???

In martial arts (eg judo/aikido), it's routine/typical/common/regular to "fall" (especially in training/practice). That is, everybody falls, frequently.

Falling when bicycling is considered fairly exceptional (even when training). Falls are rare for the vast majority of cyclists.

Obviously, the two things are not the same.


All this is obvious. The issue is what sort of training has the best benefit/cost ratio. It's not clear that training to fall would have the best ratio. Especially, since bicycle falls are rare.

CDC shows "falls" as the most significant cause. CDC | Get the Facts | Traumatic Brain Injury | Injury Center.
This page is about traumatic brain injury, so the reader should keep in mind that it's a subset of the more general "head injury". Nevertheless it proves that it's a fact.
Or in a nice chart from the CDC regarding general non-fatal injuries:http://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc-...ury_2013-a.gif
For statistics on the cause of falls you need a different source, sources for which I have cited previously on this thread. If you're that interested, and familiar enough with my writing to attempt that kind of personal attack, I'm sure you've seen it or can find it.

There are any number of external variables which correlate with the probability of falls, and age is one of them. But your objection is misplaced because I am not demonstrating a correlation beyond a very general activity. Notice in the chart above, the high ranking of accidental falls in all age groups.

Helmet true believers who have any integrity.
Anti-helmet "zeolots exist only in the nightmares of rydabent and others of his ilk, or as straw man arguments for BF rhetorical funnymen.

You mean "infrequent" then. Routine is something that is practiced and invariant, as much as practicable. In this context, since we're talking about people who have trained for falls and rolling (so that it is routine for them), it doesn't make much sense to say that it is not routine for them on the bike unless there is some physical differentiation.

Even though one event is more infrequent that the other, they may still be the same technique, the same actions. Recall that you said "Bicycle falls aren't very much like those things." Frequency doesn't seem to a very logical distinction in that context. Are you sure that's what you meant, or did you have something else in mind when you wrote it?

There's the rub.... Nobody says helmets eliminate the risk of head injuries... Reducing injuries, is what wearing a helmet is about. JMO To try and eliminate or reduce injury is a totally different subject... NO? ;)

It's normal and very frequent in one case and exceptional and very rare in the other. It's awfully close to routine in the martial arts.

There is probably a much wider variation in bicycle falls. Involving things like bicycles, higher speeds, vehicles, harder surfaces, etc. Different in many cases. Obviously.

It doesn't seem like the two are much alike at all.

The safety equiptment I use on the stairs is the hand rail. I wear sneakers that cost some more that has a "roll bar" built in to prevent the twisting of the shoe on uneven ground. There is a hand rail in the shower. There is in fact some safety equiptment available for most everything a person does. When you get older you get wiser. I have no death wish, I dont like pain.

So------------as you can see I have access to passive safety equiptment when Im not cycling. Pretty much blows all to hell one of the biggest arguments anti helmet people have doesnt it.

Oh------------and I dont run with scissors, stick beans up my nose, and pet porcupines. Any other non cycling activity that pretty much dont belong on a cycling forum you want to bring up? :)

Trying to see this from your point of view, I realize that as a young man I'd have completely agreed with you. I was on motorcycles constantly, a lot of dirt-biking on them, also on road motorbikes and a little motocross and enduro, always pushing the limits and crashing all the time. I thought that I was pretty good at it, and I would have said that my main impression of a crash at 25 mph or better, road or dirt, was that it felt incredibly violent. The ground pummels you, trees and rocks banging on your body, even a brief touch of the road surface abrades your skin. It does seem like they're two different things.

I learned a couple of falls, not even martial arts, and discovered that the earlier impression was wrong. I still had help from the self-taught skills from before, but a motorcycle crash at high speeds was no longer uncontrolled violence. You can control your body in ways to eliminate injury. It was only later that I learned some more advanced methods from martial arts, and I did practice them on all surfaces and full speed, and I know now that it's exactly the same when falling from a bike. You're right, it doesn't seem like it would be, but it is.

The only time I've had a hard hit to the head by the way, or hard enough to matter, was when I was 17 doing jumps on a motorcycle. I was wearing a helmet at the time. I've never done more than scrape the backside of a helmet on a bicycle crash. From my experience therefore, knowing how is far, far more effective than is the helmet itself and I don't see how any sport worthy of safety equipment is also not worthy of training for the same incidents.

