Who said it was in Bucks County?

Dunno what jeans, half helmet, msf course have to do with anything. Care is the same for all, they work with what they are dealt.

Of course I don't have that info, that's why I was asking if anyone had any source. BTW, do you have a source or link for the motorcycle helmet injury study from which you posted an illustration?

Can anyone say, with studies to back it up, that cracked helmets have not deformed as intended, absorbing forces during a crush phase? Breakage does not necessarily imply failure; your failure is to infer failure on the part of cracked helmets.

I had it once, but I think it's on an old computer so I'll check. If not, I still may be able to track it down on the 'net

There's a study by the Australian Transportation Safety Bureau by Morgan and Szabo, July 2001, entitled, "Improved shock absorbing liner for helmets" which said,

"In an impact situation involving a bicycle helmet, cracking through the thickness of the foam liner (slabcracking) is undesirable as it renders the foam liner of the helmet useless in its ability to further absorb an impact force. As a result the foam is unable to distribute the focal impact over a larger area and to decelerate the blow at the point of impact... The majority of cracking displayed by samples was in the shape of an arc outlining the spherical headform on impact. Arc-cracking has minimal effect, as it is part of the crushing process. However, cracks developing partly or fully through the thickness of the foam-slab renders it useless in crushing and absorbing impact forces."

I also exchanged emails with a professor of mechanical engineering about helmets cracking along with compression of foam and he said,

"compression of a material in one direction must lead to tension in other directions. (AFAIK, the only exception is one theoretical loading condition.) Therefore, a helmet that has cracked may have actually provided protection."

when asked about claims of a helmet working when cracking happens without compression, he told me,

"Fundamentally, these things are supposed to work in compression... if it didn't compress significantly, it did not work as designed."

I don't know why you are so upset about this; after all, according to you and others here, without the helmet the cyclist would probably not go to the hospital anyway. So the situation, according to your perceptions earlier, would not occur. So you shouldn't be upset, unless...there is a real possibility that the cyclist without a helmet is really at risk.

John

I don't want to speak for six days, but, umm, dang John, you could be a cyclist wearing a full face motorcycle helmet and still have to go to the hospital when you bite it hard.

So it looks like learned consensus is that helmets work as designed, absorbing impact by crushing before cracking. While there might be those helmets out there that are defective and crack without crush deformation or impacts of such violence that the result in the same, it certainly sounds like those who should know on a professional basis seem to think that helmets work as designed.

On the consumer end, most will report that a helmet worked and back that up with the observation that it cracked. People here are quick to jump on such anecdotal reports, claiming that because the helmet cracked, they did not work as designed. Which is apparently a very incorrect inference.

My hypothesis is that breakage is reported because it is the most immediately recognizable damage to the helmet by the consumer. Crush damage is much harder to detect or measure, since I really doubt anyone takes too much time examining the 3d curvature of the inside of their helmets before they crash, to compare to deformation after a crash. After a crash, crush damage might be observable, but the head (round, non-uniform curvature) leaving an impression in the inside of a helmet (round, non-uniform curvature) means that such damage would be hard to observe.

So please, all of you with a penchant for dumping on anecdotal reports of cracked helmets as evidence that helmets did not work as designed, stop it. There's a better than even chance you are wrong.

Does helmet use reduce the incidence of non-serious injury?

but the issue that prompted my emails to the prof and caused me to seek out the study were a number of helmets that had not crushed but simply cracked.

A co-worker had fallen, broke his collar-bone and his helmet. Of course he claimed he could have been far more seriously injured had he not been wearing his helmet and showed me it as evidence. It had no visible compression at all. It had simply split apart.

This spring, a Vancouver city councilman was riding through a stop sign while failing to notice an oncoming car and was hit. He had a concussion and neck injuries but credited his survival to his helmet. He invites citizens to contact him via his blog and since he talked about his collision and helmet, I emailed him to ask if the helmet showed any signs of foam compression. He emailed back and said, there was abrasion to the rear plastic covering and the helmet had split cleanly into 5 pieces. There was no compression.

While I was researching a column on BCs helmet law I exchanged numerous emails with a former provincial politician who worked on it. He claimed his helmet had saved his life this past winter and offered it to me to see the damage that had been done to it. There were a number of pics offered and I again wanted to see if there was any compression of the foam, but there wasn't.

These 3 incidents in no way may be representative of the overall rate of cracking without compression, but it sure seems to me, as someone interested and following this issue for over 2 decades, that these reported situations have increased over the years. Cracking without compression has always happened, but it seems this has been happening more since designs have changed to allow large vents.

Helmets still have to pass the standards test and that means less foam deflecting/absorbing the same impact. That means the foam has to change and it seems the foam is more dense and more likely to split. The industry doesn't reveal the failure rates for these designs but the director of one of the leading facilities that tests helmets for certification says failure is common.

