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Originally Posted by curbtender
(Post 17053741)
Beyond the initial impact, wouldn't you think a helmet saves some skin? If you get knocked out, you really don't have control of what part of your body is grinding into the asphalt.
That should be taken in context, both the chances of these kinds of injuries and their severity. The helmet will unquestionably help, but in my personal risk calculus of these minor injuries, the probability times severity is normally low enough that I have no qualms if I forgo the helmet, but significant enough that I don't feel foolish if I wear one. |
This thread has inspired me to read as deeply as I can about the effectiveness of bicycle helmets. I've read a lot of papers, very few of which were very impressive, and have observed:
1. Most of the studies that are totally enthusiastic about the effectiveness of bicycle helmets were done in the 1980's and 1990's, and were mostly authored by the same three people. 2. More recent studies are a lot more subdued about the effectiveness of bicycle helmets. 3. The effectiveness of most bicycle helmets can be summarized like this: In an accident in which a helmet is effective, you'll survive just fine without one; in more serious accidents, such as those involving motor vehicles, a helmet will not help much, if at all. 4. The claim that mandatory helmet laws reduce the total number of cyclists is mostly bull****; a more reasonable conclusion is that helmet laws have pretty much no long-term effect on ridership. (Australian numbers are way up since their very silly helmet law went into effect ...) 5. Most importantly, I've learned that no one, in all honesty, has any idea whether bicycle helmets significantly reduce one's risk of injury or not. It's like the debate over the effects of running shoes on injury rates: there are simply too many uncontrolled variables to be able to say anything at all that isn't driven by one's pre-set agenda. My conclusion about helmets is this: helmets are a LOT less important than most other factors in determining one's safety on a bicycle. In fact, I'm certain, based on what I've seen, that one's margin of safety is not statistically significantly improved by wearing one. However, I'm going to continue to wear a helmet anyway. The reason for this seemingly silly decision is this: would you rather slam your body into a concrete wall at 30 km/h with just your bare head, or while wearing a stupid foam hat (i..e, bicycle helmet)? It may not help much, but it's a lot better than nothing. |
Originally Posted by bragi
(Post 17059752)
It may not help much, but it's a lot better than nothing.
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Hi,
I was just looking at a website for a company that produces *Football* Helmets. (This is American Football, and the manufacturer does NOT ship outside the United States). Home page Prior to 1975, there were No Bicycle Helmets, and I was seriously considering getting a Football Helmet. Back then , a Football Helmet costed about sixty dollars (≈$60.00). They are a lot More Expensive today, see the site. The new thing, this Ridell company has a Patent, Insite - Shop Riddell which covers impact sensors embedded in the Helmet. This seems to be a New Idea, and may be connected with the recent controversy over Concussions . I would speculate that someday we may be able to purchase Bicycle Helmets with these Impact Sensors, which would send a wireless Signal in the event of a serious impact. As a side note, I see that the Ridell company also Reconditions Football Helmets, whereas we Cyclists are urged to throw out Helmets in the trash after five years, or after any serious blow to the head. Okay, this post seems to be about Helmets, so I'm going to move it to the Helmet Thread!... |
Originally Posted by hotbike
(Post 17060686)
I would speculate that someday we may be able to purchase Bicycle Helmets with these Impact Sensors, which would send a wireless Signal in the event of a serious impact.
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Football hemet has more component parts than a cycling helmet. In a bike helmet there is nothing to recondition after the crash the part that is supposed to absorb the crash energy is also the major part of the helmet. As to the sensors, assuming that it would be a help i've fallen and cannot get up" type of emergency notification, I see that a major PIA for the paramedics getting calls for all kinds of non-releted bumps on the helmet, like dropping it.
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Originally Posted by I-Like-To-Bike
(Post 17060818)
Wireless signal to whom, the helmet merchandiser, alerting it to a potential customer for a replacement helmet?
Must connect to a smart-phone via Wi-Fi... |
1 Attachment(s)
Originally Posted by hotbike
(Post 17061133)
IDK, I guess it is Wi-Fi enabled...
