You had to know that would make me laugh?:lol: You never get helmet hair. But I on the other hand have to fluff up my fohawk when I take the cycling dew rag off.. :roflmao2:

Hey...I got hair...it's just on my chin these days.

Can I hijack this thread? How about helmet mirrors? I mostly ride on roads and frequently in groups, so I greatly appreciate mine and I consider it to be in part a safety feature. But the other day a friend looked at my helmet/mirror setup and said, "But what if you fall? Won't the mirror go smashing into your face or eye?" And I thought, "oh" She could be right. The mirror is, of course, plastic, not glass, but in the wrong circumstances, it could make an unfortunate incident considerably worse....

As an EMT and as a long-time cyclist , I've seen more bike related head injuries than I'd like to think about. The ones that really stick with me (because they are people I know or work with) are how serious some of the slow/fallover injuries can be. I really believe that most of the 8 or so "slow" type head injuries that I remember could have been prevented or at least the damge reduced by wearing a helmet. I think Dnvrfox makes a good point about some accidents that a helmet won't help, but I wouldn't ride without one.

It is your decission on whether you wear a helmet or not. I' for one will always wear my hemet. They are not uncomfortable and do provide protection. You stated earlier you were a scientist. Well if so you should be aware that Wikipeadia is not a trusted site. Second in most of the posts you have written there are numerous grammatical and spelling errors. I wander if you are truly a scientist or if you are just trying to cause a stir here.

For what it's worth regarding the last point, I am typing on an Ipad. It has an annoying habit of replacing what is typed with something else, often far from correct.

I'm not feeling very welcome here, so I guess we'll all be pleased if I just leave.

Dude...you just threw a stink bomb in the church...you would be better off bring up politics.

I realise that now - too late to save myself my being cast out as a troll pretending to be a scientist. Whatever folk think, I was not trying to start a war, just a chat about a subject that can't just be a chat!

Anyway, I'm off to friendlier climes. Like someone said, I'm probably too thin skinned!

I will just leave you with this literature review.
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1052.html

I'm convinced, I just threw away my helmets...

I think that this is a good, additional point of discussion. Ideally, if you wear a helmet, you want it to be rounded, with nothing protruding to get snagged. You probably don't want a visor on a road helmet. As for myself, I use a cycling cap with a soft brim on all but the hottest days.

Rear view mirrors have the same supporters/detractors as helmets. If you wear one, you probably want one that's made from relatively soft plastic that velcros onto the side of your helmet. Wearing one that clips onto your glasses (like the wire one I used in the '70's), is probably a bad idea.

I really don't mind the well considered arguments for/against helmets. Having had two recent accidents, I'm looking for all of the useful information I can find regarding head safety.

Just one more thing regarding mirrors. As we age, the ability to quickly change eye focus diminishes. By the time you look into the mirror, make a judgement on the speed and position of a closing vehicle, and then look back at the road and readjust your focus, you may have missed something ahead of you. Riding in different areas of the country present different challenges, and mirrors may be a really good safety feature under some riding conditions.

PS : Can we keep the discussion going without the "I'm not, but you are" crap? I'd rather see potentially useful information posted than a locked thread. Thanks!

Anybody over 50 years old who needs others to help him/her decide when/whether to wear a helmet or not...definitely needs to wear a helmet...even when not in traffic and perhaps even when not on a bike.

Sorry, but it had to be said. Do what you feel is best for you, not what you think other people want you to do.

For full disclosure sake, I have rarely worn a helmet over my 40ish continuous years of cycling in traffic.

I tried to get a discussion going looking at the design of bicycle helmets. The only thing brought up about my post was my decision not to wear one. As a lifelong motorcyclist bicycle helmets remind me of 70's motorcycle helmets. They are better than no helmet at all but bicycle helmets could be better designed and made of better materials such as modern day composites. I read of the testing method using a slegehammer. How many cyclist are going to run into a slegehammer? The technology and the materials are available. With all the cyclist out there now why doesnt a major manufacturer produce a better helmet? I read about a couple of companies in Europe making composite helmets but some company should have one avalable in the US. A plastic helmet will protect your head from a blow but it causes neck injuries when it slides on asphalt. The present day helmet will probably work good for a mountain biker but I think its a poor product for the road cyclist.

You'll have difficulty getting a discussion going on this without it simply degenerating into namecalling. I am, apparently, a jackass, airhead, ****-for-brains know-nothing with no common sense for suggesting that people read the evidence about helmet use before deciding whether they are in fact essential - and, for that matter, before deciding whether cycling is in fact as dangerous a pastime as some of them seem to believe. It isn't, by the way.

As to bicycle helmet design, you are correct. In order to make helmets both as light and as profitable as possible, most manufacturers turn out products that meet only the minimum statutory standards, which are pitifully low. And there is little or no useful correlation between the price of helmets and their usefulness in a crash. And neck injuries are not the biggest potential problem btw - it is rotation of the brain inside the skull, which may actually be exacerbated by wearing helmets as currently designed, that is the big issue if one is unlucky enough to have one's head connect with the ground or whatever....

