If you mean, does it make sense sometimes and is that substantiated, I think that it is. In some situations for practically anyone, in all situations for some people, and everything in between, wearing the helmet can, provably, improve the person's chances to avoid injury enough that it's a meaningful, reasonable measure.

For other people, in other situations, the risk is insignificant enough that it's pointless to guard against.

Our judgement of those situations is based on the resources available to us.Among those resources is a person's skills and abilities, his knowledge and experience. Results of crash tests. And risk studies - everything we know helps inform our judgment. You take them with a grain of salt, but it's just as much an error to summarily dismiss them as it is to insist on a study to the exclusion of everything else. It's not like we're picking teams and trash-talking the other side. Is it?

I thought trash talk was the golden fleece

Depends on which part of the other side. There are two kinds of helmet advocats, those who want more and safer cycling and those who want less cycling. I'm not doubting anyone's motives here, but I do think the question why cycling enthousiast helmet advocats find themselves on the same side with people who want less bikes to make way for the cars is food for thought.

I also doubt that the measure is reasonable. Is it sound reasoning? Or is it just an assumption that a helmet will make you safer and mass helmet use will make cycling safer based on a gut feeling rather than reason? The helmet advocats don't have the international statistics going for them, and the lab testing of helmets isn't very convincing either. If it's about reason, wouldn't the same facts and the same science lead to the reasonable choice to wear a helmet when walking, when driving and in the shower?

The frequency of ER visits for cyclists on the US streets, along with the proportion of serious head injury among those visits, in light of the well-documented capability of helmets to mitigate that kind of injury (the lab testing is very good in my opinion), ensures that for some people in some situations wearing a helmet can be justified by sound reasoning and empirical knowledge.

Whether an individual goes through that process or just accepts it from some other source, I couldn't say. Personally I'll wear a helmet in conditions where I'm most likely to have an accident and the consequences are most likely severe, and may or may not wear one when the risk is trivial. It's a reasonable decision in both cases, which I base on both empirical data and personal experience, and external factors when I wear one during trivial risk.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Miele Manhttp://www.bikeforums.net/images/buttons/viewpost.gif
The logic behind their statements that a bare head would not have hit the pavement in a crash is that by some miracle a person not wearing a helmet could somehow slow their bare head within the inch or two of helmet thickness to the point where the head sans helmet would not strike the pavement that a helmeted head did.

IUt;s a specious stance as far as I'm concerned. that's because the momentum required to slam a helmeted head onto pavement is going to be too great for a person to avoid striking their head sans helmet as the momentum is going to be greater that what a distance of a mere inch or two can avoid.

Cheers
My post was about an ADULT hitting their bare head versus the exactsame adult in the exact same instance hitting their head during a fast fall but the impact only happens supposedly because of the extra inch or two of foam. The point I''m making is that if a fall is great enough that a helmeted (adult) head hits the pavement hard that an extra inch or two of a helmet would not be enough to prevent said impact. Sliding and or rotational head injuries was not the topic. The topic was a bare head versus a helmeted head requiring less distance to avoid the impact. Maybe so in a very low speed fall but at any speed great enough to cause a helmeted head to slam onto the pavement is not going to prevent a unhelmeted head from hitting the same pavement. The momentum of the fall is simply to great.

Cheers

I've never seen documentation or reports of the proportion of "serious head injuries" stated for the total of ER visits by cyclists on U.S. streets. Any reference available?

I'm pretty sure I provided some the last time you asked this, several studies. "Serious head injuries" was very well defined as I recall. If I have some time and boredom I'll dig them up.

But before I do that, I'd like to pin down exactly where you stand on that question. I don't like doing general research on something I've already settled to my satisfaction, just on request from someone who doesn't have specific questions or a hypothesis.

One, how is a head injury categorized as "serious"; what kind of head injuries are not considered "serious" for the purpose of these studies? Is every report of head contact with the ground considered "serious" because there might be a possible concussion?

Two, are neck, jaw, dental and other injuries (not mitigated by helmet use) considered "serious head injuries" in these ER studies?

Three, do these ER stats provide any credible info to draw a conclusion about the effectiveness of helmet use in mitigating the seriousness of head injuries?

I suspect the agenda of helmet promoters behind inflated rhetoric/hype about the actual frequency, percentage and number of "serious head injuries" to bicyclists (with or without helmets), especially serious head injury in the absence of any other equally serious (or fatal) injuries suffered by cyclists in accidents serious enough to create catastrophic injuries.

Just wondering, can you point to a single peer reviewed study of the safety efficacy of mounting a 10 foot tall christmas tree to the back of your bicycle?

