In article , Ed Huntress says...

Nonsense. This study has been picked up by motorcyclists to defend the
indefensible. The TBI statistics are readily available, or were. Check
Google Scholar.

They're actually not readily available. There was a big helmet
thread recently on the m/c ng, and I found it is very difficult
to find *real* data on accident statistics, as a function of
helmet use. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors out there,
but in the end they only talk about the folks who wind up
being admitted to the hospital. I found the van der sluice
study but honestly nobody I've heard talking about the
subject ever mentions it. I'd be interested if you had heard
of it from a different source, and if so when. It seem to
me to be a very well done study.

I'm not trying to defend lack of helmet use, only pointing out
that the standard 'don't raise my rates' justification to
demanding riders wear one, is on kind of bogus ground.

The ABATE folks (anti-helmet use) _never_ use the large mortality
argument as one of their selling points. They deny there *is*
any difference in mortality. You know of course there is,
any sensible person can see why.

Most of the pro-helmet folk never touch on the subject because
it removes one of the arrows in their quiver - the 'you have
to do it for the public good' argument.

Most of the guys who survive to be in a coma for a few months
were indeed wearing a helmet. They would have been killed outright
had then not been.

There were two regulars on the m/c ng last year who had accidents.

The first one experienced a low-speed parking lot collision between
two bikes. He basically fell over in the street at about 15 mph.
No helmet. He spent about three months in the hospital with head
injuries.

The other rider was in a bad accident and crashed on a highway going
60 mph. He also spent a couple of months in the hospital. Without
a helmet he would have died. But the severity difference between
the two crashes was probably a factor of 100 in kinetic energy.
Most folks don't realize a) how fragile a human head is, and b) how
well the foam in a helmet protects it against shock load. Folks who
crash at any decent speed stand a good chance of dying from a head
injury.


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