closetbiker

here's your opportunity to explain the pathology of brain injury and how the 2 designs linked (cone lined and Phillips) differ from the current, conventional design in the role of DAI. Give it a go.

Tude 

They are fun! - but they don't stay well on the HELMETS. Have done birthday rides but all us idiots with the birthday hats on top of HELMETS - just looked like arses - but hey we had fun

Tude 

Sigh .. I'm rather glad it is not set in stone where a law states a bicyclist must wear a helmet - cause the posts bringing out the un-benefits of wearing a helmet would increase (note, not including the per state age required helmet required for children of a certain age).

There's always someone who will argue about something - cause - HEY - we're a free speech society!

OK - so years ago I, Tude, did not like the aspect of wearing a helmet. Why you ask? I thought I looked like a dork. It looked like I had a mushroom on my head! And it made my hair all funky (especially when sweaty - yuck - helmet head). So I did not wear one. (shoot - I struggled many years before that to find the right motorcycle helmet - ending up with a half-helm). And I never went down hard enough, etc to enact a benefit of a helmet or not. But sometime later as I started to upgrade my bicycle stuff to more serious riding stuffs - I lapsed into helmet territory and never went back. Hell I have helmets that match my bicycles.

I won't even again write about my one friend who, last Spring, took a meander around the block in his baseball cap this past Spring and "woke" up still clipped in and down on the side of the road - with concussion and did not know who he was (he lost a couple hours out of his life and actually rode down to someone - gave them his license and asked how to get back there, since he didn't know where his house actually was).

Nope. I got over the funky helmet look and started thinking some of those brands out there are dam sexy and so I rather enjoy my helmet. Whatever can protect the melon is awesome. And if it looks freakin great, then that's priceless!

And actually at the many functions I do/did for my club for festivals/outdoor expositions/bicycle races - I really didn't get too many people who were totally negative on helmets, personally when I did hear a negative comment about helmets - they really didn't come across as a serious bicyclist. That's a person who rides a bicycle, not a bicyclist.

But I got lots of people and their children at my booths and the visitors reinforced helmets to their children (especially since there were some of us in the booth riding in and out and so had the attire on - can't tell you how many times I go down the street and I hear a mother walking with their small child on a bicycle - and they point to me and say "See?! When you ride a bicycle, you wear a helmet") - plus I also talked to several people who kinda wanted to know, ya know about helmets (meaning - they've never worn one and didn't really know what to expect about a helmet - like size, style, etc). Out in the public - I'm a wealth of info - that stuff turns me on - I just stepped down from the Publicity Director of my club to concentrate more on my stuff (I participate now in a number of charities that include bicycle races and marathons) and for more bicycle advocacy. More people on the road on two wheels makes me very happy

My only regret about resigning from my position is that I had many people come back and update me each year on their bicycle activities - see some of them went from dusty bicycle stuffs in the garage to getting the family involved in bicycling. Sweet stuff. And I searched the internet and contacted many agencies - some from Europe on bicycling activities so I had tons of literature on bicycle do''s and don'ts. And lots of stuff on bicycle safety - which included helmets. I'll miss those return updates, although one woman works with me - she's now leading some shorter rides and has become quite the confident rider. Awesome!

As to the baby blurb and inside car blurb, hell - you can slip in the tub and get a nasty bump on the head ---- there are all sorts of things like this one can bring up to reinforce a "why helmet". But sorry, I'm still sold on being as much protected as I can be while on the road, I mean (as a commuter and mtbr) I have nice lights, fenders, extra this, extra that - am wind and rainproof basically from head to toe ... ride year round and love it (wind and rain can go away though, just drop some more snow for my mtb - simple request) why not plop a helmet on my head and add a few more points to my overall health factor.

