Originally Posted by vivophobic
Bike at 30 mph (or some other speed), hit something head on, flip over your handle bars, land directly on your head. Do this without a helmet. Record your injuries. Now do the exact same thing under the exact same speed and conditions while wearing a helmet. Record your injuries. If your injuries are worse without the helmet, then helmets do improve safey. If your injuries are worse with a helmet then helmets do not improve safety.
Apart from the obvious sarcasm with which this was intended, your point doesn't fly. Bike helmets are meant to withstand an impact of about 14 mph, not 30. You assume that there's some sort of constant reduction (a -14 mph modifier if you want to nerd it up) but that isn't necessarily true nor does it necessarily mean anything. If I slam headfirst into the ground at 16 mph, that's still pretty damn fast and probably fast enough to incur any injury you'd like to name including death.
If helmets are so effective at that speed, explain to me why Torrin Arnold who was knocked from his bicycle at 30 mph is now legally blind despite having worn a helmet.
Whether the helmet "reduces" injuries 100% of the time is not so simple. Even if it's true, which I'm not saying it necessarily is, by how much does it reduce the injury? Does it make a really nasty concussion just a mostly really nasty concussion. On the other hand, if I ram into a wall at 60 mph with a helmet, will it reduce my injuries? 120 mph? 600 mph? Clearly there's some cutoff after which it will not have any impact on injury rate. What is that number? Do you have the engineering background to name it? I don't.
Attempting to say that helmets are not improving safety because your are more likely to be injured in a car or while walking does not cut it.
Now you're just confused.
What was stated is that head injuries are more likely to kill a person in an automobile than a bicyclist. If it's so important that cyclists wear helmets than it should be equally important for motorists.
The fact is that using these examples to say helmets do not reduce injury is comparing apples to oranges.
And nobody has claimed this either. What we have said is that there are other activities that are at least as dangerous, even when looking just at head injuries, as cycling. Yet nobody is advocating a helmet campaign for those activities.
You say a motor vehicle has lots of safety systems in place and that's true. Are the head injuries concentrated among motorists not wearing seatbelts and without airbags? Quite probably.
On the other hand, are the head injuries concentrated among cyclists riding the wrong way down the street, unlit after dark, passing on the right of right turning vehicles, etc? Also quite probably.
There is a fear campaign about cycling that says it's sooo dangerous (it's less dangerous than other activities that we do everyday without thinking about it) and can be made substantially safer by wearing a helmet. There is no large scale evidence that demonstrates that dramatically increased rates of helmet use have actually had a positive benefit. That is what we're saying.
On the other hand, I have seen no evidence that shows that they increase risk of injury and it seems quite possible that one will save my grey matter. So I wear mine anyhow.
But don't think that the person who isn't wearing a helmet is a complete idiot, because you may not understand the situation as well as you think you do.
Attempting to say, as some have, though not necessarily here, that wearing a helmet is less safe because people wearing helmets feel more invincible, and therefore ride more dangerously, is also innacurate. The manner in which people ride does nothing to the helmets effectiveness. It is not the helmet that makes these riders less safe, as the helmet will protect no matter how they ride (or fall). It is in fact their attitude and feeling of invincibility that increases their chance of accident that makes them less safe.
Risk compensation is a real and undeniable fact. Every single rider who says they would never ride their bike without a helmet is engaged in risk compensation. They are explicitly saying that they are undertaking an activity or doing it in a fashion (in traffic, for example) that they wouldn't if they didn't have the sense of protection that a helmet provides.
The question is merely to what degree it occurs.