Yep that's why the thread is hidden away in A&S. Not really a lot to say unless some troll wants to stir stuff up. Now where is the flat earth sticky...?

It is crazy and they couldn't really back up their opinion either. It is one thing to hold an opinion and back it up but to hold an opinion so strongly and claim the evidence exists and then not provide any of it Is ridiculous. I mean to post an article in the helmet thread trying to say helmets are bad where the only mention of helmets at all was "helmet hair" and that is the strong argument against helmets just really iced that already glazed cake.

Heck I understand not wanting to wear a helmet they can be big and bulky and aren't really a sexy look and could certainly be hotter in the summer and all of that sort of stuff but to say it is unsafe and harmful just blows the mind completely.

Well I mean everyone knows the earth is flat that is a universal truth that everyone holds. What next are they going to say that JFK wasn't shot by Elvis using a secret laser ray developed by Bob Hope and Lena Horne? What crazy times we live in,,,LOL

Among the people/groups I tend to ride with, not wearing a helmet would look more odd than wearing one, but those folks all tend to be experienced and skilled riders who understand the simple factors of why wearing a helmet is a good choice.

Our new shop will have a policy of wearing helmets at all events we are a part of. There is no ifs ands or buts in this situation. There is just no point to not wear one unless you are riding on soft fluffy clouds in dreamland and your bike is made of air (but plenty stiff). I have a brain and it ain't perfect but unfortunately I won't be able to get another one and really don't want to have to do that ever. It would be miserable to have any brain damage especially as a result of cycling. I love eating vegetables but I don't want to become one unless it were a cartoonish version and I was a crime fighting habanero pepper with garlic bulbs for fists...HAHAHA

All of our local club and shop rides require helmets. Might be an insurance thing. I rarely see an adult w/o a helmet other than DUI types riding Salmon against traffic or on the sidewalk.

As I already explained at least once, very few -- potentially no -- studies have been able to accurately study cycling injury rates, for very well-known ethical reasons.

Even countries that take their cycling very seriously struggle massively to accurately count cycling injuries. So attempting to analyze cycling safety using such numbers, that necessarily have huge error bars, is essentially pointless. This is why, for example, the previously-referenced studies estimate large improvements in cyclist fatality rates could be caused by helmet usage, while our actual real-world statistics have never shown even the slightest such improvement. When you attempt to study a problem using junk data -- which virtually all cycling injury data is, unfortunately -- your results are going to be garbage, due to GIGO.

While not ideal, that means that any accurate safety analysis must be done using fatality statistics -- which are vastly easier to compile accurately.

Well, you've demonstrated a critical need for improved reading comprehension about a dozen times now -- I was being charitable and hoping your problem was a lack of coffee. Turns out, it may be a lack of ability to understand, which you continually demonstrate as well.

68% of American cyclists do not wear helmets. I am far from the only person who is aware that they do not work -- I'm just one of extremely few willing to attempt to educate persons like yourself.

Again with the lack of comprehension. You are no less safe with the wind in your hair versus wearing a bicycle helmet.

It is amusing that you are so completely uninformed that you think peer review has value.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...l-hoax/572212/
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/...s-and-scholars
https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffre...h=450ccbd5463e
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2...iew-statistics
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8877864/

68% of American cyclists do not wear helmets. You hold the minority opinion.

It is a great argument to illustrate that you are completely clueless on this topic -- since you were just preaching about manufacturers rigorously testing their helmets. That is precisely not the case, which is why Virginia Tech University has had to step into the breach and develop a test program.

And you had absolutely zero clue about that, until I educated you. As with the remainder of this entire topic.

So are you willing to accept my challenge, or not? If I provide the statistics that I previously referenced, will you be an honest person and admit that you have been wrong?

So is it your contention that no one has ever survived an OTB at 30 mph sans helmet, without at least vegetization? That's the necessary conclusion from your claim, and it is incorrect. Unhelmeted motorcycle riders survive crashes like that frequently, as have bicycle riders.

Doctors at Mass General, and everywhere else, are not trained in accident reconstruction, and even if they had been, they likely would not have had the necessary evidence to make that judgement. Among other things, they would need to know the angle and speed at which your head contacted whatever it hit -- because as previously-explained, the increased effective size of your helmeted head changes the impact situation substantially.

Did anyone get your crash on video?

All that said, I worked with some of the finest physicians in their fields at the University of Chicago, and while they are very good at their specialty, they were almost universally useless at anything else. One industry-wide example of this is the persistence of hand-written medical charts -- which cost many lives unnecessarily.

Why did professional cycle racing see an increase in fatalities when helmets became mandatory?

And, more to this specific point, why can no statistical evidence to support your claim be found? Why do helmeted cyclists still die at precisely the same rate which bare-headed ones do?

