sudo bike

It might help if you treated others how you wish to be treated.

rydabent

sudo

I treat my cat very well. He is very intelligent.

sudo bike

mconlonx

Show of hands if you regularly ride without a helmet, and have crashed with any head impact at all in the past three years.

Anyone? Bueller...?

I-Like-To-Bike

Can't. They are all brain dead, doncha know?

350htrr

I would suspect that most of them haven't yet crashed hard enough to believe in helmets yet... Intellectual thinking, believing in statistical testing, Helmet testing to the extreme circumstance/failure is great in theory, but in practice sometimes it doesn't work out the same for the 90+% of real world crashes...

rekmeyata

You keep going on and on about the 2%...it don't mean schit! Go to the sites I gave and get the real numbers on helmet vs non helmet deaths while on bicycles.

chasm54

Raises hand. Car drove into me last year, sending me over the car and into the road. Separated shoulder, glancing blow to the side of the head on the roadway. Trivial bump on the head, no real damage.

Had I been wearing a helmet I might easily have assumed that the helmet saved me from serious injury, of course...

howsteepisit

It was my assertion that the 2% was meaningless, glad you agree. Your reading comprehension not so good I am afraid.

Six jours

During my racing career, a long time ago, I crashed plenty. A couple were in excess of 50 MPH, including one during a motorpaced track race. One of those even put me into the hospital. But I never once struck my head or helmet, which is something most racers of the time would tell you. Humans instinctively protect their heads and faces in a fall.

Since I retired from racing (several decades ago) I have not fallen from a bicycle, despite near-daily riding. I simply do not see a reasonable explanation for today's recreational riders to be falling all the time. Perhaps they enjoy putting themselves at risk. Maybe they're just incompetent. Or maybe they see everyone else doing it so figure that's just the way things are in this sport: "If you don't fall every xxx miles you're not going hard enough, but I wear a helmet so I'm safe."

Short version: I think you've got it backwards. Most "serious" cyclists I see sans helmet around here are grizzled old veterans who know exactly what they're about and aren't buying into the modern fiction about the "dangers" of cycling.

FBinNY 

Hey!!!! who you calling grizzled????.

OTOH- I have crashed a few times over the last 45 years, and like you never suffered a head injury if you don't count road rash.

rydabent

mccon-------------My hand is up. I was hit at low speed by a driver comming out of a parking lot. I was knocked over and I hit my head. It was just a slight bump with a couple of scratches and gravel dents on the side of the helmet. There were no scratches on me. The helmet did its job.

chasm54

You're rather embarrassing. It would comfort me to know that you're trolling, because if your iintention is to be taken seriously, I cringe.

rydabent

chasm

Am I an embarrassment because my helmet saved me from some injury? Btw I am not the only one many people have posted incidents where their helmets saved them from injury.

350htrr

Probably 10 to 1 helmet saved my life stories, as compared to I wasn't wearing a helmet but am still OK... So, what does that mean? We don't know, because we don't know how many were wearing a helmet, doing the same type of riding, having what kind of skills, taking what kind of risks, riding what kind of speed, falling by themselves, being run over by vehicles, and many other causes that could make ones head bounce off the pavement... Thus this thread, 130 pages of opinion and so called "facts" that no one can prove, or even if it's "true" under certain circumstances (stuff like helmets can actually make things worse, or are useless above 12MPH but 90+% of accidents don't comply to those statistics)... BUT, really, Yes I am going to say it again... It's better to have and not need a helmet than need and not have, as 90%+ of all accidents are below the useless helmet level...

RyderTheRider

When I was 8 I swerved and crashed my bike into a gate that was half open. Somehow I caught the corner of the gate right with my forehead and now carry the mark of that 20 years later. Obviously, a helmet wouldn't have saved my life as I lived, but it would have saved me a huge dent across my forehead and the months of having a head wound that required care.

It's obviously better to have a helmet, but even after that there is someone freeing about riding fast with the wind in your hair.

sudo bike

Most probably it did, just not the job you think.

Six jours

And I'll again point out that that is true regardless of the activity, yet I somehow doubt that you are calling for driving/walking/showering/whatever helmets.

Six jours

I have no doubt that bicycle helmets prevent superficial injuries every day. But then, so would knee and elbow pads. Yet we never see rabid knee and elbow pad proselytizers here. Hmm...

And before the usual suspects breathlessly respond with "No one ever died from knee and elbow injuries!!!" I'll remind you that ryda's argument has devolved to "You should wear a helmet because mine once saved me from some scratches."

mconlonx

Either most of those not wearing helmets died in crashes, or those wearing helmets are naive and ignorant to buy into incorrect information regarding the protective ability of helmets.

rydabent

My overridding point about helmets is that ANY injury that is prevented is a good thing. I dont understand why the anti helmet people dont understand that. Are scabs and scars the sign of being a hairy chested man that laughs off pain??

mconlonx

Yes. Chicks dig scars.

chasm54

In the first place, the question was directed at those who had crashed without a helmet, and you just had to jump in with a "I was wearing one and it saved me..." story.

In the second place, no you are not alone, but you have spent enough time in this thread to know better.

FWIW, and addressing mconlonx's point, I am fairly confident that in a lot of cases where helmets sustain a glancing blow, the unhelmeted head wouldn't have received any impact at all. If one watches people crash, it is noticeable that hits to the head are relatively uncommon, but near misses are very common indeed. In my own case, described above, I landed pretty much on the point of my shoulder but my head barely grazed the ground. Had I been wearing a helmet the contact would have been much more solid. Mostly we seem to fall in a way that, as far as possible, gets our head out of the way. That's another reason, imo why a lot of the "helmet saved me" stories are mistaken. In some cases, without the helmet there may have been no saving required.

paulkal

2 years ago I crashed while not wearing a helmet, doing about 30 km when my front wheel slipped. Landed on my head. Just a small bump. If I was wearing a helmet, it would have saved my life.

crawstuff

I had a crash at a very low speed 2 years ago without a helmet. sadly for the purpose of this discussion my head didn't hit the ground, my dang neck did it's job (controlling my melon.) Helmets are useful when wore for dangerous activities combat, car racing, rollerblading, talking smack to MMA fighters, etc... Transporting me to and from work not in and of it's self that dangerous except for the motor vehicles and going toe to toe with one of those is going to do a catastrophic amount of damage. In the U S Army risk is calculated based on the likelihood of something happening (unlikely to very likely) and the impact of the event (minimal to catastrophic.) If your risk matrix says you should include a helmet I support your decision to wear one, mine does not, please understand that does not in any way say anything negative about your decision.

P.S. when throwing down with the MMA guy remember the helmet only protects your head. No matter how roided out the guy is he'll probably go to work on everything else, kind of like getting hit by a car.