A helmet as a flotation device. That's a new one. Nice one.

First, we are corresponding in a virtual world with no form of fact checking- each of us can post anything we want, exaggerate any story, and even outright lie for our own reasons.

Second, this thread is named "For those helmet naysayers" so clearly, the original post was to "prove" that a helmet saved the author from more serious harm and thereby convince readers to change their opinions about helmets. However, there is no proof of anything in the original post or any that followed so as far as convincing "those helmet naysayers" it was a worthless thread (as of yet). Helmets break under a variety of circumstances so a broken helmet equates simply to a broken helmet not a saved life or head- anything more is an assumption.

I would love to hear actual logical arguments for helmet use and I have posted this request before yet I have only heard stories like this. I have researched the most pro-helmet sites out there and have only concluded that they are more concerned with marketing than saving lives.

Trevor
Spell checker sucks.

Unless your eyes are capable of recording images at 100000 fps and playing it back in slow motion at regular 30fps, I doubt you'll be able to tell the difference.
What you can do, is strap a couple of strain guages or accelerometers to a hard plastic ball, then slam it into a wall at 30mph, then do the same with it in a helmet. Capture the data at several hundred Hz and you'll see some interesting things happen.

Case in point, we used to do fatigue tensile tests on plastic braided cords. To the naked eye, as the machine ripped the cords apart, it looked almost identical between different braids, when we looked at the data sampled at 20Hz, you can "see" the individual strands breaking and the sensors rebounding and shifting as each strand broke. You wouldn't be able to tell by eye or even if you slowed down the video, but the data itself showed one type absorbed a lot more shock than the other.

I personally would rather the helmet brake and dissipate the force than my head doing so. It doesn't have to "crumple" THAT much or increase the impact time THAT much to make a difference if the energy is squared as time is halved.

No one is forcing you to use a helmet. Just like no one is forcing you to use a condom/seat belts/air bags/smoke detectors/etc.

Helmets suck. But everyone has been convinced they have some sort of magical property that will like, save your life or something. I think all they want is more money out of my pocket. If not, then why are the damn things so flimsy. Hit one tree head on at over 20 mph and the things are toast. They just fall apart, crumble, become junk in an instant. It's not like you are protecting anything important anyway. If you are really concerned about protecting vital organs, wear a cup.

I really can't believe people argue this point still...oh well, I will wear my armour and helmet knowing full well it is one layer of protection before my skull gets nailed, it isn't perfect...but it is better than without. And as for avoiding the situation...arg I can't be bothered even being witty. nm

Glad you are semi-ok. Been offline for a bit, hope things are good man.

The problem with what you say here is that we rarely, if at all, hear the stories of people who have sustained a head injury when they weren't wearing a helmet. Maybe you can find for me some posts on any list by anyone who has proudly proclaimed they survived without injury a side, rear or top impact on their skull without a helmet in a cycling accident. Anyone. Even a thread: "For the anti-helmet crowd". :eek:

Think about the crumple zones in your car. If you think helmets are a rip off. One little collision at 20mph and your ENTIRE front end is crumpled inwards and the whole engine compartment is crushed. Cost of 20mph crash? Like 12 grand. I wish they made cars extremely rigid so you can just back up and keep driving to work if you hit a tree at 20mph and the damage would cost maybe a grand or less, maybe.

I can't either. I think us MTBers have known for a long time that helmets do provide beneficial protection. It seems that the contraversy mainly exists in the others disciplines of cycling. Having been through many crashes and a good amount of them involved head-to-surface contact, I will continue to swear by helmets and head protection. Helmets do have limits but you know what they say about an ounce of protection... okay so maybe they're 10 ounces...

Crash with you're helmet on. Make sure you're head bounces atleast 3 times off of rocks/roots/curbs.

Remove helmet, repeat exercise.

Seriously though, what would you rather have, a cracked helmet or a fractured skull?

A really rigid structure would pass on all that impact force to the passenger.

