prathmann

I doubt it was that old. But the protective characteristics of a bicycle helmet have not been shown to deteriorate with age. MEA Forensics studied hundreds of used bike helmets up to 26 years old and found no significant performance change based on aging.
EPS Foam Liner Performance With Age

CB HI

If they are still selling helmets that poorly made, with the plastic coating just coming off; it is time to not waste your money on a cheap helmet.

Northwestrider

If I had kids I'd make sure they rode with a helmet as I do. As for others, meh , it's up to them .

CB HI

If you had kids, maybe your kid would be one of the kids I see riding around with a helmet strapped to the handlebar.

Which is better, that kids ride bicycles or that kids wear helmets, many will not do both?

GravelMN

Of course helmets have limits to the protection they provide, so do seat belts, air bags and bullet proof vests.

You obviously have a poor grasp of how statistics work. If 100% of cyclists wore helmets 100% of the time and one cyclist was killed in a collision with a car, even if it was due to internal bleeding in the chest and abdomen, then 100% of cyclists killed in car vs. bike accidents would have been helmeted. Isolated statistics without context are meaningless. To mean anything you would have to look at a large sampling of all car vs. bike accidents, categorize them by speed involved and type of impact (head-on, side, rear-end, over the hood, under the wheels, etc.) Then you would have to compare the number and extent of head injuries for each type of impact at various speeds to determine to what extent and under what circumstances helmets mitigated or failed to mitigate the injuries. The reality is that well designed helmets reduce or prevent head injury in many common light to moderate head impacts and may mitigate to some extent head injuries associated with more forceful impacts. If you get hit dead center by a full-size vehicle doing 55+ mph, chances are you are going to die with or without a helmet. If you go over the hood of a right hook doing 20 mph, that helmet could make a significant difference depending on how you hit.

Far more important than "What percentage of people who died in car vs. bike accidents were wearing helmets?" would be "What percentage didn't die because they were wearing a helmet and therefore didn't show up in your statistic?" or "How many people avoided or reduced the severity of head injuries in non-fatal accidents due to helmet use?"

Here's a final thought: How many of those people who died in your statistic would have survived if they weren't wearing a helmet? Likely none. So even if helmets aren't magic and can't save you from every severe impact, there is still valid reason to wear a helmet to mitigate the far more common lesser impacts. If you choose not to wear one, that's your business.

jfowler85

DAI's mechanism of injury is rapid acc/deceleration of the brain, it is not a per se rotational head injury. I.e., it is rotational acceleration vs the motion of rotation itself.

Yan 

95% of soldiers killed in Afghanistan were wearing kevlar vests at the time of their death. Therefore kevlar vests are of limited use in protecting against combat deaths.

See the flaw in your logic?

mconlonx

...they were probably also wearing helmets...

Leisesturm

No, I see no flaw in my logic, and if your information is correct, then it was indeed a very unfortunate factoid to attempt to use to discredit my opinion. I wear a helmet for two reasons. 1.) to be allowed to participate in riding events where the organizers (most) insist that participants be helmeted and 2.) to hold my helmet mirror in the proper location in space. When I ride around town I am as likely as not to be helmetless (and thus also mirrorless). Note that I am not a militant wind in the hair helmet detractor. I think, however, that threads like this one claiming that a helmet (or mirror) "saves" a person who would otherwise have been lost to be overstated and probably wrong.

Yan 

Here's the flaw in your logic: while kevlar vests are indeed extremely effective in preventing a bullet from penetrating into a wearer's body, there are plenty of ways to be killed on the battlefield where a kevlar vest would be bypassed. For example, one could be shot in the face, or simply blown up by an explosion. Despite of the fact that almost all soldier's in the modern military enter combat while wearing kevlar protection, thousands of American soldier's have nevertheless been killed in the Middle East. This does not prove that kevlar vests are useless, it simply means that these soldiers were killed via means other than being shot in the chest.

Now replace the words soldiers and kevlar vests with bicyclists and helmets. While 62% of dead bicyclists were wearing helmets, there are plenty of ways to be killed on a bike other than head injury. You could be crushed under the wheels of the vehicle, crushed against a static object, cut in half at the waist, have limbs amputated and bleed out, bleed out internally, have your neck broken, have a sharp object penetrate your torso, to name a few. The fact that many cyclists have died while wearing helmets does not prove that helmets are useless. It simply proves that there are more ways to be killed than from head injury.

mr_bill

It's amazing how many people are *NOT* "helmet detractors." (Also note that the mundane, trite and factually useless one left your claim completely unchallenged.)

In fact, in the United States, in 2013, 62% of the people on bicycles who died in crashes with a moving automobile on public highways *WERE* *NOT* *WEARING* *HELMETS*. Why do I suspect that where you come from 62% is no longer a hell of a persuasion?

You can put an Everlasting Gobstopper in your mouth and suck it and suck it and suck it and suck it . . . it will never get any smaller.

-mr. bill

Leisesturm

Yan. I know what point you are trying to make. But it isn't much of a point. If 95% of armor wearing soldiers are being killed on the battlefield it is NOT saying anything good for the use of armor! Nor is it reasonable to conclude that all these soldiers are dying from explosions etc. It is more likely the case that the level of protection offered by our armor is not up to withstanding the penetrative power of the most recent armor piercing rounds.

