For those of you who don't wear a helmet, have you ever hit your head in an accident?

[N_C]

For those of you here who do not wear a helmet while riding, have you ever hit your head when you have had an accident? If you have please share the details with us. And tell us whether or not you now wear a helmet after the accident. If you still do not wear one, please tell us why.

[blackDoggy]

I wear helmet only when participating in competitions where it's required by the rules. I have never hit my head when cycling in any conditions, perhaps this is the main reason why I still don't use helmet every day. I do ride a lot in winter, with all snow, ice, etc. The other reason is that helmets are not very popular in my country, and one may risk looking like a dork when using one.

[nova]

Sence starting road biking ive always worn a helmet well nearly so. See to ride with the local bike shop it was a requirement. So i bought a cheapy from kmart for 19 bucks back then and been wearing ever sence. Now i use to ride and jump bmxes helmetless. I had 2 or 3 crashes i can remember where i smacked my head on the ground after a wipe out. I also think i was knocked out once on my mountain bike with no helmet. I hit a rut in the ground was flipped around 180. I only know what happened because i was turned around 180 and seen my friend heading at me at a fair clip and my tire was torn off the rim by the root in question. (damn thoose were soem great rims on that old bianci)

After the crash on the mtb i started useing a helmet when ever i was hitting it hard on the trail. I had a old dirtbike helmet i used.

[nova]

I dont know if its realy safe to ride helmetless any where realy. Maybe for kids who are only allowed to ride in their flat yards and thats a very very small maybe. Thing is you should make your kids use them even then. That way it becoms a habit and they will grab theirs on the way out the door.

Its no diffrent that me with my geber mini combat folder. Every noght i take it off my side and put on my table by my bed. Every morning i pick it up and put it back on my side. Habbits are hard to break and in the case of my knife can get me in a eee bit of trouble sometimes. Whent with a friend to court once over a bs ticket and hear beeeep at the metal detector. In the case of a helmet it can save you loads of trouble.

Sorry for the semi OT post but it is related and maybe some parent will ge their yard only 6 year old a helmet and build the habbit after reading.

[H20.1]

For those of you here who do not wear a helmet while riding, have you ever hit your head when you have had an accident? If you have please share the details with us. And tell us whether or not you now wear a helmet after the accident. If you still do not wear one, please tell us why.

Ive not hit my head since I was a kid riding on half-pipes on my BMX bike.

As a roadie of many years I dont wear a helmet unless riding in areas with lots of long downhill sweepers where I will be seeing regular high speeds. Even then, I realize wearing a helmet will provide me with very little real protection.

I think proper safety on a bike is far more important than strapping a foam hat on. Cycling is not an inherently dangerous activity, but like anything can be made dangerous depending on how it is approached. Ive lived in both Europe and the US, and it disturbs me to see the amount of paranoia being stirred up by the helmet lobby on this side of the pond.

[Laika]

Ironically, it was the two times I went over the bars w/o wearing a hat that made me start wearing one...I figured I'd about used up all my luck.

Both times, I guess my body just went into some kind of instinctive tuck and roll thing... the first time, especially, I can't figure how I didn't hit my head on something.

Since I've started wearing a hat, I've had one pretty minor spill & didn't feel any impact or see any marks on the helmet afterwards, but I'm gonna keep wearing it.

[SpokesInMyPoop]

funny... sometimes I don't wear a helmet, but I do most of the time.

I just had an accident last week where my head made full contact with the side panel of a brand new ford excursion.

I think I would've gotten a concussion had I not been wearing one :B

[genec]

Yes, before helmets were popular, I was in a crash that put my face hard onto the hood of a car. The ensueing 2 week headache have made me a firm believer of helmets.

[Simplebiker]

When I was a kid growing, I never wore a helmet, never thought about a helmet. Helmets just weren't on my radar. Neither did my parents seem to think about helmets. Not that they did everything correctly. (They use to let us kids ride in the back of the pickup truck, as did many others in that area at that time). But I don't think they were ever intentionally negligent.

Now I must admit that most of my riding as a child was in the yard on grass. But also of note is that I never had training wheels. My dad got me a nice skyway frame bought components. I helped him a little as he built it up. Then at 7 years of age, he gave it to me and just expected me to learn how to ride it. So I did, falling down many times, of course. I don't remember ever hitting my head. I scraped, arms, knees quite a bit, poked myself in the stomach once with the handle bars, probably while trying to jump off a ramp. Never had a helmet. However, once when my dad took me and my sisters to ride downtown Memphis, I rode across a street without looking, probably ran the light, my dad really yelled at me then. Perhaps that is part of the reason why I think helmets are of a much lower priority that just behaving in a manner to avoid accidents.

When I bought my first bike as an adult, I wore my helmet all the time. I even turned around to go back and get my helmet one time when I forgot it before my ride to work. Then sometime over the past year, I got a lot more lenient about it. For most of this summer, I haven't worn one. However, I will probably start wearing it more regularly, at least for my commute and on long weekend rides.

I've had two crashes as an adult. In the first I was wearing the helmet. In the second crash I was not wearing the helmet. In the first, I went over the handlebars and slid on my forearms and elbows and knees and skinned them up pretty bad. In the second, the bike came out from under me to the right and I kind of slid along on my left leg and shoulder on this wet wooden walkway. But I didn't get a splinter and very little skin breakage. In neither crash did I hit my head.

As I said before, I will probably start wearing my helmet more regularly. I am very much aware that there are rare situations where a helmet may save someone's life. However, I wil don't think there is a need to make helmet laws or to try to impose my choice on others. I think on a prioritized list of things one can do to increase their chances of arriving safely, helmets fall near the bottom. I'd say that they rank above knee and elbow pads, even though that's the only thing I've ever hit, but not much else. I see helmet wearing riders doing much more dangerous things everyday.