Must connect to a smart-phone via Wi-Fi... http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=400974 |
Originally Posted by bragi
(Post 17059752)
(Australian numbers are way up since their very silly helmet law went into effect ...)
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Originally Posted by yugyug
(Post 17061735)
Not correct. What studies or articles are you basing that claim on?
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"Australian numbers are way up since their very silly helmet law went into effect ...)" |
Originally Posted by bragi
(Post 17059752)
This thread has inspired me to read as deeply as I can about the effectiveness of bicycle helmets. I've read a lot of papers, very few of which were very impressive, and have observed:
1. Most of the studies that are totally enthusiastic about the effectiveness of bicycle helmets were done in the 1980's and 1990's, and were mostly authored by the same three people. 2. More recent studies are a lot more subdued about the effectiveness of bicycle helmets. 3. The effectiveness of most bicycle helmets can be summarized like this: In an accident in which a helmet is effective, you'll survive just fine without one; in more serious accidents, such as those involving motor vehicles, a helmet will not help much, if at all. 4. The claim that mandatory helmet laws reduce the total number of cyclists is mostly bull****; a more reasonable conclusion is that helmet laws have pretty much no long-term effect on ridership. (Australian numbers are way up since their very silly helmet law went into effect ...) 5. Most importantly, I've learned that no one, in all honesty, has any idea whether bicycle helmets significantly reduce one's risk of injury or not. It's like the debate over the effects of running shoes on injury rates: there are simply too many uncontrolled variables to be able to say anything at all that isn't driven by one's pre-set agenda. My conclusion about helmets is this: helmets are a LOT less important than most other factors in determining one's safety on a bicycle. In fact, I'm certain, based on what I've seen, that one's margin of safety is not statistically significantly improved by wearing one. However, I'm going to continue to wear a helmet anyway. The reason for this seemingly silly decision is this: would you rather slam your body into a concrete wall at 30 km/h with just your bare head, or while wearing a stupid foam hat (i..e, bicycle helmet)? It may not help much, but it's a lot better than nothing. In the real world, I look at the very slight chance of falling and hitting my head, along with the very slight protective ability of the typical bicycle helmet, and figure there's no real need for it. Everything bragi writes in his post supports that conclusion except for the last line, which almost seems as though it was written by somebody else. <edit> The short version is that I ride in such a way as to make "hitting a concrete wall at 30 kmh" an extremely remote possibility, i.e. I have not fallen off a road bike in the more than two decades since I stopped racing. So for me there is no more reason to wear a helmet while riding than there is reason to wear one while walking, driving, showering, or any other routine daily activity. Now, none of that really applies to anyone else, and I operate under the assumption that I am not qualified to tell anyone else what they should or should not do to mitigate risk in their own personal situations. I really just wish that everyone else would operate under the same assumptions regarding me. |
Originally Posted by Six jours
(Post 17070673)
This is a very strange post to me.
I live in a city where the vast majority of people don't wear any special clothing for cycling. They hop on their bikes wearing whatever they happened to throw on that morning. A few wear helmets, most do not. Now there IS an exercise set who wear helmets because it is part of their cycling costume, but these folks are only found on fitness trails or rural areas beyond the burbs on training rides. Somehow, given that some do and some don't wear helmets here, the subject of helmet use never comes up in conversation. I have never heard someone chastise another person for not wearing a helmet EVER, and I hang around a lot of cycling nuts. Of course New Orleans is the poster child for "being whoever you want to be" without answering to anyone about your helmet, tattoos, hair style, gender issues, facial piercings, what kind of car do you drive, or most other issues that are really nobodies' business but the person making the choices. But HERE! OMG. It,s like watching a clothes dryer full of tennis shoes go round and round and round - bumpity, bumpity, bump - but never get the shoes dry. |
Originally Posted by JoeyBike
(Post 17073863)
But HERE! OMG. It,s like watching a clothes dryer full of tennis shoes go round and round and round - bumpity, bumpity, bump - but never get the shoes dry.