Having too much foam, or too soft foam can cause problem too, but it seems the newer designs have gone too far in their density and the fundamental point of a helmets ability to crush has been set aside to sell more appealing designs.

If these helmets break more easily, it may even work to create the impression that the helmet worked, even if it is obvious that it didn't.

*Ooops, I almost forgot the point of my post. You mentioned,

"those who should know on a professional basis seem to think that helmets work as designed"

Well, after these 3 incidents, I emailed Bell and asked about the helmets that broke without compression. I mentioned their own site says helmets work through foam compression.

They replied that the helmets worked as designed, as they were supposed to, and that cracking is a valid way for EPS to attenuate energy.

This response just does not jive with what I've found elsewhere. You'd think Bell would understand how helmets work and saying cracking is a valid way to attenuate energy is more than a little misleading and ridiculous, if not irresponsible.

I begin to see why you receive so much abuse here, John. I have never said anything about a correlation between helmet use and hospitalization. And I have never said a cyclist without a helmet is not "at risk". What I have been saying, over and over, for years, is that a helmet is so little better than not wearing a helmet that there's not much point in wearing one, especially if you don't wear it for other, riskier activities, like driving a car.

But you knew all that already.

As to me being "upset"? No, not really. If anything, AmericanMade's posts just bring back all those memories of bitter, burned-out nurses I worked with, who were all too happy to find fault with every patient, usually based upon something every bit as shallow, ignorant, and petty as "He didn't care enough to wear a helmet; why should I care enough to help him?"

Yup. John can be more than a bit whacky on occasion. He contradicts himself and floats in the wind, in his own little world. Always has.

"Burned out" nurses? I don't know of any but I know of a few overworked nurses, for obvious reasons.

The rhetorical "He didn't care enough to wear a helmet; why should I care enough to help him?" is interesting but I'm not sure where that comes from. It absolutely misses the mark.

While it may not be an accurate enough paraphrasing of the feelings you portrayed your wife having for your tastes, it kinda goes along with the dropping the unhelmeted patient off in a wheelbarrow after his bennies run out sentiment.

You see, AM, there are a number of helmet fanatic stereotypes. You've covered two of the most popular. The angry, my damn taxes are payin' for your brain surgery stereotype. A lot of these folks also go for "He didn't care enough to wear a helmet; why should I care enough to help him?" So sorry if you don't wanna be lumped in there, but they're pretty similar.

Next huge stereotype you went for in your first post in this thread is the folks who incorrectly think that people that die who don't happen to be wearing helmets when they do so is pertinent to Darwinism. Yeah, Darwin awards are funny. Yeah, saying that not wearing a helmet 24/7 somehow qualifies someone for the awards makes you feel smart and superior because you do wear a helmet 24/7, but it's just plain wrong. Theoretically, if helmet wearing for all types of cycling saved lives in any great quantity, then natural selection would seem to allow folks with poor bike handling skills and situational awareness more of a chance to reproduce. This dilutes the bike handling skills and situational awareness of the gene pool. Bad news for the cycling race.

Okie Dokie. We've now established that helmets are a good idea for some types of ice skating, but possibly protection overkill for other types. Is it any great leap to apply this idea to various types of cycling?

The "when your money/bennies run out" was the PRECURSER. This is a monetary item but some were intent to slam my wife's profession. Anyone can do almost whatever they like in this country, but in an instance where you choose not to do what is recommended by those who have to fix you (AMA etc) and your actions drain all your resources how is it your bill is paid? If you choose not to wear a helmet, fine, you know the final outcome if your insurance runs dry. If you follow the "nanny states" regulations you will be covered by the tax payers. We in this United States all pay for the guy who chooses to go for the minimums and tempts fate. Why? Should you be the gambler, go for minimum insurance why do we have to pay? Actually why do American hospitals have to absorb a bunch, the states reimburse part and the feds at times? And in the end we the American taxpayer......only speaking of this country

You can choose to wear a helmet or not, I should be able to choose not to have to pay for you when some protection is possible and you refuse that course. But the Flat Earth Society still exists so this will never be resolved in the near future.

In the state of PA more people die per year now than before the (motorcycle) helmet law was withdrawn. Black and white. Some will die regardless, some will die because the small bucket of foam was not cool. My bud died without a helmet, no I don't know if it would have saved his melon, we'll never know now, but it just may have in that instance.

There isn't enough data to say with any certainty. If you want my opinion, which isn't worth much, I think helmets probably do offer some protection against bruising and lacerations in low-speed falls when the unhelmeted head would have made contact with the ground or whatever. It's one reason why I am in favour of helmets for young children learning to ride, as they are the most likley victims of such falls and I wouldn't want them put off cycling by unpleasant, if not life-threatening, experiences.

