Re: Helmets

["superpat" <superpat@gateway.net>]

kat in Orange county writes:
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.>

I must be getting spongy from all the falls from my horse (with a helmet),
but I truly fail to see the logic in the above argument. I have tried to
stay out of this particular thread because in my mind it is ludicrous to try
to defend not wearing a helmet except to say that the wind in the hair feels
good. OK. I'll buy that one.
Back to the above post.
If people fall from their horses and do not sustain head injuries not
requiring medical intervention, they will not be seen in ER.
With me so far?
If people fall from their horses and sustain head injuries serious enough to
require medical intervention, it is likely that they will be seen in ER.
Still with me?
Does not the question become: Of those head injuries sustained, what
percentage of the owners of those heads were wearing a helmet, (or were not
wearing a helmet?).
What I am hearing from those who have worked in ER is that the vast majority
of serious head injuries belonged to heads that were sans helmet.
The argument that I hear from kat is that since one cannot know how many
persons fall from their horses and are not injured, whether they were or
were not wearing a helmet also cannot be known and therefore the numbers of
incidents requiring trips to the ER or any conclusions exprapolated from
these is useless or not meaningful.
You lost me on this one.

I wear my helmet because I don't want to take even the slightest chance that
I could suffer a serious head injury. It's not the many falls where I may
not strike my head that concern me. It's that one (perhaps in a million)
that could kill or maime me. I agree that the choice is yours. No fancy
arguments needed.
Pat Super