I'm sure I've seen some commercially available cheese helmets.

Let me Google that for you

I'm having trouble buying that your answer to 1) is truly genuine.

You would grant me that the force your brain gets exposed to in the crash is based on Delta V of your head, the change in Velocity, and Delta T, the time over which that change occurs.

I think you'd also grant me that the crushing of the foam in the helmet elongates the Delta T.

Now you can't know in advance, without mathematical values, for any given impact whether the change in Delta T from the crushing is going to be enough to make a difference in the occurence or severity of an injury, but why wouldn't you want give yourself the benefit of that ride down effect, and the chance that it maight make a difference in a particular accident?

[QUOTE=merlinextraligh;12294483]I'm having trouble buying that your answer to 1) is truly genuine.

1) The helmet is not designed to provide protection from 28 mph horizontal speeds.
2) The helmet is designed to provide protection from a vertical fall of 5-6 feet.
3) As such, the real benefit of bicycle helmets would be for those walking and or running, do we see people wearing them for the use for which they were designed-no!
4) The process of wearing a helmet increases apparent head size by at least 50%, creating a risk for torsional injuries for which they were not designed and increasing the likelihood of head/helmet contact with the ground. This may be part of the reason for increased injury/death rates in whole population studies.
5) The manufacturers themselves state that helmets will not prevent concussions.
6) The AMA position statement is based upon the terribly flawed data posited by Thompson in 1989 and again in 1996. Once bad data gets into the system it can be devilish difficult to get it removed. For evidence of this read the Bio of Inaz Philipp Semmelwies

Yahoo-frickin-hoo!

Apparently I've successfully reached the point in my life where I don't feel compelled to become involved in pro/con helmet discussions.

Thank-Dog.

Nonr of that clashes with the fact that compression of the foam lengthens the Delta T, which improves your odds. I get that Bike helmets aren't designed to deal with severe impacts, but if my head is hurtling to the ground I'll take my chances with it being covered with somethin energy absorbing rather than bare.

It's you in this case. The time I spent in college working at a lab that studied head injuries in motorcycle accidents and testing the effectiveness of Motorcycle and bicycle helmets is what I'm speaking from.

As somebody mentioned earlier, this is just like the seat belt argument in terms of "rational" thought. Like the CEO of a helmet company once said "It's obvious that it's better to have something between your head and the ground when you hit. That's not even worth arguing about."

Your a much smarter person than I for this realization.

But here is something to consider. As our head is "hurtling" to the ground, Our brain is gearing up to protect this head, we curl into a ball, our shoulders are wide enough to protect us from contact with the ground and all of these survival mechanisms are altered with strapping on a helmet. Our " head "(+helmut) is now larger, increasing the likelihood of head(+helmut) contact that otherwise may not have occurred. So is it really helping us or is it perhaps not so clear at all and in fact , may be hurting us.

But it is , for all the reasons stated above. If it is so obvious than why are the whole population studies so radically different for bicycle and motorcycle helmets. Why is the data so solid for motorcycle helmets and so lacking in bicycle helmets. Perhaps what is "so obvious" is not in fact , obvious at all. I wear a motorcycle helmet....always. I wear a seat belt always. The bicycle helmet is an accessory foisted upon us by fears not grounded in reality or fact .

I wear a helmet sometimes - like when training, group rides, etc - . If it were for my personal experience, I wouldn't bother at all about wearing one. In my only serious accident in nearly 50 years of riding (hit from behind by a drunk driver) I wasn't wearing a helmet, and had no head injuries except for some road rash. To be honest, I had a mild concussion but without any sequels. A helmet wouldn't have prevented my broken shoulder blade, badly sprained ankle and lots of body road rash.
I was wearing a cycling cap, but didn't start a thread by the title "Caps work!".

I rode on a team once that advocated practicing crashing on a grass field. Without practicing crashing, those without crash or tumbing experiene wouldn't curl up and take it on the shoulder even without a helmet on. Racers that have practice/are used to crashing can crash with a helmet just fine.

So, what you're saying is that in a significant crash, your body can react and limit the head impact, possibly to something like a fall from 6ft?

If I told you that you were going to have an unexpected pedal release and come crashing down on the top tube, would you prefer to do so with a cup on or no cup?

I'm not arguing that cups are ineffective in reducing the risk of racking yourself. Some people, however, are arguing that helmets do not reduce the risk of scrambling your brain.

helmets save lives. end of thread.

This idea that the data is so lacking appears to be overstated.

First, the population studies relied on by the anti helmet crowd, address the issue of whether mandatory helmet laws are effective in reducing injury. That is a different question than whether you can reduce your own risk of injury by choosing to wear a helmet.

Second, the studies used to claim that helmets don't reduce risk don't say that, at least that I've seen. There are some that say that they can't prove the effectiveness of a mandatory helmet law in reducing risk due to the number of confounders.

No one in any of these threads has posted studies showing helmets don't work, just studies questioning the proof that they do.

Three, there is data showing helmets reduce risk:

The Effectiveness of Bicycle Helmets:A Review
Revised Edition Prepared by Dr. Michael Henderson
for the Motor Accidents Authority of New South Wales, Australia.
1995

"SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Wearing a helmet substantially reduces the risk of head injury to a cyclist in a crash. This has been shown by a raft of strong evidence generated by epidemiological and biomechanical research, and cited in the present report. ....

