"There are three kinds of lies: little lies, damned lies, and statistics."
-Mark Twain

seemed fitting for some reason.
The curse of an English degree.

For what it's worth, the value of a helmet is to absorb the initial energy of impact, so your head doesn't.
Similar reasoning to crumple zones on cars these days. Transfer of energy.
The curse of an engineering degree as well, it seems.

In Oz they did surveys of the number of cyclists wearing helmets both before and after. It varied with the province, but in each case it went up a lot. In SA, the helmet wearing percentage went from 40% to 90%. It makes sense to me... cops were giving tickets, and it's easy to see if a rider is wearing one.
http://www.roble.net/marquis/cached/...elo1/velo.html

Maybe helmets are overall helpful in preventing minor injuries, but I think it is more likely that they prevent some and cause others. Helmets are specifically designed to keep a person from dying if they fall like a dead weight headfirst onto a hard surface. If this were a typical fatal accident scenario, then we should see a substantial reduction in fatalities when helmets are used. We don't.

ah but the purpose of a helmet is to protect the head and brain, not the neck, back, or any other part of the body.
what the statistics should reflect is what percentage of helmet wearers came away from an accident without head trauma.
can't argue from the specific to the general. forensics does not work that way.

And I'm sure they do that in some circumstances... but if the overall effect is beneficial, then why are helmets not effective at reducing fatalities? Here is my list of *possible* reasons for why the "obvious" safety benefits of wearing a helmet do not make us safer overall.

1) A person with a helmet on feels that their head is protected, so
they won't try as hard to keep from hitting it on the ground. An
analogy I like that most people can relate to, is carrying a fine
camera in your hand while negotiating rugged ground. If you fall, will
you try to save the camera or not (ie by not letting it hit the
ground)? What if it was in a padded styrofoam case that you thought
would allow it to survive dropping?

2) A helmet makes it more difficult to keep from hitting the ground
when tumbling or falling backward, since it sticks out 1-3 inches.

3) Some people will take more risks while wearing a helmet than they
would otherwise.

4) Helmets are designed to take direct hits, but the vast majority of
bike crashes involve glancing blows. Brain and neck damage caused by
sudden rotation would be more likely with a helmet on than without.

5) Most serious injuries and death involve getting hit by cars... and
helmets are little help against those kind of impacts. There is also some
evidence that drivers give unhelmeted riders more room.

I don't see your point.

Why is this important, if the same number of people are getting killed, helmet or no?

I didn't call you a name, rruff. I said you were worse than a dumbass, which you are. My thinking as such and stating so isn't juvenile in the least. If I had called you a dumbass and said "your Momma too" - then you could argue that my "tactics" are juvenile.

Again, you're losing your cool, which isn't surprising of someone irrational. You have no access to or proof of anything of value and you just keep repeating yourself. I too, have been just repeating myself in response to you, and now I'm done doing so. It's like ramming my head into a cement wall...without a helmet.

1. accidents happen so quickly, that most reactions are instinctual, like a nerve impulse taking a direct route up the spinal cord as opposed to the typical neuro-pathways, such as when jerking back from touching a hot object to avoid a burn. As such, the immediate reaction is to protect the face and head with the forearms in a crash. You don't usually have time to ponder the fact you're wearing a helmet. Survival instincts take over.

2. this one I don't quite follow.

3. this is a matter of common sense, and one's level of mental development. They say one's ability to make a rational decision isn't fully developed till your mid 20s. This is why kids do stupid things in cars, for example. That said though, sure I could see this being true, that someone would take a greater risk. Same with wearing 'body armor' or those exo-skelital outfits you see BMXers wear when stunting.

4. This goes back to my initial comment. A helmet protects the head, not the neck. snapping your spinal vertibae is not what a helmet is to protect against. As you said, it's to prevent a rock from causing a subdural hematoma for example, and even a glancing blow can cause this type of damage without a helmet to absorb the impact. This is also why once you wreck with a helmet on, throw the helmet away and buy a new one. You have no way to know if there was structural damage done to the helmet, even with no visual damage.

5. sure. I never said a helmet will save you from being hit by a car.. lol again, the helmet is there to prevent head trauma. period. It's not an end all be all device to protect you from death or injury. It's another layer of protection in case you Do wreck. The same as a tail light, a yellow jersey, or a mirror can help you to avoid an accident. One more layer of safety.

As for drivers giving more room to someone without a helmet however, I'm not sure I agree here, for the vast majority at least. Granted we're stereotyping here, but I've found there are usually two types of drivers. Ones who give ANY cyclist or pedestrian a wide berth, and those who flat out don't appear to give two sh**s and don't move over at all.. even finding it funny to hit large puddles and such to make riding that much more miserable when near a road.
I don't think a helmet plays much of a factor there either way, but again, this is just from observation over 20 years or so. Nothing to substantiate that.

you really don't see the point? really?
The point, specifically, was that the helmet has a very precise purpose, and even if the helmet does it's job to perfection, you can still be killed any number of other ways that don't involve direct head trauma. Here is an example of what I mean:
If I were to shoot you in the face, would the bullet-proof vest you have on be any less effective at doing the job for which it was intended?

