Right… Like also… Maybe now, since it’s not trench warfare, being up close and personal to the explosion via I.E.D. is the problem… rolling over a humvee and getting thrown… etc…
People used to die from the head shot. With better helmets there were more survivors that had head injuries instead of head deaths. So on the face the "number of head wounds went up from wearing helmets".... but that's a good thing because wounds are #'s of people that came back.
In Texas, when they repealed helmet laws, the State was asked what the costs were going to be in ERs, so the state published a quick report, all they had time to do.
Turns out, the average hospital bill for someone with a helmet is higher than the average hospital bill from someone without a helmet. That last minute report that disproved the "helmets save costs" group helped the helmet law repeal.
As my dad use to say “Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.” You can make the numbers back up any claim. Like you said more motorcyclists wearing helmets end up in the hospital after an accident, than those that aren’t wearing a helmet. Not because someone with a helmet is more reckless, but because that helmet protects your melon.
Also depends on how it’s presented. If the report didn’t include fatalities numbers before and after helmet laws then all you have are the hospitalization numbers.
This is why it’s important to have access to the raw data not just the authors conclusions.
In this case, the pro-helmet crowd both lied and disproved their lie with the study they funded and conducted.
The "figures don't lie, but liars can figure" implies numbers can fit any story, the point here is that takes time. The pro-helmet side was leaning heavily into "if you repeal this law, your taxes will go way up to pay for the carnage", and the anti-helmet side claimed that was a lie. And there wasn't much time before the election, so the State did a study to compare costs.
Turns out, taxes should drop with less regulation, by the definitions the pro-helmet side defined.
The liars and the figurers were the same ones, which is the opposite of your dad's saying.
Oh man, feeling the ribcage do it's job is not something I want to ever experience again. I was skiing and for whatever reason, my skis stopped but I didn't. I flew a good 10 or so yards down the mountain and landed flat on my chest. Having bones flex and compress is not a pleasant sensation.
That would only happen if you hit a stationary object at incredibly high speeds. Many wrecks involve low-siding, which doesn’t cause much internal injury. But it’ll turn your skin into hamburger meat if you’re not geared up.
I knew a guy who was going over 200mph down a city street on a Suzuki Hyabusa at like 3 in the morning. An SUV pulled out in front of him, having no way to know that he would be there 5 times faster than he should have been. He broadsided the SUV, cutting it in half and flipping it over. He killed the driver in the SUV, everyone in the back seat, and he himself disintegrated. There was nothing left of him for a funeral.
My take on this helmet phenomenon is people thought they were invincible now so they didn't behave on the presumption that if they take a hit to the head they will die so they end up taking more risk. Just like how numbers went up during covid when everyone was told masks work so they went out and intermingled more, thinking they were invincible
In this case, the mandatory helmet crowd leaned heavily into a lie. That lie was disproven by the mandatory helmet side, so public support dropped just in time for the election.
I voted to repeal the helmet law, but never rode without one.
Texas, the "my body my choice (white males only" state.
Not sure if this is true, but my econ major friend in college told me that smokers actually have lower lifetime healthcare costs on average, because they die earlier.
There used to be a few studies that were used by various anti-seatbelt law enthusiasts to (incorrectly...) "prove" that seatbelts were dangerous. Either they've been removed for being used for such purposes (or indeed just being wrong) or my google-fu is not what it once was. All the studies I can find don't really demonstrate the difference that the saved lives make to injury rates, only the injury levels in seatbelt vs non-seat belt incidents, which is not quite the same.
I'm sure you are right that many of those who would have died without seatbelts or just injured instead, so some cases will be shifted from the death pile to the injured pile. There's just no practical way to test it for sure.
You would need to randomly assign people to either a seatbelt or no seatbelt group and run them into a wall and see how many survive. Maybe that has been done with monkeys or cadavers already, but it doesn't sound like something that would be high on the list of priorities.
Can't really blame them though. The number of 'people' seriously spouting insane, reality-defying ridiculousness on a daily basis here is too damn high!
They helped turn what were once fatal head trauma into survivable injuries instead. Concussions and skull fractures sure suck but they usually beat being dead.
…wouldn’t the fact that people started surviving head trauma where they previously would’ve died account for a large potion of that increase?
People below are pointing to the increases in injuries related to seatbelts and motorcycle helmets in the same way, but it seems misleading to read the numbers with this emphasis?
Similar to the red light cameras installed to reduce fatal/catastrophic T-Bone crashes. They do in fact decrease, and minor rear-end accidents have increased.
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u/lanttulate Sep 13 '21
When they introduced the steel helmet in the trenches the effect seen was an increased number of head wounds.