Electricfreak

Smart people wear helmets. Brain matters!

NoviceJohn

Unless you're riding your bike to meet someone for a date, always ride with a helmet. A helmet from a big box store is better than no helmet when you fly over your handle bars head first onto the pavement.

CarinusMalmari

Oh wow, this must be the mother of all bicycle helmet topics. How does this thing even remain stable? These things usually go up in flames after a couple of dozen posts. Anyway, I couldn't help myself to register, to behold this thing in all its glory, and while I'm here add to the fun. But let me first cast my vote: after decades of research it's still largely unclear how effective bicycle helmets are, but everything points to "not very". I doubt if they are ever worth the bother, but there are loads of things you can do that really make a difference and that should have priority over something that has at best a dubious safety record. As a utility cyclist in the Netherlands I really don't need a cycling helmet, so I never wear one. The negatives don't outweigh the benefits they may or may not offer. It's nonsensical to wear any protection for an activity that in my/our specific context is extremely safe anyway.

elcruxio

Oh you're so cute I could squeeze you! If I ever do a safety lecture for a kindergarten can I use your exact phrase?

Say, do you wear a helmet while driving a car, taking a shower, walking in the city, walking in a frozen city? I say I've had more terrible bumps on my head when walking and slipping than riding a bike. It would seem to me that my 29er mountain bike is more stable than my own two feet especially in icy conditions. And in general as well.

JoeyBike

Me too. But I figured that if I am going to wear a hat anyway, why not wear a hat with good ventilation that is not going to blow off my head, feels like nothing in on my head at all - wind blowing through my hair, allows me to see what is coming up behind me (mirror attached), and it might, just MIGHT do me some good in a fall.

I can see no helmet for people who hate wearing hats. And I don't care who wears one or why they don't - I am a Libertarian by nature. Just interesting a hat wearer wouldn't pick up proper cycling headgear for that purpose. Humans are interesting creatures.

JoeyBike

We do know that helmets are pretty good at protecting the helmet itself. I went to a school at the Specialized bike company and found it amazing how much sophisticated in-house testing they did on their helmet designs. Certainly the big helmet companies like Bell do at least the same. The testing showed forces absorbed by helmets hitting flat objects, simulated curbs, pointy things, round things, rough things, smooth things. It was truly amazing the amount and types of data are available for the helmet itself.

Another well studied object is the human head - mostly by the auto industry. The auto industry, knowing no one is going to wear a helmet in a car anyway, had to figure out how to keep car occupants from ever hitting their heads. So shocks in bumpers, seat belts, air bags, and crumple zones to protect the rest of the human body were developed.

The bike helmet industry uses their own data combined with the auto industry head trauma data in an effort to make a hat that is comfy and somewhat protective within a small range of scenarios. There are a million ways to fall off a bike and hit your head. The helmet industry is only trying to address the most common head impacts using materials available to them at a cost that is reasonable, and to make a profit from the endeavor.

What they do know is that a bike helmet will do a great deal to prevent scalp lacerations. I think that is common sense. Your hat will do that to a lesser extent. What they also know is that a bike helmet will allow you to hit your head a bit harder before cracking your skull. And a skull is pretty hard to crack in the first place. What they DON'T claim is that a helmet will prevent brain damage of any sort. Even football helmets can't claim that and the impacts are about the same for a mild fall off a bike.

What I take from all of the above is a helmet will prevent some injuries better than a cloth hat or nothing at all. And if I were not falling off at least once a year, maybe I could believe that I was never going to fall off. But I do fall off, and I like wearing hats, so I grab a bike hat before I mount up. If it ever prevents stitches in my scalp that's just gravy.

