i'm sure there are moments of inertia and coefficients of friction that need to be considered. but there is a much better way to determine if helmets work.

first, put your helmet on and grab a good length of 2 x 4 firmly in your hands. now swing the board as hard as you can and strike yourself on the crown of the helmet.

then remove the helmet and repeat the experiment.

when you regain consciousness, perform an analysis of variance on the results.

it makes no sense to me to argue whether a helmet is effective in reducing the risk of injury in a fall. but maybe i'm the only one who feels that way.

Very well said. The only problem is that the only entities in existance with the power to both test and redesign helmets are the helmet companies themselves. Thus there is a lack of good data about when a helmet is helpful and when it is not. Bell can hardly put a statement that may be construed to say that their helmet will not help in all accidents.

Some questions for the helmet industry.

1) How many impacts can a helmet safely stand in a single accident? My father's helmet would not have done any good in a second impact because it was shattered. Some would do better because the shell and inner structure keeps the helmet together.

2) Is the helmet capable of staying in place on the head during an accident? Strapping systems on all modern bike helmets are notoriously hard to adjust so the helmet will not slip on the head.

3) Is there a possibility of neck torsion when wearing a helmet? How much?

4) What parts of the head is the helmet capable of protecting? i.e. road helmets require more protection on the side of the head than mountain bike helmets.

On most safety equipment, these types of questions are answered during a training session. Bike stores typically do not provide this training when they sell helmets, nor do the instructions that come with a helmet suggest much beyond "make sure the helmet does not slide back or forward." Which by the way; ever try to adjust the straps on a helmet so it does not slip forward or backward?

In short, all this fire during the "helmet wars" makes it impossible to discuss how well helmets work, and in what situations they fail. The "pro helmet" cannot bring it up because it will be seen as a weakness in argument. The "pro choice" do not bring it up because they get flamed. All we get instead is:

WEAR IT!
I DON'T WANNA!
WEAR IT YOU IDIOT!
YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!
IF YOU DON'T YOU WILL GET KILLED!
IT'S MY LIFE!
LISTEN, I WILL COUNT TO THREE... ONE...TWO....

and so on.

Anybody here ever take a hammer and destroyed a helmet before? I did one time. It was quite enlightening. I found that the high end helmets will hold together for more then one hit. Low end helmets with unbonded shells, they will literally only work once.

The second hit mentioned by Brian above (after my helmet had shattered) left me with a cut that had to be closed by three staples. It's the first time I've ever had staples put into my head. It's apparently the newest method for trauma units to close stitches. The funny thing is that when I pressed the center staple, I would get very dizzy, almost like vertigo. When I mentioned this to the doctor three day later, he immediately removed the staples. :roflmao:

Bikerider and Bandit above had good points about helmets leading to a false sense of security. I've never maintained that helmets were the only safety measure to use. But they are a very important one.

Concerning me not using any of the accident theories in my comments, that's because this is about helmets, not accident prevention. Helmets are personal protection, like other pieces of equipment. 'Sorry if you couldn't follow the analogies from other situations, but I was not the first to bring up other situations (walking, being in a shower, etc.). I will use accident theory to analyze my own accident in the future (when I have figured out a few more technical details, like placing my photos into this forum). I think then you will get a better idea of what can be done.

But to summarize many of the above posts, the "to helmet or not to helmet" question is mostly answered--if you value your head, put on a helmet. If you value your personal freedom from "regulation" more, then take your risks. By the way, these risks are not of the stupidity levels shown in the Darwin Awards (go to the web, and read them--they are unbelievable). We have an engineer who never wears a helmet, but commutes daily to my worksite by bicycle. Some people have mentioned to me that someone should talk to him about his habit of not wearing a helmet. I told them that he had never been to the Emergency Room, and I had twice in four years, and that maybe I could learn something from him. In short, I'm not an evangelist for helmets, but I am an advocate of them; mine did save my life!

