Would any cycle helmet have helped here?

[Milkfloat]

No need to provide by mile....

These figures are derived from the number of admissions due to head injury, requiring hospital admission and therefore a measure of the number of head injuries that could be prevented if helmets worked, and had been worn by these individuals

With the clear assumptions made it is a record of a head injury occurring and needing admission

Think of it as looking at a medicine, if you want to see the efficacy as a cure then you can only look at it's efficiency in those who have the disease.

No statistics will ever be absolutely accurate, and it is possible that other factors already affecting these figures such as air bags may have already reduced the number of car driver and passenger head injuries. Also you will note it includes motorcyclists who already wear helmets (and possibly some cyclists who were as well). the data (as with all data) is therefore limited, and it is up to you to make your own analysis and decide on its merit

It does leave us with a snapshot of the head injuries being admitted at the moment and under present circumstances

However what is evident is that when looking at head injuries that have occurred and needed hospital treatment is used as a baseline it is evident where the greatest improvements could be for the general population

The figures show nothing that helps with risk. They don't take into account the frequency of each activity. When we add journey miles and frequency of activity into the equation then driving or being a passenger would be one of the safest ways to move without a head injury.

 

[ufkacbln]

The figures show nothing that helps with risk. They don't take into account the frequency of each activity. When we add journey miles and frequency of activity into the equation then driving or being a passenger would be one of the safest ways to move without a head injury.

The point is that the figures show physical events that have occurred

That is it

Nothing to do with risk..... Whether the risk was on in ten or one in a million cannot change the fact that it happened in each case

 

[mjr]

Your own link to the anti-compulsion petition provides some some pretty good data that suggests that helmet wearing is often a good idea.

Maybe time to reread the petition? It was a pro-compulsion petition and the government is pro-helmet, but unwilling to compel while voluntary use is so low. As both sides are pro-helmet, it should not be a surprise that the selected data is incomplete and presented to support wearing crash helmets.

As I have stated before, I am not pro-compulsion, I am not anti-helmet, I am pro-choice.

Given the last-stated government position, it does not seem possible to be wear a crash helmet without being anti-choice in practice at the moment.

 

[Milkfloat]

Maybe time to reread the petition? It was a pro-compulsion petition and the government is pro-helmet, but unwilling to compel while voluntary use is so low......
As both sides are pro-helmet, it should not be a surprise that the selected data is incomplete and presented to support wearing crash helmets

Sorry my bad, was a mistype at early o'clock. So how can the TRL figures be so wrong - all the figures I have ever seen seem to show that overall there is a probably a net benefit to wearing a helmet in terms of accident outcome. None say, quite rightly, that a helmet will definitely save you, or the absence of one will not, but they seem to suggest that in the majority of accidents it won't cause harm and may do good, although in some accidents rotational injuries may be exacerbated by a helmet. I don't see how any of this has a bearing on pro-compulsion. If the evidence was that strong that a helmet would 90% plus save injury then I could see pro compulsion being seriously considered. I just don't see that happen as pro compulsion has effectively failed in Australia and has virtually no political backing here.

 

[Milkfloat]

And why is that?

Mainly because large numbers of potential cyclists don't want to wear a helmet so cycling numbers have fallen. As I say - I am pro-choice.

 

[mjr]

Sorry my bad, was a mistype at early o'clock. So how can the TRL figures be so wrong

TRL is not a neutral actor on this subject (basically pro-helmet bodies have hired them far more often), plus the question it was looking into in PPR 446 was biased, considering injury prevention above all other effects. If you want an even more skewed TRL report, look at what it produced to support the Jersey compulsion law in PPR 697...

- all the figures I have ever seen seem to show that overall there is a probably a net benefit to wearing a helmet in terms of accident outcome.

"in terms of accident outcome" but not in terms of overall cyclist outcomes? Once someone has crashed (accident or other collision), then it's only injury mitigation, rather than a safety measure. For those figures to be sufficient, there would also need to be strong evidence that helmets do not increase crash rates.

...I just don't see that happen as pro compulsion has effectively failed in Australia and has virtually no political backing here.

I thought Australia still had legal compulsion?

 

[benb]

It is more than that though. Numbers fell dramatically but head injuries remained relatively unchanged.

The proportion of head injuries remained relatively unchanged, to be precise.

 

[benb]

Right but, if helmets are effective, the reduced number of cyclists in Australia should have started to show a reduced proportion of head injuries amongst their overall reduced number of injuries.