At anyrate... Back when I was working at UMich, I once had the task of picking up a dozen Cisco 2511s we were using for my project as OOB terminal servers. The receiving for my dept. was the North Campus Computing Center... a building up on a hill. I decided that I didn't want to lug 12 big boxes the half-mile to the parking lot (I also always got a ticket in that lot for letting the meter run out) so I simply drove up the side of the hill and parked on the grass near the doors to the loading dock which was occupied by a truck. After loading up the Jeep full of routers, I backed out totally forgetting that I had nestled myself in amongst some 10-foot high sapplings (three to four inches in diameter). I heard a noise and stopped. I looked behind me but there was nothing there so I continued to back up and kept hearing a grating noise. Finally, all of a sudden, the perfectly pruned remnants of a tree sprang up in front of me. My skid plates tore off all of its branches. There was no damage to my vehicle but I felt really bad for the tree.

Do you hear that sound? The sound a fishing reel makes when it has a hit? I am living proof IMO, that helmets do not suck. I have broken more than a few. I just thought Trevor could use some support, seeing as he is paddling upstream without much of a paddle.

Here's some pictures of my helmet after hitting a pile of rocks head-first at around 20MPH.

http://www.neebu.net/~khuon/images/c...t/PICT0001.JPG
http://www.neebu.net/~khuon/images/c...t/PICT0002.JPG
http://www.neebu.net/~khuon/images/c...t/PICT0006.JPG

Here's the helmet before that one after it made contact with an upright tree after I got thrown from the bike when I shot a corner too fast and went wide of the center-cut of a big fallen tree trunk.

http://www.neebu.net/~khuon/images/c...ike_helmet.jpg

I go through a helmet on average every 18 months. The majority of them due to offroad crashes although I've had a few onroad crashes that necessitated helmet replacements in the past. I remember when I was a kid, I had to beg my parents for a helmet and in the end, managed to save up enough money to purchase one on my own. Their attitude was, "you're not racing, you don't need a helmet." Yes, its true... they understood nothing about cycling.

I know, perfect for those helmet nay-sayers.

Re: crashing without a helmet, I crashed a bike making a turn on some gravel strewn pavement going too fast while not wearing a helmet, and spent three days in the hospital with a concussion. If I had been wearing a helmet, I would have gotten up with scrapes and bruises.

Anecdotally or not, it's real simple, helmets help when you hit your head, that's why there are helmets for all types of activities, from kayaking, construction work, skiing, hockey, rock climbing, luge. Etc.

Golly. I want to go on that ride.
All I wear is a helmet.

Good point: it's a self-limiting selection, thinning the herd. What can probably be found are statistics regarding serious and/or permanent injuries for people who did not use helmets.

Indeed. However, this can equally apply to both sides of any given debate.

And what sort of "proof" did you expect to find in a "virtual world with no form of fact checking?" Sure, the helmet I cracked on the road at 35-40km/h in 2001 may not have saved my life. It's quite conceivable that my head may well have survived an impact like that totally intact. However, it's an experiment that I will quite happily pay $50 or more to avoid performing.

Likewise, I would love to hear arguments out there specifically against helmet use apart from the old "they cost too much" or "helmet laws take away our freedom" or "wearing helmets causes people to take more risks". Specifically, why do some people have such a problem with helmets anyway? Any decision to take more risks while wearing a helmet is totally at the discretion of the wearer. How much "freedom" can someone lose in the two seconds it takes to put on a helmet? And as far as the cost goes, I've seen plenty of ultra-cheap helmets over at Wally World.

Read my earlier post describing what a helmet does and doesnt do.

Helmets DO: slow down the velocity of the brain hitting the cerebral walls of the skull, therefore reducing risk of brain trauma (the number one causes of head-imapact related deaths).

helmets are NOT: designed to keep your skull from fracturing...it does reduce teh chances of this, but that is not your concern, since if the skull was hit that hard, you can be assured with absolute certainty brain trauma has occured to some extent.

It's like a seatbelt...you'll hear stories both ways. Heck I know a guy who got messed up worse due to his seatbelt, but that doesnt mean I'll run around touting to not wear one...hell seatbelts have saved my life on and off a race track, numerous times.