There are studies available on many web sites which point to the value of helmets, and a few which contend that helmets are not what they are cracked up to be. Each side can point to their own stats. But the real story is that almost no one now says helmets won't help in an accident scenerio.

To those who say that bicycling is not dangerous, and helmets therefore are not necessary, I would say the following. The bulk of the information, and my own personal experience confirms, that bicycling is one of the more hazardous activities you can you can participate in. Cars (drivers, cars don't steer into bicyclists, drivers do) are the main source of the hazards, but there are others. These hazards can be minimized by training, use of protective equipment, selection of routes, riding techniques, etc.

I continue to ride, and I get flak from my wife for doing so. "I don't want another call from the Emergency Room," she tells me at every opportunity. She was very much effected by my accident in May, and all the measures I have taken to change (to be detailed later) have not reassured her.

John

Freedom, studies, co-efficients of friction, BULLEXCREMENT!!!!

Wear your helmet you stupid people who find your mothers attractive and thusly want to procreate with her!!!!

Pot, meet kettle.

What? Because of my sig? Perhaps you've heard of something called a joke? Some people's children I swear...

So you can tell a joke but I can't? Or were you joking again? Jokes are supposed to be funny, you know.

Cut it. It ain't funny.

John, there's no question about the complexity of the forest fire and poison dust analogies. They're perfectly understandable. They're not obviously apt, however.

Let's stipulate that helmets will help prevent head injury in a collision with the head. Let's also stipulate that cycling can lead to collisions with the head. Does it follow that it's "important" to wear a helmet while cycling?

Not that I can see. We might notice that walking near traffic might lead to collisions with the head, too. Is it important to wear a helmet when walking on the sidewalk? Riding in the back seat of a car might lead to collisions with the head, too. Is it important to wear a helmet when riding in a car?

The importance of wearing a helmet is not determined by the possibility of imagining some possible circumstance in which a helmet would be useful. It's determined by the likelihood of their being useful. And again-- yet again-- there's no reason to think that cycling leads to collisions with the head any more than does walking or riding in cars, activities people think it perfectly reasonable to undertake without helmets. Check for yourself. The statistics simply do not bear out any special hazard in road cycling. According to the NTSB, the number of cyclists killed per year on public roads is lower than the number of pedestrians, and (obviously) lower than the number of automobile passengers. Check Ken Kifer's page for the risk per hour of cycling. According to some company called Risk Management, the chances of being killed per hour while cycling on public roads is half that of being killed in a car.

According to the National Safety Council, in fact, about twice as many people drown as die in cycling accidents. So, is it "important" to wear a life vest every time you swim? Are high schools negligent in sponsoring swim teams without requiring that all swimmers wear swim vests?

I'll bet your answer is "no". And if your answer isn't "no", the answer of all the other helmet zealots here will be "no". But if it's reasonable to swim without a life vest, why is it necessary to cycle with a helmet?

On to the subject of "experience". You say that in your experience cycling is dangerous. Well, if we're going to compare experiences, mine is that cycling isn't especially dangerous. Yes, it requires skills to do reasonably safely. But I have replaced a car with a bike for about a decade now. I've commuted in some of the busiest traffic in the country. I've ridden in snow, rain, darkness, and fog. I have never, ever hit my head while riding. I've fallen a few times, but I've skinned my arms or my legs. My experience is that a helmet isn't necessary for road riding.

Some safety equipment, in my experience, is necessary. I would think it unreasonable to ride at night without lights and reflectors, for example. But I haven't seen anything to convince me that helmets are necessary for road cycling.

But I'm not relying on my experience alone, or on stories from one in five people on this board that a helmet "saved a life". I'm just looking at the objective data, and in the U.S. road cycling isn't especially dangerous.

It certainly isn't dangerous enough to make it unreasonable to ride without a helmet. Again, it's no more necessary to cycle with a helmet than it is to ride in a car with a helmet, to walk with a helmet, or to swim with a life vest.