I'm pretty sure that I don't want to try a straight backfall or normal shoulder roll with an aero helmet. With a normal Bell helmet I haven't really noticed it in the way, except for the light scratches that one time. Somewhere in between, the helmets will become dangerous and I think that it's something pretty important to know. These articles and studies present it as speculative, even the one that skye linked, but someone who is really good at the techniques could strap one on, try it and tell us. I'm not trained well enough that I want to take the risk.

All those hand rails on your stairs and in the shower, sneaker roll bars serve to prevent an accident from happening, not in case an accident does happen and you do hit your head.

So you think you don't need helmet because you have those preventive measures.

That's exactly we, who don't regularly wear cycling helmet do. We make sure to be highly visible and use bright head and tail lights in the dark. This helps prevent being hit, reducing accident likelihood, though not guaranteed to eliminate it.

If the above is too much to be clear to you, in simple words:

Hand rails in shower and on stairs ~ high-visibility + bike lights during cycling ===> Accident prevention

Wearing helmet on stairs and in showers ~ wearing helmet while cycling ====> In case an accident does occur

No helmet on stairs and in showers ~ No helmet while cycling ===> Head trauma if an accident does occur in which one's head gets hit

Not only false, but you have just exposed your reasoning flaw under plain day light

I hope this post has convinced you that you do need to wear a helmet in the shower and on the stairs.

Oh, please.

Seatbelts and airbags are *NOT* accident prevention - they are personal protection devices. (Well, admittedly seatbelts also do have a bit of preventive benefit. But that's not their primary function in street automobiles.)

Yet you are so anti-helmet that you insist that automobile drivers and passengers wear helmets.

Are the bunch of you all done with your mutual rhetorgasms yet?

-mr. bill

Interesting.

If you are spending a lot of time crashing, it might be worthwhile practicing. If crashing is a rare and exceptional event, it might not be.

I wasn't soliciting your advice. And no I do not crash frequently.

If you just meant that in general, yes that's true and the same applies to wearing a helmet. My point is that the skills are worth more, more effective, than the helmet. Anyone requiring a helmet should more logically be acquiring the skills.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Helmeted riders: 58% lower odds of severe brain injury
 

"The researchers found that among this group of patients—those who sustained traumatic brain injury after a bicycle related accident—the ones wearing helmets had a 58 percent reduced odds of severe traumatic brain injury and a 59 percent reduced odds of death. Further, the use of helmets reduced by 61 percent the odds of craniotomy (an operation to remove part of the bone from the skull to expose the brain) and facial fractures by 26 percent. "

https://www.facs.org/media/press-releases/2015/haider

Anti-helmet sophists.

-mr. bill

This needs to be posted on the helmet thread also.

Skills are certainly worth more than a helmet to avoid a crash... But stuff happens, a squirrel could run out in front of you and get stuck in the spokes and over you go... A helmet then could also certainly be worth it's weight in gold when head hits the ground... ;)

This thread needs to be moved to the helmet thread.

I use a helmet so I don't get another TBI. But the first one was due to brain operations connected to a (congenital)brain aneurysm, and (congenital)hydrocephalus.
Agreed

Agreed.

Good thing we have these experts to let us know that helmets protect the head. If they want to raise awareness of helmets or make better helmets that's fine but I stop short of creating more laws. Anyone not wearing a helmet today is of age and a casual rider around town or just dumb.

We can get on New Yorks case. They provide citibikes to any random tourist in a place with possibly the worst cycling infrastructure of any major city and i dont believe they come with helmets. You'd have to be mad to try and ride around the nitty gritty there on a rented bike. Makes me wonder who the average citibike rider is and where they go on them.

Merged. Carry on.

Just the abstract so far.

-mr. bill

I mean skills during a crash, not just the skills to avoid one.

Replace "bicycle" by "shower" or "stairs", or just about any activities that may result in head injury, do you think the statement would be far from true?

That's why it's important to wear a helmet on the stairs or in the shower, according to the logic of some people.

Still looking forward to a reply to my post #1659 (#1660 was not a direct reply since seat belts and airbags were not mentioned in #1657 or #1659).