Originally Posted by
mbrickell
Based on my experience working in an ER, and having talked to the ER docs about this subject, the consensus is that helmets are fairly worthless over a certain speed. Maybe 30-40ish. At highway speeds, such as on a motorcycle, the consensus where I work is that helmets keep you alive perhaps, but your brain is mush so you are basically kept alive by machines indefinitely. Now, you get down into the 10-30 mile per hour range or so, and the consensus in our little ER world is that helmets definitely help you, and prevent significant injury. There is a definite difference in the severity of injury between helmetless and helmeted at under 20 or 30 mph when your head bounces off the pavement. Hence, I wear a helmet. To each their own, and you can quote whatever studies you want. I see it frequently at work, so while my experience is anecdotal, I've seen enough head trauma to wear a helmet myself.
15-20 mph wipeout from moving bike, definite advantage to helmet.
80 mph wipeout from sportbike, eh, you're probably meat anyway at that point.
I don't want to search the net right now but I seem to remember reading that cyclists fatality rate is 100% if hit by a vehicle moving over 45 or 50mph, don't remember exactly, regardless of whether they were wearing a helmet or not compared to something like 10% (again, don't remember the exact number) when hit by a car moving under 30mph, and 0% if the vehicle was moving slower than 20mph and at those speeds those with helmets are less likely to sustain life threatening, disabling or long lasting injuries. Therefore, in slow-traffic urban setting helmets are more useful than on a road with fast moving traffic.
I also know people who worked in ER (I work for a medical school and a large medical center and many of my users are doctors, residents, medical students) and they said that most cyclists who died from being hit or run over by a fast moving car had such massive internal injuries that they would have died from those alone regardless of their head injures.