I agree, I was just editing for maximum accuracy.

 

[ufkacbln]

"The report also looked in depth at 113 fatal cycle casualties (2001-2006). The analysis concluded that 9 cyclist fatalities involving head injury from hitting the ground and 3 to 9 cyclist fatalities from hitting a vehicle could potentially have been prevented by helmet wearing, equating to 10-16% of all cyclist fatalities"

As with the figures I quoted earlier these are actual incidents and independent of measures of risk

A far more accurate assessment of the effectiveness of helmets

 

[ufkacbln]

Interesting, thanks for the information. For years I've been collecting accounts of damaged helmets that are supposed to have saved injury, specifically looking for cases where the helmet seems to have worked as designed - i.e. compressed as yours did. So far they're running at 6%. Almost all the others describe the helmet being shattered or other words for broken - i.e. having had rather little useful effect in brain protection - and/or grazed which suggests they have potentially caused rotational injury while possibly also saving a nasty scraped scalp. Thanks again.

Personally I would love to see an analysis of helmet history in each case

We know that even minor impacts can compromise the structure of the helmet

How many of these fractures are along lines weakened by general use such as occasional drops, storage or other causes involved in daily wear and tear?

 

[doog]

The figures show nothing that helps with risk. They don't take into account the frequency of each activity. When we add journey miles and frequency of activity into the equation then driving or being a passenger would be one of the safest ways to move without a head injury.

Totally agree. Another issue is that there's always been a raft of statistical information submitted to the Home Office about Injury accidents involving motor vehicles.This is VAST and as far as im aware has been recorded for the last 30 years or more. As a result we know roughly how many motorists have suffered head Injuries in injury /fatal accidents.

However there has never been an obligation to do the same with cyclists *unless* they were involved in an injury accident with a motor vehicle that was attended to and recorded by a Police officer. Indeed a cyclist falling from a bike and striking their head under any other circumstance would never warrant Home Office statistical analysis .It was never recorded and still isnt. Now some have said that data has recently been gathered from hospital casualty departments regarding questioning patients over helmet wear, this appears to be ad hoc and incomplete unlike vehicle accident stats.

So we have a situation where amongst other things people are using incomplete, completely ad hoc hospital data and comparing it to officially recorded Home Office data based on years of recording accidents involving motor vehicles. The latter compared with the former would naturally produce a misleading statistic.

 

[ufkacbln]

There is also the documented inaccuracy of the Home Office "Stats 19" data where a police officer's initial assessment was used as opposed to the hospital information that accurately recorded injuries.

The biggest issue was always the over reporting of head injury

A Cyclist or pedestrian would suffer massive trauma and die of internal injury, blood loss or other causes, yet be rported on Stats 19 as a "head injury" because that was the one seen by the officer at the incident as being the "obvious" cause

 

[srw]

"The report also looked in depth at 113 fatal cycle casualties (2001-2006). The analysis concluded that 9 cyclist fatalities involving head injury from hitting the ground and 3 to 9 cyclist fatalities from hitting a vehicle could potentially have been prevented by helmet wearing, equating to 10-16% of all cyclist fatalities"

So that's about 10 lives saved per year. Out of the 20,000,000 or so people each year who ride a bike. That's a pretty hefty denominator to neglect. I'm all in favour of risk mitigation, but it needs to be proportionate to the problem it's seeking to solve. Cyclists dying of head injuries is not really an important enough risk to warrant much mitigation.

 

[ufkacbln]

So that's about 10 lives saved per year. Out of the 20,000,000 or so people each year who ride a bike. That's a pretty hefty denominator to neglect. I'm all in favour of risk mitigation, but it needs to be proportionate to the problem it's seeking to solve. Cyclists dying of head injuries is not really an important enough risk to warrant much mitigation.

Which brings us back to the point where more pedestrians, car drivers, car passengers would be "saved" each year as they are more prone to these injuries

 

[classic33]

A consultants view on helmets
'There are accidents where helmets are a great thing. There are others where a helmet doesn’t work' - hospital consultant
http://www.independent.ie/life/city...doesnt-work-hospital-consultant-31398352.html
"Recent research here shows that in direct impacts between cyclists and cars, the main areas of injury are to the torso or lower limbs, and a helmet offers little extra protection

But it is in secondary impacts – usually with the ground, or windscreen, or bonnet – that the helmet provides significant protection.

In 26 out of 32 secondary impact cases, helmets would have reduced the cyclists’ head injury by around 75pc, the research cited by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) shows."