Clydesdales/Athenas (200+ lb / 91+ kg) - Ban Bike Helmets!

Sorry if this has been posted before, but this definitely gets a "Right on, mother****er!" from me: :D

http://adrianshort.co.uk/2009/08/24/456/

And yes, there is clyde specific commentary.

THAT is absolutely freaking hilarious!:thumb:

Why did I take so much of it personally?!?!:o

MM

It's a little difficult to know how to properly respond to this thought-provoking article.

The article basically bemoans the demise of the bicycle as a means of general transportation in the UK. That is a fair comment. Chaps like my uncle rode bikes to work by day and to the pub by night all their lives, and undoubtedly maintained those machines in their garden sheds, but were by no means bike enthusiasts. They were as keen on their bike as they were on their lawnmower - it was a machine that made your life easier (but that's all it was). If you couldn't afford a car and didn't live near the bus line, bike ownership was the only way to go.

When I first went to university in the very early 1990s, bike ownership was rife amongst the undergraduate body and hardly anyone owned a car. I was slightly unusual in that I had a good bike for weekend touring, and a lousy old Raleigh Arena racer for cycling to classes. In fact, the more beat-up or knackered your everyday bike looked, the cooler you were. When I returned to that same university in the early 2000s to work as an adjunct, I asked my class on our first meeting if there were any problems they wished to raise with me. Hands immediately pointed towards the ceiling...big, universal problem amongst the student body: "Where can I park my car on campus??"

So I think the article is correct. Cycling in the UK is becoming limited to "serious" cyclists.

But where it falls down is this...Although most major British cities have bicycle lanes, you are still at the mercy of motorists. You think a motorist isn't going to sneak into the cycle lane to squeeze by another car in the hope of pulling off a swifter left-turn in the midst of the morning rush hour? Wearing a helmet doesn't typify you as an over-accessorized amateur cyclist. Instead, it does typify you as someone who wants to stay alive, when jockeying for road space alongside some moron who is attempting to drive a car, apply lipstick / have a shave (depending on motorist gender), tune a radio, drink coffee, and send a text-message simultaneously.

Why did I take so much of it personally?!?!:o

No kidding. In a couple hours I'll be donning my helmet, spandex, and hi-viz yellow shirt on a fat body that I showered after my ride in this morning, then hopping on my expensive, well-researched, highly accessorized bicycle (with yellow fenders for extra visibility). I will most likely hammer for a goodly portion of the ride as part of my training plan for a race this weekend.

I'm totally inspired by this guy though, so I'm leaving the GPS at the office.















(I'll probably freak out about not going fast enough and think my race this weekend will be ruined. :lol:)

He makes some good points, mixed with a lot of retro-grouch ranting and misplaced animosity. Why single out helmets? Do requirements that cars be equipped with seatbelts and headlights stop people from driving?

Hopefully I am missing some sort of sarcasm in this post and article? I have hit the pavement hard twice. Once a few years ago on my Hayabusa due to being cut of by a guy in a moving truck who was on the cell phone( left me with TBI-frontal lobe damage, brain stem damage, 2 Ti plates...) and once last year on my Sunday ride on my fixed gear (tag by an idiot in a van....) Had I not had a quality helmet on for the motorcyle crash I would not be typing this now. Had I not had a quality helmet on for the bicycle crash, probably the same could be said as I hit the pavement with the point of impact being the exact same place as one of my plates. The helmet took the brunt of the impact as the cracked and crushed foam will attest to... and I live to function and ride another day....

Maybe its just my TBI talking, but I am thinking maybe a ban on idiotic, mis-informed non-sense drivel ? Instead of proposing making things LESS safe for the cyclist, why not put that energy into making things safer for cyclist. Ban on helmets to get more people to ride? Are you serious?

Instead of proposing making things LESS safe for the cyclist, why not put that energy into making things safer for cyclist. Ban on helmets to get more people to ride? Are you serious?

As someone else who once had his life saved by a £20 cycle helmet, I have to say I agree with you. The article is funny and interesting, but singling out helmets as a symptom of extraneous gear ownership is about as useful as criticizing cyclists for owning lights...

Hopefully I am missing some sort of sarcasm in this post and article?

I'd say so...

Sheesh people....

You're illustrating this guy's point entirely.

I'd say so...

Sheesh people....