A bit dramatic, but the point is the same. using helmet statistics versus all fatalities is a skewed statistic, and totally inaccurate and meaningless.
Compare helmet use to fatalities or injuries with the direct cause being head trauma, and you have some useful data.

Perfectly stated and the point I was trying to make earlier - only not as well as you did.

If that is your point, then I *do* see it.

I don't understand the relevance of this part though. What would that data be useful for? Isn't the ultimate point of the helmets to make us safer? If they fail at that task, it hardly matters that they "perform as designed"... there is no good reason to wear one.

Using your bullet proof vest example, lets say everyone in the army starts wearing them. They work great at stopping bullets, and everyone predicts that fatalities will drop a lot. But instead the enemy shoots soldiers in the head and rate of fatalities stays the same. Are the vests effective?

OK, approaching it from that angle, head shots are far more difficult than a center of mass shot, so the percentage of kill shots would still be the same or drop, but the big issue here, is that in war, people are trying to kill or disable others, whereas with cycling, wrecks are accidents, and the number of wrecks will not increase with or without a helmet, so we have a varied bit of control data there that will greatly affect the results.

Now, once again I'll state that the purpose of a helmet is to protect your head, and if the helmet does this, even once, it's served it's purpose, and you have avoided injury you would have otherwise sustained.
A helmet reduces the probability of injury. That's it's job, and it does that job effectively. Nothing guarantees your safety on a bicycle, other than abstaining from riding and staying home. Anything that improves the chances of your safety however, is a benefit.

That's the problem GlassWolf... there is no evidence to support that this is true. In fact the evidence we have is that fatality rates are the same (helmet or no), so apparently the protection they provide is not relevant to the vast majority of cycling fatalities, or they somehow *cause* fatal injuries that would not have otherwise occured.

How then are they effective?

Of course it would be nice if we had information on *all* cycling accidents, but for obvious reasons this will never exist. Fatalities at least are reliably reported. But I don't see any reason why helmets would have a better score regarding minor injuries when they fail at the task they were designed for.

Why do you keep insisting on using fatality rates? GW spoke earlier to your using misleading statistics, ones that do not address situations where death is a direct cause of head trauma, rruff, and therefore, are useless to this discussion. And why do you ignore the notion that perhaps the "statistical evidence" that you deem so superior isn't available since those who wear helmets and have bike accidents in which the head is hit don't suffer any injuries worth reporting? Therefore, one could assume, rightfully so, that helmets are doing their job in a majority of instances when they are needed. Your claim that helmets cause more injury or death when worn has in no way been substantiated and never will be. You can't prove something that isn't true.


As for your comment, "But I don't see any reason why helmets would have a better score regarding minor injuries when they fail at the task they were designed for." Precisely, you don't see any reason. But that doesn't mean you are correct and this is where anecdotal evidence will trump your misleading and dubious statistics.

Yes.. Rruff's argument is ridiculous in that if helmets are working, there will be no statistics to prove it. Therefor he is using the lack of specific evidence to prove his point, which is utter ignorance.

It's wholly possible that bike fatalities involve crushed organs and broken spines just as often as head injuries - who is to say precisely what a person will die from if they are smacked by a car? So the fatality rate would remain fairly constant regardless, but the unreported number (head injuries) would be effected.

The bike helmet is the most protection you can conveniently wear on a bicycle without being impeded.

I wonder if tumbling practice is still done in PE? It is a good thing to have a little experience with IMO. Anyway, if you were to try something like a diving forward roll with a bicycle helmet on, you would find that it gets in the way. In a tumble that would result in no head impact otherwise, the tail (which sticks out quite far) can hit the ground hard. I recall a friend mentioned a crash where he fell straight backwards onto his back. He was able to avoid hitting his helmetless head because his instinctive reaction was to keep it tucked to his chest. If he had been wearing his helmet, the tail would likely have struck the ground and he would have gotten some bad neck trauma, and maybe a concussion.

I'm certainly no acrobat, but I've noticed that in the 20+ bad cycling accidents I've had, my instinctive tendency is to tuck my head down to my chest and take the brunt of the impact on the shoulder and back. If I fall sideways or backward I will also tuck my head and try to keep it from hitting anything. Only once did I hit my head (helmet) and in that case I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have hit my head if I hadn't been wearing a helmet. It was a forward somersault in which the tail of the helmet struck the pavement.

Anyway, I'm only presenting these as possible explanations on why the fatality rates don't go down when helmet use goes up.

Fatality stats are used because they *exist*, and are also extremely relevant if your concern is to keep cyclists from being killed. This is what helmets are designed for and is also the reason why they are promoted. Obviously helmet-wearing cyclists *do* suffer injuries worth reporting, since they are killed at the same rate as the non-helmet wearers.

