350htrr

I think mconlonx has a good point, what you and I would/could think is life threatening the ER Docs wouldn't even sweat over. So "superficial" injuries could mean many different things, from road rash to a cut on the head, to a slight concussion,... Yet not one of us would choose any of them if the helmet can/would protect us from such "superficial" injuries, I suspect.

Six jours

You sailed right by the point that helmeteering is not about superficial injuries.

350htrr

And you sailed right by my point, that what some people think is superficial injuries may not be to others, or that some peoples serious injuries may not be thought of as so serious by others... Depending in context like the ER Doc... But to that person it sure seems like a life threatening problem at the time... So the saying that my helmet "saved" my life has some merit in the sense that the helmet reduced some of the probable debilitating injuries that people think would have happened...

Six jours

What the **** are they teaching in Canadian schools anyway?

curbtender

He's right. I used my head as a battering ram for years. I'm not sure if it's even worth saving. But I see other people go down and out on some simple drop, bleed like no tomorrow or swell like a balloon.

350htrr

Well, I may have the nuances wrong but the BASIC idea is this. One person looses a leg, no problem, he goes on with life like normal after a few months... Another person looses a leg and just can't cope with it, his whole life goes down the toilet, yet another person looses both legs and goes on with life like normal... Get the picture? Things effect people differently...

Six jours

Well, it was over 90 degrees here today. So I removed my helmet and saved my life. (Using the Canadian definition of "saved", anyway, where it apparently means pretty much anything the user wants it to.)

curbtender

So you admit to helmet use? Must be something special.

350htrr

What we have here is... "A FAILURE TO COMUNICATE" Probably all my fault, but really that isn't what I was saying at all...

Six jours

Was it the part where I wrote "I have been wearing a helmet every day the past few months" that tipped you off?

Six jours

I gather neither of us really understands what you're trying to say.

hockeyref

230 pages.... I don't think I'm gonna wade thru all that. Suffice to say that at age 47 I rode without a helmet for 25 years - road bike, and doing stupid stuff on my BMX bikes. Thinking back on it, I was really lucky that I got away with a few dozen stitches and two hands worth of "mild concussions" - the term they used in the '70's and 80's when you rang your bell, didn't lose consciousness, and seemed to have all of your senses when you it the ER.

rekmeyata

Just think, if we could make a helmet 230 pages thick.

baron von trail 

The cyclist here goes without a helmet, he's probably not walking away with minor injuries.

Ditto for the motorcyclist, who also falls smack on his head.

chasm54

Yawn. This video has been well discussed here. If you scroll back to the date in question, you'll be better informed. But to summarise:
1. We don't know what injuries he might have sustained. Most people who bang their heads suffer no permanent damage.
2. The chances of my being hit by a motorbike from behind are vanishingly small, probably less than the chances of my slipping in the shower and banging my head on the side of the bath. Do I bother to wear a helmet in case the latter scenario arises? No.

Even if we accept that helmets prevent brain injury (I don't) the question is one of the level of risk. Cyclists get severely injured at about the same rate, per mile travelled, as pedestrians. I don't see anyone posting videos of falling pedestrians and saying they should all wear helmets.

There. You've now had the benefit of about 60% of the discussion that has taken place in the last 230 pages, and in the four iterations of this thread that preceded them.

sudo bike

The cyclist here goes without a helmet, he's probably not walking away with minor injuries.

Oh wait... he wasn't, and he did. Oh well. Did I prove this makes helmets unnecessary? Was he "just lucky", or was the guy who got hit by the motorcycle just lucky?

mconlonx

You'll have to excuse Baron, he's a bit slow and trollish.

rekmeyata

That guy was just an accident waiting to happen anyways the way he was riding.

curbtender

Put you in a cartwheel and tell me where your head hits. It's great to think you have control of your body until physics takes over.

Six jours

I've never hit my head while cartwheeling. I feel bad for people who have no control over their bodies.

sudo bike

Happening to hit your head is only one small facet. Let me put it as concisely as possible, in some logical sense of order:

• You're really unlikely to get in a crash.
• You're even more unlikely to get in a crash where you hit your head, because people naturally protect their noggin' pretty well in a crash.
• You're even more unlikely to get in a crash where you hit your head and suffer brain damage or death
• You're even more unlikely to get in a crash where you hit your head and suffer brain damage or death that a helmet would have prevented, because the forces the helmet is tested to withstand aren't terribly likely to cause very serious injury.
• In those crashes where you are suffering forces that are likely to kill you or turn you into a vegetable, on the off-chance the helmet out-performs its design and test specs, you are just as likely to die from abdominal injuries. Because of:
• The crash most likely to kill you is a collision with a motor vehicle at an intersection, one of the least likely situations a helmet will help you in.

