Helmets

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

k s swigart katswig@earthlink.net

Pat Super said:

>>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.<<

Let me see if I can explain it to you.  You say that you don't 
care what the chances are, if you could suffer a serious head 
injury you would wear a helmet.  But unless you wear your helmet 
in the shower--this is just plain false. People have been known 
to slip and fall in the shower and sustain serious head injuries.

Instead, what most people do (the normal ones who don't wear a 
helmet at all times, day and night) is to evaluate the chances 
of sustaining a serious head injury and decide for themselves 
whether it is necessary to wear a helmet to protect against it 
or not.  When making this evaluation people weigh the pros and 
cons.

Because, in the situation of wearing helmets (for any activity), 
the chances of sustaining a serious head injury are 
unquantifiable, people must make "judgements under uncertainty."
Tversky and Kahnemann (sp?) in a paper they did discussing the 
systematic errors that people make when making judgements under 
uncertainty (if you want me to dig through my garage for the 
actual reference I will...but it's gonna cost ya :)) discuss 
what they call the "Availability Heuristic" in which they state 
that people systematically overestimate the chances of something 
happening if they have just recently seen it happen or heard 
about it happenning. Which is why ER personnel ROUTINELY 
overestimate the chances of serious head injuries while riding--
and it is why, after everybody reads all the testimonials on 
RideCamp from the converted, that people ROUTINELY overestimate 
the chances of a serious head injury while riding.  And why 
police officers routinely overestimate the number of criminals 
in society (and with the advent of instantaneus, mass media 
hype, the general public also routinely overestimates the number 
of criminals in society).  Consider how many thousands of miles 
and thousands of hours thousands of people spend riding horses, 
and compare that against the number of serious head injuries 
while riding, and you will get a better idea of the chances of a 
serious head injury while riding.

Then consider how many thousands of people spend thousands of 
hours on the ground around horses and compare that against the 
number of serious head injuries incurred during those 
activities, and you will get a better idea of the chances of a 
serious head injury while being around horses.  Then you will 
understand that even horse people who do wear helmets everytime 
they get on a horse but not every time they are around a horse 
also do not "wear a helmet because they don't want to take even 
the slightest chance that they could suffer a serious head 
injury."

People who wear a helmet while on a horse but not around a horse 
(probably most of the preachers here who sanctimoniously prate 
about not wanting to take the slightest risk) also evaluate 
their perceived risks and decide that the risks aren't high 
enough to warrent the cost. 

Now, if wearing helmets were "free" (i.e. there were no cons) 
then we would all wear helmets all of the time.  Since wearing 
helmets isn't free, and the pros and cons are unmeasurable and 
vary from person to person, activity to activity, horse to 
horse, and day to day, it should be left up to the individual to 
weigh the pros and cons for themselves and make a decision.  

And it is quite clear that riders and helmet manufacturers are 
very aware that wearing a helmet while riding is not "free" 
which is why there has been the recent "advances in technology" 
to make them much lighter--EVERYBODY knows that when helmets 
were much heavier, there was substantial cost associated with 
wearing them (though still not quantifiable).

There are still costs associated with wearing them, they are not 
weightless, and they are not sizeless and their fastening 
mechanism really sucks (as currently designed, if I install a 
properly fitting helmet, properly on my head, that chin strap, 
literally, makes ME nauseaous).  I will continue to monitor 
helmet technology and weigh my perceptions of the costs 
associated with wearing one against the costs of not wearing one 
for the variety of activities that I engage in during the course 
of a day (not just riding horses) and decide when I think it is 
a good idea for me.

I merely wish to bring to light (so people can make better 
informed decisions--I won't say well informed, because very 
little really good information exists) the fact that there ARE 
associated costs (probably the least of which is the price of 
the helmet itself) with wearing a helmet.  And the longer you 
wear it, the higher those costs become (which is one of the 
other reasons that I am willing to wear it for a 3 minute 
steeplechase, or a 45 minute polo match, but not for a 12 hour 
endurance ride).

You want to evaluate those risks differently, go right ahead--
but don't be naive enough to believe that the only cost there is
associated with wearing a helmet is that you don't "get to feel 
the wind in your hair."  It may be something that you consider 
to be the only relevant cost (personally, I think that one, 
while true, is TOTALLY irrelevant).

Me? I always wear a hat.  But I know that that isn't costless 
either.  MJ Jackson can't wear anything on her head.  I know 
this because I spent a lot of time this past year riding well 
behind her, picking up her hats that always ended up on the 
ground...until she gave up on trying them and went back to 
riding bare headed.

Many people claim to "not even notice" the helmet--until they, 
of course, get to the stage where they notice that it isn't 
there and "feel naked." (If you can notice that it ISN'T there, 
then you gotta know that it being there is different than it not 
being there--mostly because you can feel its weight).


And I contend, that the reason the converted are willing to
accept "I like the feel of the wind in my hair" as an excuse, 
but are unwilling to accept "it may be bad for your neck, and it 
may increase your chances of hitting your head at all and it may make you more likely to suffer heat stroke" is that 
the first, if true, can be considered silly; while the second, 
if true, would actually require people to re-evaluate their 
choices.  And nobody likes to have to re-evaluate the religious 
convictions.

I have far greater respect for people who are aware of the 
other, very real, costs associated with wearing a helmet and 
have decided to take their chances with wearing a helmet because 
they think the benefits outweigh the risks than I do for those 
people who blindly assume that there are no risks.

kat
Orange County, Calif.

p.s.  As a completely separate issue, the fact that some other 
people, and maybe even society, may volunteer to undertake the 
consequences of what they consider to be foolish actions on my 
part is totally irrelevant.  I have never asked anybody to volunteer that, and volunteering to pay for what you perceive to 
be other people's mistakes does not give you any right to then
tell people they aren't allowed to do things that you think are
mistakes.