Advocacy & Safety - Used my Helmet

HI,
Clipped a mirror on a parked truck trying not to bump a group rider , did a flip landed on my ARS, and must have hit my head (I don't remember hitting the ground). I put my bike back on the road and survyed the damage, My head didn't hurt but my back side was stinging. So I decided to head home, I then had 48 hours of explicit pain in my hips, and my groin muscles. I checked my bike closely the next day, its fine except for the air pump mount was broken off.
I then went over my clothes no rips or tears. whew 100 buck riding pants with the scorpion design.
And finally my helmet, as I looked it over it was intact except for a major split in the foam the entire center section was spit in two. I decided the helmet was a good idea in the future, its was a freak accident but that seems to happen alot lately..
I bought a new helmet this time the Atas a bigger helmet my LBS reccomended for my fat head.
Doug.
You can say helmets cramp your style, but I believe mine saved my head.:twitchy:

You were very lucky.
Roy got hit by a truck mirror.
Three weeks in the hospital.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh187/10wheels/30000.jpg

Glad you're ok. Using your what's inside the helmet is the best way to avoid using the helmet itself...

Actually, a cracked helmet doesn't indicate that it did anything. Now if the foam were actually compressed around the impact area, that would suggest that shock absorption occured. But a crack? Naw. My baby girl can crack styrofoam, doesn't take much force at all.

This is why I don't ride next to parked vehicles. Next time hit the fred.

I used to hit my head when I fell off. Then I stopped using a helmet and now it doesn't happen. I'm also confident that should I hit it, my head is better designed to protect my brains, by centuries of evolution, than a styrofoam hat designed by a motorbike helmet companies marketing department a few years ago.

But for sure, the helmet in that instance protected you from a graze, a bruise and some swelling.

This is why I don't ride next to parked vehicles. Next time hit the fred.

+1 - execute your panic maneuver strategy to collide with moving objects before considering static objects.

-Kurt

Thanks for the post, Doug. Don't that the anti-helmet posts personally. They are not responding to you, just fighting old battles.

Thanks for the post, Doug. Don't that the anti-helmet posts personally. They are not responding to you, just fighting old battles.

I think what they were really saying was that the group forced him in too close so that he needed the helmet that he always wears. I don't think he'd be that close if he was by himself.

Thanks for the post, Doug. Don't that the anti-helmet posts personally. They are not responding to you, just fighting old battles.
Not an old battle, or a battle at all. Just a pet peeve when someone walks away from a possibly avoidable accident with the lesson, "so always wear your helmet", and doesn't give us any idea about how to avoid to avoid a similar accident

I like to learn from other people, including how to avoid mistakes. Saying that a helmet might prevent a bump is not particularly enlightening. Telling us what mistake a person made, or how they would have acted differently to avoid an accident could be very useful information.

hmm, why were you so close to a parked car is the better question, not why your helmet is cracked. It's kindof like the guy here who dropped his chain and landed I think it was 5 riders into the hospital with various injuries. Use your brain when you are thinking about your next move.

A cracked helmet is a helmet that failed. At best, it only partially protected you. For my money, though, partial protection is better than none. I'm glad you're ok.

One day I'm gonna build that helmet I've been designing in my head - one that'll actually absorb impacts instead of cracking.

So what lesson did you come away from this incident with?

Just a pet peeve when someone walks away from a possibly avoidable accident with the lesson, "so always wear your helmet"...

and what in the original post sounded even remotely like that? man, you anti-helmet people are as bad as the mandatory helmet when it comes to misrepresenting things.

and what in the original post sounded even remotely like that? man, you anti-helmet people are as bad as the mandatory helmet when it comes to misrepresenting things.

1.
You can say helmets cramp your style, but I believe mine saved my head.2. No mention about how to avoid the accident.

You're misrepresenting me ("you people"???) as being anti-helmet. That's completely not true*. I'm just not in favor of advocating helmets, while neglecting discussion of safe behavior. My complaint is, and has always been, that we have a perfectly good living example that we can discuss to learn some bicycle safety tips, and the OP has just fobbed off a "good thing I wore my helmet" on us.

Of how much use is it to read 100 posts about someone who bumped their head, but was wearing a helmet? It's not new information to say that if you bump your head while wearing a helmet, the helmet may indeed absorb some of that shock.

In few of these posts have I ever seen more than passing mention of the behavior that led to the action. And I've yet to see one where the OP wrote anything about what to do to avoid the accident at all, or opened up discussion for some safety tips. If someone did, and also added a pro-helmet statement on top of it, you wouldn't hear a peep out of me.

If you went to an advanced driving safety class, and heard example after example about how wearing a seatbelt can save your life, but the teacher passed up every opportunity to talk about safe driving, you'd be right to be pissed. This is a very specific bicycle safety forum, filled with forum nerds, with a huge amount of collective experience. To say that a helmet might have absorbed some shock when someone hit their head is not enlightening. To hear it repeatedly is annoying.

*You'll notice that I haven't in any place in any of my posts - including this one - debated the value of a helmet one way or the other. I don't care. I'm not starting a debate on that, and I'm not anti-helmet. You're just trying to turn this into an anti-helmet pro-helmet standoff. But that's a red herring.

So, again, here's the deal: anyone can make any posts saying how they think helmets are a good idea, etc., and as long as they don't make extravagant claims I'm not going to nitpick. But if you're going to post a personal accident report, I'm going to want to discuss the details of the accident and possible ways to avoid it (unless of course, there's some special need for sensitivity around the accident). That is completely fair, I think, for a bicycle safety forum. If he doesn't want discussion, he can go start a blog and turn off comments.

bzz bzz.. I'm just not in favor of advocating helmets, while neglecting discussion of safe behavior.... bzz bzz bzz...

now that i can get behind.