testosterone + male insecurity = poor choices

Wear a helmet.

Lot of doom and gloom here.

You can be in a car with a seat belt and get destroyed any day of the year, any minute of the day. Bikes are no different in my mind.

Ride defensively and be careful. Wear a helmet if you feel it keeps you safe too.

I would never criticize any other adult for not wearing a helmet, just as I'd never harass any other adult for smoking. They're grown-ups, they mow their lawns, pay their taxes, and vote, they should be allowed to make bonehead decisions concerning their own health and safety. And I'll defend their right to make those decisions.

Just as long as I'm allowed to be as hi-vis-safety-vest-&-helmet-dorky as I want to be. Hey, I'm 55 years old next week... I don't care how cool, chic, hip, or stylish I'm not being. I consider myself well-dressed if I remember to wear pants.

I ride a lot in South Carolina, nice quiet rural two lane blacktop just across the river from my home. There is no moto helmet law in SC, and on my afternoon climbs to the lake, I get passed by all manner of motorcyclists, who not only aren't wearing helmets, but HAVE helmets strapped to their pillion seats! (In case they have to cross back into GA... I see 'em sometimes at the river, pulled over en masse, donning or doffing their helmets. Weird.)

I was talking to one such rider at the dam's welcome center. He tapped his head and said "You know, ya ain't gotta wear that thing up this way," talking about my very style-less Bell Image lid.

"Yeah, I know," I replied. "Thing is, my brain is worth more to me than yours is to you." Then I rode away. Good thing he was on a Harley... Once he realized I'd kinda-sorta insulted him, he might have caught up to me on a faster bike...

Also it's not just about looking "cool".

A lot of helmets that actually protect you are heavy and hot as hell. If you pass out and crash that kinda sucks too doesn't it?

:lol::lol::lol::thumb:

+1
I wear it to protect against penetrating injuries and soft tissue injuries which could be bad (as one poster said when going through a windshield), but I have little faith that it will protect in a major impact. The skull and fluid around your brain do a phenomenal job protecting from concussions. The types of wrecks and forces involved that cause serious brain injury are generally beyond what a helmet can absorb, the exception being where you have a large amount of force applied to a small area that might cause skull fractures, like if you hit the edge of a curb. In those instances a helmet can help redistribute and absorb the impact. Bike helmets are not motorcycle helmets.

Bike helmet science is largely anecdotal. Mostly what we hear is "my helmet saved my life" because a user sees a crushed or fractured helmet and assumes the worst of what would happen to his head without one.

The ski industry is the only one I know of that takes uniform records of head injuries and has studied that data. Every injury that involves ski patrol at a US ski mountain is documented in the same standardized way. Two whitepapers came out in the last three or four years that brought the efficacy (or lack thereof) of helmets into focus. I don't recall the exact names, but one was out of Sweden and one out of Sugarbush VT.


All that said, I wear one every ride because I'll take any help, even if marginal, that I can get.

I think everyone agrees that hitting the ground hard enough with or without helmets will seriously injure or kill you. But I think the key to remember is NOTHING will keep you 100% safe. Seatbelts don't prevent all fatalities, nor do airbags. But they all help. I'd rather the helmet take the abuse of cuts, scrapes, and dents than my head. And in the major accidents, I'd rather take the chance WITH the helmet then without. With a helmet, there is a larger chance of less damage then without, where you have almost a certainty of injury.

Buddy of mine is a police officer of 18 years. We got on the subject one day about seat belts and their safety, which carries with it the same arguments you see here in this thread. His response floored me, but summed it up pretty well. It was: "In all my years I've never had to unbuckle a corpse" . I jokingly said "you just have someone else do it?" to which he said that in all the accidents he'd responded to no one wearing a seat belt was ever dead at the scene. Some of his mororcycle accident stories will make you run out and buy the first helmet you see.

-R

The issue is not that simple

Last year we had a cyclist and a roller-blader collide on a MUP.

