Helmets

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

k s swigart katswig@earthlink.net


> I know this subject is getting old but in one post someone was supposedly
> weighing the dangers of wearing a helmet to not wearing one. What scales
> are you using?????? 

The scales I am using are my own personal observations and experience and 
conversations with others about their personal observations and experience, 
since nobody has ever bothered to do an intelligent analysis of what the 
risks are associated with wearing a helmet.  Most people just blithely assume 
that there are none.

> I think if you would listen to us that are affiliated with Emergency Rooms
> in one way or another (there have been a couple) plus counting the posts of
> personal accidents where helmets have actually saved lives, you will find
> that the odds weigh out to wear one. You cannot beat hard, cold facts. 

And these “facts”  you are talking about are also merely personal 
observations and experience.  I, too have worked in an Emergency Room (true, 
a lowly EMT).  What you don’t see in an emergency room is all the people who 
fall off of horses without wearing helmets and don’t do any damage to either 
their heads or their necks.  Those people don’t show up in the emergency room 
and therefore don’t get counted in your facts.  It’s kinda like having a job 
as a policeman; spending most of every day dealing with either victims or 
criminals and then assuming that all people are either victims or criminals 
simply because the rest of the population doesn’t cross your path.  It rather 
skews your view of life.  Emergency room personnel only see people who get 
injured, not those that don’t.

Emergency personnel also don’t see any of the people who spend once a month 
at a chiropractor or visit an orthopaedic surgeon because they have chronic 
neck problems which may (or may not, since nobody has bothered to find out) 
be associated with the fact that they have increased the weight of their 
heads by constantly putting helmets on them.

In addition, there are a great many other things that have never been 
discovered in relation to wearing helmets. To name just a few:

1.	To what extent does increasing the size of your head change the risks 
of neck injures?  Nobody knows.

2.	To what extent does increasing the size and weight of your head change 
the chances of hitting your head at all?  Nobody knows.

3.	To what extent does protecting your skull from direct blows to the head 
change the effects of these blows on your brain (don’t mistake your brain for 
your skull...and helmets are designed to protect skulls, not brains)?  Nobody 
knows.

4.	What are the effects of strapping a narrow piece of “unbreakable” nylon 
snuggly (if it isn’t snug you aren’t wearing it right, and you are reducing 
the effectiveness of the helmet as a skull protector) around your thorax?  
Nobody knows.

And believe it or not, the answers to all of these questions vary from rider 
to rider, from horse to horse, from activity to activity, and from day to 
day.

I can’t make a quantitative analysis of the risks associated with wearing a 
helmet v. the risks associated with not wearing them. Because the 
quantitative data simply don’t exist (and never will).  Until it does; I’ll 
use my touchy-feely (or even gut instinct) analyses and other people can use 
theirs.  So don’t give me this bullshit about cold, hard facts.  The 
necessary cold, hard facts relevant to this issue don’t exist—but there are 
plenty of examples of situations where the latest “safety technology” was 
found to be flawed and to bring with it as many risks as it was intended to 
mitigate.

If helmets didn’t have any disadvantages, we would wear them all the time, 
since sustaining a blow to the head is something that anybody could 
experience at any time.  Why don’t you wear a helmet to bed? (Presumably 
because the chances of sustaining a head injury in bed are sufficiently low 
that you are unwilling to disrupt your sleep with the discomfort of it--
quality sleep being more important than planning for virtually non-existent 
head injuries.)  But soldiers in a fox hole wear their helmets to sleep since 
the risk profile for head injuries has changed (although in both instances, 
these chances are not quantifiable).

With every activity (riding horses or not) and among every person, the 
chances of sustaining a head injury vary, and the appropriate steps to 
mitigate these risks vary accordingly.

kat
Orange County, Calif.

p.s. It REALLY gives me the willies to see people who wear their helmets 
improperly (i.e. not how they were designed to be worn).  Because these 
people take on many of the risks of wearing one, while at the same time not 
reaping the benefits of wearing them.