Helmets are fine, and yes, they'll provide an additional measure of safety if you're in a wreck. If you want to wear one, that's fine with me. Good on you, in fact, you're taking special measures and ensuring even greater safety for yourself. As I said, sometimes I wear a helmet too. I also put on a life vest sometimes. But sometimes I swim without a life vest, and sometimes I ride a bike without a helmet.

Either way, it just isn't that big of a deal. It's not especially "important". The interesting question to me is why so many cyclists are emotionally invested in thinking it is.

Cheers.

yadayadayadayada, enough already

Up until last May, I thought much like Merriwether. I had been in several accidents, and my head had never touched ground. This included significant accidents--crashes. I felt my judo and parachute fall training would keep me from having a head injury. Tuck your head, chin into chest, and roll; usually your head won't touch the ground at all (and that protects you from the type of neck injury which causes paralysis too). On one fall, I rolled several times, and ended upside down in a bush, all without my head hitting the ground. I wore my helmet as an example to my kids, but with the same almost contemptuous attitude that if a fall came my way, I wouldn't need it.

That changed in May, with my most recent accident when for the first time in over 40 years my head hit the ground in a bicycle accident. I now know that we cannot control all the circumstances dealing with a crash, and therefore it is a big unknown as to whether a head hit would occur.

Merriwether, I wish you well, and hope that you have the good fate and luck not to know the feeling of waking up, dizzy and disoriented in the hospital with an hour missing from your memory, or worse. You see, to me the statistics and studies don't matter anymore. Wearing a helmet a matter of survival, and me continuing to bicycle. Besides, where would I put my mirror without a helmet? (I lost my bar-end mirror this week, and didn't even miss it for a day.)

Bumbaclat, stop it! What you are saying is not appropriate to this forum, and adds nothing to the discussion.

John

I agree with most of what's been said in this thread, even the line about a helmet being a good place to attach a mirror, but it has nothing to do with looking "cool" or anything, just that it's a good way to raise the probabilities of surviving a bad accident.

I had one about 20 years ago. The helmet transferred the forces down to my clavicle, which fractured. That healed in a few weeks, but the alternative would have been my skull, which would have been fatal or nearly so. I naturally owe my life to that cheap piece of plastic and styrofoam. It indeed was cheap compared to the job it did.

There was a reference to the Tour de France and why some of the bikers don't wear their helmets all the time. Well, it puzzles me, too, especially after seeing the piece here:
http://www.sph.emory.edu/Helmets/boardman.html
Surely every participant of the Tour is intimately familiar with that bit of history.

Needless to say, I feel naked if I get on my bike without my helmet. Perhaps it's the mirror that makes it feel odd without it. It doesn't bother me one bit that I've been wearing the helmet for so many years and I've only used it once! So far!

Hey I'm laughing. :D

I can't believe this thread is so long, as stupid people usually don't have much to say. And yes, I'm saying those who don't wear helmets or advocate the being sans helmet are stupid, dumb, idiotic, without intelligence, few spokes short of a wheel, low on pressure in the brain department. If I hurt your feelings well then life sucks, don't it? It's a valid contribution considering the fact it's even being debated. Some people can be rationalized withn, some people need to be yelled at.

Are you two guys brothers or something? See above post.

John, whatever you used to think, what you're attributing to me is very clearly not what I've been saying. I've been clear-- very clear, in fact-- that I'm not saying any benefit that helmets provide can be provided some other way.

As I've said several times already, I'm saying that the expected benefit of helmets is low, not because they are redundant, but because the likelihood of a severe collision with one's head is not very high while cycling. Given what objective data show, the likelihood of a head collision while cycling is no greater than while walking near traffic, or riding in car. It's less than the risk of serious brain injury or death while swimming. Yet no one insists that you have to wear a helmet while driving, and no one insists that you must wear a life vest while swimming. No one says helmets or life vests are "necessary" for these activities.