You're illustrating this guy's point entirely.

well I am glad I missed the sarcasm lol, .... i was sort of looking forward to reading the next article about banning brakes (another safety item as useless as helmets) as just being another item we use to accessorize our bikes with to discourage common people from riding :lol:

well I am glad I missed the sarcasm lol, .... i was sort of looking forward to reading the next article about banning brakes (another safety item as useless as helmets) as just being another item we use to accessorize our bikes with to discourage common people from riding :lol:

Oh yeah, definitely gotta ban them fancy disc brakes. If anything encourages me to go really fast (and need a helmet)...

:D

MOST people will miss the sarcasm.

Freedom of speech aside, there's a train of thought that speech ought to be self-censored -- in other words, say something worthwhile instead of just blabbering on!

Someone should have told this clown that.

Opinions are like a**holes -- everyone has one, most of them stink.

No kidding. In a couple hours I'll be donning my helmet, spandex, and hi-viz yellow shirt on a fat body that I showered after my ride in this morning, then hopping on my expensive, well-researched, highly accessorized bicycle (with yellow fenders for extra visibility). I will most likely hammer for a goodly portion of the ride as part of my training plan for a race this weekend.

I'm totally inspired by this guy though, so I'm leaving the GPS at the office.

(I'll probably freak out about not going fast enough and think my race this weekend will be ruined. :lol:)

But I just got my GPS YESTERDAY! I have to see if I can shave a few seconds off of my 3.1 mile commute!!! Maybe I need some carbon wheels!

MM...off to shop online for the next upgrade........

Plant tongue firmly in cheek.

I loved it!

My prescription pain medicated mind read it as an off handed swipe at those that detest bicycles on the road.

He has a nice listing of folks who "should not" ride, accompanied with reasons that are properly facetious. If you can't ban riders, then the next best thing to do is make bike riders extinct by banning helmets.

Then again, I could be wrong since I'm living my signature line right now.

But I just got my GPS YESTERDAY! I have to see if I can shave a few seconds off of my 3.1 mile commute!!! Maybe I need some carbon wheels!

MM...off to shop online for the next upgrade........

Don't laugh, I live and ride in the middle of a huge national forest west of Glacier National Park (2.2 million acres) and I rely on GPS. The forest canopy here is so thick you rarely see anything but trees so you have trouble getting your bearings at time. I have a Mio C320 running Mio Pocket; this enables me to run Ozi Explorer CE, which is a great offroad GPS program. I've imported all the USGS topo maps for this forest into my 16GB memory card since those maps seem to have the best and most updated data on forest roads. if I want to ride the main roads, I can also run Mio's program and have the GPS unit read directions to me since I have text-to-speech enabled and a handlebar mount for my GPS unit.

This is the standard view you get on most of the forest roads here--trees, trees and more trees. Yes, you can't see the forest for the trees.

http://pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL442/7447283/14154973/371266473.jpg

My prescription pain medicated mind read it as an off handed swipe at those that detest bicycles on the road.

He has a nice listing of folks who "should not" ride, accompanied with reasons that are properly facetious. If you can't ban riders, then the next best thing to do is make bike riders extinct by banning helmets.



:thumb:

:thumb:

I'm not sure if I'm relieved or I if I need more drugs:D

I don't want to give up my skid lid, but riding without one feels so right.

As someone else who once had his life saved by a £20 cycle helmet


I doubt it. Cycle helmets are good at absorbing trivial knocks, but useless at absorbing the energy of a blow that stands a "good" chance of being fatal:



http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1016.html

What is the balance of advantage?

If wearing a helmet is the difference between you having the confidence to cycle (or to cycle more) or not, you should wear one! The health benefits of cycling outweigh greatly any negative consequences of helmet use.

On the other hand, if wearing a helmet makes it likely that you will cycle less, then the balance of advantage is cycling without a helmet.

If helmet wearing is unlikely to affect the amount you cycle, you may like to consider the following. Interpretation of the data can be controversial, but examination of the wider evidence from places where helmet use has become significant suggests that the following are reasonable conclusions:

* If worn correctly, a cycle helmet may afford some protection against minor, largely superficial, injuries to the head.
* A helmet is unlikely to offer protection against more serious or life-threatening injuries.
* You are more likely to hit your head in a crash if you wear a helmet.
You may be more likely to crash in the first place, particularly if a helmet makes you feel better protected.
* A helmet may increase the very small risk of the most serious brain injuries that lead to death and chronic intellectual disability.


The truth is that the overwhelming number of cyclists who get hit by cars survive. Ascribing survival to wearing a helmet makes as much sense as claiming that you weren't eaten by the bogeyman because you kissed your teddy bear before going to bed. Yes, you kissed the teddy bear and you're still here, but...