This really doesn’t help your case. VT’s testing finds that some helmets offer BETTER PROTECTION than others.

As are the materials used in proper helmets that exhibit an improvement in wearer protection. Why don't you wear one of those helmets, instead of a bicycle helmet that exhibits no benefit?



It is nowhere near as simple as you seem to think, as evidenced by the fact that you got your calculation wrong -- it's not 100%. Hint: Consider what happens when the foam is fully compressed.

And again, you are missing half of the equation. The increased size of your effective "head" necessarily results in more and more-severe impacts. So the question is not "Does foam absorb some energy?" It is "Does foam absorb sufficient energy to offset the increase caused by the effective head-size increase?"

That question is anything but simple to answer -- and statistics indicate that the answer is most-likely "No".



Depends on how good their aim is. I'd rather they just barely miss my head than solidly contact my helmet, and so would you.

If bicycle helmets save lives, why then are they unable to leave any trace whatsoever of their effect in the United States fatality statistics? This is the crux of the problem with your claim. You believe that helmets work. If they do, evidence should exist. It does not. In fact, evidence that they do not work exists, and could scarcely be more clear.

Again, helmet usage in the United States precisely matches the percentage of cyclist fatalities who were helmeted when they crashed -- currently both numbers are 32%. That is the precise signature of a placebo. This has been the case for many years.

Given that situation, there are only three potential high-level explanations:

Answer 1: Bicycle helmets are placebos.
Answer 2: Bicycle helmets save riders' lives, but some unknown force prevents this effect from appearing statistically.
Answer 3: Bicycle helmets cost riders' lives, but some unknown force prevents this effect from appearing statistically.

For the moment, let's ignore the third option, since it really doesn't matter because any unknown force that could satisfy A2 could apply to A3 as well, with the opposite sign.

So I will offer the helmetista crew here an olive branch, and I won't even ask for proof that A2 is the case, I will just ask for a hypothesis that could explain how A2 could be the case. Offer a plausible explanation, and maybe we can investigate it together, and determine its veracity. To date, no one has even been able to offer such a hypothesis, despite repeated requests. What could be this unknown force that prevents helmet effectiveness from leaving a statistical signature?

So? A fuzzy winter hat might offer better protection than a golf visor -- doesn't mean either one is going to save your life, or even matter.

By the way, in an interesting tangential development, the effectiveness of motorcycle helmets appears to be declining. In 2022, 60.26% of US motorcyclist fatalities were helmeted, while only 66.5% of riders wore helmets. That gap is down by close to half from just last decade.

I can -- I am waiting for you to accept my challenge.

VA tech has stepped in because they felt the CSPC tests weren't good enough though I am sure there are some manufacturers who don't test as well. However VA Tech creating better tests and rating helmets doesn't prove helmets are unsafe or bad.

I know the answer so this is more of a rhetorical question, where is your data? Also you are trying to claim these people believe what you believe which I know you don't have data on because it doesn't exist. People don't wear helmets for all number of reasons but I think most sane people would doubt it was because they felt they were actively unsafe and potentially dangerous as you are promoting. Regardless though people not doing something doesn't mean people shouldn't do it or that it is unsafe or dangerous. That is just silly logic. People frequently make decisions that aren't good for them. Tons of people still smoke or do hard drugs or drink excessive alcohol or other things that are reckless but that doesn't mean if a majority of people did it that it is good to do.

Now your articles have gone even farther off the deep end and have even less to do about helmets in the helmet thread. You really are going to great lengths to not support your opinion. It is amazing you hold such a ridiculous opinion but you won't actually stand behind it. You would think at the very least you would have posted those NHTSA studies you claim to have but you couldn't even do that. The best article you had was not one you posted and was just an extra one underneath one of the bicycling articles you posted and even that one was weak the first one's most damning strike against helmets was helmet hair which is neither dangerous nor a reason not to wear a helmet. Everything you post doesn't help you and your argument which is already super weak.

So your argument is now stemming upon someone else agreeing to some silly challenge that you have? You can't back up your argument it is OK that is fine just bow out.
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You educated me? What did you educate me about, you not being able to stand behind your opinion or is it that there isn't all these studies you claim to be able to find easily? You educated me like the Jersey Shore show educates people as in not at all.

This is fairly current and not a goofball source Nature. This one is older but again, a legit source. NIH Don't know how many beers I'd need to claim these folks are complicit in the Big Helmet Conspiracy. :beer:

Anyone even slightly versed in the topic knows that helmet testing and certification has been a long-standing problem.



I should hope that's rhetorical, because you've already been told several times that the data is available from the NHTSA. Are you unable to comprehend those 5 letters?



So, just to confirm then -- you lack the sufficient faith in your position to state that you will admit to being wrong, after I post the evidence?

What are you scared of? If you are certain that I am either wrong, or unable to defend my position, just state here publicly that you will admit to being wrong after I do so. You've nothing to lose, right?