But people, including you, do insist that you must wear a cycling helmet. It's very "important" to do this, you say. Well, I'm wondering just why it's so important to wear protective gear against this risk, but not the others. I've asked this over and over, and you don't respond. You keep acting as if you're replying, but in fact you ignore this point I've made over and over. In your last post, you say that I just think that you can provide all of the benefit of helmets with judo rolls.

I'm interested in what have to say about the actual benefits of helmets given a crash , and I'm glad we have someone with your expertise here on the board. Don't get me wrong. But if you won't respond to what I say, what am I supposed to do? I don't know, I'll just leave it here, I guess.

Bumbaclat: it's always good for a chuckle to hear a buffoonish high school kid, or someone who just writes like one, make clear that it's time to take charge and let people know what's what. Your contributions are excellent; keep it up!

Something tells me you step out of the shower to pee.

As I said before, wear your bloody helmet. You know when you were a kid and your mother told you to eat your veggies? You said why. Your mom said 'just eat them'? Same deal. I'm your mother. Wear your helmet.

I'm not singling you out. I tell every helmetless rider I see to put one on.

I am pretty easygoing unless it involves stupidity.

Mr. Merriwether.
Perhaps details of the experience I mentioned in my last post will help clear up some of the questions you raise.

I lived in the Los Angeles basin at the time, and had been doing touring rides with the L.A.Wheelmen bike club for many years with no serious mishaps. I biked to work about half the time, only about six miles each way. No problems, but I still used a helmet every time. It just came to be a habit, whether I needed it or not. I never expected to fall and hit my head, but it was no big deal to wear it.

I know you're thinking that anyone needs to wear a helmet riding in L.A. traffic no matter what. Well, my incident happened in the north part of Redondo Beach, on a residential street, with no moving traffic nearby. I was on my way to work. I did *not* fall and hit my head on the ground, so that judo roll mentioned earlier wouldn't have helped. It was a sudden incident that can't be predicted.

I was trudging up a short hill, getting near the crest. I was near the right edge of the street and the coast seemed to be clear. I glanced down to the right as I was shifting to see how the adjustments I had made to the deraileur stops the night before were working out on a real hill. That was my big mistake, of course. I thought everything was clear, but hidden just beyond the crest of the hill was a parked van in my lane. I went head-first into the back of the van. Bent the fork and frame and the front wheel, and crashed the helmet and my clavicle. If the disintegrated helmet was any indication of what my head would have looked like without it, I wouldn't have survived without it. There was no warning, of course. If there had been any, the accident wouldn't have happened. If I were paying attention as I rounded the top of the hill, it wouldn't have happened either, but that's the reality of it.

So, if you compute "the likelihood of a severe collision with one's head," it happened once in over thirty years of serious bicycling, in my case. I guess that's about 0.001 of the bike trips I've made. So far the second helmet is still in good shape. So is my first head. I don't know how to get a second chance with that.

Best of luck in the lottery of life.

I always wear a helmet. But I think I will stop now, because "Bumbacat" has demonstrated quite clearly that helmet-wearing causes brain death.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bumbacat, as an exercise for the student, please learn the difference between assertion and evidence. Between anecdotes and data. And between obnoxiousness and politeness.

RichC

JDP - Ive been riding for 22 years, 21.8 of them without a helmet. I purchased a outrageously priced Giro Pneumo USPS edition in celebration of Lances 4th TDF win. It sat around for a couple of weeks looking great. I tried it out - hated its looks. Wore it again - not so bad. After 4 or 5 rides - never ride without it again. Can't even feel it! The extra bonus was a fine lady I've seen for years on local rides never used to talk to me - she does now and we have started dating. I asked why she finally came around - because she always thought I was a dumb **** for not wearing a helmet, and did not want to get involved with someone who one day, some day, will have mush for brains.

"A friend of mine quit smokin' and got ran over by a tobacco truck!" --- Redd Foxx

Truth be told, I'm at times envious of those cyclists who are so confident of their own reflexes and the attentiveness of those with whom they share the road. I'm not so trusting of either. I wear a helmet.

