Topic: Episode #344

[amysrevenge]

True enough, in the bike vs car debate, the car wins -  every stinkin' time. 

I like my odds in the pedestrian vs. bike battle though - unless the bike is going awfully fast (or another fatty is riding it), I'm predicting a draw at worst for me.

[Johnny Slick]

True enough, in the bike vs car debate, the car wins -  every stinkin' time. 

I like my odds in the pedestrian vs. bike battle though - unless the bike is going awfully fast (or another fatty is riding it), I'm predicting a draw at worst for me.

I had a cyclist run into me last year while I was walking home. It hurt but I'm pretty sure I won.

[Citizen Skeptic]

no, you don't have to wear helmet on rollercoasters. sheesh.

I mean the risk of brain damage from the forces involved.

I think it's zippy. Rollercoasters top out at 3-4g's which isn't much. If that was the case, fighter pilots would be brain damaged by the end of their flying careers.

[Apocrypha]

Re: Protective head gear to prevent brain injury (eg: concussions...which should just be called brain injuries...The word concussion just doesn't carry the seriousness as the phrase brain injury)).

I was very surprised nobody actually said the words "There is no head gear that can protect you from a brain injury" during this segment Rebecca was leading.
Sure head gear can protect your actual skull from being cracked but it does nothing for your brain. Brain injuries, even mild ones, are serious and cumulative. Don't think that putting a helmet on them will protect your children from brain injuries.

[Trinoc]

Rebecca's right that the main difference between a bike and a car is the amount of damage each can do. There are good and bad riders/drivers in both cases, but if many drivers were as reckless as some of the cyclists I've seen the roads would be carnage.

If the scale of moral superiority was based purely on vulnerability then pedestrians should trump cyclists, but somehow a lot of cyclists seems to have claimed a high ground which is above both those on motorised wheels and those on foot.

[GodSlayer]

...and doored once, all while I was observing all laws.

I don't know about your country, but I looked up the road code for cyclists in mine just a few days ago, and it actually specifies that you aren't to come within a metre of a parked car (i.e., close enough for an open door to bother you) -- and you're to move yourself firmly in the way of traffic behind you if necessary to make that clearance, rather than risk being so left [EDIT: so 'kept to the right', for Americans] that they try to overtake you and you're squeezed in an unsafe place.

that said, I actually go out of my way to not piss off motorists -- I'll glide along when I see in a rear vision mirror that someone is in their parked car and risk the door rather than risk strangers with large weapons thinking I'm obnoxious.

[GodSlayer]

Re: Protective head gear to prevent brain injury (eg: concussions...which should just be called brain injuries...The word concussion just doesn't carry the seriousness as the phrase brain injury)).

I was very surprised nobody actually said the words "There is no head gear that can protect you from a brain injury" during this segment Rebecca was leading.
Sure head gear can protect your actual skull from being cracked but it does nothing for your brain. Brain injuries, even mild ones, are serious and cumulative. Don't think that putting a helmet on them will protect your children from brain injuries.

...do you have the numbers to back this up?

presumably there's a threshold of accelerating/stopping beyond which injury is caused and increases in some relation to the speed, so the question is how much can certain helmets absorb impacts of various severity--is it enough to put the impact that reaches the brain entirely under the injury threshold, or only enough to put it under certain benchmarks of more and more sever damage, or even in many cases not enough to even prevent the same severity of injury? (we can all feel the fact that boxing headgear serves a function, but do we know if a blow sufficient to cause a concussion is minimized below that concussion level by one (etc. questions re cycle helmet in cyclist+pavement contact)?

[Kantalope]

I tried the note to the webmaster but the shownotes still have the wrong source for the science or fiction story on the forensic skulls and faces story.
Teh Google does not seem to help...even Google Scholar let me down or maybe I let Google down...

Can anyone else help?  Where did that story come from?

[Evil Eye]

A crocoduck would be a huge falsification against the theory of evolution.

Nope. It would just force us to revise it.

Think Brontosaurus.