No automotive seat belt will prevent death and major injury, in fact seat belt manufactures have stated this. No reputable automotive safety instructor would claim this.

I am of the opinion that the notion of "minor" head injuries- such as concussion- is tossed about way too lightly. A significant concussion can be a life-changing event, and not in a good way.

Put another way, I'll take whatever protection I can reasonably wrap around my bean that might help if I am in a head-bonking situation. Any brain injury SUCKS.

Not into telling others what to do so, of course, I'm not saying it should be nanny-state mandatory or anything like that.

I (and many others) have been trying to say that for about 200 pages...

It's not a matter of risk while riding. I am more likely to crash while riding, no doubt about it. I am also less likely to catch myself on the way to the ground. Have injured riders in surveys hit their head enough to want protection? Yes. Have riders injured their heads enough times to want protection? Yes. Have the injuries been severe enough in those some of those incidents enough to wear protection? Yes. Is the percentage of instances of crashes involving major head injury been enough to wear protection? Yes. Have helmets shown to be effective within the range of energies seen in impacts to the head? Yes.

As has been stated, seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, none prevent an accident, but I still want them when I might get in an accident just the same. Is there more likeliness of getting in an accident in a car? Maybe. Do I want to be skilled enough to avoid an accident? Yes. Do I want to have brakes and good handling equipment? Yes. None of that changes the issues with a helmet or any other last line of defense.

The excuse will always be that you need to learn how to crash, then it will be that you need to learn how to ride, then it will be that car drivers need to not hit cyclists, then it will be multi-use paths are no good, and on and on until you should just have planned for what we know can happen as best you can reasonably wear. Wearing a helmet is completely reasonable for riders of all ages and abilities. It's something easy to control in terms of your own actions. You can argue it adds to risk, but something tells me that risky riding may happen more often when someone isn't concerned enough to wear a helmet in the first place.

This is unfortunate, but in terms of a crash helmet, nobody has found a way to reduce chance or grade of concussion while also protecting against the major brain injury. It's always been considered the primary focus because the events are not supposed to be repeated within a lifetime. Riders crashing and hitting their head on a regular basis might want to try some other remedy to keep it from happening over and over again.

There is so little study and so little known about concussion, even less than the profound injuries at this point. Even in sports where concussion is a daily concern, those helmets(not crash helmets) are still not made to deal with concussion effectively. It appears that softer is better, but softer is often thick, heavy, and not durable. As a rider, I certainly think we could wear thicker and slightly heavier lids, but the rest of the market has never agreed. The market has never been very aware of how helmets work, to what effect, or much of anything to do with them on the whole, so far as having no clue about the various certifications or how we got there.

The point also remains that the first part of the argument is as true for any piece of bicycle safety gear as it is for a helmet, and that the second part is an argument you don't get to make on behalf of anybody but you.

+1,000,000

Helmets are one choice we make among many. We have to respect the choice even if it's different than what we decide for ourselves.

Except for the fact that those eschewing them don't appear to be nearly as informed as they'd like to think, nor does their judgement appear worthy of any freedoms associated with it. If their arguments bore some resemblance to reason or rational thought, they we might think otherwise.

Oh, I bow to your infinite wisdom.

Why stop at helmets, why don't we let the all knowing decide how to raise our children, where we should live, map out the best career track, and when the time comes select the ideal mates for those children they've done such a great job of raising.

There will always be people who feel that others are making ill-informed wrong choices about just about everything. The difference is that some of us respect choices that are different from our own, and there are some people (I could point to one right here, but I won't) who don't.

The problem with this argument is that there is good evidence that airbags and seatbelts (at least) reduce serious injuries and deaths in a measurable way. The best evidence shows that bike helmets don't. The reason bike helmets don't is because they have been made so light (to get people to wear them) that they don't provide meaningful protection against serious injury. If cyclists wore motorcycle helmets, they would have the kind of protection that most seem to believe they have now with bike helmets.