JusticeZero

Right, but all that is NOT on topic. The OP feels that skin cancer is a serious risk, and likely if they do not find a way to mitigate it, then all the bike helmets in the world would do them no good because they will not wear them. Maybe they have a family history of cancer, and have good reason to be worried. I don't know, and it's not my job to know. My part is to answer the question as best I can as to how to prevent SUN EXPOSURE TO THE EARS AND NECK, which helmets do not typically protect against, and which wide brimmed hats do. If you don't let them wear a wide brimmed hat or equivalent, and you do not have a better suggestion to meet the need, then you, as most helmet law fans are, are just trying to get people off of their bikes and into cars.

WaltPoutine

I don't get it. Why don't you wear one in the tub? You could be as safe in the tub as you are on the road. Plus it'd be waterproof so you wouldn't have to wear a shower cap and it would look great and attract lots of comments from other people in the shower.

You could show them how to put bars of soap in the vents and other useful functions that people haven't thought of yet. I understand that since the Dutch government made shower helmets compulsory the number of people taking showers has increased by 54.235% and the amount of water used has also gone down. So it's not just safer, it's also good eco-logic.

WaltPoutine

Hear, hear. And back on topic: I have occasionally (on long tours when it's not practical to keep stocked up on sunscreen lotion) used hats that seem to be described as "french foreign legion" as seen at this link:
https://www.armynavysales.com/Merchan...egory_Code=CAP The only problem with them (as with all baseball caps) is that the brims tend to be a bit too long and stiff for comfortable descending or riding into a headwind.

joejack951

I ride year round and love it too. I do, however, make some decisions that increase my enjoyment of cycling while ever so slightly increasing the chance I might get hurt. For instance, in the summer, I leave a lot of exposed skin, namely my arms and legs. Now aside from the ever so slight chance that it may snow in the summer and I could get frostbite, there's a slightly higher chance that I could fall and scrape a knee or elbow (I know, because it's happened to me before, once about 3 years ago). I prefer not to sweat any more than I already do though so I make a slight safety concession. I'm curious how you dress in the summer though since safety is such a high priority. It's very easy to put on a pair of leather pants and a jacket which would greatly reduce the risk of any road rash (and I'm sure you'd get plenty of compliments from other bikers on your outfit).

Another safety concession I make is not wearing steel toed shoes. At stoplights, one could very easily get their foot run over by a car and you only get one left/right foot. Seems as though it would sense to protect your toes but I'm too much of a weight weenie to care about that.

BarracksSi

Sunscreen lotions work, too.

closetbiker

the OP said,

Even though someone can apply sunscreen, when you're riding a bike, it always sweats off. The shade a wide brimmed hat provides seems a reasonable precaution if sunburn is your concern.

What people choose to be most concerned with is an interesting phycological issue.

BarracksSi

Ah, ok, somehow I missed that..

I haven't had any difficulty putting sunscreen on, over, and behind my ears, though. My hairline isn't a problem -- I just let some get into the short hairs; and, back when I had longer hair (especially the mess of a "mullet" I had around 1990.. ugh ), the hair itself blocked the sun just fine. I've also used DCT for my ears even though it's supposed to be a lip sunblock/treatment.

On the other hand, my head doesn't sweat very much, either -- my back starts sweating before anything else. One of the guys I work with begins sweating from his head first (it'll drip down his cheeks before my face is even moist), so maybe the OP's "sweat pattern" is also different from mine.

Kyle90

I wear a mossy oak hat.. pretty much all the time, and I have somewhat long hair so my neck doesn't get burned. I don't think I've ever had a sunburn on my neck. If it's anywhere, it's my cheeks and that's rare.

Six jours

You might want to contact the major motorsports organizations with this little tidbit. As hot as it gets in those cars, I'm sure the drivers would be happy to learn that they don't need to wear their helmets.

BarracksSi

They must wear their helmets, if for no other reason than to protect their heads from the roll cages surrounding them.