Guess who was wearing a helmet, who wasn't and who died?

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1157/...3344caa73d.jpg

Kinda makes the "organ donor" argument a little bit ironic, eh?

- Oh and BTW, I guess the OP's question isn't going to get answered huh?

Suffice it to say, in the general population of the USA/Canada, more ride without helmets than with, but in certain circles they are more popular. In few places, even those with strictly enforced MHL's, not everybody wears them. I've heard up to 90% wearing rates (but those reports have been in the media and might be stretching it) but I've seen studies that show 75 - 80% maximum usage. Makes sense. There's going to a faction of people who will not go along with the majority no matter what the issue is. World wide, usage is far below 50%. In most places it's effectively 0%.

In my MHL province wearing rate is about 50%. I re-read a news clipping I've kept that was printed 3 years before our MHL was enacted (a dozen years ago) where an official mentioned voluntary wearing rates stall at about 50% and laws are needed to get them higher. When they enacted our law and there was enforcement, ridership dropped about 30% and overall usage rate bumped up to 75% because those who didn't want to wear a helmet just stopped riding. These days, enforcement is lax, ridership is up and the rates have dropped to 50/50

But you're still riding, give yourself a pat on the back. ;)

The helmet is a good place to mount my mirror, then i can use any glasses i choose. The wife and kids would freak if i didn't wear a helmet too.

The pro-helmet wearers will usually quote some anecdotal evidence of helmet benefit. The anti-helmet crowd will pull up studies that prove thier point. And a helmet thread on this will resurface here at least monthly *yawn*

The only firm opinion i have on the subject is legislation. Helmets use should not be manditory.

Yeah, I have. I've actually tried it with both microshell and hard shell helmets. The microshell took a lot of stick but the hard shell helmet was stupidly strong. My ultimate goal was to break through the shell, and even with a fairly hefty hammer it took me about 5 minutes of hitting the thing absolutely as hard as I could to even get a small crack to appear. Hard shell helmets really are ridiculously strong... That's why I wear one!

I tried the same with an old motorbike helmet as well, again trying to just break through the shell. That was absolutely impossible to do though, no matter how hard I tried!

Only one way to find out.

I don't wear a helmet because I 1: ride a recumbent, and the lines of force needed for me to end up hitting my head are unlikely and 2: my strategy for dealing with temperature changes involves adjustments to my head coverage - adding/removing hats and the like; often I don, remove, or change hats several times on a ride in order to adjust to road and weather changes.

If I road a road bike, or a MTB on trails? I would wear a helmet. Much more likely to hit my head with one of those. I don't require others to, though.

That said, I do not ride without an ANSI II reflective vest on. I twitch at the sort of recklessness embodied in people who ride their bikes without donning reflective clothing.

One of the advantages of a full-on concussion :twitchy:. I have no memory of my meeting with the Ford Focus that failed to yield. Waking up in the ambulance was traumatic, but i guess i don't associate it with the place i got hit. That's a good thing, because i had just passed my apartment at the time and was less than 50m away -- it would be awfully hard to commute if i couldn't get out the driveway for fear of being pegged by a passing geriatric.

I was wearing a helmet. I don't know how much it helped, but i know that my glasses, knee, and bike frame were all broken and my head still works (mostly).

24

I wear one. I'd estimate fewer than 10% of the people on campus do; it might be closer to 5%. Along with my iPod and gloves, it's one of my three must-haves when riding.

Always wear a helmet. I had a friend go from a Cat III rider to never riding again all because he hit his head while doing an endo on a patch of sand when he didn't have a helmet on.

Don`t ride. Take up running. Bikes can go fast and crashes tend to be painful. Far fewer runners suffer road rash, head injuries, and broken bones. Also, running gets you fit much quicker than casual riding.

Yes, and now I'm completely fine with that corner. I go about 11 instead of 15, which is what I estimate I was traveling when I fell. Gravel is tricky and slippery. It's good to find your limits, though.