I'm sure it would be possible to make a helmet that was both tolerable to wear and provided meaningful protection. But I'll bet it would be pricey. And the sort of cycling most people do is so low-risk as to not require any helmet at all.

There is none. If helmets made a significant contribution to safety, than as more people wore them, fewer would get injured. But that hasn't happened. As helmet use has increased, the incidence of serious head injuries to cyclists has not declined.

In some ways this is not surprising. In the first place, cycling - ordinary cycling, just riding along, commuting etc. - is very safe. In the UK there is only one fatality per two million miles cycled. In the second place, the most usual cause for serious head injury among cyclists is collision with a motor vehicle - and even the manufacturers don't pretend that helmets will offer much protection in that scenario. Indeed, the incidence of head injury per mile travelled for cyclists is approximately the same as for pedestrians, and for the same reason - collision with a motor vehicle. So those who say there is a need to wear a helmet for cycling need to explain why they don't wear one while walking across the street. After all, there's no reason NOT to wear one, is there?

Promoting the idea that cycling is so dangerous an activity as to require protective clothing just discourages people from cycling. It isn't.

Technological advances are being made in so many areas these days. I just read an article about the new airbag safety vests being used primarily in the eventing discipline of horseback riding (think Christopher Reeve). The vests are reasonably priced (relative to other costs in the sport) and appear to be quite effective.

With the national discussion on concussions, maybe more effective bicycle helmets will get some interest by manufacturers. And it's probably going to be a spin-off from companies that are involved in a full range of helmet technology (motorcycling, hockey, horseback riding, etc.).

Oh a bunch of hooey! You knew that this is a hot topic based upon your first post that stated,

"All that said, at the risk of triggering WW3 (having seen another thread discussing this topic from a different angle), I am mulling over the whole cycling helmet debate. "

you invited comments and opinions so why do you think anyone is personally attacking you? You asked for it.

Whether you wear a helmet is your problem.

This is a logical fallacy unless you can control for the change in time of the number of riders, the distances they are riding, the type of riding they are doing, and the seriousness of the injuries. To take one potential example, the rise in helmet use over the last 20-30 years coincides with the increase in popularity of mountain biking. If you have statistics of serious head injuries/mile of road cycling (or insert another appropriate modifier instead of "road"), you should point us to them.

This is why the most cited whole-population studies have come from Australia and New Zealand where there was a quite sudden and dramatic increase in helmet usage as a result of well-publicized and enforced mandatory helmet laws. And there were traffic surveys conducted both before and in the years following the MHLs so that the numbers of fatalities and hospitalizations could be normalized based on changes in the number of riders. These studies have failed to find the hoped for benefits of increased helmet usage and even showed a slight increase in injury risk when the drop in ridership was taken into account.

Also, one must be clear that nobody in the pro-helmet camp is under the illusion that wearing a helmet makes bike riding safe. When your head hits the ground the net change in momentum is the same whether you are wearing a helmet or not. The role of the helmet is to distribute the force over a larger area, thereby mitigating the severity of the trauma. I do not have access to appropriate statistics, but one might guess that helmets would not reduce the frequency of concussions as strongly as say, the frequency of fractured skulls. This is why an argument about "the frequency of serious head injuries" is meaningless unless the type of head injury is specified.

If you don't believe that objects are protected from trauma by padded containers, go ask someone who sells eggs whether they think it's worth the extra money to use padded packaging.

Perhaps we may argue about the definition of "hoped for", but the first 4 articles I found in an internet search came to a conclusion different from yours:

http://www.bhsi.org/henderso.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...00423-0031.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...3&searchtype=a
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...9&searchtype=a

[QUOTE=MinnMan;11381597]Perhaps we may argue about the definition of "hoped for", but the first 4 articles I found in an internet search came to a conclusion different from yours

The first study (Hendersons) is a meta-analysis of other studies and relies primarily on case-control studies rather than the whole-population data following the MHL although it does include a brief summary of early findings after those laws were enacted concluding that there were benefits but admitting that they were less than expected. The second study is entirely a case-control one and subject to the usual concerns about self-selecting groups not necessarily being representative of the rest of the population. The third study does look at early findings after the MHL (and I think was the basis for Henderson's data in the first study) but fails to fully account for declines in ridership and also changes in some of the medical reporting procedures that were instituted at the same time. And the final study is again just a meta-analysis of other papers - since only the abstract is available it's hard to know how those other papers reached their conclusions and whether they were based on case-control or whole-population.

OTOH, here's an article from the BMJ summarizing the effects of MHLs in a number of jurisdictions and concluding that the main effect was to reduce the amount of cycling and had no appreciable change in the rate of head injuries. In addition to normalizing the results based on ridership counts, Robinson also looked at the comparative records of pedestrians vs. cyclists in that period to account for confounding factors such as changes in medical reporting and general traffic safety campaigns.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410838

And
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9110034
found little change in head injury risk following the marked increase in helmet use in NZ just prior to the introduction of their MHL when a concerted publicity campaign greatly increased voluntary helmet usage.

