS Oh, by the way, Franki-boy, of course I'm refractory. I'm totally
immune to the heat of the flame war the scummy anti-helmet zealots
have conducted on me. You're such an incompetent, you can't even do ad
hominem abuse right -- and that's the lowest possible class of
nastiness. What are you actually good for, Krygowski?
Tim McNamara
Andre Jute
> Granted, if a person really cannot see the
> weaknesses in something like the report Jute cites,
Hey, Franki-boy, when can we expect your list of these alleged
"weaknesses" in:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf
that you keep promising?
Aren't you the same wanker who already took several incompetent swipes
at that report, and each time, in every particular, failed to make a
scratch on it, and was humiliated by transparent stupidity of your
arguments?
Aren't you the same wanker who was exposed in this newsgroup as lying
about the conclusions of the Western Australia economic benefit study
*and* that Texas study of drunken cyclist? Are you lying about the New
York report, too, Franki-boy?
Aren't you the same wanker who came out with "confounding factors"
about unhelmeted riders to "refute" (LOL!) data about helmeted riders?
Give us a another giggle, clown.
Time to shit or get off the pot, Franki-boy. So let's have your list
of "weaknesses", let's humiliate you some more with your ignorance of
statistics and logic, your mantra-like chanting of misunderstood
"facts" from the netsites of the anti-helmet trolls, so we can all go
home and stop wasting this much bandwidth on attempting to educate a
slow learner like you.
Andre Jute
Relentless rigour -- Gaius Germanicus Caesar
Andre Jute
> On Sep 5, 8:55 am, Frank Krygowski <frkry...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> You don't know so much as you think you do.
> This is some serious knee-jerk adversarialism you're locked into.
> Just because you've stuffed a big bag full of data and polished (and
> polished, and polished) a bunch of talking points doesn't make you
> right or anyone else wrong.
Anyone with "polished (and polished, and polished) [...] talking
points" is an obsessed apparatchik who *needs* to polish those
received "talking points" because he can't think for himself.
That's how come Franki-boy makes a fool of himself by throwing out
totally irrelevant "confounding factors" he picked up on the netsites
of the AHZ; because he can't think for himself, those received but
"polished talking points" are all he has: they have to fit all cases.
Trying to discuss statistics, which are the essence of applied
science, with Frank Krygowski throws up the same problems as arguing
with Marxists, Moonies, Scientologists, Hare Krishna, Mormons and
snake-charming Fundamentalists who think the world started in 4044BC:
you're not dealing with reason, you're dealing with the emotive rote-
learned "facts" of a perverted faith.
Andre Jute
A little, a very little thought will suffice -- John Maynard Keynes
James
> On Sep 5, 7:29 pm, Dan O <danover...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sep 5, 8:55 am, Frank Krygowski <frkry...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > <snip>
>
> > You don't know so much as you think you do.
> > This is some serious knee-jerk adversarialism you're locked into.
> > Just because you've stuffed a big bag full of data and polished (and
> > polished, and polished) a bunch of talking points doesn't make you
> > right or anyone else wrong.
>
> Anyone with "polished (and polished, and polished) [...] talking
> points" is an obsessed apparatchik who *needs* to polish those
> received "talking points" because he can't think for himself.
You know, I've heard it said "You can't polish shit." The Myth
Busters tried, but they weren't very successful.
JS.
Andre Jute
I used to work in advertising. Occasionally one would hear somone brag
that he could "sell any old shit". I wouldn't ever hire those because,
besides reasons of professional pride and principle, I thought they
were bullshitters. Nobody can polish shit, as you say. But Krygowski
got away with chanting his idiotic mantras so long that I can't help
wondering how many obsessed wishful thinkers (i.e. really stupid
people) there are in cycling. -- Andre Jute
James
The problem with salesmen (and women) who can "sell any old shit" is
that often they sell what customers want, rather than what the sales
team agreed to and the engineers designed. Happened all too often
from a certain salesman in the US who worked for the company where I
worked before. "Yeah, I've sold another 10 units, but they need
feature X implemented before the end of tomorrow."
Then there's the engineers who don't realise that all constants should
be treated as variables, so that feature X could be just a tweak of
setting B, insertion of module M, and a new menu entry in XML doc F.
Sorry - rambling. FK and coffee should not be taken together. Well
aged port would be better.
JS.
Andre Jute
creaming myself laughing.