In the end, I have to agree that for more serious impacts - there is not enough evidence that a helmet will do much good. Maybe hold the pieces of your skull together in the ambulance and keep your obituary from mentioning "He wasn't wearing a helmet."

mconlonx

So I got this new van, a cutaway with a utility body, which means you can walk through from the front of the van into the box out back. Great, except the shelf at the top of the divider is low, lower than the cab ceiling, lower than the box ceiling. In getting used to it, I've hit my head -- HARD -- a couple times. Pain, tears, even a couple lumps. Ouchie. More head injury because of this than in my past decade of riding, even without a helmet.

Right now, the van is functioning as my mobile bike storage and work area, and as a result, sometimes when I'm loading a bike in or out, I'm wearing a helmet, either coming back from a ride or heading out. That helmet has saved from some right nasty head-bumps on that divider shelf...

Also, it is too funny seeing the reaction of other drivers when they notice you are wearing a helmet in a truck...

elcruxio

clearly you don't suffer from the bane of all hair carrying people. the spotty ridged helmet hair. It looks absolutely ridiculous. However a beanie/baseball cap hair is awesome. flatter better controlled profile with better direction control. With a helmet I sometimes get tufts poking through the vents of the helmet.


Have you not heard man?! When you do fall, and it will happen with 200% certainty since all the "helmetless is an organ donor"- types crash dozens of times a year and every time it's the helmet that saves their lives, your head will explode against the curb and in addition a close relative will get cancer through the explosive brain waves. Also a hundred cars will rear end a hundred cyclists in as many days due to the rage induced by a single helmetless rider. Did he not realize a helmet would have saved him under the grinder which is a sixteen wheeler.

Except if you are wearing a helmet of course. Then all is good.

/s

howsteepisit

Great post Joey, and a nice description of what you have learned about bike helmets! Seems to make a lot of sense.

JosephG

I'm a staunch supporter of the buzz cut, so helmet head never worries me, bicycle or motorcycle helmet

CarinusMalmari

@JoeyBike I think we have a fairly similar view on bicycle helmets, be it that you are more of a "Glass is Half Full" kinda person it seems.They're most likely better than nothing in case of an accident, but they probably don't save lots of lives in any sense of the phrase. However in the Dutch situation even an effective helmet wouldn't make much sense. Around here they did a pretty good job in ensuring real bicycle safety, as in preventing bicycle accidents altogether. Well, for the most part that is, you don't prevent everything, of course.

I'm a fairly avid cyclist, nothing remotely extraordinary, but with an average 140k a week I do get around. However, I was only once in a mention-worthy accident, mainly caused by tween arrogance annex peer pressure that ended with me slamming face first into a down-hill trail. Significant road rash and two stitches, so nothing serious, but still it counts as a memorable crash. Other than that and some childhood crashes that didn't even result in minor injuries, I never was in something that could be called a crash at least not with a straight face. It's not luck, but because of a variety of reasons, regular Dutch cyclists don't fall of their bicycles a lot.

It's simply not worth the discomfort of wearing a helmet that isn't very effective, or the inconvenience of dragging such contraption along. Not for the remote possibility that I will need it some day. I would reconsider the option if I would engage in more risky cycling, say plunging myself of a hillside, but if results in the past say anything about the future, that just isn't my thing.

rekmeyata

Why? there's nothing under the scalp anyways!

JosephG

Just to update my previous posts, nothing back on MIPS as of yet. SCOTT's reply was to refer to the MIPS site.

A non-update update. Looks like I may not get anywhere with this.

CarinusMalmari

There's no good reason to believe that a bicycle helmet will offer much protection against things beyond injuries to the scalp. If you want to protect the skull, and the brain, you might want to consider a real helmet instead of a foam hat. Or even better, you might want to consider preventing accidents all together. Which I know is for a large part easier said than done, but a difficult real fix is better than a crappy and largely ineffective quick fix.

Iief

I saw this interesting article on Digg today: Stop forcing people to wear bike helmets - Vox

They use a lot of statistics and make a good case for why bike helmets actually discourage riding and don't result in a meaningful safety increase.

