Given the tonsorial appearance of most of the male members of my family and the fact that I've been rocking a decidedly Jack Nicholson-esque hairline lately, it's only a matter of time.

So you're saying that smooth domes aren't cool? (weeps)

Thanks for the thought, Chip, but don't bother. Arguing with not-overly-bright teenagers is a complete waste of time.

The vast majority of cycling-related head injuries are from falling to the ground, not because a car hits you in the head. The energy absorption required for a 160 lb person falling from 4 feet directly onto their head is only around 1300 foot*pounds which these helmets are quite capable of. In any event, energy absorption is a poor metric for helmet performance since it is rapid deceleration that causes severe brain injury. If the skull decelerates too rapidly, the brain's momentum smacks it against the inside of the skull. A helmet which transfers all the kinetic energy to your head slowly will save your brain better than one that absorbs most of the energy but transmits the rest to your head very quickly.

The decision to wear a helmet is a peronal choice, but I can't imagine your motivation to actively advocate against them.

I wear a Fox Flux. Nice helmet, really comfortable and I like the fact that it comes further down the back of your head that a normal road helmet, gives you a little extra protection to the back of the head.

We should all grow/wear giant afros.

I ended up getting a Specialized helmet similar to this for $50. I really like how it looks/feels and the LBS guy fit it for me.

EDIT: My bad I didn't get this one, I got the one that retails for $50
https://www.specialized.com/bc/SBCEqP...jsp?spid=33255

If I had a nickel for every internet expert repeating some nonsense he read in Bicycling, well, I'd be five cents richer today, anyway.

I'm not advocating against them. I'm advocating against the mindlessness of the whole debate.

I really like my helmet. I'd like to get a higher end one sometime. I have worn it for one ride so far and it felt good. Also my brother, who is a bit of a.. magoo.. said it looked cool (he's very captain obvious and would tell me if it didn't look good)

To anyone who doesn't like helmets I say get one you enjoy even if its pricey for a helmet. You won't regret it.

You guys have it all wrong. A helmet is NOT designed to save your life. It really isn't. All the helmet is designed to do it make clean up easier for the EMS guys once they scrape your lifeless body off the front of an Escape. They charge more for helmets that have more vents because they will have more clean up to do, not because the material will be stronger. They just tell you a helmet will save your life because they don't want to be scraping your gray matter off the windshield. They'd rather let the mortician wash it all off.












for those of you who didn't get it, I'm kidding.

I have a dark blue Protech just like this one https://www.xsportsprotective.com/pro...ate-black.html. Mine is all stickered up though. If people don't like that you are protecting yourself **** them. I don't tell criticize people for not wearing one and they shouldn't criticize me for wearing one.

This is what I'll be buying (and offering in my online shop) shortly. The pic is only my favourite of a huge line of awesome helmets.

https://www.nutcase-helmets.de/0708edition.html

Cool helmet.....this would be my first choice, I like the camo. As far as not looking dorky, sorry can't help ya.

I'm not repeating nonsense, and I hardly consider myself an expert. I am, however, a mechanical engineer who knows a few things about momentum, energy, and how materials behave under dynamic loading. I thought I'd point out that if the reason you don't wear a helmet is really that you think it has to absorb half a million foot pounds of energy to be effective, then your logic is ridiculous.

I don't judge people for choosing not to wear helmets. I used to commute without one. But when you use a silly number to support a decision not to wear a helmet in a thread about what helmet to buy, it is YOU playing the expert and begging to stir up the 'mindless' debate. I thought the OP might be interested in reality instead of hyperbole. It would be a shame if he made a decision based upon the uninformed idea that a helmet has to completely absorb every foot pound of energy from a 40mph collision with an SUV to be effective.

I hope you're warming up thoroughly before attempting those stretches, mate. You're reading all sorts of stuff into my posts, most of which isn't actually there.