-mr. bill

In that case let's save some time. If all that you're concerned with is that you imagine that serious head trauma is associated with random minor injuries in medical studies, I can put your mind at ease immediately: No.

I heard somewhere Donald Trump spent $12,000 on a helmet, I didn't even know he rode a bike...

No helmet saved my neck.
I was right hooked a few weeks ago and I was able to turn with the car for a bit and slid along the front quarter panel with my head and forearm. I got a scrape at the top of my forehead and a small cut below my sunglasses which also got scuffed. If I had been wearing a helmet I am sure I would have suffered an Diffuse Axonal injury as the helmet would have stuck on the wheel well and twisted my neck. What bothered me the most was the Doctor in the ER who it turns out was a helmet zealot and had already worked up a head of steam(hot air) and proceeded to give me a lecture instead of treating my wounds, road rash mostly and a hemotoma on my forearm where I took the brunt of the impact. There were wild claims that I needed a CAT scan even though I barely touched my forehead on the car's quarter panel. I had small scrapes on my pinky fingers which of course got infected as DR. was too busy telling me he rode 10x more than I did even though I just rode 52 miles in three hours and 45 the day before. Wow! he must ride 50,000 miles a year, how does he find the time for doctoring? He spouted the usual BS and obviously hasn't bothered to know what he was talking about, like the fact that helmets do not protect you from a concussion, and the public health benefits of riding far outweigh the benefits of helmets. Even though the nurse said he was an avid cyclist he didn't get that I needed hydration and calories because he was praying I had a TBI to jibe with his "organ donor" mentality. Sad.

Sorry about your accident and I am glad to read you are okay.

We will never truly know what could have happened had you been wearing a helmet and I hope you are never in a repeat.

I think the doctor in your case behaved like a total elbow and I probably would have cut him off at the first mention of whether or not I was wearing a helmet.

This Dr. was the usual "I'm god you're a worthless peon, my word is gospel" type. His $10,000 bike and kit prove he is superior. I'd like to see him ride slicks in a snow storm and not fall down. Instead of decrying the driver that stealth right hooked me, (stopped for left turn then decides to go right suddenly) I get a lecture and six extra X-rays I didn't need on my non-impact side. My head scrape could have been avoided with a ball cap.

Evidently motorcyclists came up with the broken-neck line back when helmet use was first being legislated.

About 20 years ago, a friend of mine who was an emergency-room doctor told me about a motorcyclist who wiped out on a corner at high speed and suffered many broken bones and internal injuries and was in a coma for over a week.

When he came out of the coma and was finally able to speak, one of the first things he said was, "Thank Christ I wasn't wearing a helmet! The strap would have caught on something and I'd be dead!"

Trakhak evidently you have mistaken the bicycle helmet forum for a motorcycle helmet one.

And you've evidently mistaken the helmet thread for a some doctors have zero bedside manners thread.

-mr. bill

Shouldn't the woman victim in this tragic accident have worn a helmet, which might have saved her and her unborn child?

Shouldn't posters on this list have a shred of decency?

Family of dead cyclist weeps; Driver who was high on pot gets 6 years in prison

The crash happened in darkness, at about 8:30 p.m. Authorities say Smith was driving about 45 mph. Greenough was pedaling home from work, had a rear red flashing bike light and was wearing a helmet when the car struck him along a 200-foot section of Northeast Lombard Street that doesn't have a bike lane because the road narrows to travel under the Northeast 42nd Avenue overpass, investigators say.

Helmet use should NOT be legislated.

If you ride a motorcycle and don't wear a helmet, there wasn't anything that it would have protected in the first place -- but it should be the RIDER'S decision, not the Nanny State's decree.

Taking a(n) (unnecessary) risk doesn't nessesarily mean you have low intelligence, even if you wouldn't take that risk yourself. In this form this is nothing more than a classic ad hominem btw.

I like the reasoning, not sure if I agree with it, but I don't think it's a good comparison. Because I believe it's clear that motorcyclists wearing helmets improves road safety, while cyclists wearing helmets appears to decrease road safety.

Beware of gimmicks. A helmet is considered as one of the most crucial safety equipment in all wheeled sports. Not only does this protective piece help reduce the force of impact during crash or collision, but it also helps protect the neck from jerking.

Very few accidents happen because the motorcycle ride wasn't wearing a helmet. The direct effect of not wearing a helmet is pretty much limited to the rider who wasn't wearing one.

Given the above, there is no "general welfare" societal aspect to forcing people to wear helmets. Thus, no Constitutional authority for such laws.

Worse, a traffic cop who is writing a helmet citation isn't hunting for drivers who are dangerous to others. They are just acting as tax collectors, rather than doing the job that we have been told they were hired to do.