There's nothing stating that helmets are ineffective in preventing injuries in any studies. Like I said, we know the ranges of impact energies they work within, the capabilities, and we know what types of falls it takes to create those energies and it is nearly the same as the first hits used for DOT motorcyclist helmets, which have also been talked about as being better at preventing lesser brain injuries because they are softer than Snell motorcyclist stanard helmets. Could we use more helmet? Sure, but there is nothing showing that motorcycling helmets are more effective for bicycling use at the moment. In reality, DOT motorcycling helmets do not need to be that much heavier or less vented. They are typically heavier shelled to deal with the hemi anvil hits at higher impact energy but all a bike helmet might need to do to pass DOT is become another half inch thicker, to deal second impact with flat surface anvil. Two impacts is still a point of contention in mc helmet testing as well. In all the mc discussion it's that the lighter impacts are most commonly seen, against the flat road. I don't know how this is going to differ from bicycling impacts. Hemi's and curbstones don't appear to be the larger concern by the standards.

Hmm, I think their doing some of this and will do the rest as time goes by.

"They" tell us how to raise our kids, in California don't dare get caught spanking your child in public, or if some liberal neighbor sees you doing it they can call child services and you get a lovely visit with offers to attend classes on raising a child where they will tell you how to raise your child. Of course the spanking has to leave a mark for social services to get excited but they will come to check for marks, if the spanking doesn't leave a mark then it really isn't spanking it's love pats.

Russia started a way to map out a career path for a child by administering tests back in the 50's, America is attempting to do this very same thing now. In Russia the tests figure out what the child's strengths and weaknesses are and then steered the child into the classes that would best fit his strengths and later a career guidance in which "they" already know about and the child was pigeonholed into that career. America hasn't gone that far yet, but are getting closer each year to doing that.

Selecting the idea mate? Some are already doing this by getting DNA testing done to see if their a match for having perfect kids or to make sure they don't get damaged DNA that can lead to many illnesses or physical problems. So yeah there are couples who do this before they get married.

See, that's my problem. I lack imagination. Every time I think I've dreamt up a ridiculous, hyperbolic situation, it turns out to be happening, (usually in California first). Actually, I'm better than that, but was trying to make a point about smug, sanctimonious people who don't accept other's opinions because they are the products of ignorance or stupidity.

I believe is was James Madison who predicted that the USA would lose it's freedoms, not to a foreign power, but by degrees from forces within. I never cease to be amazed at how much and how easily Americans are willing to give up freedoms that so much blood was shed to protect.

I speak for no one here but myself when I say that I respect everybody's decision to wear a helmet or not, and just wish that those who truly believe in helmets would return the favor and let us morons revel in our stupidity unmolested.

There ya have it 237 pages of nothing but thick skulls. Of course there's no choice, because there shouldn't even be a market for these things, because our thick skulls will be just fine after multiple attempts to increase our knowledge base.

I believe you're the one who implies that folks who make choices different than what you believe is right are "not nearly as informed as they'd like to think, nor does their judgement appear worthy of any freedoms associated with it" (your words).

As long as you feel that way there won't be any productive discussion because there's no reason to bother.

There's always that hope of more sophisticated lurkers. :crash:

Just to throw some more statistics on the fire:

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/risks_of_travel.htm

What I take from these numbers is that there isn't a massive difference between walking and cycling in terms of danger. Per km it's much of a muchness. Per journey you're four times more likely to be killed while cycling and per hour you're about 2.5 times as likely to be killed. It sounds like a lot but both are in the bottom three in terms of safety and are far more dangerous than any other form of transportation by a large margin except for motorbikes.

I was surprised that the numbers were so close, especially when you consider that pedestrians actually spend a very small part of their journey interacting with cars. For most it's only when crossing the road that the two groups come into contact. Depending on where you live cyclists spend almost all their time interacting with cars so you would think the numbers would be very much higher.

What I take from this is that if I'm going to ride to the shops or the pub then I'm not going to wear a helmet. It's a pain in the arse carrying it around and pick up groceries at the same time. I don't do it when I'm walking so why do it while I'm cycling. Apart from mountain biking I have never crashed while on my bike and I've been riding on the road for about 18 years.

