VPD cracking down on cyclists without helmets

[SFMIKE]

wow... did you keep the dog's paw as a lucky charm?

Glad to hear you're OK.

I really do not know much about what I did for a few hours, but I am afraid the poor dog got the worst of it. I had lots of cuts and bruises and a nasty headache for days, but the poor little dog is missing a limb.

Funny, it never occured to me to save the paw.

 

[SilkyJohnson]

henryhill use that whole sentence i said and it makes sense. i said they dont have the authority to tell me WHAT TO WEAR ON MY HEAD. oh my god hes not wearing a helmet hide your eyes children!?!?!

 

[FortunateOne]

there are LAWS in place to keep things in place and there are laws that are BS. Just because someone is an authority/lawmaker does that mean if they say the sun didnt come up today are they right? they DONT have the right to interfere with how u live your life. how you ride your bike. what u eat. how about permission to hug/kiss/change your own child. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2008/062608_government_permission.htm

oh yea
oh yea

but since there authorities they only have our best interests in mind!?!?

go google DynCorp Haliburton child sex slaves........

I agree with the principle, but unfortunately many of these sorts of laws are in place because some people have an arrogant lack of common sense. Without the childseat law, many parents won't put their kids in one. Without DWI laws, many people will drink and drive and cause accidents. Unfortunately you can't just legislate the stupid, so everyone who has common sense or the ability to make smart choices has to abide by laws designed for the dumb and dumber.

 

[Noob888]

Laws and principles? Did we forget that adultery or infidelity was also against the law? How about books and book burning? Smoking cigarettes should be against the law. But it's not. We all know why. Furthermore, on one side, government is hand holding people while on the other, they're not doing enough. There is no balance.

 

[tedsweettangv]

There is lots of politics around most laws but at the end they come down to money.

Smoking isn't illegal because the gov collects 24 billion in taxes. That outweighs the medical costs. Actually if you want to reduce medical costs you promote smoking. Smokers get diseases that kill them fast, in a short period of time. Non-smokers linger and drain the system for decades. When the Soviet Union fell the Czech republic had one of the big strategy firms do a study on how they were going to fund the medical system. The most surprising recommendation was to encourage smoking and tax it. Easy to raise taxes and people die soon after they are past working age.

Helmets (bike and motorcycle), seat belt laws etc. lower medical costs. Personally I have always been a "let those that ride decide" person for seat belts, helmets etc. but I am also not blind to their benefits.

 

[Noob888]

tedsweettangv, I agree with you on everything up until helmet part. The seat belt issue is somewhat controversial imo. I know someone who would've died had she not worn her seat belt but because she did wear a seat belt, she suffered major internal injuries because she was wearing the seat belt which was not racing style. Notwithstanding, the data on the benefits of wearing a seat belt is widely available and known, including the reduction of being ejected from the vehicle. This is in contrast with helmets which offer no protection in virtually all situations.

The bottom line is the public only knows what the media tells them or who they choose to listen or believe, like those who are in positions of authority.

We assume these companies and industry are around to protect us when in most cases their sole purpose is profit based. We neglect to believe that they may have a personal agenda or financial interest toward a particular subject. Case in point: Cigarettes and the tobacco industry. All major studies in the past were undertaking on tobacco use and it's ill effects were funded by the tobacco industry. Up until the 80's, many physician's still did not acknowledge that smoking tobacco was harmful to your health or that smoking is the number one cause of heart disease. Most doctors believed the studies from the tobacco industry.

Another prime example is the rampant use of antidepressants and how most physicians still believe they help people. The public also believe the hype, yet there are lots of studies and evidence to show they're effects are not any better than a placebo and have numerous bad side effects. Talk to a psychiatrist and he'll disagree with these findings, just like he did with cigarettes.

As our society advances, we often become too busy and fail to stop to think for ourselves. We're increasingly relying on the government and those in positions of authority to do our thinking for us without blinking an eye. We assume we're not being misled because we're taught not to second guess these people. We tend to assume theyre looking out for our best interests when it's really their own.

 

[tedsweettangv]

There are a couple of studies. The Henderson study is the one most quoted.

http://www.helmets.org/henderso.htm

The most careful, conservative estimates from good studies show that the reduction in risk of head injury to a bicyclist as a result of wearing a helmet is in the order of 45 per cent. In other words, at the very minimum a helmet halves the risk of head injury.

Here is a link to the evaluation of other places that implemented mandatory helmet laws. It tracks both take up and injury reduction. There is a case study from BC in there as well.

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roadsafet...bicyclehelmetsreviewofeffect4726?page=9#a1037

One thing I did learn from reading these is that because of the way helmets are tested, manufacturers had to go with a more rigid foam to get certified. This actually makes helmets less effective for their main target demographic which is children. Children's heads deform under less stress than the foam so although it provides protection from abrasions it does very little to lesson brain injury in children.

 

[SilkyJohnson]

it should be a choice to wear a helmet not a law.

 

[SilkyJohnson]

yea so everytime a bullshit law is passed us citizens should just lay down and agree with it. go fuck your mother hubba u bootlickin piece of shit. u like cops and tasers so much y dont u become one. a bully with a badge. do what u want to and get away with it badge, a real good ol boy with the mirrored sun glasses with the mirror on the inside.

 

[wolverine]

Why all this hatred for authority, Silky? Who you gonna call next time someone robs your place, eh?

 

[bcneil]

perhaps people that want to do stupid things like drive with no seltbelt
bike or motorbike with no helmet

could sign some sort of waiver to not have medical for such events.