For the record, and as simply as possible:

1) I don't advocate for or against helmets. I just advocate for intelligent adults making their own decisions, and not having to put up with insults as a result.

2) A helmet is of some -- but limited -- use. It can certainly prevent bumps and bruises, and in a certain kind of fall it can prevent brain damage and/or death. The "right" kind of fall -- enough energy to cause damage/death without a helmet but not enough to overwhelm the helmet's protective ability -- is unfortunately rare. Anyone who thinks it's going to save him when struck by a large, high-speed motor vehicle is kidding himself, regardless of what kind of degree he has.

I would not dream of getting on without a helmet!!! You only got issued one head Got to take care of it!!!!

1) Only one of us is tossing personal insults around. I was clear from my first post that I think intelligent adults can make whatever choice they want. I don't care if YOU wear a helmet or not. But I wanted the OP to know actual figures instead of the orders-of-magnitude-inflated energy number you through out there to justify your decision.

2) Physics and statistics suggest otherwise. Your post history in defense of your decision appears to be based only on your own intuition. As I mentioned, energy absorption is a poor metric for helmet performance. Even so, the band of energies between "helmetless severe brain injury" and "overwhelming the helmet's capability" is sufficiently large to include the energy of a fall to the ground which is the most statistically probable mode of head injury on a bike. This is true even when the collision is the result of collision with a vehicle. You might suffer a lot of internal organ injuries from the actual collision, but if you bust your noggin, it will almost certainly happen when you hit the ground.

If you want the "pro-helmet" folks to leave you alone, don't make up numbers which have nothing to do with the type of injuries that helmets are meant to protect against.

I figure a helmet is less dorky looking than bandages and drooling would be. And I'm a klutz, so I'm at risk of *precisely* the kind of accident helmets are designed for - getting tangled up in my own feet, pedals, and/or random stationary objects. So I wear one. (I don't do any other sports, or I'd wwear a helmet for those too, probably).

Also, it would REALLY suck to be on the hook for $40K in student loans and be unable to use what I learned. Brain damage scares me.

This would leave one to believe that actual figures are forthcoming. Hopefully your readers have gotten over their dissapointment...

BTW, anyone with a calculator can figure out that a 5000 pound SUV traveling at highway speeds does, in fact, generate a half-million foot pounds of energy. You're the one who threw out the "But the helmet doesn't have to absorb all of it!" strawman.

That's an awful lot of unsubstantiated opinion, coming from someone whining about "intuition". Do yourself a favor and actually research the statistics. If you're an honest man, you'll discover that in the big picture, helmets make a very small difference.

Oh, and speaking as an old paramedic, I'm here to tell you that when a human body is struck by a motor vehicle at 40+ MPH, the coroner can choose from a dozen different causes of death. Anyone who has actually seen the results of such a collision truly understands how futile a few ounces of styrofoam are.

Seems to me that decent, thoughtful people don't need a reason to let grown-ups make their own decisions in peace.

It is clear that this is going nowhere which isn't a surprise given your long and distinguished history of snarky posts on this subject. I have offered no straw men. The straw man here is when you say that a helmet must absorb the entire energy of vehicle collision to be of any use. I will certainly agree that if you stand in front of a 40 mph and try to stop it with your head, you will die regardless of whether or not you wear a helmet. I have not suggested that a helmet will save you from every type of life-threatening injury when you are hit by a car. You are correct that it will only save you from a specific type of injury. It just happens to be that this type of injury is statistically probable among injuries, and that is has the nasty habit of killing you or giving you permanent brain damage.

Here is some substantiation for my argument. I presume you'll provide same.

https://www.helmets.org/henderso.htm
https://depts.washington.edu/hiprc/pr...meteffect.html
https://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00036941.htm

The University of Washington page provides a list of references used in their analysis. You can go get these papers at a University library near you if you care to do the research. I will, in fact, leave you alone now since I don't think that these three links or the 74 papers cited by the UW link will deter you from jumping into every single helmet thread to suggest not wearing one. And of course every time you do this you will then complain about how you are so picked on and you just want to be left alone.

