closetbiker

I re-visit the original post here because it shows how people get things wrong.

It says most kids are smarter than women but what's missed is that kids fall more than women and women are the safest of cyclists.

Is that smarter? Wearing a helmet and crashing as opposed to being without and not crashing?

So then the question is why does Jeff post that wearing a helmet should be the smart thing to do? My guess would be that the helmet lobby has run a campaign trying to convince the general public that head injuries to cyclists are a significant problem by quoting (often shaky) numbers out of context to create an emotional response based on fear. Using personal anecdotal stories, they create a market for something that does little except allay the fears they created in the first place.

It also brings up the perception that to ride a bicycle is to participate in something that is detrimental to health (through trauma) rather than beneficial to health (through exercise to it's users and in decreased damage in accidents to others), and that's just wrong. Jeff should be praising those women for riding their bikes not only safely but, for increasing the net health (yes, including nuero-health) of society. It's people like that that end up paying for the health care of those who do not take care of themselves and end up in the hospital with some preventable, chronic disease.

I prefer the first 15 years of mass produced helmet sales over the last 15 years. Back then, when someone rode with a Bell Biker, it wasn't such a big deal, but the last 15 years (or so) when someone goes around lidless, you have people pass judgement and be intolerant without understanding or respecting the individuals stance or the over all situation.

I bet Bell Sports prefers the last 15 years though. They've profited quite nicely.

John C. Ratliff

I surely wish I was wearing one (a helmet, that is) when I fell off my bike in the sixth grade, got my first migraine headache ever (recurring over a lifetime now), scraped up the side of my face and temple region, and had a miserable day after that. But that was before they were available (approximately 1957). Wearing a helmet would not have kept me off the bike either, as our family had only one car, and we used the bike to go everywhere. More later...

John

roadiespinner

Here is my conclusion , after extensive research.
Over 25 years of riding 1000 to 3000 miles per year fall three times and hit head hard enough to do severe head damage if not wearing a helmet. Then decide whether or not to wear a helmet. [I did not need to review any other studies.]
I chose to wear a helmet whenever I ride a bike, it is an easy decision.

Six jours

I have been riding for 25 years too. My average, at least during my racing career, was about 13,000 miles per year. I've entered more than a thousand races -- road, track, and cyclocross -- and specialized in the motorpace event which was renowned for its danger. I am sure I have fallen dozens of times, but I have never landed on my head in a crash.

So based on my far more extensive research, I can't see any use for helmets.

Of course, both my example and yours are nothing more than personal anecdotes, so it looks like we've just wasted everybody's time with worthless opinion pieces. Hmm...

schnee

Check my signature, and then ask me if helmets cramp my style!

Haydn

My father got knocked off his bicycle a few years ago (wasn't wearing a helmet) and he sustained severe head injuries and is now disabled.

partly because of this I choose to wear a helmet, Ho Hum.

roadiespinner

My personal experiences have brought me to one conclusion and yours have brought you to another.
Your reasoning sounds like someone saying " I once survived a car wreck, without buckling up, with no injury so I see no need for seat belts or air bags."
To have survived " dozens of falls" without hitting your head makes me think that you are one very lucky person. Or perhaps you have hit your head but don't remember it because of the head injury.

closetbiker

maybe what you're not getting is that if we look at everyone, we find that head injuries are distributed to people that are not riding bikes as well, and even when they do happen to people riding bikes, it only happens to a few. Usually those few could have easily have avoided the head injuries (much more effectively) by riding better than by wearing a helmet.

90% of the people who have head injuries get them from being in cars, falling and being involved in an assault. Being on a bike does not indicate you're in line for a head injury any more than walking down the street does. It's more how you do something than what you do that leads to problems.

Six jours

Which is why personal anecdotes are so useless in this kind of discussion.

Well, except that the evidence for seat belts is crystal clear. The evidence for helmets is not, kind of like the evidence for side-curtain airbags. So your analogy would be more correct if was something like "I've survived dozens of car wrecks without ever hitting my head on a side window or door sill, so don't think you're an idiot just because you drive a car without side-curtain airbags".

Yeah, me and about a zillion other bike racers who rode and raced without helmets. To read the stuff on this thread, you'd think that prior to 1985, riding a bike was practically suicide. And yet people who raced back then will almost certainly note that there seemed to be far fewer serious injuries back then then there are now.

A thousand miles per year, eh? Two point seven miles per day. My bike commute to first grade was longer than that. And even then I was able to avoid hitting my head when I fell off.

