nou, hier nog wat statistieken:
# 1 in 8 of the cyclists with reported injuries had a brain injury.
# Two-thirds of the deaths here are from traumatic brain injury.
# A very high percentage of cyclists' brain injuries can be prevented by a helmet, estimated at anywhere from 45 to 88 per cent.
No helmet can eliminate the risk of head injury entirely, but a helmet does dramatically reduce the risk of skull fracture when a cyclist's head hits an object or the road. It also reduces their chances of concussion and protects their head from cuts and scrapes.
Gegevens van het
Bicycle Helmet Institute
En dit naar aanleiding van het invoeren van het verplicht dragen van een helm in Nieuw Zeeland:
Researchers in New Zealand have concluded that the law has reduced cyclist head injuries significantly. The large increase in helmet wearing associated with the passing of the compulsory helmet wearing law reduced head injuries by between 24 and 32% in non-motor vehicle crashes, and by 20% in motor vehicle crashes.
En tenslotte dit:
Evidence for the effectiveness of helmets has come from two other types of studies: case-control studies, in which the proportion of people wearing helmets among cyclists with head injuries is compared with that of cyclists without head injuries, and ecological studies examining changes in the rate of head injury over time among populations wearing helmets and those not wearing helmets.
The strongest evidence for the effectiveness of helmets comes from case-control studies; this design is one of the cornerstones of modern epidemiology. A systematic review of five case-control studies, published in the Cochrane Library, found that helmets reduced the risk by 63-88% for head, brain, and severe brain injury among cyclists of all ages.1 Four of the studies controlled for a series of important covariates.3–6 Helmets seemed equally effective in reducing injuries in crashes involving motor vehicles and in accidents associated with falls and other causes.
Despite this large body of evidence on the effectiveness of helmets in preventing head injuries in cyclists and their beneficial effects for populations of cyclists, critics, especially in the United Kingdom, continue to question the usefulness of helmets. Their criticisms fall into two main categories: “risk homeostasis” and lack of adjustment for other confounders. Hillman has argued that while helmets may offer some inherent protection to cyclists there is no overall benefit because cyclists who wear helmets ride in a less cautious manner so that their overall risk of injury is unchanged.11 This theory of risk homeostasis has been discussed for decades, but the evidence that it applies to helmet use and bicycling is non-existent.12 The other criticism is that case-control studies on helmets have not adequately controlled for all potential confounders, especially unmeasured factors such as differential risk taking behaviour in cases and controls. Adequate adjustment for differences between cases and controls is important for the validity of any case-control study. Four of the five studies in the Cochrane review controlled for potential differences between cases and controls, such as age and severity of the crash.3,4,5,6 Crash severity can be used as a proxy for the hypothesised effects of risk taking behaviour. The magnitude of the protective effect of helmets found by these studies (threefold to eightfold ) makes it clear that unmeasured confounders cannot explain the differences in the risk of injury between cyclists who wear helmets and those who do not.
Healthcare providers and public policy makers have a duty to promote the health of the public and to base their recommendations on evidence of effectiveness. The evidence that bicycle helmets prevent head injuries is as strong as that for any injury prevention programme. While many programmes have their critics, the weight of the evidence for the effectiveness of helmets is strong; the evidence for a lack of protection is weak, circumstantial, and largely based on rhetoric. Further delays in promoting the use of helmets will be measured in the number of lives ruined by the devastating consequences of preventable brain injury.
Van de studie: Helmets for preventing head and facial injuries in bicycling (Rivara FP, Thompson DC, Thompson RS, Cochrane Collaboration, Issue 4, 1999)
of deze pdf vanuit Singapore
en hier nog meer medische info, voor wie het nou nog niet wil geloven...
Meer kan ik er niet over zeggen...
(zou soms ook geen overbodige bescherming geven).
