Originally Posted by Wogster

Taking a 4lb steel ball, dropping it 1.5m means nothing compared to potential injuries, because of a few issues, one is that a head is attached to a body, and the head and body are in motion. How that combination travels through space, when affected by the laws of physics and impacts an immovable surface, is unknown at this time. We make the assumption that helmets prevent injury, but without a comparative study, which could be accomplished using crash test dummies, and using data gleaned from automotive testing. Helmet testing in it's current form, is only useful in determining if a helmet is useful if you fail to unclip properly and fall over to the side.

Originally Posted by elcruxio

I'm interested.
How many in this thread use their bikes as primary transport?
I get the vibe (in the US forums and also local Finnish discussions) that those who mainly use the bicycle as a hobby (racing, etc) advocate helmets louder than those who use bicycles as a part of life accessory. Many who are car free or just use a bicycle a lot for everyday activites seem to be more "meh..." about helmets.
I'm practically car free and my helmet use is pretty much divided such that
training - helmet on
everything else - helmet off

Originally Posted by chasm54

This is a pretty silly statement, actually. There is good data from Australia that making helmets mandatory reduced the numbers of cyclists. To compare cycling with skydiving or hang gliding in terms of risk is simply nonsensical. And to suggest that objecting to helmet promotion is analogous to encouraging people to ride or drive without brakes is barely worth dignifying with a response.

Plus, the idea that "there is no evidence that oblique injuries are occurring at all" may be literally true in the sense that the data may not have been gathered, but is absurd in real life. You think all the impacts suffered by heads, helmeted or otherwise, are linear?

Do you by any chance work for a helmet manufacturer? Or sell helmets?

Originally Posted by rekmeyata

You can easily find out by doing a poll here on this forum. In America you're going to find out that the vast majority do it as hobby.

What I can't figure out is why you wear a helmet only while training, what's the difference in a crash suffered while training or not?

Originally Posted by License2Ill

Again, no link to any supposed evidence of reduced riders due to helmet mandates. It's a ridiculous hypothesis from the start.

Originally Posted by chasm54

...
The argument in this thread and its predecessors isn't really about whether one should wear a helmet or not, it is about whether one should retain the freedom to choose.

Originally Posted by elcruxio

Well obviously the potential crash is not going to happen while I'm riding with my everyday bike. Or at least not as severely as it would as with the road bike or mountain bike. With the mtb crashes happen almost every ride. Finnish forests are fairly technical.

Why isn't a crash going to occur when riding the everyday bike or doing everyday riding you ask. Simple, I'm not in a hurry. Also no fear of tire blowout since the tires I've got on are practically bullet proof. My last crash was three years ago and then I was in a hurry. It's all about you

Also, mad riding skillz

Originally Posted by MMACH 5

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE point to someone, anyone participating in this thread who is arguing for taking away cyclists' freedom to choose not to wear a helmet.

Originally Posted by MMACH 5

By arguing how worthless helmets are, the Bare-Head Brigade (BHB), is doing little to dissuade MHLs, but this seems to be the fall back for why many are participating in this thread. And again, we

Originally Posted by rekmeyata

You can easily find out by doing a poll here on this forum. In America you're going to find out that the vast majority do it as hobby.

Originally Posted by License2Ill

I think the standards orgs know that a head is attached to a body. It's not important to head impacts because gravity pulls at the same speed to the ground. There are comparative studies, and there is clear evidence that a helmeted head is protected in conditions that a non-helmeted head is not. Crash test dummies are useless in this. Gravity still pulls the same, whether you fall from your bike or you fly through the air to ground.

It's also not a 4lb steel ball. It's an 11lb ISO headform.

Originally Posted by sudo bike

What makes you think this forum is at all representative of cycling in America? :confused:

Originally Posted by chasm54

[Curnow, W.J., 2005. The Cochrane Collaboration and bicycle helmets. Accid. Anal. Prev. 37, 569–573] In that paper Curnow points out that the Cochrane analysis of helmet effectiveness is flawed because helmets will not protect against brain injury caused by oblique impacts giving rise to angular acceleration. Other commentators have suggested that it may be worse than that, because the vents on modern helmets may have a tendency to catch on irregular objects or surfaces and actually create rotation that would not otherwise have occurred.

The latter is speculation, I think. At least, I am not aware of any research that would rule it in or out.

My personal view is that it's unlikely that helmets have often given rise to injuries that would not otherwise have occurred. My decision not to wear one is essentially based on my calculation that when cycling my risk of any head injury is extremely low, and on the fact that real-world accident statistics do not tend to show that increased use of helmets has a marked impact on the incidence of death or serious injury to cyclists. So, they are probably efficacious for minor injuries but less so in severe crashes. In the former case I'm happy to take the small risk. In the latter, the risk is still small and the helmet is unlikely to make a crucial difference.

My objection to helmet promotion is that it leads people to believe that cycling is a dangerous activity. This discourages people from cycling. Worse, it discourages them from letting their children cycle. That is bad for the public health (the most ardent helmet-promotor would agree, I think, that the health benefits of cycling outweigh the risks) and has al sorts of other negative societal and environmental consequences. And cycling is actually a very low-risk activity. Recent evidence to the Transport Select Committee in the UK parliament, based on official Dept of Transport statistics, indicated that in Britain one cyclist is killed for every 28 million miles cycled. The idea that one needs protective clothing to engage in an activity that safe is ... remarkable. I'll put it no stronger than that.