Let's see -- in no particular order:

• the crisis in peer review
• the fact that some products which do not protect people remain for sale
• the fact that modern products do not necessarily improve on millennia of evolution
• the nearly useless-quality of cycling injury statistics
• the difference between Buzzfeed and fivethirtyeight
• the many substances in the environment that are not harder than a human head
• that paddlers do not wear helmets because of the "hardness" of water
• that manufacturers do not rigorously test their helmets
• and most importantly, that bicycle helmets exhibit the precise statistical signature of a placebo

That first study was previously addressed a page or so ago. I'll just quote from it, to illustrate why it isn't useful:

"These numbers are likely higher since cyclists’ injuries are still considerably under-reported, particularly in cases where no automobile was involved4."

Also, entertainingly, they had to whittle-down their dataset from an initial 780 studies to just 10 ( ! ) due to the lacking quality thereof, and some of those studies included as few as 21 cases. Meanwhile, they claim to expect a reduction in cyclist fatalities due to helmet usage, per their estimates, but they declined to explain why that has never occurred in the real world.

The second study you linked was done by one of the same authors who famously had his earlier attempt retracted pursuant to the Data Quality Act, since it was garbage.

https://waba.org/blog/2013/06/feds-w...ent-effective/


So nice try, but you'll want to do better next time.

That's as good as it gets, though. Obviously nobody is going to set up controlled experiments. I wonder why this subject has you so agitated. Wasn't there a question in some of your other whoop ups as to whether you even ride a bike? Do you stand on the street and tell folks they shouldn't look both ways before crossing? Or rail against people thoroughly cooking their pork? Even Larry knows to use a condom. :foo:

One of my very few memories of my hospital stay was of walking into some patient's room and viewing a vegetable. A living, breathing piece of wood. (It was completely beyond me that there might be "rules" for patients, or even that I was a patient and perhaps not supposed to wander. Heck, a week before I wasn't even born yet.)

The same author that you quoted, who had his early work famously retracted, has now given-up trying to push the helmet falsehood. One of his more recent studies concludes:

Why do you think I am? I am just taking time out of my day to educate people who should already be educated on this topic. I wonder why so many posters to the Advocacy & Safety forum are so completely unfamiliar with the topic at-hand.

No, that was a pathetic and desperate attempt by an individual with no remaining position to defend, who had previously talked a lot of smack, and regretted it -- you should probably search up that person, you two might have a lot in common.

Sorry, TC1. It appears that you have not convinced a single person here that wearing a bike helmet has no safety benefit over a bare head. Your theories simply don’t hold water against common sense backed up by personal experiences, and data. Your attempts at justifying your position are weak, and lack substantive supporting data. Statistics can be interpreted different ways, depending on the picture you want to paint. Fail. Zero stars. Do not recommend.

You have the distinct title of being the first BF’er to join my ignore list.

There's a well known horse trainer that also believes helmets make you less safe. His argument is that the weight of a helmet makes it more likely that a rider will land on their head if thrown from a horse. (I suggested they should just wear lead spurs to guarantee that they always landed on their feet.)

Did you do a poll, or are you just imagining again? At least a couple people have liked my comments, and several others have become extremely quiet when pressed to defend their claims -- which may or may not indicate enlightenment.

Speaking of holding water, I'm glad you replied again, because I wanted to educate you about your EPS foam misunderstanding. You believe that EPS foam magically absorbs 100% of energy applied to it, as stated earlier.



Here is a "simple" experiment that you can do at home, to learn how wrong you are, and it only requires two items -- a bucket of water, and a section of new EPS foam. Float the foam on the water, and wait until the water settles to a glassy surface. Now take your fist, and strike the foam. Your hypothesis is that 100% of the energy from your strike will be absorbed by the foam, and in that case, the water will remain completely undisturbed and glass.

Please have someone record a video, and post your results.



At least I've defended my position. You, and just about everyone else, have been forced to resort to ad hominem attacks because you can't even attempt to defend yours.

"Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience." Supposedly Mark Twain but does it matter? Anyway, I agree that nobody is convinced. It's bad enough to make the leap from death statistics to all injuries but some person with no expertise imagining they can pull off a "gotcha" of NIH, etc is too much. Of course we just went through this with anti-vaxxers so it shouldn't be a surprise. Repetition, lack of new material has diminished the entertainment so I'll move along as well.

The stance that helmets do nothing is where you go off the track. They are used to mitigate the impact. I rode yesterday and saw about 90 percent of the riders using helmets. There was no complaints about their use or non use. I think the biggest issue with people not riding is that their but hurts...

That is the only reasonable course of action. This is not about an exchange of information, or even people expressing their opinions -- it's about one person arguing an untenable position because arguing is their favorite sport.