Remember kids... always wear a helmet. (The almighty bikeradar helmet thread)

I have been involved in an accident with a cyclist

Masterly use of the passive voice.

That's active voice (the auxiliary verb form 'been' is part of the present perfect, not the passive), but it is certainly borderline ambiguous and she is also dissociating herself from what happened by means of the formulation. Proper passive here would be something like 'I was forced to be in a crash' or 'I have been made to crash into cyclists on at least two occasions'.

Hmm, disagree. The word involved is the past participle, and the words 'have been' is the past perfect tense of the verb 'to be', and the conjunction makes it the passive voice. The active voice would be 'I involved...', and 'I was involved' is the passive voice, whether it's 'I was involved', 'I have been involved', or 'I am involved'.

Interesting.

Sarcastic.

Nuances.

Hmm, disagree. The word involved is the past participle, and the words 'have been' is the past perfect tense of the verb 'to be', and the conjunction makes it the passive voice. The active voice would be 'I involved...', and 'I was involved' is the passive voice, whether it's 'I was involved', 'I have been involved', or 'I am involved'.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. :) 'To be involved' is not a passive form but a description of a state, as in 'to be disappointed' or 'to be motivated'. 'To be' is here not an auxiliary verb as found in the passive voice but a full verb. 'Involved' is not a participle but an adjective or attribute, and 'have been' is the present perfect, not the past perfect.

As I said, it's borderline ambiguous and these distinctions run into one another to some extent in English, being more vague than in many other languages; e.g., you could say 'I am disappointed' and mean a perfectly active sense, or you could say 'I am disappointed by you', which is not clearly either active or passive. (Some people argue that this sort of thing is really a middle voice in English, but I think that's nonsense.)

However, the sense of the verb 'to involve' has much to do with the puzzle about our present example. It can take a passive voice, e.g.:

Active: I wasn't happy that she involved me in this.*
Passive: I wasn't happy to be involved in this by her.

* Note that this is merely a transitive use of the verb, which is sometimes confused with the passive.

Looking back at the 'disappointed' example above, consider how the same construction with the verb 'involve' then becomes passive:

I was involved by you.

You could add a clause like '... and now I can't get out' to make it perfectly clear. Where the sense of the verb can determine active or passive, there is no clear argument to be made that a particular construction must always have the same kind of result.

When one is 'involved' in something, one often has (had) no control over choosing whether or not to be involved--e.g., you might have to do a job you really hate as part of your regular work and become involved with people you'd rather have nothing do with, but have to stay professional. This distance is really what the driver above wanted to express, and it is this sense of the verb that plays into 'I have been involved in an accident'.

So, again, English is in some ways too reduced a language to make this completely clear, but I maintain that 'I have been involved in an accident' is active. :)

Interesting.

It's certainly a damn sight more interesting than h@lm@t discussions. :)

Is a helmet more effective if the crash is referred to in the passive voice?

So I've been told.

B-dm tschhh.

It looks like car helmets might be about to take off for road use. And not before time of course.

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http://www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk/news/14295159.Woman_admits_to_killing_cyclist_with_car_and_lying_to_police/

but wait...

https://www.change.org/p/public-make-it-law-for-a-cyclist-to-wear-a-helmet

That poisonous creature is remanded on tag. Might be driving around.

Sutton, now of Haydon Court, Maidenhead, Berks, was released on conditional bail to return to the same court for trial on June 6.

Someone remember to follow this up. Be interested to see what happens to her.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2016/04/20/phoenix-bicycle-safety-comics-put-graphic-graphic-novel/83045078/

Jesus christ, that just in terrible taste.

So, I have been on LFGSS for about 8 years. In that time I have known four forumengers suffer brain injuries in cycling accidents. On each occasion, the rider in question wasn't wearing a helmet.

Does this tell us anything or is it just coincidence? Genuine point for discussion.

It's one interpretation of the data but you'd need to know more about each accident to draw a direct link.

The sample is post-hoc, too small, and too restricted, for any conclusions to be drawn that might apply elsewhere.

In the last few years I have also known 4 people who have suffered brain injuries. One was cycling,and was wearing a helmet. The others weren't cycling, nor were they wearing a helmet.

I have been on LFGSS for 9 years and know of over fifty crashes without helmets that have not caused brain injury, including rotational concussions.

Interestingly, none of these crashes have led to bum cancer either, I believe.

Interestingly, none of these crashes have led to bum cancer either, I believe.

Anecdotal. Daily Mail has reported on studies which show that everything causes bum cancer.

It doesn't tell us anything and the "just coincidence" is the other side of a false dichotomy.

For it to begin to tell us anything, we would need to know a) the number of forumengers that you know that have been in cycling accidents, b) the percentage of those that were, or were not, wearing helmets during those accidents, c) the percentage of those accidents as a whole that led to a head injury, d) the percentage of those accidents that involved a cranial impact and e) the percentage of d) that actually led to a brain injury.

There are actually a whole range of other data points that would be useful in telling us anything. What you're presenting here is still anecdotal evidence. Without at least some credible degree of context to compare it to, it's fundamentally meaningless.

Does this tell us anything or is it just coincidence? Genuine point for discussion.

Do you know anyone who's not a cyclists suffer brain injuries? at the moment I know more non-cyclists who suffer from brain injuries, but that doesn't tell us anything.

anecdotally it tells you that cycling prevents brain injuries.