I am also sick of this debate, last summer a guy in our town made a sudden left turn in front of an on coming car and ended up with his head on the horrified woman's dash board (not wearing a helmet). He died on impact, maybe a helmet would have helped, I don't know, maybe.

You can decide these things, it's OK.

The thing that always surprises me in these helmet threads is the passion of the anti-helmet people.
Having smacked my head on the pavement both helmeted and non-helmeted, I prefer to wear one on all rides.

Bicycling is an growing sport. There are more total bicyclists than, say 20 years ago.
Because the sport is expanding, and many, but not all wear helmets, it IS possible for both the number of helmets in use to increase AND the number of head injuries to increase.
Imagine that helmet use remained the same at 50% (I don't know the actual figure, just using 50% as an example), while the sport grows at 10% per year.
If any given percentage of riders experience accidents and head injuries in a given year, then it is still possible for both "the number of helmets in use" AND "the number of head injuries" to increase, because the total number of riders is rising each year.
More head injuries does NOT prove that helmets are ineffective, it just proves more people are riding.

I love it - safety is overrated. Why do we cringe so, and turn into moralizing babysitters, whenever people do things that can get them hurt?
As Ron White says, "You can't fix stupid."

Anyway, here's the deal - just get a helmet. Don't spend a lot of money on it, either, as they are all designed to meet the same standards.

Try it out for 2 weeks.
Then ride without it two weeks.

Assume the minimal risks associated with cycling during this period, in the interests of enlightenment.

After this month, decide what you like.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I listened to all the crap that goes with helmet debate, too, and ended up asking myself, "Why the hell am I listening to all this crap?!"
Once my trial was over, I found the helmet made me feel no safer. It was the same thing a DVD player comes packaged in. Oh, maybe if I fell over in the driveway and hit my head, it might help. That is what they are deigned for, after all.

Overall, though, I can take them or leave them in terms of safety. I'm half convinced, in fact, that much of what we are led to believe about them is either profiteering sham or fear mongering... which often are the same thing.

The one place they do excel is as a visibility tool. They are the highest point in the riders world and you can really do a lot to take advantage of that. Everything from Fluorescent paint to flashing lights is doable on a helmet. This lets you be seen long before you have to hope the helmet is gonna help you.

So get one, try it, and decide. Cycling is NOT dangerous in and of itself, despite what the alarmists say. Helmets don't change that.

The helmet is not supposed to make you fell any safer - it's meant to MAKE you safer. But as I said before, don't make lame excuses,
just don't wear one and say proudly, I don't want to wear one. All of this extra stuff makes people look foolish and insincere..

I found that I wear my helmet cause I would really feel stupid (if I felt anything) if I hurt my head in a fall while the helmet was in the closet. Just stupid. Kind of like the umbrella in the car when you have to cross the parking lot in a downpour.

Liddy made it pretty obvious he was a troll, so I guess I don't need to follow that line.

Funny things bike accidents.
I tried bike polo a couple of weeks back - what a blast! The local group are pretty casual, not like some of the videos you find on the internet. One lad didn't have a helmet for some reason (compulsory here), but that was fine, he had excellent bike control and as I said, it was pretty casual. The ball managed to go under his rear wheel - not his front, his rear and the result was a forward piroutte, right over the bars and onto his head. The graze was about an inch square so it was obvous where he hit - that's right, inside the area that would have been protected by the helmet. He lay on his back for quite a few minutes. Was obviously dazed when he stood and staggered to the side lines. Didn't ride again that afternoon. I don't actually know how he got home as I left before he did.

Very slow speed.
Not on road.
Accident that resulted in a head injury and included some brain injury.

If you're in an area where you don't need to wear a helmet, you've got a choice. Use it, but you are choosing to risk injury ... bit like riding in the first place but you're choosing to risk injury. So why get so het up about defending your choice (like Liddy the troll)? Make your choice and wear it.

Personally, I was wearing a helmet on every ride 5 years before they became compulsory here. I'm free spirited enough to think that personal choice is a good thing and that you can't legislate safety, much as they try. I'm happy to applaude that you have the choice, just don't expect me to agree that not wearing a helmet is a good idea.

Richard

I've worn a helmet (almost) religiously since 1977 when the USCF proclaimed that I must wear a "leather hair net" if I wanted to race. However, there have been times recently while riding in south Louisiana in 105F+ heat index when I've wondered if the danger of heat stroke wasn't a more serious consideration than the potential for crashing and striking my head. Just something to ponder . . .

Dunno mate. Our February regularly posts temperatures above 40 C (your 105 F) so I know the conditions. Yes, you do sweat like blazes but wearing a light bandana as I do helps keep things cool - I actually started wearing the bandana to fight skin cancer after noticing the strange, mottled sun burn on my scalp (yes, balding badly). Without a helmet, you still need sort of hat to protect yourself from heat stroke.

Richard