You've been badly misled.

Helmets do not protect against minor concussion by design. They don't even start deforming until you get to impacts that would cause major injury. Here is a set of accelerometer plots.

Source: http://www.helmets.org/liners.htm

So in a damaging impact (which is the point) you prevent permanent brain damage. If you use softer foam you risk "bottoming out" and having permanent damage.

Uh-oh...

Bare-head Brigade attack formation!

Here we go again, it's an infinite loop.

Quit using all that "science" and "facts". It just distracts people from properly applying politics to reality.

At this time of year where I live, an added benefit of helmet use it is protects from falling nuts. They won't kill, but they can really hurt when they drop on your unprotected noggin. On my last few rides I had a number of times where the sound of contact was such that all I could think was 'damn, glad that didn't hit my head.'

I always wear it, and I would suggest that if your dog doesn't make you wear yours, well then he's an idiot. ;) Of course that being said, I did forget my helmet once. Didn't even realize I was missing it until I was a half mile out.

I did think of an excellent use for my helmet the other day though, I could set my helmet down, slide my phone into one of the vents, and then take a self photo. I haven't tried that yet.

And no, I don't have a dog.

As I noted in the other thread, I learned this weekend that at the right time of year helmets have the added benefit of protecting against falling nuts. It was breezy this weekend and on a few of my regular roads there were many trees shedding their fruit.

Hi,

It is true that there are accidents that one would be better off not wearing a helmet. But as far as I can tell, statistically speaking, you are better off wearing a helmet than not wearing a helmet*. I've seen it recommended that people get smooth helmets so that they avoid placing additional torque on your head.

Even if you crash at a higher speed than is recommended for the helmet, if the helmet hits whatever your head was going to hit, that means that the helmet has absorbed some of the energy that would have been absorbed entirely by your skull. So I don't find the "don't help in high speed collisions" argument because, well, they do.

Cheers,
Charles

* There are car accidents where the occupant is better of not wearing a seatbelt. My aunt was in one where she was thrown completely from the car and would not have survived if she had worn one. She always wore her seatbelt after because she realized how unlikely such events are.

I ride on 3 wheels a lot, so the threat of winding up fleshy side down is pretty minimal.

When I ride on two wheels, I typically don't wear the Styrofoam hat unless I'm riding on sketchy surfaces or racing. But that's really just my choice.

I don't want to get this thread closed, so we really ought to take this discussion to the A&S forum. But I think your point is debatable at best. The forces involved in getting hit by a vehicle are so much greater than a helmet can cope with, that the mitigation provided by the helmet becomes irrelevant.

Ho hum. The lab test that generates those figures involves a zero speed fall from seven feet with a disembodied headform inside the helmet. Its relevance to real-world crashes is negligible. Tell me what the g forces inside the helmet will be if it is hit by a two-tonne car at, say, 20mph. And then tell me the helmet will have provided significant mitigation of my undoubtedly catastrophic head injury.

That depends a lot on what part of the car you hit. If you are going to bounce off of the hood and hit the windshield with your head, I think you'll be a lot better of with a helmet. If the car hits you and then your projected into the air and then hit your head on the ground, I still think you're better off with a helmet. Yes, there are clearly collisions where wearing a helmet isn't going to make a difference.

People who wear bicycle helmets get killed by cars. It's clearly not a panacea. But people who wear helmets are more likely to survive crashes that involve cars than people who don't.

If you don't want to wear a helmet, that's fine with me. From both a public health point of view (you're better of riding a bike and not wearing a helmet than you are not riding a bike and getting fat sitting on your couch) as well as a "better for me as a bicyclist if more people ride bicycles" point of view, I support your right to not wear a helmet when you ride a bicycle. But, statistically speaking, you are better off wearing a helmet than not wearing a helmet if you are in a crash.

Cheers,
Charles

Really? How do you know this?

1) Understanding how helmets work.
2) Looking at statistics about bicycle accidents and helmet wearing.

Here is what happened to me a couple of months ago:

I was riding along about 20 mph when a kid (salmon) popped out and hit me. I was knocked off my bike and landed head-first on pavement. Broken neck, couldn't use my lungs for a while.

My helmet was significantly mashed, probably about 2/3 of its deformation taken up by the impact. I won't get into the details of how I know this is true (it would take way too long - let's just say I am a professional engineer and have years and years of training and actual experience), but the deformation in my helmet is entirely consistent with standard helmet testing. So probably my head was exposed to something like 200-300 times gravity as it decelerated. You can consider that my professional opinion as an engineer.