Hopefully I am missing some sort of sarcasm in this post and article? I have hit the pavement hard twice. Once a few years ago on my Hayabusa due to being cut of by a guy in a moving truck who was on the cell phone( left me with TBI-frontal lobe damage, brain stem damage, 2 Ti plates...) and once last year on my Sunday ride on my fixed gear (tag by an idiot in a van....) Had I not had a quality helmet on for the motorcyle crash I would not be typing this now.


That's probably true - because statistics and crash tests show that motorcycle helmets work reasonably well.



Had I not had a quality helmet on for the bicycle crash, probably the same could be said as I hit the pavement with the point of impact being the exact same place as one of my plates. The helmet took the brunt of the impact as the cracked and crushed foam will attest to... and I live to function and ride another day....


Ahem - from Europe's leading cycling helmet test engineer and forensic witness in cycling helmet cases:



http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1019.html

A helmet is a fragile piece of equipment. On seeing a damaged one, it is easy to assume that a serious injury has been prevented. Cycle helmets split very readily, and often at forces much lower than those that would lead to serious head injury. Helmets work by absorbing impact energy through the crushing of an expanded polystyrene liner. Once compressed the liner stays compressed. It does not bounce back to its original form like reusable helmets for some other activities. If a helmet splits before the liner has partially or fully compressed - and this is often the case - then it has simply failed. It will not have provided the designed protection and may in fact have absorbed very little energy at all.

If a helmet splits after fully compressing, it will have reduced initial forces to the head, but thereafter it will afford no further protection and any residual energy will be transmitted to the brain. Cycle helmets fail catastrophically, not gradually, so it is a mistake to believe that they provide useful, if reduced, protection at higher velocities. In high impact crashes, such as most that involve motor vehicles or fixed vertical objects like concrete barriers and lamp posts, the forces are so great that a helmet will compress and break in around 1/1000th of a second. The absorption of the initial forces during this very short period of time is unlikely to make a significant difference to the likelihood of serious injury or death.

Helmets provide some protection when there is only partial compression of the liner and they may work better if in addition there is no split or breakage. This is most likely to be the case in crashes that result from low-speed falls without any third party involvement and where, without a helmet, injury would be relatively minor. If the liner suffered no compression, the helmet almost certainly played no role in preventing injury and without the helmet there would have been no injury of consequence anyway.


And -



Maybe its just my TBI talking, but I am thinking maybe a ban on idiotic, mis-informed non-sense drivel ?


Like people who don't know the basic facts about helmets posting on this issue?
Please.



Instead of proposing making things LESS safe for the cyclist, why not put that energy into making things safer for cyclist. Ban on helmets to get more people to ride? Are you serious?

Every country with a mandatory helmet law has seen a collapse in bike use - and serious accident rates per rider have shot up. Partly a psychological problem known as accident compensation, but mostly because of a safety in numbers effect.

The problem here is that you and Leicester assume that the first thing that seems sensible to you, as utterly uninformed individuals, has to be true. The universe doesn't work this way. The belief that it does is known as "stupidity".

Next time, do some research - especially if you have a special reason to need a decent helmet, because at the moment it's obvious you don't have the knowledge to buy one (which is actually quite tricky).

I doubt it. Cycle helmets are good at absorbing trivial knocks, but useless at absorbing the energy of a blow that stands a "good" chance of being fatal:



The truth is that the overwhelming number of cyclists who get hit by cars survive. Ascribing survival to wearing a helmet makes as much sense as claiming that you weren't eaten by the bogeyman because you kissed your teddy bear before going to bed. Yes, you kissed the teddy bear and you're still here, but...

Ascribing little or no head trauma to the wearing of a helmet does make sense tho... I have my damaged helmet hanging next to my bike gear as a reminder to wear a helmet each and every time I go out. Had I not had a helmet on when my head hit the pavement at speed, well i probably wouldn't be able to comprehend the need for a helmet anymore...

That's probably true - because statistics and crash tests show that motorcycle helmets work reasonably well.



Ahem - from Europe's leading cycling helmet test engineer and forensic witness in cycling helmet cases:



And -



Like people who don't know the basic facts about helmets posting on this issue?
Please.



Every country with a mandatory helmet law has seen a collapse in bike use - and serious accident rates per rider have shot up. Partly a psychological problem known as accident compensation, but mostly because of a safety in numbers effect.