I kind of feel that because i live in a jurisdiction, alas, almost an entire country, with a mandatory helmet law, I have more reason to be here to argue than others. But yep, sneakers in a dryer is a great analogy. |
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TIPS FOR STAYING SAFE • Wear a standards approved and properly fitted bicycle helmet... |
Originally Posted by bragi
(Post 17059752)
This thread has inspired me to read as deeply as I can about the effectiveness of bicycle helmets. I've read a lot of papers, very few of which were very impressive, and have observed:
1. Most of the studies that are totally enthusiastic about the effectiveness of bicycle helmets were done in the 1980's and 1990's, and were mostly authored by the same three people. 2. More recent studies are a lot more subdued about the effectiveness of bicycle helmets. 3. The effectiveness of most bicycle helmets can be summarized like this: In an accident in which a helmet is effective, you'll survive just fine without one; in more serious accidents, such as those involving motor vehicles, a helmet will not help much, if at all... My conclusion about helmets is this: helmets are a LOT less important than most other factors in determining one's safety on a bicycle. In fact, I'm certain, based on what I've seen, that one's margin of safety is not statistically significantly improved by wearing one. However, I'm going to continue to wear a helmet anyway. The reason for this seemingly silly decision is this: would you rather slam your body into a concrete wall at 30 km/h with just your bare head, or while wearing a stupid foam hat (i..e, bicycle helmet)? It may not help much, but it's a lot better than nothing. Health Promot Int. 2007 Sep;22(3):191-7. A decrease in both mild and severe bicycle-related head injuries in helmet wearing ages--trend analyses in Sweden. Berg P1, Westerling R. Author information Abstract Several international studies point at the efficacy of bicycle helmets in reducing head injuries. In Sweden, observational studies show that from 1988 to 1996 helmet use increased in all categories of cyclists. The objectives of this study were to analyse the trends of bicycle-related head injuries based on their main diagnosis and external cause of injury by different age groups. Our study area was the whole population of Sweden from 1987 to 1996. Outcome evaluation was based on data from the Swedish National Hospital Discharge Register concerning all bicycle-related injuries from 1987 to 1996, which presented 49 758 reported in-patient care. The trends in incidence rates (IRs) were studied with regression analyses. The results show that children under 15 years had the highest IRs. For these children, the IR decreased by 46%. The head injuries in children decreased both in collisions with motor vehicles and in other accidents. Similarly, the IR of concussion and skull fracture decreased. For non-head injuries, there were no significant changes for children. On the other hand, the incidence of both head and other injuries for adults aged 16-50 years increased. Ages above that showed no significant changes. Our conclusions are that the decrease in IR for bicycle-related head injuries refers to children in ages for whom bicycle helmet use during the period increased. This could not be explained by any general decrease in bicycle-related accidents or by any changes in the distribution of injuries after collision with motor vehicles. The increasing helmet use among younger schoolchildren probably contributed to the decrease in head injuries. A decrease in both mild and severe bicycle... [Health Promot Int. 2007] - PubMed - NCBI Accid Anal Prev. 2014 Sep;70:1-7. doi: 10.1016/j.aap.2014.02.016. Epub 2014 Mar 28. Bicycle helmets are highly effective at preventing head injury during head impact: head-form accelerations and injury criteria for helmeted and unhelmeted impacts. Cripton PA1, Dressler DM2, Stuart CA3, Dennison CR4, Richards D3. Author information Abstract Cycling is a popular form of recreation and method of commuting with clear health benefits. However, cycling is not without risk. In Canada, cycling injuries are more common than in any other summer sport; and according to the US National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, 52,000 cyclists were injured in the US in 2010. Head injuries account for approximately two-thirds of hospital admissions and three-quarters of fatal injuries among injured cyclists. In many jurisdictions and across all age levels, helmets have been adopted to mitigate risk of serious head injuries among cyclists and the majority of epidemiological literature suggests that helmets effectively reduce risk of injury. Critics have raised questions over the actual efficacy of helmets by pointing to weaknesses