Quote: Him "How many of the Tour de France riders didn't wear a helmet?
As for gumshields, I always wore one playing League bar the odd game as I got older. It certainly didn't make me any more likely to suffer injury. I played exactly the same way as I did without a gumshield.
I didn't use one in Union, but far fewer tackles and a more mature atmosphere meant I was far less likely to take a hit above the neck anyway.'"
The UCi brought them in as a compulsion (in 2003) for two reasons..one money, second there had being a death.
However they did it on a knee jerk basis (which is what the UCI do anyway for pretty much anything) WITHOUT any reference to the statistics & efficacy of helmets
Deaths in pro cycling
1950s 8, 60s..4, 70s..4, 80s..5, 90s...3, then up to 2003 before the helmet law there were 2, following the law there were 8 more deaths in the remaining 7 year period of the 2000s..Even with massively advanced technology in medical science, air ambulances, medics with all the latest kit on the scene within minutes the death toll went up when helmet compulsion was brought in.
Pro cyclists take far more risks than they ever did, they go beyond their own abilities far too often and the amount of crashes exceeds by huge amounts than what used to happen..lucklily the majority of incidents end up with arm/shoulder injuries, in fact many hits to the head would be avoided altogether if the rider hadn't being wearing a lid that increased their head size..I've seen this hundreds of times were the head would not have hit anything at all except for the fact the rider had a helmet on.
Safety aids such as these make people more reckless, they give a false sense of increased safety (risk compensation) but only recently have some professional bodies taken the stance of looking at the actual FACTS and making a decision which whilst not popular DOES save greater injury and indeed the frequency of such.
This is the same in RL IMO, it should be an area that the RFL spend some serious money on as especially in the junior game were schools are pretty much insistant that kids wear gumshields.
In the East Riding back in 2004 there was a case of a £30,000 payout because of a serious mouth injury in a hockey game at a school. However it was the lack of highlighting use of gumshields by the LEA that led to the 'negligence' aspect, that a gumshield would certainly not have given the protection offered in such a severe case failed to be highlighted at all. That at school level basic level moutguards offer very little protection anyway..but that is another matter altogether.
Basically it was falsely taken as a given that the gumshield would have saved the individual from a hockey stick swipe that did quite a nasty injury..In my belief and from other quarters it simply wouldn't.