The problem here is that you and Leicester assume that the first thing that seems sensible to you, as utterly uninformed individuals, has to be true. The universe doesn't work this way. The belief that it does is known as "stupidity".

Next time, do some research - especially if you have a special reason to need a decent helmet, because at the moment it's obvious you don't have the knowledge to buy one (which is actually quite tricky).

my research has come in the form of first hand EXPERIENCE....Read all you want, quote all you want, when your head is smacking the tarmac, I am sure your statistics will soften the impact. A few years ago after I came out of my coma from my cycle accident, I was told I would not walk again let alone ride a bike. And yet I am. So I choose to have all of the chances at protecting my brain I can when I am riding... Guess I just got "lucky" with the purchase of a decent helmet, since I haven't the knowledge to buy one on my own (where are all of the smart people like you when I need them), you know for my "special reason" to need a decent helmet (which I call self-preservation, but that's just me - i am just odd that way...).

There has always been two camps of thought on the helmet issue. I have spent too much of my life racing motorcycles, cars, and bicycles and had my noggin saved by a bucket too many times to not wear one.

Those who argue against them are entitled to their own opinions and free to act accordingly. In the end I figure Darwin will sort it all out, but I hope those who claim a cycling helmet is of little value are never in a position to have to prove their theory.

Oh yea. In before the move to A&S:thumb:

There has always been two camps of thought on the helmet issue. I have spent too much of my life racing motorcycles, cars, and bicycles and had my noggin saved by a bucket too many times to not wear one.

Those who argue against them are entitled to their own opinions and free to act accordingly. In the end I figure Darwin will sort it all out, but I hope those who claim a cycling helmet is of little value are never in a position to have to prove their theory.

:thumb: Your pharmaceutical's are makin' sense to me :D

I wanted to read the whole thing but I had to go get my hair streaked.

Buncha *******.

I wanted to read the whole thing but I had to go get my hair streaked.

Buncha *******.


Wanna borrow some pain pills? It makes it easier to read, apparently.

:thumb: Your pharmaceutical's are makin' sense to me :D

Perhaps you should lay down until it passes.:p

There has always been two camps of thought on the helmet issue. I have spent too much of my life racing motorcycles, cars, and bicycles and had my noggin saved by a bucket too many times to not wear one.

Those who argue against them are entitled to their own opinions and free to act accordingly. In the end I figure Darwin will sort it all out, but I hope those who claim a cycling helmet is of little value are never in a position to have to prove their theory.

There are actually three camps:

1) Those who think that the smart politicians need to make sensible decisions for the stupid citizenry, by making helmets mandatory for riders.

2) Those who wear helmets, who think everyone should wear helmets, but thinks the state needs to stay out of it and let individual riders make up their own mind.

3)Those who think helmets are for sissies and pantywaists and believe that real men should not wear helmets and that crashes and injuries happen to other people.

I fall into the second camp myself. Nobody has done the kind of crash testing to determine that helmets are effective in preventing injuries, so making the use of an unproven technology mandatory is improper use of government law making power.

Even though most doctors will say that the helmet saved a persons life, nobody really knows for sure. The only way to know for sure is to repeat the crash with and with out, and look at the difference in injuries. We do know, from car crash testing that certain amounts of force will cause a certain amount of injury, so we really need a crash test dummy that can ride a bicycle, then put that dummy through a variety of crashes to determine the injury rates with and without a helmet. Now it gets better, the same crash scenario on a mountain bike, a hybrid, a touring bike and a racing bike will all have different potential injury forces. You will probably find that in some crashes, helmets are very effective, in some they are partly effective, and in some, the helmet has no effect. Now given that data, out of 1,000,000,000 miles how many crashes occur where the helmet is effective versus ineffective.

Where this kind of testing would be helpful is that lawmakers could then use it determine whether helmets should be law or not. It would also be helpful to helmet manufacturers in designing better helmets that are effective in more crashes.

.......... so we really need a crash test dummy that can ride a bicycle, then put that dummy through a variety of crashes to determine the injury rates with and without a helmet.......

I think you are going to have a really hard time talking Jtgyk and me into this little experiment.:innocent:

The man does not hate helmets. He seems to have no opinion about whether they do the job or not. The helmet is a metaphor for crass consumerism, materialism, and conformity. Read the last paragraph again.
Sort of hard to believe the thread went off in a pro/con helmet direction. And it included some of the worst anti-helmet reasoning I have ever read.