Guess some folks just learn more slowly than others.

roadiespinner

I am indeed a slow learner, but I have learned enough to wear a helmet.

blue_neon

Wow this thread is still going.

closetbiker

there are a lot of slow learners

Six jours

Fair enough. I personally prefer not falling off and hitting my head in the first place, but if your method works for you...

John C. Ratliff

What we prefer, and what we get are sometimes, through no fault of the person involved, not the same.

https://www.arcamax.com/familycircus/s-291477-475748

Enjoy,

John

closetbiker

Life's full of risks. Why do some fears resonate with us more than others? Often, fears are rarely based on reality.

Some people are so full of fear that they make poor choices over what they choose to be fearful of, and end up worse off than if they weren't so fearful in the first place

Six jours

Yes, that does seem to be about the level of risk management understood by the average helmet proselytizer. Thanks for sharing!

rando

from the looks of it, you can't prove that Billy was better off with the helmet on. the only thing he fell on was soft snow. the worst risk was of a spinal injury, which the helmet did nothing to protect.

closetbiker

I've kept this comic on the door of my (bike) closet (guess how I came up with my username?) for years.

I think it's funnier and more realistic.

crhilton

The funny part of this argument, to me, is that you'll try harder to avoid crashes. Which, in the case of defensive riding is mostly helpful. But in the case of balance recovery it often makes for worse wrecks.

So even the "extra security means laziness" argument isn't quite bullet proof.

I always say, wear a helmet and forget you have one on. While they can pose an extra risk (they can get caught, and hurt you worse) it's much more likely they'll decrease the intensity of your injury. If you really want to feel safer on it, just tell yourself you'll be a quadriplegic if you wreck: That's scarier than death anyway . (My apologies to the handicapped, I just can't think of a nice way to say I fear the challenges you face more than death.)

Besides, in the winter it helps keep my head warmer .

crhilton

You're incorrect.

His is actually evidence of incidences of real falls, with a real rider, where a helmet decreased the damage inflicted on his head.
You've simply proven you don't fall on your head. Since many people recognize they may fall on their head they're more likely to see the value of his anecdotal evidence for the value of bicycle helmets.

Now, had you said you'd fallen with a helmet and it did nothing for you then you'd have the equivalent and opposite anecdotal evidence.


And, as always with personal anecdotes, either of you, both of you, or neither of you could be lying.

[Edit, I'm tired, I can't spell]

WaltPoutine

There is substantial disagreement on this point and it is misleading to state it as fact. The time-series/longitudinal data from areas which have implemented compulsory helmet usage indicates that wearing helmets does not reduce head injuries.

There is another body of data which has concentrated on the mechanics of head-injuries, paying special attention to torsional/rotational injuries which lead to diffuse axonal injury (DAI) and other pathologies related to the rapid rotational acceleration/de-acceleration of the gello-like brain material. Although this area of biomechanical testing is sadly neglected it appears that there are many situations in which helmets can actually increase torsional injuries: so much so that there is actually a motorcycle helmet https://www.phillipshelmets.co.uk/ which has been designed to have a sliding outer shell to mimic the "lubricating" effect of the scalp.

By all means wear a helmet if your personal beliefs incline you to it, but please don't state as fact your opinion on a highly contentious subject when so much of the evidence actually contradicts what you state so baldly. Thanks.

Richard Cranium

Many people misunderstand the relationship of bicycle equipment and their potential for serious injury. Besides the use of helmets, lights and mirrors are often touted by manufacturers and medical professionals as effectively increasing bicycling safety. Unfortunately, (for cyclists) the risk of serious injury during a bicycle ride is most often the result of the behavior by automobile drivers using none of these devices correctly. :-(

closetbiker

which is why he said,

crhilton

I'm sorry, it's basic physics. It's a device which decreases the deceleration your head experiences with an impact on the ground. I don't need to hear people's bad statistics based on very incomplete information to take away my "belief" classical physics.

There are definitely ways it can make things worse, which is why I stated that. But evidence of torsional damage simply isn't that common: And the thing with torsional damage is that every time it happens there's going to be a medical record. Every time a helmet turns a minor bump into nothing more than a broken helmet you'll have no record unless LBS probe every new helmet purchase.

It may sound horribly anti-empirical of me, but I just don't buy incomplete statistical evidence collected from sources who had no clue they were collecting experimental data.

Are there "crazy" studies around that test helmets in a lab with dummies. You know, they test one variable at a time in order to learn the properties of said variable. Things like smashing a dummies head from eight dozen directions and measure the forces on the head. Kind of like car impact tests?

crhilton

Did you read anything else I said?