If I was not wearing a helmet I probably would have been killed, and at the very least broken my skull and severely damaged my spinal cord. I still got a pretty good concussion, but my wife still has a functioning (and healing) husband, not a quadriplegic with severe brain brain damage and zero hope of improvement. I was just at the doctor's today in fact. They say I am coming along remarkably well and am expected to make a full recovery. They explicitly said (again) that I owe my safety to my helmet.

I actually need to thank the anti-helmet political activists here for lowering the quality of advice available at this site. Had they not degraded discussion so badly, I would have asked for a helmet replacement recommendation, been given one, and would be on my merry way.

As it was I was so appalled that I decided to learn about helmets and what is the real story about helmet safety. A lot of what I learned surprised me, and I never would have known if I had not felt a need to find out for myself.

It turns out that more expensive is not better. Cheap helmets protect just as well as expensive ones. The extra money just gets you style and (non-safety) features.

Round and smooth is best. I had no idea, but sharp, aerodynamic shapes and massive venting provides a grip surface that can cause your helmet to be ejected or to twist. So you might lose the coverage and get your skull bashed, or you might have twisting injuries. A pointy helmet is still way better than no helmet, but round, smooth ones are best.

Helmets need to fit to work. Otherwise they might twist or come completely off.

There still is room for improvement in helmets, but the main points above will help getting the best protection that is available.

So:
- I have my helmet to thank for the fact that I still can walk and talk;
- I have political activists and their propaganda to thank for my learning about helmets on my own.

As a result I have a replacement winter helmet on the way. Hopefully I can take that first return ride just before Christmas.

My father was an engineer. He believed in repeatable tests, provable numbers, and documented research. You and he apparently went to different schools, because your conclusions appear to be supported by nothing other than opinions and feelings.

My opinion is based on a whole lot of things I'm not going to get into. Short answer: your guess is wildly inaccurate.

If you are actually interested in understanding bicycle helmet safety, I would strongly recommend starting at the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute:

http://www.helmets.org/index.htm

Most activists do it a different way. They know what they want to support (usually fighting helmet laws) so they dredge up anything they can find to support their political position. This includes using people who do research the same way, presenting their "findings" as unassailable fact without regard to the actual validity of the findings.

The big reason I don't want to get into why the truth is the truth is that it would take an amount of writing that I neither have the time nor the inclination to do.

To understand why bogus statistics are bogus, for example, you would need about a year of statistics training and about a year of physics training with a lab where you actually do measurements and calculations. Even then I have seen people go through that and be so insistent on their political beliefs that they still manage to screw it up.

Same thing happens with global warming. There are bona fide climate scientists (the deniers) who do research for hire by political actors.

The biggest impediment is insistence on being right about something for political reasons.

There is no fix to that, and I'm not going to waste my time trying. Those who are interested should actually learn about it. Keep in mind that learning does not mean familiarizing one's self with propaganda.

Like I said above, I regard the discussion at this site to have degraded to the point that it is not reliable. I might check this thread or I might not - I've said what I have to say and have no illusions about being able to change people's emotions about solid research. They are either interested in the truth or in their politics, generally not both.

After putting a dent in a Chevy pickup hood with my helmet and surviving, I have an opinion on the effectiveness of helmets that will not be changed. Some of the people here remind me of a quote I learned in a statistics class.

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts...for support rather than illumination.

Andrew Lang (1844-1912) Scottish poet, novelist and literary critic

Ha, Ha... I think I like that. And JMO that's EXACTLY what's happening with these anti-helmet boys facts and studies/conclusions... :twitchy:

Your post leaves out all the interesting parts. Could you share some of the measurements you took, the assumptions you used and the methods you used to calculate this figure?

Well, if you're using 19th century Scottish poets to justify your inability to understand basic math, you've got far more problems than I can help you with.

But by all means, keep pretending that 2 ounces of beer cooler foam can protect you from brain damage.

Heh. I'm sure figures will come from the "I made them up last night" catalogue.

I love it. Never let facts get in the way of ignorance, right?

I guess what I meant was, what specific studies regarding helmet efficacy in crashes which involve a cyclist and a car?

Despite the high word count, we're really just left with an admittedly biased website and a thorough demonstration of argumentum ad verecundiam.