Among the findings of the better studies are the following:
The effectiveness of crash helmets for motorcyclists has been studied for decades, and they are known to reduce the risk of severe head injury by about one-third
The most careful, conservative estimates from good studies show that the reduction in risk of head injury to a bicyclist as a result of wearing a helmet is in the order of 45 per cent. In other words, at the very minimum a helmet halves the risk of head injury.
Other estimates from controlled studies give even higher risk reduction figures. Depending on the type of impact and the severity of injury, the reduction in the risk of head injury as a result of wearing a helmet has been shown in several studies from all over the world to be in the range of 45 per cent to 85 per cent.
Those who do not wear helmets are several times more likely to sustain injury to the brain tissue than riders who do.
For children, an Australian study has shown that the risk of injury is reduced 63 per cent for head injury and 86 per cent for loss of consciousness, when a helmet is worn. For loss of consciousness, the risk is over seven times higher among non-helmet wearers than among helmet wearers.
In the two years after the compulsory helmet legislation was introduced in Victoria, the number of bicyclists with head injuries decreased by 48 per cent and 70 per cent in each of the two years, relative to the last year before the law.
In Queensland, the rate of head injury from bicycle crashes fell by more than half following the introduction of a helmet-wearing law; admissions to hospitals with bicycle-related injuries other than to the head remained unchanged over the same period.
Helmets designed to the Australian and Snell standards provide a margin of protection in the real world greater than the respective standards require.
Old-style helmets that do not comply with the Australian Standard reduce the risk of head injury by little or nothing.
The vast majority of head impacts occurring in the real world of traffic are easily survivable if a Standards-approved helmet is worn.
No studies have come to conclusions contrary to the above."

Four,

The anti helmet crowd goes to extreme lengths to pick at the data contrary to their position, not dissimarly to the way the Tobacco industry used to pick apart cancer studies, and the Auto Industry quibbled with seatbelt data and airbags.

See e.g. https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1147.html

Five,

Using a helmet, makes biomechanical sense. You can measure the decrease in force (G's) imparted to the brain, as a result in the change in Delta T which occurs from the crush of the helmet.

Thus, there is a sound logical reason, to believe that the studies that favor helmet use are likely correct.

Staggering considering I've had several concussions...two while wearing a helmet.

But I still don't wear one all the time and would NEVER consider telling someone to wear one.

None _of_ my_ business and I REALLY don't care.

I dont always wear a helmet either. If I'm going a block up the street, or over to a friends house in the neighborhood, I usually don't. I often don't wear one on the pub crawl rides where we rarely get over 5mph. I don't think helmets should be required - certainly not by law, but I think they are a good idea most of the time.

Helmet saved my life. Head first into a tree at around 12-15mph (wasn't really looking at the speed). Enough force to break my spine all the way through in two places and 7 break ribs. Helmet was broken in at least 5-7 places all the way through; no head trauma. Well, I say no head trauma, but I believe there was very little - perhaps some nerve damage causing one pupil to be smaller than the other (yes I have been to the doctor for that after the fact). I'll let you decide whether the helmet kept me from a fatal skull fracture or at least some type of brain damage. Think about the force it would take to break a spine all the way through and 7 ribs on a man that is 6'1" and roughly 185lbs - pretty fit, good muscle tone, some fat around the mid-section.

How can you know when you fall that you won't hit a guard rail head-first, or careen off the road and uncontrollably smack a tree? My accident happened so fast I wasn't even able to put my hands up. Some people are just accident prone; I'm NOT that guy. I had never broken a bone - other than fingers and toes - and I've never sprained an ankle, never had stitches or staples; this was NOT going to happen to a guy like me. Just some food for thought.

The "Helmet saved my life" line - I truly believe that. The doctors truly believe that. You don't have to. You can say I'm delusional (maybe it's a symptom of a head injury).

What irks me most is the public attitude about helmets. It is basically treated as the first and last word in safety, responsibility, and whether you are a good person or not.

If you are not wearing a helmet, expect drivers to give you lectures at stop lights, expect yells of "Where's your helmet?!" from complete strangers. I know people who will not ride with someone who doesn't wear a helmet. Online you mostly get comments like, you are stupid, or you are guaranteed to end up brain damaged if you don't wear a helmet. I mostly think of a helmet as an anti-heckling device nowadays.

If you want to voice your opinions about other peoples' risk and choices, start heckling fat people on the street. I have never heard of someone refusing to ride with a cyclist that chooses to eat red meat because they might have a heart attack.

I don't care if you choose not to wear a helmet.

I think that for the most part the issue of riding with others that don't wear a helmet relates to organized group rides. Unfortunately in our litigious society, if you injured on a group ride, not wearing a helmet, it's going to increase the legal risk of the organizers. Also a policy requiring helmets is likely to decrease insurance costs for the Organizers.

But clearly, had you not been wearing a helmet, you never would have hit your head.

That idea is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I've ever read, and I'll be sure to avoid hospitals in south bend. Is it possible that there are situations where you might hit your head with a helmet when you wouldn't without? Yes. Is it likely? No. Is it worth not having protection when you do hit your head? Not by a long shot.

I had a fairly serious concussion from catching an edge snowboarding at 30-40mph, and you would be hard pressed to argue that the helmet didn't reduce the force of the impact. After being a ski patroler for 3 years, I can also say that there is a huge reduction in the number of head injuries in people wearing helmets.
I don't know why people get so antihelmet, but when it comes to head injuries every little margin of safety is important, it could be the margin between a life-altering traumatic injury and being dizzy and having a headache for a couple days. I don't care if people wear a helmet or not, but to say they don't reduce the risk of serious injury is silly.