 

[SilkyJohnson]

anyone comes through my front door to rob my place will be met with my shotgun. i'll call 911 after

 

[Devils_Advocate]

perhaps people that want to do stupid things like drive with no seltbelt
bike or motorbike with no helmet

could sign some sort of waiver to not have medical for such events.

In that case can you also require people who smoke, drink, consort with or provide sexual services for money, skateboard, ski, talk on their cellphone while driving or do anything remotely dangerous also sign similar waivers?

That would certainly help with the rising cost of health care.

In general I have no problem with enforcing the law, but if you do enforce it then it should be total. I've seen people receiving tickets for riding without a helmet while others pass. Ticket everyone or no one. If cops have nothing better to do then so be it.

 

[mmdma]

If it was up to me I'd taser cyclist for crossing streets on their bikes, biking on sidewalks, sharing lanes with cars in roads with designated bike routes, crossing red lights, passing in between stopped cars in slow traffic, and any other excuse I could possibly find. In fact, I would make it as unpleasant for cyclists as I possibly could, in this city, because I have in my experience, found them to be the most incosiderate, selfish, mindless, and rude people, who think they're always right and exception to all traffic and common sense rules, and that all cars and pedesterians should treat them like royalty.

.02

 

[Thatotherguy]

Um, why are we resurrecting a thread that hasn't had a post in almost a year? Call me old fashioned or curmudgeonly, but I don't care for thread necromancy.

 

[Fullhouse]

Um, why are we resurrecting a thread that hasn't had a post in almost a year? Call me old fashioned or curmudgeonly, but I don't care for thread necromancy.

DITTO that

 

[Claptix]

Do you ride bikes often? I do. I ride on the road and off of the road. and while reducing any number of bumps and bruises, due to one specific crash, I can pretty much clearly say that I am able to make this post today due to a bike helmet.

It was after dark, and I was alone on a back fire road in Steven's Creek Park in Cupertino, California, I crashed at full speed and head first. I was miles away from anyone. My helmet took the brunt of it.

When I made it to the ranger station, the first ranger that saw me took a look at my helmet (which I admit was cracked) and said "you know without that thing, we would be scraping you up tomorrow morning".

Without the helmet, my skull would have simply cracked open like a coconut.

I am not saying that for every friendly ride someone takes they always need a helmet. But if you are going for any kind of serious ride or be competing with cars for space, I would never consider riding without one.

JC

Not really. For one thing, you assume that everyone is wearing their helmet correctly and has the right size.

Secondly, if the person does not have any major ill effects from coming into contact with the pavement or lamp post etc while wearing a helmet then it's highly unlikely that he will have suffered much injury to being with. It's pretty slim odds that you'll land on your head in the first place. Also, most helmets don't protect against neck injury. It's highly unlikely and improbably that your life will be saved by wearing one. However, just for the sake of argument, say it is spared, you'll be paralyzed. That's not any kind of life.

Thirdly, except maybe when it comes to children, helmets in general don't offer you much protection. Helmets themselves have limited utility, being useful only for preventing minor abrasions to the head. In other countries and in the usa, where there are bicycle helmet laws, the laws usually apply to children only not adults. People are already pissed off because they're reluctant to ride a bike worrying that they're going get fined for not wearing a helmet. Thus ridership will decline.

Fourthly, an hour of bicycling causes fewer serious head injuries than an hour of walking. Think bicycling is dangerous? Try the safety quiz at the Bicycling Life website. Think helmet laws work? Visit the “cyclehelmets” website.

Finally, to further add insult, to avoid getting a ticket by VPD for not wearing a helmet, all you have to do is to have it on your head, barely strapped on. Now, doesn't that, in theory, defeat the purpose of the law?

 

[Aeiyah]

As a taxpayer whose taxes fund the emergency medical services required by people who may suffer head injuries from falls off bikes, it annoys me when I see cyclists not wearing proper safety equipment.

I would have thought the world would have learned a lesson from Natasha Richardson's death. She felt perfectly fine after striking her head from what she thought was a harmless fall. A simple $35 helmut, replaced every year, would have prevented her death.

 

[stem cell]

Helmets dont do much good. Wearing a helmet is not even close in prevention, say, to wearing a seat belt. A cyclist always loses when he comes into contact with a vehicle or if lands hard on pavement. A helmet is nothing more than a false sense of security. Maybe someone is lucky enough to survive a crash or fall because he was wearing a helmet. The difference may be minor: a vegetable vs a para/quadraplagic. That's not much benefit in wearing a helmet in my books.

Besides, common sense prevails when riding any vehicle or bicycle. But, hey, we as a society don't have common sense so we wait for someone else to tell us what they think common sense is and then apply that as our own.

apparently, the doctor has spoken!

boob888 is freakin hilarious...how ignorant can one be?...

give your head a shake...your resistance to bike helmuts is more a resistance to authority, and the laws they make, rather than the obvious benefits of bike helmuts....

 

[HeMadeMeDoIt]

I was in dt close to Robson abouttwo weeks ago and saw a Sikh guy riding a Harley with just a turban and no helmet. That i thought was complete fucking bullshit ridiculous. Did he ever sign a disclosure saying that when he lands under my SUV and I turn his head into strawberry curry pie my insurance won't cover him?

The courts are willing to give exceptions for religious reasons to someone that rides a 1500cc machine thats capable of 100 km/h (just because its a POS harley) yet everyone else peddling needs a helmet ?