Chris516

This argument, is baseless. It doesn't account for:

1. Being on a bike
2. The inertia when falling off a bike

krobinson103

Endless debate. do as you wish. I like my head.

mconlonx

ibtm

rekmeyata

About what you said about the helmet issue is mostly nonsense and that FACT has already been proven here on this discussion over and over and over and over to nauseum with scientific facts, government studies, helmet testing facts, actually cases, etc, etc, but some just don't care about the facts, so I leave it alone now because no one can convince brick heads with facts.

Secondly you are absolutely correct about preventing accidents. A person must ride their bike without distractions like music so they can pay better attention to what's going on around them, and keep their eyes open constantly scanning front, left, right and at least 1/4 a mile ahead instead of staring at the road 1 or 2 feet in front of the front wheel as most cyclists do. I've only had 2 accidents on a bike in 40 years and neither were my fault but in the first crash I was going to fast for road conditions even though the pedestrian that walked out in front me had a wait signal so technically it was her fault but I could have prevented it had I not been going 32 mph passing cars doing 15 to 20 in a 35 zone on a busy car and pedestrian congested city street, but I was 21 and had a need for speed. The second accident I placed myself in a position so a driver of a car could see me, I was right of her and even with her side window with the front wheel about even with the front bumper (VW Beetle) so she could have full view of me in a bike lane and keeping up with the flow of traffic on another busy city street, she saw a parking spot and turned fast into me, those you can't do a whole lot about.

Oh and by the way, the last accident my head went through her side window breaking it out, try doing that bare headed and let me know how you would fair, then I pivoted onto the ground slamming my head onto the pavement, again let me know how you would have fared bare headed

elcruxio

About your second accident. You can't do much about crazed gunmen shooting people on the street short of wearing body armor all the time. Then again such occasions are extremely rare. So is your second accident. It's in fact almost a malicious intent to cause harm- kind of situation and at least groo negligence. These massive efups which indeed are extremely rare cannot be a guide for safety equipment since they fall into the class of "anything can happen, a plane can fall on you"

Slamming your head through a car safety glass shouldn't be too big of a problem. You can break one of those with a decent kick or a small piece of porcelain and a weak throw. A head will just pass on through. Now the pavement is another issue but still relatively rare in all the accidents happening with a bicycle.

italktocats

noone is forcing you, because they cant (excluding the places where its mandatory)

rydabent

It get kind of tiresome of the anti helmet types that prostitute the thread by asking if pro helmet people wear helmets when they drive or do anything else. It is apples to oranges. Cars have crush zones, seatbelt and shoulder harness, and air bags. Cyclist only have helmets to mitigate damage. Try to stay on the subject of cycling safety.

CarinusMalmari

The only real FACT I can thing of concerning cycle helmets is that the jury is still out on whether and how helmets work. Mainly because it's next to impossible to measure the effect,at least not without going all Josef Mengele on test subjects. As a result there's whole **** loads of reports with all kinds of conflicting results. Any other conclusion than that is caused by confirmation bias. I do however take a GIANT hint from the fact that the Dutch Cyclists Union, arguably the most severe Bicycle Safety Nazis around, discourage even bicycle helmet promotion.

We can look at the design, and conclude they're great at protecting against lacerations and bruising. They don't seem to do a whole lot to prevent concussion type injury. They might prevent skull cracks by redistributing an impact to a larger area, but I wouldn't count to much on it, They're tested for impacts till 20km/h, which isn't that bad, but the testing methods used are laughable, and they sure seem to fail a lot.

As for your anecdotes, or rather speculation about anecdotes: they don't prove anything, except that 50% of your accidents were preventable. Did the helmet make a real difference? maybe, maybe not. We'll never know and you stated the reason: We've to repeat the exact accident sans helemt to ever know.

rydabent

This thread belongs in the helmet thread area.

So the question is, who is forcing you to wear a helmet? Altho people that value their brains do. In other words smart people that want to remain smart.

gregf83 

I don't GAF about people who don't GAF about their brains...