[pnj]

I can't even count how many times I've hit my head.

[Hal Hardy]

When I was about 7, I was wandering side to side on a residential street when I rolled over a patch of sand. I landed square on my forehead. I had a knot there for a few years, but no headache, blurred vision, etc. Back in those days, even motorcyclists didn't wear helmets. Did the wreck do any brain damage? Hard to say. Maybe I'm the one that was supposed to start Microsoft. :o

I still don't wear one even after a few more minor falls over the decades, because I don't want to. These days I ride a long wheelbase recumbent and head injuries are pretty rare. Arms and legs are the vulnerable parts with these bikes. A set of Joe Rocket leathers would be useful.

[oboeguy]

Uhhh, I don't remember...




I keed, I keed. I wear my helmet 95-99% of the time. I only go without if no helmet is avaible (e.g. renting a bike for a few hours overseas). I've been in crashes enough times with a helmet on but I can't say 100% for certain if it saved me from anything. I will continue to wear my helmet, though, to make sure I never have to know what a serious crash without a helmet is like.

[KrisPistofferson]

I rose mountain bikes all through the nineties like most people in my generation, and was one of the first people I know to wear a helmet. I had a really nasty wreck where I dislocated my shoulder that made me buy one, back when it was still super-dorky to wear one. Since I've taken up road cycling, I've had two wrecks where I've bashed my helmet on the ground. In the one where I cracked a couple ribs and was lucky not to break my collar bone, I KNOW I would've had skull trauma had I not been wearing a helmet that time. They're not heavy, uncomfortable or silly looking if you buy a decent one, so it sort of baffles me when people are vehemently opposed to their use. There's not much you realistically CAN do as a cyclist to protect yourself aside from wear gloves a helmet and keep your eyes on the road, I don't see why someone would want to sabotage what little safety the DO have.

[wheezl]

Hit my head on the street. I have a memory if riding my bike and looking back to merge for my left turn and seeing a car about 100 Yards back. My next memory is the nice lady pulling the oxygen mask off of my face in the ambulance.

I wear a helment now. But I don't preach it.


edit: The Attending Physician at Bellevue Emergency that night was a hottie. (don't worry ladies I didn't shout it while passing her)

[grapetonix]

There's not much you realistically CAN do as a cyclist to protect yourself aside from wear gloves a helmet and keep your eyes on the road, I don't see why someone would want to sabotage what little safety the DO have.

Other important things are keeping the bike well-maintained (I remember seeing a statistic that like 40% of bike accidents over here were due to likely mechanical failure), not going faster than you deem safe, and lastly, not taking too sharp turns.

About the thread - No one of those I know who have crashed with bikes wore helmets (4 people). One got a major concussion and loss of memory when he was riding at close to 50kmh or so down a road and something found its way into his bike's spokes... but seemingly no permanent brain damage (he's just fine nowadays). The other three crashed due to: mech.failure, reckless riding and the third from extreme drunkenness. Noone of those smacked their heads, just more or less gross wounds on arms and legs...

[mlh122]

I wear a helmet for any ride longer than an eighth of a mile. There's been a law here for a while that anyone under 18 must have a helmet, so many of us just keep wearing them after we turn 18.

[bennyk]

Hit my head on the street. I have a memory if riding my bike and looking back to merge for my left turn and seeing a car about 100 Yards back. My next memory is the nice lady pulling the oxygen mask off of my face in the ambulance.

:eek: WOW.

I wear a helmet pretty much always. I crashed once and landed on my chin which smacked my helmet against the ground. It would have been pretty bad if I hadn't been wearing it.

bk

[bike756]

I hit my head pretty hard after a 35mph run in with a car and wasn't wearing a helmet. If I had hit something hard, I could be dead, but I landed in the grass. I wore my helmet 99% of the time. It was in the other 1% that I got hit by a car. I'm never going without it from now on...after my collarbone heals that is.

[ViciousCycle]

Although I almost always wear a helmet, I find that I take less risks when I don't wear a helmet. I didn't have a helmet when I rented a bicycle in Amsterdam, and I did relaxed, low-key cycling the whole time. Trick question: if going without a helmet causes a rider to take less risks, is a helmet a safety feature or an anti-safety feature?

[Splat-NJ]

When I used to MTB I didn't wear a helmet. I used to also ride my mtb helmetless on the roads when I didn't feel like trucking to the trails. Then one day I spilled when a cop car cut me off ( no lights, nuthing) and I musta just missed cracking my peanut open by millimeters. From that day on I wear a helmet. All it takes is ONE TIME.

[fuchikoma]

When I was a kid, my parents started insisting that if I didn't wear my helmet, I couldn't ride. The problem is that as a kid, it was far more dangerous TO wear one.
Without a helmet, I MIGHT fall and hit my head.
With a helmet, I WOULD be hunted down and beaten by gangs of my "peers." I'd even been cordoned off while riding and almost surrounded one time. After that, I told my parents about it, and stated I wouldn't wear it anymore. They didn't believe me, and stated that they would take my bike if I rode without a helmet. So basically, I waited it out and went from about age 12-18 without a bike.

When I turned 18 I started riding again, and as time went on, I noticed I didn't find nearly as much trouble as an adult. Now I'm 24 and just got a new bike, and decided to get a new helmet (Bell Furio) to go with it since I was unused to a properly adjusted bike, and was now moving 3x the speed I used to with <1/2 the traction.

I'd never hit my head in an accident, but I figure it's easy insurance to strap one on, and with these modern designs, the airflow is better than riding without one!

Incidentally, I always wear gloves now too, but unlike the helmet, almost EVERY crash I've been in has skinned my hands and arms...