We started posting to this in another thread and then it was tacked on to this sticky so we did not have access to the previous 5-10 pages you refer to. You may not have been aware of that either.

Nope, I wasn't. Would have been, I guess, had I read back a little :(

This is a silly argument because it applies to every piece of safety equipment.

Okaaay... Highly speculative and lacking in any data to support it.

Who knows!

Not really (some of them might be but some of them are not).

It seems that people die from skiing mostly from high speed collisions (skiing out of control) (too fast for helmets to be of much use).

I wear a helmet skiing mostly so I don't whack my head on tree branches.

why are you such a "data" freak? even when you're provided with "data" you refute it. so common sense is out, "data" you don't agree with is out, personal experience is out. novel way to be a winner.
BTW the skiers THIS year all hit trees, non-moving, should have seen them, trees.

Just with this one sentence it's obvious that you have not even got the basics sorted out. If you don't want to come across as extremely foolish you should do that before you should start sharing your experience or insulting anyone else as an "organ donor".

I guess it's too much to ask that people treat each other with a little respect in this thread even if they disagree

I did merge a thread in from commuting, not everyone knows about this thread. We have been merging every helmet thread into this one, so it sometimes gets a little disjointed.

I never skied fast enough to feel like I needed a helmet. There are a lot of people that ski out of control and hit trees and other skiers. From my time in Utah, Tony Danza and Sonny Bono come to mind. Skiers usually die of a ruptured spleen or other internal injuries, but there have been well-documented cases of people falling from a stand-still and hitting their head hard enough to prove fatal.

I didn't read all 93 pages, so I'll just summarize my thoughts on helmets as simply as I can.

1) My skull is pretty good at protecting my brain from injuries, but my skull with a Styrofoam shell on top is even better. I find helmets are lightweight and don't detract from my enjoyment of riding, so it's worth it for me to wear one.

2) As a practical matter, helmets keep the top of head from getting sunburned. If I didn't wear a helmet, I'd have to wear a hat, and since most hats don't come with chin straps, I'd probably lose it on the first big downhill.

These are not common skiing injuries/fatalities (though, it would seem that helmets might be useful for these). One has to be careful drawing statistical conclusions from media reports.

You haven't provided any data to back that claim up.

The anti-helmet camp are the "data freaks": they routinely point out (reasonably) that pro-helmet arguments are anecdotal ("personal experience") or lacking in data.

Relying on "common sense" is a common criticism (reasonable, I think) of the ant-helmet crowd. Either the "commonse sense" and "personal experience" justifications work for both sides or they works for neither. Sorry!

:rolleyes: Go read compilations of skiing accidents. It is running into things at high speed that typically kills skiers (there are all sorts of injuries skiers are subject to but not many of them are lethal).

You are ignoring what I said here.

What appears to happen in many skiing accidents is that the victim goes too fast and can't maintain control or stop. They leave the piste and collide at high speed into whatever is in their way. That often happens to be a tree. Put another way: most ski runs are clear areas in forests and what out-of-control skiers typically run into are trees.

What in the world are we discussing skiing helmets for? They're vastly different from bike helmets, just like motorcycle helmets are.

It's just as likely the shell broke after the liner compressed, while absorbing impact.

Aargh.

This one comes close:

Mind you it should say I Have Never Worn A Helmet But Am Going To Buy One Soon.


Which is my intention this week:)

Not really (not all of them).

Anyway, it's not any less productive than anything else being discussed here.

And, the sociology of them is similar.

I would +1 that comment chasm but you didn't provide enough study material or research links for my taste. 40 or 50+ plus years cycling experience just won't do.

Last summer my 10 year old son crashed his bike and landed square on his forehead, two front permanent teeth completely excised on impact (other baby teeth came out as well.) Were it not for the helmet on his head, he would most likely not be able to wipe his bottom or feed himself at this point. He did not have a choice as to whether he would be wearing a helmet or not. We require it 100% of the time of our children when riding on things with wheels (cars, golf carts, Polaris Rangers excluded). Glad I am/was a hardass parent that way!

I do not like wearing a helmet, I actually hate it when riding a bicycle. Motorcycles and quads are another story. I used to only wear them when I HAD to, events, or my mother demanding it. I now wear a helmet each and every time I am on a bike. I believe people should be able to make up there own minds about helmets and bikes, but children should not be allowed to make those decisions.

Never understood the skiing helmet thing either...

Yeah, imagine my surprise when I found the thread I posted in had been transferred and tacked onto this one. I did read a few pages back and all I saw was a couple of iffy epidemiology studies. Checking the author of the NZ study, it's pretty clear that he is not an epidemiologist as his other papers are not in that area. Probably pissed at having to strap on a helmet and cobbled something together. The majority of papers I have read that actually collate ER visits and attempt to control for variables show that wearing a helmet reduces head injuries. I'm keeping mine strapped on, the rest of you can do what you want. Just keep your organ donor cards on you, there aren't enough hearts, kidneys and livers to go around.

It looked as though this was the case, which is the only reason my head didn't explode. In that case, it's understandable not to really know other studies that directly contradict the one posted, the conflicting statistics, and otherwise the very inconclusive state of evidence.

You didn't look very hard. I'm not going to go dredging for stuff readily available in this thread for you, but the cases where mandatory helmet laws are instituted and no drop in serious head injuries occurs is pretty damning, to me. Especially since it resulted in less overall cycling, meaning that there were probably a lot of people riding around lidless before implementation. Yet, no drop in head injuries. Why could that be?

Also, since you're so safety conscious, I assume this means you have the skate-style helmets with few vents that even helmet advocates admit are more effective than the wildly more popular vented cycling helmets? I wonder why those aren't more popular, what with helmets being so important and all... :rolleyes:

Not a problem, just keep thinking the magic beer-cooler foam hat will save you from being an organ donor. I've also got some amulets who's magnetic aura helps shield from vehicular crashes, if you're interested. Only 3 easy payments of $19.99, plus shipping and handling, of course. PM me.

Dang..... didn't know I was walking into a sh*t storm for posting picture of my helmet on the COMMUTING forum. :)

Just passing along my experience. Glad I was wearing a helmet.....it protected my coconut.

Carry on.

I'm glad too, you've proven how helmets can be helpful, WITHOUT snippy backhanded put downs to those that don't wear helmets. of course the vast majority of helmet wearer's comments have been useful, positive anecdotes with a simple I'm glad I had one.
why a small number of posters can't live up to the very standard of validation and proof they demand from non-helmet wearers and then resort to "your brain isn't worth protecting" put downs is beyond belief.
it's not "anti-helmet", it's "anti-stop calling me an idiot because I've decided at 20 mph I don't need a helmet because I know how to ride a bike and be aware of my surroundings and at 50 mph helmets won't work anyway".
and I have been hit by cars so save that argument too.

If you are going to throw people into a pit full of crocodiles, maybe you should warn them first.

I think it would have been better to lock the thread and redirect them to the crocodile pit (which they could, then, enter into willingly).

m/s squared are not units of speed