My helmet, while not saving my life yet, has both kept my head from getting scraped up badly, and has pretty much gave me a higher feeling of safety while on the road. And helmets have been proven to reduce the damage taken to the upper head (inside and out) during a hard impact. Life threatening or not, at the least it reduces the likelihood of losing some braincells :)

As an interesting note, I remember once reading a story about a MTBer who really incurred "severe penalties for 'effing-up" on an obstacle. I forget the exact nature and cause of the crash but his friend managed to get him out of the trail and to a hospital. They had forgotten to take off his helmet which was itself partially shattered. The ER doctor told his friends that it was a good thing they neglected to remove the helmet as the remaining structure of the helmet was basically holding his skull together.

ugh...when a helmet shatters, that is always a bad sign.

I do wish we had better helmets, in regard to keeping our skull in one piece...but I don't see how that is possible without either sacrificing the advantges the current design has, or adding obscene bulk to the helmet and premature wear issues.

I'd certainly be interested in seeing something like that. But until then, if a helmet does crush, given the material doesn't bounce back, I'd expect it to be fairly easy to spot. I've destroyed a few helmets, and they always crack, and I have never seen any noticeable crushing. I'd like to think that helmet makers could do better. I also think the testing standards suck (even considering that the Australian standard is more stringent than the American one) and don't adequately replicate real life collision situations.

But hey, if you want to continue believing that the current helmet design is the best it can be, go right ahead.

Whenever I post my view on the inadequacy of current helmet design, people seem to assume that I am anti-helmet. Far from it. I am very pro-helmet (although I am anti mandatory helmet law), but I try to maintain a realistic view of what they are capable of. I also think that they could fairly easily be made significantly better, and probably even be designed in such a way that they don't need to be replaced after a crash. I really don't think styrofoam is the ideal material for helmets. The only reason it's used is because it's cheap.

Actually, if you'd bothered to check my location, you'd realise that yes, I am forced to wear a helmet (or at least legally compelled). If it were left solely up to me, yes I'd still wear a helmet, although probably not all the time.

Your arguments are all good and well until you said "that." It doesn't help when you start putting words in my mouth. Please tell me where I said the current helmet design is the best design.

BTW: I hope you realize the difference between force and stress. You can hit at 30mph and have a large force but relatively little stress on a helmet. You can also hit at 15mph and have a relatively small force but large stress on the helmet if you hit a curb. If the helmet were designed to crumple, as you would prefer it, a curb can easily put several thousand psi in your helmet and while it will crumple in a low stress high force impact, a low force high stress impact would allow the curb to go right through the helmet into your skull.
The best design would be a compromise of a crush zone, followed by a hard shell, followed by a thin elastic foam layer. Of course that would drive up production costs, end costs, and drive down profits. And your life isn't worth that much to most companies.

Now, I'm all for helping you not wear a helmet, so check the law. I see motorcyclists around here wearing the helmet strapped to their arms or just sitting on their head (not over, as in full faced helmet). Check your local laws to make sure they say that your helmet actually has to be ON your head.

No but by putting words in my mouth and making up things when you have nothing else to say, it doesn't make you anti-helmet, it just makes you sound ignorant (not that you are). When you need to dissipate a lot of force and stress in a relatively small cross section in a relatively short period of time, you'll see that the only solutions out there are to have a material self destruct in dissipating that force.
If you're willing to live with a huge cross section, little ventilation, and lots of discomfort, you can build a bike helmet like knee or elbow pads and they'll be reusable to a certain point, kind of like the low speed hydraulic or pneumatic bumpers on the fork lifts we have at work. Otherwise, there's no other way to dissipate that much energy in something that weighs only 14 ounces. (I think that's how heavy my giro pneumo is)

you could always wear an army helmet when you ride your bike. no ventilation and they can withstand some gunfire. ;)
i do wonder how a bike helmet can prevent injury. although when i got hit by a car i had on a helmet. i did have a headache but i didnt have a concussion or anything. so i cant say if the helmet saved me or not. i'd rather ride with a helmet than without. who knows if i had not been wearing a helmet if my brains would've been scrambled?
i have a Bell Aquila now and i'm looking at getting a Giro Havoc for mtb. and these helmets cost in the $40-50 range. and for me, it's not just about safety, but comfort as well. i like lots of ventilation and it has to be lightweight. so i'll spend the extra $20 for comfort.
sure, you can get a $20 helmet at Wal-mart...but they are so bulky and have virtually no ventilation.

I have found I need a smoke detector. Gave up on the seat belts though.