Those all add up, to me, to an almost infinitesimal chance that a helmet is going to help keep me from dying or suffering brain damage. If it does, it will have operated outside of its design specs and testing in a freak situation where I was hit hard enough to die by head injury but suffered no other internal damage. If I was really concerned about protecting my head in these crashes, I'd use a helmet designed to take more impact. But we don't do that, because it would be silly inconvenient, and people still want to feel safe because they are uncomfortable with the thought of dying, so they buy a helmet to placate that fear. If that's what you lot need to do, go for it. No reason you shouldn't feel better. And it might help save you a trip to the hospital to get some stitches. I just ask that you not pretend to have some moral high-ground where you value your head more than I do.

Just because you walk around in a belt and suspenders doesn't mean everyone else is stupid for not doing so.

License2Ill

Have you looked at any of the basis for impact energy levels used in testing? While always a compromise to industry, it's a decent hit. The amount of g's allowed has been shown to be levels where profound brain injuries occur, and basically are designed to take it down to survivable limits. We're still talking possible coma, most certainly loss of consciousness, and heavy concussion as a result of the type of impact energy they are tested using, which will certainly result in profound injury(vegetative) and death, as well as skull fracture without the helmet.

There has been criticism of the levels of mc helmet impacts being too high, causing higher levels of brain injury that when combined with other major injuries can add-up to death, but all of those helmets now can meet all of those standards with similar results. It's the same levels of g's used for any standard, the only thing that changes is how much impact energy the helmet has to handle to get the g's below the threshold. There isn't really helmet out there for any activity that is meant to do anything other than sustain a fall with a head in it. The exception to that would be the SA2010 Snell tested helmets for auto racing with a rollbar test added. However, there is substantial evidence that cycling helmets will reduce major head injury. As an element of safety, it's not something to overlook just because it's the last in line and doesn't stop bullets when riding on the front lines in a war. There are other things to be concerned about, but dismissing a properly tested helmet is foolishness. We've seen the falls, we know the impact energies involved, we know the thresholds for g levels the brain can sustain, we know the levels of force it takes to break skulls, etc, all of that is known and the results of a helmeted head against those forces and in those situations is well-documented.

https://smf.org/docs/articles/report

RazrSkutr

Only in the freak situation that Sudo Bike mentioned. The crushing of EPS does not occur as a monotonic function. There is a narrow window ( the freak situation mentioned before ) where the impact will be not so severe that the EPS breaks apart without crushing fully, nor so weak that it does not crush much at all. In this perfect freak the EPS will crush completely absorbing the maximum amount of energy that it possibly can. Below that there will be little to no reduction of the acceleration and the brain will still be slapping off the inside of the skull. Above it and the EPS will crumble apart etc. So, yes, in a very unusual perfect circumstance a helmet might save your life.

So you're talking about the combination of two rare circumstances: first that you'll have an accident on a bicycle, secondly that the accident will be within this perfect freak window for which the helmet will be useful: in short a vanishingly improbable event... the sort of event which occurs at the same rate as death from falling in the shower or tripping on the sidewalk and splitting your head open.

The rarity of this is indicated by the population-level statistics which indicate that prevalance of helmets do not reduce the terrifying injuries that you mention in your post.

License2Ill

No, you've got it totally wrong. The EPS works through a range of impact energies up to the point at which it fails completely. The amount of g's transmitted will never reach the limits at a lesser impact energy than what the helmet is capable of handling. It is linear up to the point at which it no longer has an effect. The limits are clear within the standards with the drop energy. This is not as rare or as small of a range as you are interpreting at all. You need to go back over the info. The injuries and g forces that cause those injuries are known, that's what makes the standards. It doesn't appear that you understand the ranges in use at all or the nature of injuries sustained with or without a helmet.

I can post the links, as I did above, but can't make you read it.

rydabent

There remains the legal aspect of wearing a helmet. One only has to read several of the cycling blogs to understand why you need to wear a helmet, and in the case of riding a recumbent or trike, flying a flag. Sadly in courts today when a car hits a cyclist, even if the driver is drunk, the drivers att will claim the cyclist is at fault. In court the drivers att will say that the cyclist is dead because he wasnt wearing a helmet or flying a flag. The fact that the drunk driver was doing 85 when he hit the cyclist, the att claims it was the cyclist fault, or at least partly at fault.

As I have posted else where if you are so deranged you want someone dead, buy them a bike and run over them, making sure they are not wearing a helmet. With the attitude of the courts these days all you will probably get is a slap on the wrists.