in existing helmet epidemiology including selection bias and lack of appropriate control for the type of impact sustained by the cyclist and the severity of the head impact. These criticisms demonstrate the difficulty in conducting epidemiology studies that will be regarded as definitive and the need for complementary biomechanical studies where confounding factors can be adequately controlled. In the bicycle helmet context, there is a paucity of biomechanical data comparing helmeted to unhelmeted head impacts and, to our knowledge, there is no data of this type available with contemporary helmets. In this research, our objective was to perform biomechanical testing of paired helmeted and unhelmeted head impacts using a validated anthropomorphic test headform and a range of drop heights between 0.5m and 3.0m, while measuring headform acceleration and Head Injury Criterion (HIC). In the 2m (6.3m/s) drops, the middle of our drop height range, the helmet reduced peak accelerations from 824g (unhelmeted) to 181g (helmeted) and HIC was reduced from 9667 (unhelmeted) to 1250 (helmeted). At realistic impact speeds of 5.4m/s (1.5m drop) and 6.3m/s (2.0m drop), bicycle helmets changed the probability of severe brain injury from extremely likely (99.9% risk at both 5.4 and 6.3m/s) to unlikely (9.3% and 30.6% risk at 1.5m and 2.0m drops respectively). These biomechanical results for acceleration and HIC, and the corresponding results for reduced risk of severe brain injury show that contemporary bicycle helmets are highly effective at reducing head injury metrics and the risk for severe brain injury in head impacts characteristic of bicycle crashes. Bicycle helmets are highly effective at prev... [Accid Anal Prev. 2014] - PubMed - NCBI |
At realistic impact speeds...bicycle helmets changed the probability of severe brain injury from extremely likely (99.9% risk at both 5.4 and 6.3m/s) to unlikely (9.3% and 30.6% risk at 1.5m and 2.0m drops respectively). I have been cycling, skating, skateboarding, for 50 years and have never hit my head even once after countless falls and crashes. So all of the data in the world could not convince a person like me to wear a helmet to prevent something that never happens to me. That being said, I always wear a helmet (since 1988). A modern bicycle helmet, carefully chosen, shades my head, provides ventilation, keeps me cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter than any hat, stays on my head regardless of wind forces, and keeps the sun out of my eyes (visor). I look at bike helmets as high-tech hats. Protection of my head from impact is just a bonus should I ever hit my head with force. If I were not a "hat wearer" by nature, all of the safety statistics on earth would not get me under a bike helmet. Like many others here, I seriously doubt I am ever going to injure my head while riding my bicycle. I feel it is a total waste of time posting statistics and studies on this thread that is far more similar to an argument about religios choices than any science known to man. |
Going through old files - found this:
http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h1...8.png~original http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h1...a.png~original -mr. bill |
Originally Posted by mr_bill
(Post 17081500)
Going through old files - found this:
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Originally Posted by John C. Ratliff
(Post 17080475)
It's funny that you quote this study, as it states:
John |
My memory is good, but come on, you're asking me to remember something over 30 years ago.
But IF there was a safety related manual that came with it, it's extremely likely it would have ended up in this folder too. So if it's not in the folder, there's a conclusion that more likely than not.... -mr. bill |
Originally Posted by mr_bill
(Post 17081500)
Going through old files - found this:
... -mr. bill |
Originally Posted by I-Like-To-Bike
(Post 17081765)
Didn't see a word that addressed helmet performance specifications or helmet protective capabilities/limitations. Was any safety related information listed on some other helmet documentation provided to the consumer?
John |
1 Attachment(s)
I loved that helmet! Mine had different graphics and was perhaps the last year they made them.
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=402676 Photo circa 1988 For bonus points - can anyone ID the SHOES i am wearing? (No peeking at the link until you give up!) Chainrings are Shimano Biopace BTW.
Originally Posted by mr_bill
(Post 17081500)
Going through old files - found this:
http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h1...8.png~original http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h1...a.png~original -mr. bill |
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