Enjoy your bike. Don't fall off.

I've bolded the two important parts of your argument, as they typify your stuff to this point. As to the "absorbing the entire energy of he collision" bit, I never said that, and I've explained to you that I never said it. I can only assume that this is either a reading comprehension issue or an honesty one. And the line about "statistical probability" is just more of the same assfacts you've been putting up from the start. Statistically speaking, head injuries are far down the list of probable injuries in a cycling crash, and all of the helmet research agrees on that.

As for the research, there is an awful lot of it both pro and con. Again, one just has do do an honest evaluation of it and then make an informed decision. Too many people see a blurb based on the Thompson paper about helmets being 85% effective and take that as gospel, without ever looking into it any further. This leads to obnoxious "I'd rather wear a helmet than be a vegetable" kinds of posts written by people who obviously believe their helmets make them "safe". This is a dangerously mistaken POV.

https://www.helmets.org/veloaust.htm

https://www.cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1181

https://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/332/7543/722

https://www.informaworld.com/smpp/con...38958059093159

https://www.cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2023.pdf0

Finally, as to being "picked on": show me a helmet thread where everyone is calm and rational and there are no "You're an idiot if you don't wear a helmet, my head was run over by a 747 and my helmet saved my life, helmets are cooler than being fed through a tube" posts and I'll show you a thread where the "anti-helmet" guys don't make a peep.

Perhaps you didn't state it explicitly, but it is certainly implied... and wrong.

None of the articles here directly examine the efficacy of a helmet to prevent severe head injury in the event of a fall. Each of them examines the efficacy of mandatory helmet laws on reducing injuries. Incidentally because I believe we are all adults capable of making our own decisions, I oppose mandatory helmet laws. I really don't intend to continue a pissing match, but the half-million foot*pound argument is bad science, and I wanted to identify it for the benefit of the original poster. Since you are now saying that you never said that helmets have to absorb this amount of energy to be effective, I think the error is corrected.

Good day.

this is where I stand as well and even without all the inquiries I've made over the years about helmets, I'd have to say the arguments on the pro-helmet side are so bad that these alone would lead me to believe claims on need and performance of helmets are extremely suspect. Aligning with those that make these arguments is like aligning yourself to some pretty suspect logic and you'd be less than bright to go along with them based on their arguments.

Pretty lofty assertions that fly in the face of people who have devoted their lives to studying these pheomena. Look at all the studies listed in the UW link I gave earlier and notice the simliar conclusions. These are not articles out of bicycling magazine; these are published, peer-reviewed, funded studies performed by people trained in science and statistics. If you want to summarily dismiss them as "less than bright", you better have equally credible publications to support such a dismissal.

Both sides of this 'debate' falsely rely on anecdotal evidence and personal intution. If you look at the enormous amount of published literature, it is clear that wearing a helmet significantly reduces the probability of a severe head injury. Anyway, this thread is now quite off topic. Since I have no suggestions to give to the OP for what type of helmet to buy, I'll go over to the safety forum if anyone wants to discuss it further.

Awesome. I'm in the market for a better fitting helmet. I was going to go for "cooler" as in "not as hot" but if I can get a hold of one of these, I may change my tune.

So here's a question: While I agree that helmets as a safety measure are over valued, I do think they have their place. For instance, my wearing a helmet makes my wife feel better. ;-) Also, there are certainly some people who adopt a very different attitude towards a cyclist depending on the presence or absence of a helmet. One of them is "clearly" safety-conscious, and one of them "is going to get themselves or someone else killed." The question is: which category does this helmet put you in? "Is he wearing a helmet because he's a safe, responsible bike rider? Or is he wearing it because he's about to try and jump my car on his bicycle?"

It's always good to keep them guessing.

A helmet totally saved my skull and brain about four months ago whilst skateboarding. In case anyone cares. And you probably don't.