By the article's reasoning we could make cars much safer by eliminating seat belts & air bags and affix a long sharpened spike on the steering wheel facing the driver.



2) Those who wear helmets, who think everyone should wear helmets, but thinks the state needs to stay out of it and let individual riders make up their own mind.

My sentiments exactly! (and phrased much less lousily. More Gooder?)


3)Those who think helmets are for sissies and pantywaists and believe that real men should not wear helmets and that crashes and injuries happen to other people.




I think you are going to have a really hard time talking Jtgyk and me into this little experiment.:innocent:

What Txvintage says!

(and leave my panties out of it....




.....we've discussed this before....






........ it's a comfort thing............





.............and they make me feel pretty):innocent::roflmao2:

I doubt it. Cycle helmets are good at absorbing trivial knocks, but useless at absorbing the energy of a blow that stands a "good" chance of being fatal:

Ascribing survival to wearing a helmet makes as much sense as claiming that you weren't eaten by the bogeyman because you kissed your teddy bear before going to bed. Yes, you kissed the teddy bear and you're still here, but...

I freely admit that I'm ignorant on this subject, and don't have your level of knowledge or expertise.

My only first hand experience is "coming-round" surrounded by two paramedics. On the way to hospital one of them pointed to the 5 inch crack in my cycle helmet right over the temple, and she expressed the opinion that without the helmet I'd have been making the trip in a body-bag.

Of course, maybe she was labouring under false delusions concerning the value of cycle helmets also.

Before I got back on my bike, I decided for some reason that helmets were worth spending money on...and bought something better than the £20 cheapie I'd been wearing at the time of my crash (a policy I've maintained).

I'm not convinced that helmets are akin to talismanic Teddy Bears (as per your analogy), but neither do I try and put myself in positions that deliberately test their mettle (in other words, I don't think of them as an invincibility shield!)

As one of the posters to the original story noted: "I've bounced my head off a kerbstone with and without a helmet, and I vastly prefer with." In some situations, anecdotal evidence can be more convincing than empirical research...

There are actually three camps:

1) Those who think that the smart politicians need to make sensible decisions for the stupid citizenry, by making helmets mandatory for riders.

2) Those who wear helmets, who think everyone should wear helmets, but thinks the state needs to stay out of it and let individual riders make up their own mind.

3)Those who think helmets are for sissies and pantywaists and believe that real men should not wear helmets and that crashes and injuries happen to other people.

I fall into the second camp myself. Nobody has done the kind of crash testing to determine that helmets are effective in preventing injuries, so making the use of an unproven technology mandatory is improper use of government law making power.

Even though most doctors will say that the helmet saved a persons life, nobody really knows for sure. The only way to know for sure is to repeat the crash with and with out, and look at the difference in injuries. We do know, from car crash testing that certain amounts of force will cause a certain amount of injury, so we really need a crash test dummy that can ride a bicycle, then put that dummy through a variety of crashes to determine the injury rates with and without a helmet. Now it gets better, the same crash scenario on a mountain bike, a hybrid, a touring bike and a racing bike will all have different potential injury forces. You will probably find that in some crashes, helmets are very effective, in some they are partly effective, and in some, the helmet has no effect. Now given that data, out of 1,000,000,000 miles how many crashes occur where the helmet is effective versus ineffective.

Where this kind of testing would be helpful is that lawmakers could then use it determine whether helmets should be law or not. It would also be helpful to helmet manufacturers in designing better helmets that are effective in more crashes.

#2 here, although, I couldn't care less who else does or doesn't wear a helmet.

Don't laugh, I live and ride in the middle of a huge national forest west of Glacier National Park (2.2 million acres) and I rely on GPS. The forest canopy here is so thick you rarely see anything but trees so you have trouble getting your bearings at time. I have a Mio C320 running Mio Pocket; this enables me to run Ozi Explorer CE, which is a great offroad GPS program. I've imported all the USGS topo maps for this forest into my 16GB memory card since those maps seem to have the best and most updated data on forest roads. if I want to ride the main roads, I can also run Mio's program and have the GPS unit read directions to me since I have text-to-speech enabled and a handlebar mount for my GPS unit.

This is the standard view you get on most of the forest roads here--trees, trees and more trees. Yes, you can't see the forest for the trees.

http://pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL442/7447283/14154973/371266473.jpg

Well I live in an upscale suburb of a major US city, with wide well-marked and lit streets. I do 99% of my riding on these streets or a paved, well marked, straight rail-trail. I ride slowly and for relatively few miles. I have absolutely NO need for a bike-mounted GPS but I bought one anyway:o.