As far as adults are concerned, it is much more complex. In the first place I am quite unlikely to fall off my bike at low speed with no other vehicle involved, and If I did I'd be quite unlikely to hit my head. But leave that aside for a moment. I'm much more likely to come off when I, or the other vehicle, is moving reasonably quickly. My concern is more for my brain than for my scalp, and given that brain damage generally results from the shearing effect of rotational forces - the brain moving around within the skull and severing blood vessels etc - it may actually be better to suffer the superficial damage because that damage protects my brain. What I mean by that is that if my head glances off the ground at speed, what is likely to happen is that my scalp will tear and slide across my skull. Nasty, but much better than rapid rotation of the skull. A helmet as currently designed isn't going to do that, the friction between it and the ground is quite likely to cause my head to rotate and increase the risk of trauma to my brain. So in this instance yes, the helmet may offer protection against the superficial injury but at the expense of increasing the risk of something much worse.

Are there any types of cycling where the worst you can do in a controlled environment is hit a soft wall at an oblique angle? Perhaps.

First off, motorcycling and bicycling are 2 very different activities with 2 very different records of injury and deaths. You shouldn't be comparing the 2, but it is interesting to note that when both motorcyclists and bicyclists do die, they most often die in collisions with motor vehicles and die from massive internal injuries that no helmet can prevent, even if the cause of death is attributed to head injury.

Secondly, you may want to reconsider the "burden on society" argument. It's clear and has been proven many times over that cyclists live longer and with better health than the general population. Even when they do not wear helmets. Most people die from ailments that cycling prevents and don't die from things that they are most often fearful of (ie - collisions)

Finally, you may want to learn just what happens when entire populations switch to bicycle helmet use. What you get then is the same amount of cyclists (or more) entering hospitals with the same injuries. The predicted drop in cycling injuries from helmet use just hasn't happened. It's been recorded and shows the helmet to be the red herring of cycling safety.

This guy wishes there was a nice soft wall to smack his head into at an oblique angle : https://www.vidoemo.com/yvideo.php?i=...skating-crash=

Worst you can do? Hilarious, AM!

Hello! It's been a while.



A new research article was published this week that documents the rate of head injuries among cyclists in NSW, Australia from 1988 to 2008. MHL were introduced in NSW in 1991. It concludes that “It is likely that factors other than the mandatory helmet legislation reduced head injuries among cyclists.”

The article is to be published in the Journal of the Australian College of Road Safety, at
https://www.acrs.org.au/publications/journalscurrentandbackissues.html

and a copy is available now here.

There is a story about it in today’s Sydney Morning Herald at
https://www.smh.com.au/national/call-to-repeal-law-on-bicycle-helmets-20100815-12573.html

See here for how the local cycling population is responding...

Absolutely agree.....as above "Some will die regardless, some will die because the small bucket of foam was not cool."

Then there is no problem as noted above......"Anyone can do almost whatever they like in this country, but in an instance where you choose not to do what is recommended by those who have to fix you (AMA etc) and your actions drain all your resources how is it your bill is paid?" or in reverse, whatever you can afford so long as I don't have to pay more in taxes or premiums.

That will not be answered if someone spends $10million on a full blown study.......15 people will spin the stats and come to 15 different conclusions and muddy the waters even more. As we all know smoking does not cause lung cancer and is good for stress relief. (t-i-c......no one smokes with a bike helmet on)

except no "small bucket of foam" has been shown to make any difference in deaths to cyclists.

that's the point. others pay less because cycling increases a life span and makes things better (and cheaper) for not only the cyclist, but others as well

but there have been excellent studies that have shown what has happened when people wear helmets. you need to read them and understand what has happened.

But of course, you don't have to. You can continue to be ignorant. There's no law against that.

I'm not sure what your point is...actually, I'm not quite sure what your language is, though it may be some close facsimile of English. Are you trying to compare research that demonstrates helmet inadequacy to cigarette smoking research? Do tell, then, what is the vested interest that will make lots of money by proving that bicycle helmets are useless?

Right.

And, if I read you correctly (as bizarre as your sentence structure may be...maybe you should consider writing in Swahili and then running your text through Babelfish before posting it here), you are trotting out the old, mangled and foolish idea that if you don't wear a helmet, you are somehow increasing societal health benefit costs? Fer cryin' out loud, show me one study that doesn't show the opposite of that.

On second thought, don't. Get your kid brother to write the post instead. We'll all have a better shot at understanding what the hell you're saying.

Hey Trombone! Good to hear from you again.

I saw this press on the "other side" of the helmet legislation in Australia. It seems to me what's remarkable about it is that it's got some press. It's not like the arguments are new, or that there hasn't been some opposition to the law, it's just that it seems, that the "other side" rarely gets the press like this has.

Is that your impression as well, or am I just too far from your area and not up on the coverage down under?