Originally Posted by mconlonx

When bare-headers talk of "serious injury" and how helmets don't do a lot to protect against such injuries, it should be noted, as Curnow does, that:

"Brain injury that kills or severely disables is typically ofseverity AIS 4–6. It is rare, comprising less than 6% of 558
head injuries to cyclists treated in hospital in the study of
McDermott et al. (1993)."

In the case cited above, 94% of head injury was not lethal or severely disabling, and perhaps a helmet might have helped, if worn.

Seems that helmets are, in fact, designed to deal with the majority of head injury encountered while bicycle riding/crashing...

Originally Posted by 350htrr

I went bicycle riding topless this weekend on the trail to a fishing spot. 5.5 KMs round trip three times, averaging 14.4KMs/Hr. The wind whistling through my locks, a big smile on my face... But, always in the back of my mind was the, what if?... Brainwashed? Normal? Wussy thinking? Practical/sensible thinking?

Originally Posted by blackvans1234

I work in a level 2 trauma hospital, and have taken care of many people with Traumatic Brain injury, Subdural hematomas, subarachnoid hematomas, and all other sorts of brain injuries.
I wear a helmet while riding on ''the street''. If I am ever in an accident and end up brain dead, or with a TBI, or any other debilitating injury, I wouldn't want my family to be thinking ''what if'' regarding a helmet.

That is all.

I also don't dive into pools (Ive taken care of a PARAMEDIC who is brain dead / vegetable because he dove into a pool).
don't get me started on seatbelts...

Originally Posted by rekmeyata

Gee that was all fine and dandy but you left us hanging. Is that the only reason you wear a helmet is so your family won't be thinking what if you had been wearing a helmet? You don't wear a helmet to protect your head? Just protect your families feelings?

Originally Posted by rekmeyata

Gee that was all fine and dandy but you left us hanging. Is that the only reason you wear a helmet is so your family won't be thinking what if you had been wearing a helmet? You don't wear a helmet to protect your head? Just protect your families feelings?

Originally Posted by sudo bike

This, I could buy, because it is essentially what most of us have been saying. That a head injury that will result in serious injury or death is exceedingly rare, and a case where a helmet would help in that exceedingly rare field even rarer.

If people are wearing them with the idea they will prevent minor injury (which it sounds like some people on here are), then it sounds like they have pretty reasonable expectations. People wearing them to prevent serious injury or death, are probably kidding themselves to make themselves feel better.

This isn't unique to cycling, though. America has a thriving culture of fear, where there's a terrorist behind every bush ready to kill their families, a pedophile in every alley waiting to snatch up their children, and everything is out to get you. Rabble rabble 24hournewscycle something something. I don't think any aspect of it is going away anytime soon.

Originally Posted by License2Ill

Again, skewing with the idea of helmet effectiveness because one small study says that crashes involving head injury were considered by you to be "rare" at 6%, and then the idea that just because those 33 severe head injuries out of 558 total head injuries may have been helped by a helmet leads to a conclusion that helmets don't work.

Again, we know the impact energies involved, we know the capabilities of the helmets, we know what they can do when met with those impact energies. We know they are designed to work within those parameters. If biking leads to as many as 6% of falls with severe head injuries when not helmeted and we know the impact energies involved with causing those injuries, the conclusion that wearing a helmet to prevent those injuries is incredibly sound. In one study of 558 people alone there is 33 folks that could have survived or had minor injuries instead. Take those numbers out to the rest of the world, and that 6% becomes just as tangible as the impact energies used to test helmets.

Originally Posted by mconlonx

I think you are referring to my reply, and if you look at the quote, you'll realize that it's not 6% of cyclists who were treated for severe head injuries, but 6% of those admitted to the hospital for head injuries as a result of a cycling crash. This is not even 6% of those who crashed on their bike, but 6% of those with head injuries serious enough to deserve a trip to the hospital.

Falling off your bike is rare; falling on your head, rarer still; head injury resulting in hospital visit, even rarer than that; severe head injury among the rarest of cycling crashes which occur.

The proper pro-helmet argument is that helmets might have helped with the other 94% of those in the hospital due to cycling head injury, those without severe head injuries. Helmets probably would not or did not help with those receiving severe head injuries.

The past 50 or so miles of commuting, I've gone sans helmet, kind of a "walk a mile in another's SPDs" experiment:
- most cars don't give me any more or less room.
- I have not fallen off my bike onto my head.
- no one has yelled at me to get a helmet.
- my head has not asploded

Tut, tut, should have been wearing a helmet...

Originally Posted by License2Ill

I care that a helmet could have prevented death and major injury in those 33 real instances in that one small study.

Originally Posted by License2Ill

Yes, if you read my post you should understand that I was talking about the 6% of head injury patients as you wrote it. I don't care how many crashes there are, I don't care how many head injuries are a result of those crashes. I care that 6% of those head injuries were major injuries. There were plenty of head injuries, 558. There were enough that were major or fatal, 33 out of those. How many crashes? How many minor head innjuries went unreported? How many of those head injuries occured to helmeted riders? I don't care. I care that a helmet could have prevented death and major injury in those 33 real instances in that one small study. I don't wear a helmet to prevent me from crashing. I don't wear a helmet to prevent me from hitting my head. That line of thought is absolutely ridiculous, and it's even more ridiculuos to try to use % statistics in a way that it has no business being dismissed due to whatever connotation comes from a % symbol. It's just more silliness.

There was absolutely no evidence that a helmet would not help in those fatal or major injury events. To get that out of those numbers is ignorant or foolish, pick one.