-Rob

:roflmao:

Remember the part in 'Goodfellas' about the compari, the guy whose was 'happy to be a jerk'? That's me. Not necessarily a nice guy, but a good guy. We all know where nice guys finish. I hate acquiesing.

As I've stated before, sometimes you have to an anus to truly demonstrate your commitment to a position. On this issue, I'm King Anus! The Grand Imperial Anus! Chairman Anus! I have no problem with it! If somesome objects to my obnoxiousness, so be it. I've touched a nerve and given them something to think about.

When faced with such an utterly stupid statement as "I don't need to wear my helmet", a polite and tempered rebuttal will all but be lost up on the dullard stating it. Especially when they pull out stats. Sweet Jesus I hate that...

Now to show my kinder and gentler side I composed the following haiku:

Don't wear your helmet
I can see that your brains were
Useless anyway

Bumbaclat Copyright 2002

Chairman Anus! Ha-ha... Sounds like a good name for some politicians.

But do not overdo it. People will not trust you, if they do not like you.

That is good! :beer: Good luck!!

Chairman anus, maybe you should learn to spell "acquiescing" if you hate doing it so much.

Today I went scuba diving in Puget Sound, and I was the only diver to wear a helmet. Why did I wear it? First, it was a platform for my light. Second, it provided visibility to me on the water's surface on a dark day (some years ago, my dive buddy and I got picked up by the Coast Guard because of a brightly marked helmet). Third, it looks good in photographs to define the diver's head. Divers wearing black hoods and black face masks are very difficult to photograph against a dark background. Take a look at the underwater photograph produced by the Cousteau teams if you don't believe me.

So, why should bicyclists wear a helmet?

--First, for the safety it provides in a fall.

--Second, to increase visibility for drivers to see the bicyclist. Wear a bright helmet so as to stand out against a dark background.

--Third, because it looks "cool" in photos, and some people of the other sex may value a person who values his/her own head (see the entries above).

John

I would add that:

- it protects against harmful UV rays on sunny day.

- it allows to stick to it reflecting tape and small helmet mirror.

As a youngster I often rode a bicycle without a helmet. I frequently rode in cars without wearing a seat belt. I suppose there were other risky behaviors as well. No sunscreen at the beach. Running barefoot. Things like that. I saw nothing wrong with it. From time to time, as youngsters tend to do, I suppose I made fun at the expense of those who behaved more conservatively.

I suppose now that I am 50+ years old, I have more things I value, more knowledge of risk, and certainly, more people and things that I love. Perhaps it's just a bit greater sense of things I might lose, or a bit greater sensitivity to the feelings of those who might lose me. In any event, there seems to be a greater sense of caution on my part and a desire to minimize risk. So, yes, I wear a helmet and use seat belts and........., etc. These are my choices.

If asked about my behavior or for my opinion on another's behavior, I suppose I'd argue the reasons as they apply to me. Generally though, a desire to modify another's behavior is also something which has not been carried over from my youth, except where I have been blessed with responsibility for the sell being of another.

The seat belts and the helmet, though always worn, have never been tested in an accident. So, in fact, so far at least, my cautious behavior has been completely unnecessary. I hope it remains that way. I also hope that those who do not wear either helmet or belts are similarly blessed with no need for them.

i sometimes go for shorter rides without a helmet. it's wonderful to feel the wind blowing through my hair (less wonderful in recent years as there is less of it to blow). i don't really give a #@$ if any on the list approve of the practice or not, or if they think i am somehow less intelligent than they are. i will continue to behave in a manner i regard as "safe."

on my daily commute to work i always wear a helmet because to ride without one is, to me, unsafe. likewise when i'm mountain biking. i don't really give a @#$% if there are those who think i'm a pansy for wearing a helmet at such times.

we all draw our own safety lines that we refuse to cross. the location of those lines are bound to vary. it's all good.

but i've said it before and i'll say it again: the shrill safety nazis among us really ought to try to get a life. likewise those who question the fact that helmets can protect you against injury.

well said bandit :fight: