He's not going to answer or respond to the question about risk, so I propose we just drop it.

mcon

But then there have been many post here including mine where injury was prevented or reduced by wearing a helmet. How do you explain them away.

You'd first have to explain how injury was prevented or reduced, aside from "because helmets," which you can't.

Please post one example of an injury which was prevented or reduced because of helmet use. Y'know, all scientific and like, not merely anecdotal, or some inexpert doctor quoted after the fact.

mcon

My accident. I was knocked over sideways in a low speed accident. My helmet ONLY hit the ground on the side. I got no road rash on the side of the my head because ONLY the helmet contacted the concrete. I had a sore shoulder for months.

Scientifically gravity was involved.

You got nothing. Thought so.

On a rare occasion, I rode without a helmet. I did not crash and did not suffer Traumatic Brain Injury. But I worried about not riding with a helmet about 2% of the entire ride, a definite negative.

Perhaps I rode safer for not riding with a helmet, but I can't say for sure. Which is more than you can say.

In essence, riding without a helmet kept me safe and did not result in a less safe experience. I would not have been safer with a helmet, but perhaps I would have rode more recklessly and needed one for the protection it may or may not have provided. Certainly, even if I thought a helmet was proof against head injury, wearing a helmet would not have mitigated shoulder woes...

Why were you not wearing full body armor when a simple crash put you out of action...?

I ride without a helmet,, I give it no thought other than I have been riding without one for 56 years. I have fallen a few times and gotten hit by a car once. Never banged my head other than one time when I was like 12 hit hard on the curb, threw up and then was fine lol.


Studies show cars get closer to you and are less forgiving when you are wearing a helmet.

In the undisputed bicycle capital of the world. Amsterdam where at least 70% of the population ride a bike, no one wears a helmet.

Hope you learned your lesson and have never left the house without shoulder padding since then.

I evaluate children for disabilities, and every single TBI during my career has been kid versus car. However, in twenty something years I have only had about a half dozen cases, versus thousands of other issues.

Either way, I am wearing my helmet.

mcon

I have nothing****************************** I was hit and knocked over. My helmet and with my head in it hit the ground. Quite honestly for you to say I have nothing is rather dumb on your part. All of you anti helmet types alway discount real life report the accidents like mine that did result in a riders head hitting the ground. The worse part of that is new cyclist reading your clap trap against helmets may end up not wearing one and get hurt. Where you and others go wrong is your "research" papers DO NOT contain every accident that happens. Mine was not reported since my helmet prevented any injury to my head, as Im sure thousands of other accidents are not reported.

Helmeteers be like: "this is why you should always wear a helmet when on a bicycle"

LiveLeak.com - This can't possibly end well

There's really no purpose to arguing with anyone who chooses to ride without a helmet. Not everyone's brain is worth spending $30+ protecting.

Exactly, trying to ride a bike without a helmet because your reasoning is that nothing will ever happen, where you would need one like this guy thought... That it would be OK... :eek: And he almost made it... :eek: A good example of how positive thinking, like I can do it and nothing will happen goes wrong...

How original, witty and funny, yawn.

At least I'm the next one-liner spouting drone in the Army of Useful Idiots marching for the cause of Overpriced Foam Hats for Everyone, who mindlessly swallows everything the Bicycle helmet manufacturers **** down his throat.

D1

That may very well be true. It might border on the idea of improving the gene pool.

Look, we're in complete agreement - there would apparently be no benefit to you wearing a helmet when you ride. I on the other hand prefer to wear one. I also don't swallow everything the bicycle helmet manufacturer's push - for example, I've never seen the benefit of a $200 helmet compared to the $45 Bell that I bought on sale for $20, which I find to be well ventilated, light weight, and comfortable and fits me correctly.

Using your logic, you could also say that there's really no purpose to arguing with anyone who chooses to ride a bike at all. Or drive a car. Or cross a street. Or leave the house. Or eat anything less than well-done beef. And so on. Every activity you engage in includes risk. And everyone makes lots of decisions about how much risk they are willing to accept. People who exceed the speed limit regularly or don't check their tire inflation before operating their car, don't wear their seatbelts 100% of the time, or don't wear a crash helmet in the car, are not taking every possible precaution against injury. Yet those same people will draw an arbitrary line at wearing a bike helmet and get all judgy and scoff at how foolish they think those who don't wear helmets are. It's a sign that bike helmets are seen as magical charms and a shibboleth of Those Who Just Have Good Common Sense, rather than simply offering an incremental statistical advantage for a small fraction of the possible adverse events that happen on bikes.

Not really - the issue is not the incurring of risk, it's a question of whether the risk is almost entirely to one's self, as opposed to broadly spilling over to others. If I drive drunk, I endanger far more people who had nothing to do with my decision. If I don't wear a helmet, it's my own brain that I risk scrambling, not someone else's.

Everyone is entitled to make their own risk-return calculation with respect to themselves. Just not with respect to others who were not party to the decision.

I'm sure wearing a helmet would help a lot in case of an accident, but I doubt that a bicycle helmet for all intents and purposes classifies as a helmet. You see, your bicycle helmet is so "well ventilated, light weight, and comfortable" because the manufacturer made huge compromises to protection the thing should offer. Because helmeteers like you, while always yapping about the merrits of "better safe than sorry", can't be bothered to wear a real traffic-worthy helmet A.K.A. a full-face motorcycle helmet. So ironically you opt for things like
"well ventilated, light weight, and comfortable" while I prefer to opt for real safety. This mainly involves being a two-wheel borefest that moves at unimpressive speeds, which offers a whole lot more protection against accidents than an inch of foam.

The reason bike helmets make the compromises you cite is because wearing a several pound helmet while pedaling in hot humid weather would create greater dangers than simply protecting the forehead and cranial areas as well as they can weighing less than a pound, that road bike helmets do. There are tradeoffs that are made, and you can be sure, if motorcycle style helmets were safer for bicyclists, companies would sell us those. Bell, after all, made their name in that business.


In any case, I didn't come here to argue with you - I advocate the libertarian position you espouse of allowing those who choose not to wear a helmet to not wear one. I tend to believe, as Darwin did, that these things are self-selecting in the long run.

Helmets degrade the bicycle handling traits and situational awareness traits in the gene pool, allowing those that lack both a greater opportunity to reproduce. If you're citing Darwin and are interested in the Eugenics angle of "survival of the fittest", you'd have to shoot anyone who's cracked two helmets. Or maybe three strikes and you're out :)

No, the interventionist aspect of eugenics is problematic. In Darwin's observations, the gene-pool selection occurs naturally. If you crack a helmet and emerge unimpaired, you're not selected out of the gene-pool. If, irrespective of whether or not you wear a helmet, you wreck and are no longer capable of reproduction, natural selection has done it's job.

In a modern society, physical skills such as bicycle handling may lose value relative to cognitive skills such as the decision to protect one's cranium during cycle.

D1

I agree with you on helmet price. I paid about $40 for the one I am wearing now. I see no real advantage in one costing $200. To me over priced helmets are pretty much like any other thing you can buy. Once you reach a medium level, after that all you are buying is a name or snobbery.

If you can stay upright on your bike you'll still be better off than crashing a lot with a helmet - no broken clavicles, broken wrists, stitches in the knees, jaws wired shut, etc. I guess self-driving bicycles won't be far behind self-driving cars, then you'll be correct.

http://www.fernbyfilms.com/wp-conten...-grown-fat.jpg

+1. $30 for my Giro, just $27 for my pretty much identical Bell. Pricier might get prettier, or infinitesimally more comfortable but that's usually about it. There are some helmets that claim better protection than the run-of-the-mill cycling helmet, however.

Me too. Slid into a curb and cracked the helmet. Can't be completely sure but I figure this would otherwise have caused some serious head damage.

And on the hearsay side, I had a chance to speak with the head of neurosurgery at a major trauma centre. He is passionate about the benefit of bike helmets but, really, what would he know? Probably better to trust contrary opinions of random internet dudes.

In any event, helmet laws aren't the answer. We have such a law for people under 16 and, ironically, this is the group that rarely seems to wear a helmet at least not when they're out of their parents' sight/control.