It's like this -- any vehicle intended for wheel-to-wheel racing needs a cage to protect it from collapsing due to multiple impacts, especially from other racers. The driver, then, needs protection from the cage -- a strong, well-secured seat, five-point harness, and a helmet to protect his head from getting smashed if it hits the cage. Plus a HANS device, or at least a neck collar, to protect his neck from breaking because of the helmeted head getting whipped around.

Those car-rated helmets need to withstand multiple impacts as well, in case it hits the same cage tube again and again.

JusticeZero

But if you only expect to have your head smashed against the frame and/or windows of the car ONCE by a high speed impact, that won't cause any injury at all, and so you don't need to protect your head?

I'm kind've annoyed by this idea that I 'need' a helmet on a bike, but that it's silly to wear a helmet in a car. I have been in two auto crashes, one quite recently. In both, a helmet would have helped me. (Granted, in the second one, it wouldn't have helped all that much, but I wasn't badly injured in it. Had I been going any faster, it would have been VERY important that I have a helmet; as it was, I was 12 mph under the speed limit on a road where average traffic is 8-10 mph above the limit. As it was, my head was briefly crushed against the back of the seat by the roof as it collapsed.
The first crash, though, left me with quite a bit of head injuries, to the point that I am missing days, possibly even weeks, of time leading up to and following it. A helmet probably would have helped; all I had from it was head injuries.

ccsami4x4

For the past 15 years I've always just worn a regular baseball cap backwards. Works great and the bill protects my neck.

Just last year I started wearing a helmet on a semi-regular basis...but he only reason I began wearing one is to shut up all the helmet Natzi's who like to yell at people riding without one (seriously, it got old having people yelling "where's your helmet?" every day during my commute).

Do whatever works for you and keeps you riding (and away from sunburn, etc.).

BarracksSi

You mean from the inside of the car (race driver), or the outside (cyclist)? *edit - I wrote this post before you added to yours*

When autocrossing (racing one at a time around cones on a huge parking lot against the clock), helmets are required, at least for insurance purposes. There's been debate about whether closed-face helmets cause injury if they hit an airbag, though.

On an open track (HPDEs or time trials, with zero passing or limited passing allowed), helmets are still required, and a roll bar may be recommended (or, in the case of convertibles & open roadsters, required). The only expectation is that the car might roll if it goes off-track, so the factory-built roll protection should be enough.

Wheel-to-wheel racing can be a real mess, of course. That's why the driver compartment is so heavily fortified, and the driver is restrained to keep from getting knocked around inside.

BarracksSi

Yeah, I know -- sometimes I feel like I'd be safer in my car wearing my car helmet. I'm lucky that both of my accidents resulted in no injury whatsoever.

I think it's because nobody expects this kind of stuff to happen all the time on public roads:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=kvNylkt0uvc
(Spec Miata race series crash compilation )

JusticeZero

Okay, so... I fail to see how this demonstrates that helmets are less needed in cars. Open track, to me, seems like they have more protection other than the helmet than typical autos do, and they still wear helmets. Helmets would have helped me in a car. Should we be pushing for a helmet law for cars?

BarracksSi

Helmets in those cars are there just as much to protect the driver against his own car, though.

No argument from me there.

I'm not sure. Car helmet laws are usually on the books already -- except that helmets are deemed illegal. With all the airbags being installed these days covering almost every surface, a helmet wouldn't be necessary (and, as I mentioned earlier, might actually be more dangerous, because a helmet might reach the airbag before it's finished deploying). They block some vision and hearing, too.

If it were legal for me to wear my helmet in the car on the street, I'm still not sure if I would choose to wear it anyway.

ralph12

I mighta posted this already, but I find that a knit/watch cap is essential for keeping my ears warm when the weather gets below about 55 degrees or so.

J B Bell

Actual answer alert! Please skip if you're enjoying the helmet/no-helmet debate.