I am clearly a victim of evil scheming marketers who have preyed on all of us for years. They got me again.


surfjimc
The helmet is a metaphor for crass consumerism, materialism, and conformity.


VIOLA! Nail meet head. (though I don't really think of myself as crass :innocent:)

MM...consumerish, materialistic and conformist

I freely admit that I'm ignorant on this subject, and don't have your level of knowledge or expertise.

My only first hand experience is "coming-round" surrounded by two paramedics. On the way to hospital one of them pointed to the 5 inch crack in my cycle helmet right over the temple, and she expressed the opinion that without the helmet I'd have been making the trip in a body-bag.


Believe it or not, paramedics do not get trained in helmet testing laboratories and know no more about the things than you do. They simply make the assumption that a cycle helmet protects approximately as well as other safety systems that we know work - seatbelts, motorcycle helmets, airbags. Unfortunately, this isn't true. I suggest you read the articles on the site I linked. You'll notice that doctors who have studied helmets and impacts refuse to testify that they will reduce the odds of serious injury in UK courts.



Before I got back on my bike, I decided for some reason that helmets were worth spending money on...and bought something better than the £20 cheapie I'd been wearing at the time of my crash (a policy I've maintained).


More expensive helmets are not on average better than cheap ones. In fact, they're often worse - cheap ones tend to be boring and circular, which reduces their ability to increase rotational injuries, which are the ones that tend to leave people dead or in need of someone else to feed them for the rest of their life. Funkier shapes and more protuberances are bad, high certification levels are good. Specialized helmets tend to be certified to higher levels than average.



As one of the posters to the original story noted: "I've bounced my head off a kerbstone with and without a helmet, and I vastly prefer with." In some situations, anecdotal evidence can be more convincing than empirical research...

A helmet - of a good cert level, worn correctly (and these things are rare) - will reduce the odds of minor to moderate injury if your head impacts the tarmac. Unfortunately, the evidence seems to be that you will pay for this benefit by an increased risk of head impact, and even more of the most severe type of injury. This is a trade off and everyone has to make an informed decision.

Promulgating misinformation isn't helpful - for one thing, if people were moderately informed then the helmet makers could be pressured into improving their designs. For another, it is beyond doubt that the perception that cycling is dangerous enough to need a helmet (which it isn't, if you apply a consistent safety standard and don't jog or drive with a helmet) reduces the number of people who cycle.

Read the last paragraph again.


Please, no. Not that. Anything but that. Life is too short to read ill-formed, ill-informed ramblings. That 'article' was dreadfully written.

Maybe I need some carbon wheels!

MM...off to shop online for the next upgrade........

I was at my LBS yesterday, he showed me a set of Lightweight Carbons. Both wheels including Campy SR 11sp cassette weigh less than my Furlcrum 7 FRONT wheel.

VIOLA! Nail meet head.

And causes you to hear oversize violins?

A helmet - of a good cert level, worn correctly (and these things are rare) - will reduce the odds of minor to moderate injury if your head impacts the tarmac. Unfortunately, the evidence seems to be that you will pay for this benefit by an increased risk of head impact, and even more of the most severe type of injury. This is a trade off and everyone has to make an informed decision.

This may be one of the most moronic statements I have ever read. Even much of the evidence presented was flawed or used in a manner of someone tweaking the truth to fit an opinion. There isn't enough time or space here to break down the arguments individually. Helmets worn correctly prevent serious injury. In some instances they cause serious injury, but this is in lue of death. I am living proof, multiple times, as are others who have posted in this thread.
It's similar to this:
At the beginning of WWI, British soldiers wore a cloth cap, but no helmet. Head injuries were high, so they got rid of the hats and went to helmets. To their dismay, head injuries went up. Turns out the helmets were taking head shots that would have killed a soldier and were saving lives but causing head injuries. Hence, less killed, more injured. Which is better?
Air bags in cars led to a huge rise in traumatic leg injuries, but saved lives. Which is preferable?
It is easy to spin data and evidence to fit any situation if you want to make a point.
Wearing a helmet is a personal choice. But I figure Darwinism is validated more often by those without helmets than those with when it comes to a head shot.

All I know is that my helmet has a plastic turtle stuck to the top of it and that's all I'm going to say!!!:innocent:

I freely admit that I'm ignorant on this subject, and don't have your level of knowledge or expertise.

