BarracksSi

Coffee: Use an open-face helmet and a "hydration system" like they use in auto racing.

Cell phone: Integrate a mic & earpiece into the helmet.

Hair: Cut it off. No more wavy blonde tresses -- the "boy" cut is so IN.

Daily Commute

A helmet has several times saved me from pain when riding. It has never saved me from pain while driving. I'll continue to ride helmeted, but drive bare-headed.

why2not

+1

Zeuser

I just can't understand the logic where someone might think that nothing on their head is safer than something. Even if a helmet isn't 100% effective it still does work in some situations. Some head protection is better than none at all. You're not going to come out of a head on crash with a car any better without a helmet than with one. But there is the chance that you will stand a better chance in some situations with a helmet than without one.

If the helmet standards aren't good enough then that's fine, lets discuss on how to make them better. But that's no reason to discard helmet use just because they aren't safe enough.

Just look at auto racing, those mandatory leather helmets in F1 racing decades ago really didn't provide much protection. But they didn't dismiss helmets altogether because of that. Helmets for F1 cars improved steadily over the years and they will continue to improve. Same goes for bike helmets.

Another important factor is risk. It's far more risky to ride a bike than a car. Cars have crumple zones, airbags, side impact beams, bumpers and so on. And even then when you take those cars racing you're often required to wear a helmet because of the increased risk. Because of the much higher risks involved with cycling, helmets make a whole lot of sense. Even if they're not totally effective there's a chance your type of accident might be the type the bike helmet was designed for.

when it comes to your own safety, It's always better to err on the side of caution.

Helmet Head

There is no question that in a helmeted head crash, some energy is absorbed by the destruction of the helmet. That's energy that is not being transferred to the head. How much dissipation of energy is that? Don't know. How often can it make a difference? Don't know. Might it make a difference for me some time in the future? Don't know, maybe. For me, maybe, coupled with practically no downside to wearing a helmet, is more than enough.

closetbiker

I just can't understand how it is that some just can't understand an argument or grasp some basic premises...and on an advocacy board at that.

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

ollo_ollo

I don't wear a helmet in my car but would have no objection to wearing one while driving. I guess I'm vain enough to not be a trail blazer to achieve such a small gain in safety. Can't even say it never occurred to me to wear one in the car because this came up years ago on the "Klick & Klack Car Talk" show on NPR.

A woman called in complaining her safety engineer husband wore a helmet while driving & insisted she and their children also wear helmets in the car. As I recall, K&K grudgingly conceded there was a small gain in safety, just made you look silly. I think they told her it didn't hurt to humor him. Don

tallard

Many people discount this poll due to sheer 100% disbelief that any sort of head protection can help motorists. My point is simply this, no matter how dumb something is, some safety zealout will come up with an idea to make an activity purportedly safer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_headband

It should come as no surprise if all this safety zealousness and misguidance lands us to common use of head protection in cars/trucks within a decade or so. Australian and English Canadian policy makers are notorious for being safety obsessed.

tallard

I miss NPR, I've left it aside lately...

Keith99

I'm not going to read 6 pages to see if anyone else brought this up:

The only people I know who wear helmets in cas are race drivers, and only when racing (or training for racing). That is the only car activity where the return is worth the bother.

I do not support on street racing.

I will actively oppose helmet use in cars.

BarracksSi

Podcasts. Even Car Talk is now a free download, along with Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and a bunch of others (including the "News From Lake Wobegon" segment of Prairie Home Companion).

noisebeam

I wouldn't agree to mandatory helmet use in car any more than I'd agree to mandatory helmet use while driving a bicycle.

I own a car, I always wear a helmet when cycling.

Al

Daily Commute

No. Regardless of the brain injury issue, I know that my bike helmet has saved me from significant pain several times. There has never been a time when a car helmet would have saved me from pain while driving.

Saving me from pain, that's good enough for me. So I wear a helmet. But I don't fret over the choices other cyclists make.

closetbiker

personal anecdotes are one thing, what happens to people are another. 25 times more people come into hospital with head injuries than from bicycles. if you were an official, charged with trying to reduce head injury, what makes the most sense to do?

personally, I think it makes most sense to lower the collision rate rather than rely on faulty devices to acheive that goal

tallard

Significant pain... I bang my head oh maybe once a month at home, and it usually causes lots of pain, sometimes lasting an entire day, and in 31 years of cycling nearly 365 days I've hurt my head ONCE. OH MY GOD I BETTER WEAR A HELMET AT HOME, THAT WOULD SAVE ME SO MUCH PAIN, and curses... We addressed that in another thread

Cycling caused you to bang your head several times... we addressed that in another thread as well

Zeuser

Try this: Stand 3ft in front of a brick wall. Wear a bike helmet. Advance at any pace you want and hit the wall head on. Then repeat the exercise without any head protection at all.

Which one felt the best? Which one didn't cause blood loss?

Thought so.

And you can argue all you want about how it's an unrealistic test but truth is you could be confronted with a similar situation while riding a bike and the result will be nearly the same.

It's really a no brainer.

noisebeam

Reminds me of when I was a kid. My brothers (3yrs. younger) and I were given helmets in the late 70s early 80s by out parents. We thought they were so excellent. We were also into medieval stuff, jousting, armor, swords, the rack, etc. So what did we do? We rode towards each with plastic swords and long poles and tried to knock each other off the bike, often intentionally head butting each other with those new fangled helmets. After a month or so we had destroyed them.

Al

maddmaxx 

You would have to factor the lack of visability for John Q average driver in crowded traffic against the possible saving of head injuries. One might cause more accidents and thus defeat the value of the other. At first glance it looks to me as if this is a variation of the "if some is good, more is better" arguement.

Zeuser

My helmet has more visibility than your naked head. It's got a rearview mirror on it! LOL!

Honestly, I've never noticed a lack of visibility with a bike helmet. At least not where it counts. The area where visibility is diminished is looking up because of the visor. But I rarely look up with or without a helmet.

maddmaxx 

To be of useful protection in an automobile crash, the helmet will more resemble those used by race car drivers that those used on a bicycle. They will need significantly more protection against penetrating objects then bicycle helmets. That will do a lot to decrease your vision while wearing one.

As to visibality over bare head........we are talking about wearing helmets in cars here aren't we???

Six jours

He's tried this argument several times on various threads and gotten it rammed back down his throat repeatedly. You'd think this would have been a learning experience. The irony of it is that he will soon be accusing his interlocutors of having brain damage. Lol.

tt1106

Wear a helmet when cycling, don't wear one driving, but would if required(although, I can't see why it would be, the most catastrophic injuries in auto accidents are caused by ejections, hence seatbelts). Enjoy wind in hair, but have met a substantial number of people who now eat through straws that tell me they wish they had worn a helmet.

noisebeam

Wouldn't a five point harness and true roll cage be better (more effective) than a helmet in a car?
Al

Six jours

Cite, please. My understanding is that head injury is a contributing cause of death in approximately 30% of automobile accidents. I've never seen any statistics on ejections. They were rare in my experience as a paramedic, but then I lived and worked in a mandatory seatbelt state...

Really? I raced back in the pre-helmet days and knew one guy to incur severe head injuries while riding. I've known quite a bit more since everyone started wearing helmets. This is mere personal anecdote, but it does lead me to believe that peopleare either overestimating the effectiveness of helmets, underestimating the resilience of the human brain and skull, or simply falling off of their bikes a lot more than they used to.

Hickeydog

not a bad idea at all. of course, what would also help would be finding the "Idiot" gene along with a way to turn it off.