Originally Posted by
closetbiker
Not the leading cause of traumatic brain injury.
In the US, according to the CDC, falls are the leading cause of traumatic brain injury:
Falls continued to be the leading cause of TBI (35.2%) in the United States. Falls cause half (50%) of the TBIs among children aged 0 to 14 years and 61% of all TBIs among adults aged 65 years and older.
http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/causes.html
http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininj...ernalcause.pdf
The focus here is on cycling, but that's part of the argument; placing the risk of cycling out of context. Without context, speculation is worthless
But what speculation? The speculation we're mostly seeing in this thread is vague claims about what helmets are designed to or actually have done: it's either things along the lines of "a helmet prevented a head injury when I fell" or "helmets are only designed for zero-speed crashes like a pedestrian falling." The former can't be scientifically proven without an A/B test--which is obviously not possible or desirable--and the latter has been debunked in detail here by actually referring to the testing standards that state what helmets are designed for and how they are tested.