Here is some good data on injuries, most of which are not fatal.
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1177

It is based on a survey of hospital admissions (NEISS). Cycling deaths due to head injury (vs all cycling deaths) have been fairly constant at 45% since 1991 in the US. Also note in the first chart that the percentage of cycling accident admissions due to head injury has gone up from 4.5% in 1991 to 6.2% in 2005.

I think the fatality stats are more reliable, but considering that helmet use has increased greatly since 1991, why are the percentage of deaths due to head injuries constant, and the percentage of hospital admissions due to head injury rising?

EDIT: I see that I erred in reading the chart. The percentages above were estimated injuries that resulted in hospitalizations (I think). The percentage of hospitalizations that were due to head injuries went from 12.1% in 1991 to 14.7% in 2005.

My favorite Helmet debate. http://www.helmetmusic.com/bio.php

OK now I see what you're saying.
yes tumbling was taught in school in the 70s when I attended a PSS.
More was taught to me in martial arts training on 'how to fall properly when thrown around"
However, unless your friend was wearing a teardrop TT helmet (see:Garneau Rocket or Chrono) when his chin was tucked to chest, his head wouldn't hit the ground, nor would a helmet in such a position.
Now if he'd fallen HARD, his head would have snapped back from the sudden deceleration anyway, and he'd stand a stronger chance of both head and spinal injury from that impact without his helmet on, as the helmet once again would absorb the impact of his head hitting the street.

statistics are good sometimes, but so is a sound medical knowledge, and likewise an education in engineering or science. Either of the latter two involving extensive physics matriculation.

Thank you for allowing this to remain a civil discussion. I bow out when it becomes too passionate.

He had a bit of neck strain just because he held his head forward very tightly to keep it from hitting the ground on impact. He normally wears a helmet but didn't have one on at this time. He was curious afterwards because he wondered if he had been better off without it. At any rate, the tail on my helmet is 3 inches away from my head and it seems pretty normal (Bell Alchera). 3 inches is a fair amount of distance in situations like this IMO.

I appreciate your being civil also, and your comments are reasonable.

Maybe I don't want to know but...

How do you die on a bike without sustaining a head or neck injury (I can think of plenty of ways, I'm looking for the common ones)? Are neck injuries counted as head or not? Are heart attacks counted?

Usually from massive internal organ damage. crushed spleen, kidneys, liver, and so forth. Internal bleeding, leading to hypotension and eventual loss of blood pressure causing the person to crash and subsequently expire. Also, things like a pneumothorax, or a broken rib piercing a lung and the person suffocating, or a blood clot going to the heart or lung. Many things that can kill a person if, say, hit by a car, that doesn't cause a broken neck or head trauma to the extent that would cause a fatality.

I don't know for sure... but a high percentage of the accidents that are fatal probably involve enough trauma to the upper body to cause death, even if the head is not severly damaged. Encounters with motor vehicles are a primary factor.

Earlier in this thread some people brought up the idea that racing was particularly dangerous, but all the statistics I've been able to find do not support this. I began to question the efficacy of helmets in the late 80s when I became interested in professional cycling. Helmets were not required for pros in Europe (though they were in the US), and though crashes were very numerous, serious head injuries were very rare. For instance, in the 100+ years of the Tour de France, a 21 day stage race, only 2 cyclists have died from injuries, and there is a high probability that helmets would not have helped in either case. Greg Lemond opposed helmet rules in 1991 claiming that they were unnecessary, and the racers successfully protested to prevent the institution of helmet rules. In 2003 the federation eventually forced it through, but I've not seen any data to show that it has helped in any way. American pro Saul Raisan was nearly killed in a crash from a head injury a couple of years ago even though he was wearing a helmet. I would love to see some info on the efficacy of helmets (or lack of) in pro cycling, but I haven't found any.

BTW, I've known a few competitive cyclists who were killed when I lived in LA. All of them were killed by cars (they were not racing), and they were wearing helmets at the time.

>>American pro Saul Raisan was nearly killed in a crash from a head injury a couple of years ago even though he was wearing a helmet.<<

How much do you want to bet that the physicians who treated Saul don't need to be convinced that the helmet saved the patient's life?

Whatever. If I were you I'd stop worrying about studies and statistics and I'd start worrying about my head (if you even ride a bicycle at all), but then I'm not an arrogant know-it-all (on this particular topic, I am an arrogant know-it-all on every other topic). But that arrogance is far less likely to kill me than yours seems to be likely to kill you.

What are you trying to prove? What's your point? Besides utter troll value (kudos), where are you going with this?

Why don't you go read an excellent article on this in Bicycling Magazine (it's a past '07 issue). His story is told from crash to recovery. Had he NOT had a helmet on, he would have been killed for sure. He hit the pavement at speeds in excess of 40 mph. That helmet saved his life.

I agree with PatentCad, at this point, you truly are just trolling.