I do wear a helmet, but highly recommend the Tilley hats when you need a big brim that damn well stays on your head. Check out the various models at www.tilley.com. Best for riding would be maybe the t-5 models, which have a less-big brim. That is because a bigger one could flop down into your eyes at speed; not a good thing, obviously.

Edit: The airflo actually looks perfect--might even fit under a helmet, and has brim plus a 'retractable' ear-and-neck flap.

Booger1

I wear one of those funny cycling hats.Don't see the need for a helmet on a bicycle.

closetbiker

a smaller cross sectional area at the tip gives a softer "protection" for small deformations; once that deformation is used up, a larger sectional area provides stiffer protection, with the transition being smooth and continuous, or "progressive."

It's common for motor vehicles to have rubber bumpers to limit suspension travel on big bumps (when the suspension "bottoms out.") These are typically tapered, although "parabolic" describes them better than "conical."

closetbiker

unlike the tennis ball, a human head is actually attached to a body! Immediately after impact, the human head actually rotates around the point of articulation (where the spine connects with the skull), like a 4.5Kg orange on a stick. In fact, the head’s center of gravity is off-centre, simply compounding the problem.


The effects of a blow to the head on brain function arise from the structural characteristics of the skull and the brain and the direction and size of the forces acting on the head. The brain, a rather soft tissue with the consistency somewhere between egg white and jello, is covered by three membrane layers. The outer-most layer, called the dura mater, is connected to the inside of the skull at various suture points which serve to suspend the brain within the skull. The brain sits atop the brain stem and the spinal cord extends from there, out the base of the skull through a hole called the foramen magnum. Brain injuries arise from three characteristics of this brain-skull anatomy: the rigidity and internal contours of the skull, the incompressibility of brain tissue and the susceptibility of the brain to shearing forces.

The first two characteristics give rise to contusions or hematomas (i.e., bleeding) on the surface of the brain, one of the most common injuries. There are usually two contusion sites in a brain injury. One occurs at the site of the blow to the brain and is called the coup injury. The other arises where the brain bounces off the skull when it has been moved away from the site of the original blow. The contusion here is termed the contre coup injury. Some bleeding may also arise at the suture points when the dura mater is torn away from the inside of the skull.

The third characteristic, susceptibility to shearing forces, plays a role primarily in injuries which involve rapid and forceful movements of the head, such as in motor vehicle accidents. In these situations rotational forces such as might occur in whiplash-type injuries are particularly important. These forces, associated with the rapid acceleration and deceleration of the head, are smallest at the point of rotation of the brain near the lower end of the brain stem and successively increase at increasing distances from this point. The resulting shearing forces cause different levels in the brain to move relative to one another. This movement produces stretching and tearing of axons (diffuse axonal injury) and the insulating myelin sheath, injuries which are the major cause of loss of consciousness in a head trauma. Small blood vessels are also damaged causing bleeding (petechial hemorrhages) deep within the brain.

Tests show that the PHPS concept, developed by Harley Street psychotherapist Dr Ken Phillips, provides 60% more protection from rotational injury than conventional helmets. PHPS is the most significant advance in helmet safety technology since the 1960s and is set to become the industry norm for protection against rotational injury.

Putting its own concept into practice, Phillips Helmets has combined the PHPS technology
with cutting edge design to create the Phillips brand of helmets – a ‘head within a head’.

Agent Cooper

Before I started using a helmet on a regular basis I used to tie a bandana over my head. This works pretty well as far as sun protection and it stays on at speed. Keeps bugs out of your hair and it's pretty good for wicking sweat from the brow, which is why I started using one. I still like to wear one under my helmet sometimes.

Drawbacks: I used to try to tie it over my ears on really sunny days to try and protect them, but this never worked well. You can also tie it so that the tail hangs over the back of your neck, but I didn't have much luck with this, either.

Still, the good old fashioned bandana is cheap and and it stays on, so I suppose this is a good choice for somebody who decides to without a helmet but wants some sun and bug insurance.