My only first hand experience is "coming-round" surrounded by two paramedics. On the way to hospital one of them pointed to the 5 inch crack in my cycle helmet right over the temple, and she expressed the opinion that without the helmet I'd have been making the trip in a body-bag.

Of course, maybe she was labouring under false delusions concerning the value of cycle helmets also.

Before I got back on my bike, I decided for some reason that helmets were worth spending money on...and bought something better than the £20 cheapie I'd been wearing at the time of my crash (a policy I've maintained).

I'm not convinced that helmets are akin to talismanic Teddy Bears (as per your analogy), but neither do I try and put myself in positions that deliberately test their mettle (in other words, I don't think of them as an invincibility shield!)

As one of the posters to the original story noted: "I've bounced my head off a kerbstone with and without a helmet, and I vastly prefer with." In some situations, anecdotal evidence can be more convincing than empirical research...

Personally I would rather have the cheapie, it's a lot easier to toss a £20 helmet in the dust bin on the off chance that the crash left it pooched then it is a £100 helmet. It's also a lot easier to replace a helmet that hasn't been crashed in a few years when you only paid 20 quid for it.....

Expensive helmets may have slightly better venting and an easier adjustment system, but not always, they all need to meet the same approvals, and some companies find it cheaper to use the same adjustment mechanism in a whole range of models at different prices. As for venting, it doesn't get that hot, for that long around here, and if it's cool out, fewer vents can actually be better.

Personally I'm just happy to find a helmet that fits, regardless of cost. Right now the Bell Triton is the only helmet made that fits my giant dome properly. Fortunately it's on the cheaper end, but if it cost 3 times what it does now, I wouldn't have any choice but to pay for it. If they stop making it, I'm in trouble.

A helmet - of a good cert level, worn correctly (and these things are rare) - will reduce the odds of minor to moderate injury if your head impacts the tarmac. Unfortunately, the evidence seems to be that you will pay for this benefit by an increased risk of head impact, and even more of the most severe type of injury. This is a trade off and everyone has to make an informed decision.


This may be one of the most moronic statements I have ever read.


Oh good - an idiot I don't have to mind my manners with!



Even much of the evidence presented was flawed or used in a manner of someone tweaking the truth to fit an opinion. There isn't enough time or space here to break down the arguments individually.


I.e. you are too stupid or lazy.



Helmets worn correctly prevent serious injury. In some instances they cause serious injury, but this is in lue of death. I am living proof, multiple times, as are others who have posted in this thread.


Ok: you're an idiot. How can you know that a helmet saved you from injury unless you had a twin who had exactly the same accident and died? Unless you're talking about one of the many sorts of helmets more effective than cycling helmets, so we know from lab tests that they work well, which isn't the case with with cycling helmets.



It's similar to this:
At the beginning of WWI, British soldiers wore a cloth cap, but no helmet. Head injuries were high, so they got rid of the hats and went to helmets. To their dismay, head injuries went up. Turns out the helmets were taking head shots that would have killed a soldier and were saving lives but causing head injuries. Hence, less killed, more injured. Which is better?


What does this have to do with cycling helmets? Are you completely incapable of reading or reasoning? Europe's best helmet test engineer says that cycling helmets increase the probability of serious injury or death. This isn't because they convert deaths into serious injuries - there's a 4 page article by him on the site linked explaining this. You were too stupid and lazy to read it.



Air bags in cars led to a huge rise in traumatic leg injuries, but saved lives.


Again, what does this have to do with cycling helmets? Your "argument" consists of idiotic unproved analogies. It's classic idiot thinking - "It's called a helmet so it must protect!"



It is easy to spin data and evidence to fit any situation if you want to make a point.


Why would anyone want to make helmets look bad if they worked? The editorial team at the site I linked is a blue chip group of engineers, statisticians, and traffic experts.

And it is only easy to spin data if you want to impress idiots who argue by analogy and don't check facts - because you are too lazy and stupid to check a statistical section in a paper doesn't mean everyone else is!



Wearing a helmet is a personal choice. But I figure Darwinism is validated more often by those without helmets than those with when it comes to a head shot.

What you "figure" doesn't matter. Helmets make you feel safe, you're too lazy to check actual facts, and now you're having a hissy fit at being deprived of a security blanket. Doesn't it bother you that in a post about cycling helmets that said post doesn't contain a single fact about them?

And causes you to hear oversize violins?

