Be prepared for an accident

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mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
But as I observed on my post, my cranial collision was with the road not a car. :whistle:
Still after being "knocked off", when forces and kinetic energy involved will far exceed helmet standards requirements.
 

mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
It was indeed. Have you a link for the retraction? I tried looking it up, but only got propaganda.
Sorry, it seems I was probably thinking of the wrong helmet-pusher. It was Dorsch who refused to fully support her 1987 team's 90% claim in parliamentary committee, calling it "hypothetical".

Thompson et al merely revised their prediction downwards to 69% in 1996's "Effectiveness of bicycle safety helmets in preventing head injuries: a case-control study" (JAMA 1996 Dec 25;276(24):1968-73), but even that's another never-repeated result with an unrepresentative control group. Then you notice the claims that "There was no effect modification by age or motor vehicle involvement" and " No significant differences were found for the protective effect of hard-shell, thin-shell, or no-shell helmets". Surely that shouldn't be? No effects of helmet strength, rider age or amount of kinetic energy in the initial impact? I suggest that's not just surprising but completely absurd. If you accept the physics of how helmets protect, then you can't say the helmet design and the impact energy are irrelevant. Doing so seems like basically appealing that those hats are magic.

Both papers are mentioned on https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1027.html which is where I realised I might have confused Dorsch and Thompson.

Much later, the US government has said the 85% figure isn't reliable and should not be used: https://ggwash.org/view/31377/feds-will-stop-hyping-effectiveness-of-bike-helmets
 
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