This is a must-read post. Never mind the offense Krygowski gives even
as he tries to ameliorate poor Danno, who just wanted someone to
admire and chose wrong, but read between the lines -- and all over
them -- for what Franki-boy tells us about himself. Have you ever even
heard -- never mind met! -- anyone so lacking in self-awareness as
this? How can anyone get himself -- the face in the bathroom mirror
every morning! -- so utterly, completely, grossly, grotesquely,
bizarrely wrong?
Kimberley! (Largest manmade hole in the world...)
Andre Jute
Master psychologist, master of character -- but I never dreamt it
could go this far
On Sep 6, 4:00 am, Frank Krygowski <frkry...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sep 5, 2:28 pm, Dan O <danover...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sep 5, 8:55 am, Frank Krygowski <frkry...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Sep 5, 1:53 am, Dan O <danover...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > I am curious about everything. I didn't say I don't want to learn.
> > > > Sure I do. I just don't find this stuff that you're carrying on about
> > > > that interesting or compelling.
>
> > > Then why are you reading?
>
> > To learn (gasp!) - in particular to gain greater understanding of how
> > bikes work and are put together...
>
> You misunderstand, Dan. I'm not asking why you are reading the
> threads about how bikes work and are put together. If you're
> specifically uninterested in facts about helmets, why are you reading
> helmet threads?
>
> Usenet and Google Groups has no requirement that you read every post.
> Skip the ones you aren't interested in. Don't argue in them, then say
> you won't read facts others raise, because they aren't interesting.
>
> > I've said again and again that I think a lot of what you say is right.
>
> > Please cite my disagreement with a fact.
>
> If you're not disagreeing, stop haranguing me!
>
> > Great! Keep up the good work. More power to you.
>
> > (But you're preaching to the choir here...
>
> I believe many people reading this have joined the choir, so to
> speak. It used to be different, as I recall. That is, there used to
> be many more claiming that helmets were wonderful and necessary, and
> we used to get many more statements that helmets should be mandatory.
> Now the latter statements are rare indeed, and many more people tend
> to agree with the helmet skeptics. Many have said they changed from
> helmet believers to skeptics because of the data posted and linked
> here.
>
> However, it's perfectly clear that Jute, James and Duane are not part
> of this choir. If they are the least bit skeptical about the absolute
> need for and the wonderful effectiveness of helmets, they are hiding
> it amazingly well.
>
> Which, BTW, I wouldn't care about, if they didn't challenge others
> with their views. Again, most people I ride with wear helmets most of
> the time, and I don't challenge them. Most of them also know not to
> challenge me, since they agree they know far less about this than I
> do. We get along just fine, with rare exceptions. But when someone
> does challenge me, or presents to me an argument explaining why they
> are right and I am wrong, yes, I respond. I find it surprising that
> you think I should do otherwise.
>
> > ...and doing it in a smarmily supercilious, condescending, judgmental fashion.
>
> And I'll repeat what I've said before: You are absolutely incapable
> of telling when I'm being condescending, smarmy or supercilious. You,
> Jute and Sornson are about the only ones who have ever accused me of
> such. OTOH, I've gotten e-mails complimenting me on my patience with
> helmet promoters, complimenting me on being one of the most civil
> posters here, saying they hope I keep posting, etc.
>
> Your misinterpretation of my tone is, I believe, a shortcoming of the
> medium. "Tone of voice" doesn't come across, so to speak; and once a
> reader gets into their minds "He's being condescending," then they
> mentally add a condescending tone to words others would never object
> to. I think that's where you are. And I'm sorry if you feel that's
> offensive, but for the life of me I can't think of a gentler way to
> say it.
>
> People _must_ be allowed to disagree without being lectured for some
> imagined "tone of voice." If that's not allowed, someone might as
> well shut down all discussion groups.
>
> > > Yes, many people are absolutely convinced that
> > > cycling should be considered potentially deadly, and never attempted
> > > without head protection. This has gotten far worse since helmets
> > > became promoted, _because_ of the dishonest ways helmets are
> > > promoted.
>
> > But I'm not *any* of that.
>
> And you've got to stop personalizing everything! When I talk about
> "many people" it's not necessarily - or even usually - "many people
> in these discussion groups," let alone you personally. The people who
> have successfully lobbied for helmet laws in over 30 U.S. states, and
> are still trying in other jurisdictions, are not posting here. That
> does not mean they don't exist! Likewise, Jute probably believes
> things you would find ludicrous - at least, I hope you would. Don't
> confuse yourself with him. In fact, to go further, PLEASE keep
> yourself very different from him!
>
> > You're not Pope of this dump, either.
>
> Back atcha, friend.
>
> - Frank Krygowski