The problem I have with helmets is that there is a tendancy in the media and with the general public to massively overrate their effectivness. Using helmets or not seems to be somewhere between number 1 and number 3 whenever a cyclist safety debate comes up. It should be around about number 93 when compared to things like segregated cycleways, driver training, cyclist training, road design, driver perception, awareness of blind spots, etc.

I think when it comes to PPE it is far better to underestimate it's effectiveness than to overestimate it.

Still waiting for you to post those by the way.

Why is it that Libertarians think absolutely everything they disagree with is a threat to their "freedom"? It must get unbearably tiring to view everything in the entire world through a purely political lens.

Helmet laws (motorcycle or bicycle), seat belt laws, etc. are not threats to anybody's freedom. They might well be bad policy (as I personally think bicycle helmet laws are), but the Constitution will be just fine in their presence or absence. The State, in the freest of nations, has every right to regulate the safe operation of vehicles. Among many other things.

We feel this way, because so many think that just about everything is grist for the statist mill. I don't object to state regulation of various aspects of daily life, but it has to meet a compelling state need, and be the least obtrusive way to met the objective.

Problem, is that there are so many people who feel they've found the path, and anybody who hasn't is obviously too ignorant to be allowed to take care of themselves.

As relates to the specific issue of bicycle helmets, the case has not been made that cycling without a helmet is unreasonably dangerous, nor has it been made that mandatory helmet use would lower the rate of serious or fatal head injuries.

Actually the case has been made that cycling without a helmet can be hazardous to ones well being, I posted many sites to prove that as did others here. People like you are the ones to believe helmets are useless because it doesn't suit you to believe otherwise so you take other reports that are not as well studied that say helmets don't work and run with that and call the helmeted people stupid.

So in reality the non helmeted people are the ones to ignorant to take care of themselves thus laws should be applied to prevent such ignorance and save some of the cost of medical procedures required to insurance companies and taxpayers. The same was true with seat belts years ago, the Libs all said the same thing you're saying about helmets, but the medical cost of the ignorance of people not wanting to wear seatbelts skyrocketed so eventually the government stepped in and made it a law to wear belts...though a lot of people still don't.

Personally I think having a law to force people to comply is wrong, I think if a person is injured or killed because they failed to take reasonable measure to protect oneself, like wearing seatbelt or helmet, that the hospital and insurance company (if they even had insurance) that took care of the person should have the right to go after the immediate family whether that person lived with them or not and suck the money out their paychecks, tax returns, savings, retirement, home equity etc so that the hospital, insurance company and taxpayers won't foot the bill as much. Maybe when the accident cost costs the victims family lots of money they'll think twice.

I did earlier. I don't know why you continue to overlook the most clear and known part of the conversation. It's in the standard, whether that is CPSC or Snell.

Here's the Snell standard: http://smf.org/standards/b/b90astd

a. For each impact against the flat anvil, the impact energy shall be 100 J for all testing regardless of headform size or weight. Given an ideal frictionless mechanical test facility, this impact energy represents a 2.2+ meter drop of a 5 kg headform and supporting assembly.
b. For each impact against the hemispherical anvil, the impact energy shall be 65 J for all testing regardless of headform size or weight. Given an ideal frictionless mechanical test facility, this impact energy represents a 1.3+ meter drop of a 5 kg headform and supporting assembly.
c. For each impact against the kerbstone anvil, the impact energy shall be 58 J for all testing regardless of headform size or weight. Given an ideal frictionless mechanical test facility, this impact energy represents a 1.2 meter drop of a 5 kg headform and supporting assembly.

It's because everything and everybody is a threat to their sense of self, and ultimately their self-esteem within that idea. An island of one makes them feels safely in control of their world.

I completely agree rekmeyata. In fact, I would expand this and hound the family members of pedestrians who weren't wearing helmets.

In fact, given the fact that taking the bus is far far safer than walking, cycling, or driving in terms of fatalities per billion kilometers I think we should strip the assets of the families of anyone injured on the roads who was not riding the bus.

And we should piss in their shoes just for being so stupid too.