Clydesdales/Athenas (200+ lb / 91+ kg) - Do all you guys wear helmets?

Just a comment to the 1995 CDC website. The conclusions on the CDC website Six Jours did link to (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00036941.htm), are all directly or indirectly derived from the same mind-boggling paper that is always quoted by helmet advocates (Thompson, Rivera, et al. 1989). This paper is pretty embarrassing for a medical journal as it is full logical fallacies - the applied case-control study method is simply completely useless for such a study. People quoting this paper nowadays have either never read it, do not understand it, or intend to be misleading.
Many people have dissected this paper; one link out of many is:
http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/advocacy/mhls.htm

The only thing that the Thompson study shows is: there is a wide spectrum of human behavior (surprise ?). Some people are extremely health/safety conscious and show up with minor injuries in hospitals seven times more often than the population average. The same spectrum of people tends to have better health insurance coverage than average and they are far more likely than the average person to wear a bike helmet. Cherry picking data from such information can show whatever one wants - wearing a bike helmet increases your risk for leg injuries, for example.

huh, thats really counterintuitive.
i wonder if there are any studies that have measured average speed increase due to lighter bikes and better components. maybe mountain bikers getting more aggro due to suspension advances.

arguments for the ages, its time for more painkillers and a couple concerts.

Mountain biking IS more dangerous, downhill more dangerous still, BMX and trick riding even more so, yet these "extreme" parts of cycling are where helmet use is highest. The fact that 40 somethings break rather then bounce or bounce back, are why I gave up mountain biking and returned to the road. The road where I think it's actually starting to get safer. More bike lanes, paved trails and signed bike routes make it safer, huge advances in bike lighting and more retroreflective materials being used make it easier to be seen. More riders make it safer.

There are no breakdowns in injury data by ride type, injury type or injury severity. So if your chances of getting injured on one type of ride are twice as high as on another that skews the injury numbers for both.

huh, thats really counterintuitive.
i wonder if there are any studies that have measured average speed increase due to lighter bikes and better components. maybe mountain bikers getting more aggro due to suspension advances.


My intuition has always been that putting a few ounces of styrofoam on your head doesn't accomplish much. I'm sure it's safer than nothing, but I wonder at the attitude of "helmet=safe" that is so pervasive these days. The Bicycle Institute link argues the possibility that such thinking actually increases the likelihood of serious accidents.

Regardless, one of the difficulties with the statistics is that they rarely if ever differentiate between types of cyclists. That is to say, the guy who commutes to his job on a busy highway is different from the 8 year old riding in the park, who is in turn different from the adult recreational cyclist putting in miles on the weekends.

For my money, the Tour de France is actually one of the better "laboratories" for helmet evaluation. That situation more closely mimics that of the adult recreational cyclist: relatively high speeds on performance bicycles in a variety of conditions. The only thing not present is high velocity impacts from motor vehicles, and IMO anyone expecting his styrofoam hat to save him in that scenario is a hopeless optimist.

At any rate, if we look at the Tour we see thousands of cyclists collectively riding millions of miles, and A) almost never dying from head injuries and B) that negligible rate being apparently unaffected by the presence or lack of helmets. Also worth noting that the average speed in the Tour has risen something like 2-3 MPH since the 1950s, despite the race becoming ever shorter. We tend to think of modern bikes of being miles ahead of the bikes of a few decades ago, but realistically it hasn't made much difference at all.

Generally speaking, I don't care whether folks wear their helmets or not and don't consider it my business. I just don't care for the proselytizers and don't buy into the dogma.

Oh, and as to mountain biking? Were I to suddenly be struck with the desire to fall off cliffs while strapped to a bicycle, I would absolutely wear a helmet: one of the heavy full-face models that is doubtless quite protective. I would also want a neck brace and body armor. That all makes plenty of sense to me, being as it is such a high-risk activity. But it would obviously be kind of silly to get decked out in that get-up for a trip down to the market, as I'm sure even the most die-hard safety advocate would agree.

And that's kind of my point: nobody has a problem with a responsible adult cyclists making those decisions about how much gear to wear for different scenarios -- right up to the point that he decides a particular circumstance doesn't merit a standard bicycle helmet. And suddenly our responsible adult cyclist is being called an organ donor, Darwin candidate, etc., etc.

Oh, and as to mountain biking? Were I to suddenly be struck with the desire to fall off cliffs while strapped to a bicycle, I would absolutely wear a helmet: one of the heavy full-face models that is doubtless quite protective. I would also want a neck brace and body armor. That all makes plenty of sense to me, being as it is such a high-risk activity. But it would obviously be kind of silly to get decked out in that get-up for a trip down to the market, as I'm sure even the most die-hard safety advocate would agree.

And that's kind of my point: nobody has a problem with a responsible adult cyclists making those decisions about how much gear to wear for different scenarios -- right up to the point that he decides a particular circumstance doesn't merit a standard bicycle helmet. And suddenly our responsible adult cyclist is being called an organ donor, Darwin candidate, etc., etc.

I did a little informal survey out on the MUP's on Saturday morning. The weather was nearly perfect and serious cyclists were out early, and out in force. Here's what I saw:

Almost all cyclists who rode in groups of two or more wore helmets. It was rare to see a "pack rider" without the hard hat, the only one that really stuck out was a teenaged boy, 15 or 16, who was riding with what appeared to be his family, Mom, dad, bros, and sisters. (M, D & sibs were all wearing their caps).

Also wearing helmets were those who rode racing-type bikes: drop bars, sleek frames, carrying minimal bags, wearing bike shorts, shirts and clipless shoes. From what I could tell everyone of these guys/gals wore their helmets. The only exception was a pair of very attractive young ladies, but they were more on a mission to be seen than to be on a serious ride.

People who typically were not wearing helmets were those who were on the slower bikes. And, even then it broke down to age groups, where those who were under 50 wore no helmet, while those over 50, did. Also, the folks I saw on tandom bikes all wore helmets.