In a collision with a car, a bicycle helmet is unlikely to be the implement that saves the riders life. How much speed the vehicle is able to remove before striking the cyclist is flat out the most significant factor in the cyclists survival. I have had a few non-car involved accidents where a storm grate, oil slick or other road imperfection caused me to go down. Hard. In two I was wearing a helmet, but it was undamaged afterwards, and in two I was not wearing any helmet but my injuries, while significant did not include any injury to my head.

I am NOT saying that a helmet is useless, but I AM saying that teaching cyclists to avoid cars like the plague is of more use than praising helmets out of hand, or mirrors or hi-viz or any other accoutrements besides superior situational awareness. Americans more than any other kind of human are likely to think that if they follow certain practices like: drive an SUV instead of a sedan, wear a helmet while cycling, use a mirror while cycling and cut out all salt and sugar,... Americans are easily lulled into suspending caution when properly equipped. And they die as a result.

The 62% figure I cited was for motorcyclists. 62% of helmeted motorcyclists are killed in collisions with cars. I definitely wore a motorcycle helmet on every ride no matter how short, but I never thought for a second that that was license to drive like a maniac or without a defensive awareness. A helmet can only do so much, and that child was LUCKY. Period. The driver of the car also gets a lot of points for acting quickly I am certain. The o.p. is irresponsible. There are a number of such threads in here that are flat out irresponsible feel good hyperbole.

gpsblake

Bike helmets the way most of them are marketed are a compromise. Basically, weight is lowered at the sacrifice of safety. A full facial helmet is by the far the safest but they don't breathe well and weigh heavy thus cyclist won't use them.

But a bike helmet can help prevent some nasty injuries like de-scalping, road rash on your head, and possibly death.

I wear mine but I am not a bike helmet nazi either.

atbman

In the UK a Dr Mayer Hilman researched this and found that, after looking at autopsy reports,approx 92% of cyclists with head injury fatalities would have died anyway from other injuries. He also found that a higher percentage of pedestrians and mv inhabitants died from head injuries than did cyclists. He therefore recommended (tongue in cheek, I think) that all road users should wear them. Can't find the link or report reference I'm afraid, but it was reported in the CTC's Cycling magazine quite a few years ago.

mconlonx

Fun fact: a bicycle helmet is not classified as a cycling helmet based on construction, but based on how a manufacturer markets it. If a manufacturer calls a helmet a bike helmet, it's a bike helmet. And then it has to pass only minimum requirements in order to be sold as such.

mr_bill

Fun fact: That's not a fact. A helmet that is *NOT* marketed as a bicycle helmet can be regulated as a bicycle helmet.

Fun fact: Virtually *ALL* 16 CFR regulations for *ALL* products are "only minimum requirements."
(Exceptions, maximum requirements that if exceeded, would cause a product to be out of scope for one set of regulations but in scope for another set of regulations.)

-mr. bill
[HR][/HR]
Footnote(s):
[SUP]2[/SUP] Helmets specifically marketed for exclusive use in a designated activity, such as skateboarding, rollerblading, baseball, roller hockey, etc., would be excluded from this definition because the specific focus of their marketing makes it unlikely that such helmets would be purchased for other than their stated use. However, a multi-purpose helmet—one marketed or represented as providing protection either during general use or in a variety of specific activities other than bicycling—would fall within the definition of bicycle helmet if a reasonable consumer could conclude, based on the helmet's marketing or representations, that bicycling is among the activities in which the helmet is intended to be used. In making this determination, the Commission will consider the types of specific activities, if any, for which the helmet is marketed, the similarity of the appearance, design, and construction of the helmet to other helmets marketed or recognized as bicycle helmets, and the presence, prominence, and clarity of any warnings, on the helmet or its packaging or promotional materials, against the use of the helmet as a bicycle helmet. A multi-purpose helmet marketed without specific reference to the activities in which the helmet is to be used will be presumed to be a bicycle helmet. The presence of warnings or disclaimers advising against the use of a multi-purpose helmet during bicycling is a relevant, but not necessarily controlling, factor in the determination of whether a multi-purpose helmet is a bicycle helmet.

jefnvk

The point of this was to illustrate one very real way of getting hit by a vehicle in which the impact would not result in internal injuries that would kill, but a correlating head impact could. By all means, wear what you want, but to tell others that it is pointless to wear a helmet because if you get hit by a car it is going to be the other injuries that kill you or that the hit will be so hard it doesn't matter is silly.

Leisesturm

No. What was silly was to even start a thread trying to shame those of us unconvinced about the efficacy of helmets. Clearly in the real world of American vehicle culture and infrastructure helmets are little more than handy places to hang mirrors, mount lights or post advertisement.

jefnvk

If you're never going to be convinced, why do you bother reading and responding?

I don't pretend I am going to convince someone who is set that they are useless that they can have a safety function in a collision. Maybe, though, I get someone else who doesn't know what way to go thinking about the fact that an otherwise fatal head impact with non-fatal body injuries is a very real possibility. People are free to act in whatever unsafe manner they choose, I just don't understand why they insist on convincing others to follow them in their choices.

I don't even wear my helmet half the time, but I'm certainly not going to sit around and think it can have no effectiveness if my head is impacting a piece of metal.

MMACH 5

How is this still bouncing around in A&S?

I told y'all I had stuff that needs to be dropped off in the Helmet Thread. I thought for sure, you'd have it there waiting for me.

https://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-s...l#post18849357

mconlonx

Thank you for the validation, with CPSC cite.