Cue the viola jokes! :)

(Viola players hold roughly the same status in orchestras as trombone players do in jazz bands - butt of all the jokes.)

Attempting to respond to your arguments in a courteous and (I hope) reasonably intelligent manner...

I read, with interest, some of the articles you linked to.

However, because I am a librarian, I have access to some leading academic databases (and, some may say, the time to sift through them!)

Using PubMed, I discovered that there is quite a wealth of empirical research on the subject of bicycle helmets. This link should allow you to search the abstracts of the database, although you will need a subscription to read the articles themselves (luckily, the university where I work maintains such a subscription.)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

The leading piece of recent research was conducted in 2007 by a group of Belgian academics. [The citation is Depreitere B. et al., 2007, "Lateral head impacts and protection of the temporal area by bicycle safety helmets," Journal of Trauma, 62(6), 1440.] The methodology was fairly grim, but detailed. It involved placing bicycle helmets on cadavers, and then striking the cadavers over the temporal area with a heavy, mechanical, steel pendulum.

This was their most significant finding:

"In seven of the eight tests with common design bicycle helmets, contact had occurred and in one of these a skull fracture was seen. The helmets with a larger temporal coverage consistently prevented such contact loading."

Follow-up research was then conducted by Professor Mills, Department of Metallurgy and Materials, University of Birmingham (U.K.), in 2008. He concluded:

"The side of the head is vulnerable to trauma in bicycle injuries. Depreitere et al., demonstrated contact between a flat-faced pendulum, and the side of cadaver heads, when bicycle helmets were worn. Computer design methods were used to interpret these experiments, showing that typical helmets safely absorbed 75% of the impact kinetic energy before pendulum-to-head contact occurred. Furthermore, in typical oblique impacts with the road, two factors improve the head protection. The tangential velocity component slightly improves the helmet performance, whereas prior shoulder impact on the road decreases the head impact velocity. It is concluded that current helmets provide adequate protection for typical lateral head impacts."

Which prompted Depreitere and his colleagues to respond:

"25% [of impacts] on the part of the helmet immediately cranial to the temporal area [lead to] Seventy-five percent of victims suffering from significant head injuries.

Finally, we want to emphasize that, although bicycle helmet design may be improved, current bicycle helmets already provide significant protection."

That final statement is, perhaps, the most useful of all, and actually echoes a theme that runs through some of your own posts.

Of course, I have no way of knowing whether a bicycle helmet really saved my life that day in 1994. It was a temporal injury, and the helmet undoubtedly sustained some of the impact in the temporal area. In commenting that I now buy "better" helmets, what I really mean to say is that I do pay some attention to how a helmet fits the anatomy of my head (and temporal coverage is a factor in this) - previously I just bought the cheapest the bike store had, because it was "just a helmet." Ironically enough, my new helmet is a big, butt-ugly, red Schwinn thingmajig that does cover everything (and is actually quite comfortable to wear).

In a way, that accident 15 years ago probably did save my life...in other ways. It frightened me (a lot), mainly because it was a stupid accident caused by my doing something utterly stupid (namely, taking a friend's Saracen MTB very fast down a steep downhill course when I had never been on anything other than a road bike in my life before, up until that point). Cost me severe concussion, a stay in hospital (thank you N.H.S.), a smashed face, my front teeth (again, thank you N.H.S.)...and a replacement set of RockShox for the bike I borrowed....

Oh, and a new helmet...

I mention this because it ties in, perhaps, with the most interesting element of the article you published - the idea of "risk compensation." I don't particularly recall feeling invincible that day because I was wearing a helmet (I just felt invincible because I was 17 years of age, and in good physical shape..!) But if the findings of your article are accurate, then it would seem that better education of cyclists / helmet users is the answer. Anyone who feels invulnerable on the commute home, simply because they've got their cycle helmet on when jockeying for position alongside the trucks, buses and bad drivers, needs to think again. But this facet does not make cycle helmets inherently more dangerous, nor does it limit the protection they offer to those riders who use them prudently (in other words, those riders who do not use the helmet as an excuse to take on more risk than would otherwise be the case).

you weren't eaten by the bogeyman because you kissed your teddy bear before going to bed. Yes, you kissed the teddy bear and you're still here, but... I don't believe in coincidence.

All I know is that my helmet has a plastic turtle stuck to the top of it and that's all I'm going to say!!!Beanz' pics of me show my "hockey" helmet, complete with Washington Capitals stickers (and my pinup boy's number on the back).