I wouldn't wear a helmet if I would just slide on the flat ground. The reason I and a lot of other riders wear helmets is for cases when you hit a tree or a car head first (for instance on a fast descent). Things like these happen every year in the hills, when either a car brakes unexpectedly or the bike tire fails/slides. How on earth would someone "curl up" when he is flying like a superman towards the obstacle?

Reading these threads is like banging one's head against a wall. It is apparent those who choose not to wear helmets while engaging in this ridiculous activity.

When my food is done in the oven, I remove it with a potholder on my hand. I know it's hot, and I plan accordingly. I also know that while riding a bike in traffic that my chances of being de-saddled increase, so I wear a helmet. I've been endoed by a rabbit before, something I didn't plan on. Glad I had my helmet. Be it a car or wildlife, I will wear a helmet. No sense in taking something hot out of the oven barehanded.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go put on my helmet before reading further.

Your english teachers just rolled over in their graves.

You could get a much larger margin of safety by not bicycling or snowboarding at all. By choosing to snowboard you are choosing to put yourself at risk. Of course there is some trade off that you get enjoyment out of it.

Similarly, there is a trade-off to owning and wearing a helmet. Many have argued that there is no reason to ever not wear a helmet. But these people do not sleep or walk with helmets on, so obviously there is a downsides to having a helmet which is outweighed by the risk of certain activities. Which activities fall on which side of the risk/reward cutoff is certainly a personal and subjective matter. Personally, I find that the freedom of not lugging around a head-sized object to be worth quite a bit to me.

What gets me is how the argument always somehow ends up on helmets. The argument usually goes along the lines of: "Helmets are safer, so wear a helmet", which does not take into account the other half of the equation. Not bicycling is safer, so don't bicycle. Face shields are safer, so wear a face shield. How about just riding at 12 mph instead of 20? I bet that would more than cut your risk of any accident by a huge margin.

I would disagree with the statements that helmets don't work. But I would often agree with the statement that helmets are inconsistently applied. Nobody wears a helmet walking or driving, but the head injury risk is in the same range as bicycling, and probably in specific environments bicycling can be safer than walking.

I also believe that helmets are not the greatest or easiest risk mitigator for cyclists. There are a lot of habits and decisions that can easily reduce a cyclists risk much more than a helmet. But unfortunately these are not visible on your head. Few people talk about how their mirror, or braking skills or situational awareness saved them from permanent vegetable status.

I also agree with the statement that helmet saves are over-reported. As I pointed earlier, no matter the outcome, the helmet will always appear to have worked, even if it were made of wet paper.

I also think that you are more likely to hit a helmet than you are to hit a bare head in a crash on flat ground. Your body is designed to minimize hitting your head in a fall. Falling from a bicycle on a flat surface like a road, I have always hit the ground shoulder first, or hand then shoulder, or hip/butt first and then shoulder. There are of course exceptions, but I bet that %80 of crashes end up taking a hit on your shoulder before your head if you hit your head at all. In general your neck is relatively flexible so that your head fits into your shoulder or gets pushed into your chest and cannot directly strike the ground. It might glance it, but it won't straight up bounce off the ground. Add an inch of helmet to your head and your head now sticks out around your shoulder and neck and it is much easier to get a direct impact. I believe that the resulting destroyed helmet leads many to say that their skull would surely have been shattered otherwise. As far as I know, there haven't been any studies on this though.

Well, ya know, fall enough and it becomes instinctual. At 53 I've lead a pretty rough and tumble life style....skiing/motocross/white water kayaking/skydiving/etc. and believe it or not the majority of time I 'don't see it coming' I end up doing a shoulder roll [always the right shoulder] and ending up on my feet. As evidence, 3 time I've had a horse fall at the canter and all three time I shoulder rolled out of it and ended standing up before the horse even got up.

Adjust you ball cap.....do you think about which hand, which fingers, where to hold the brim? No, you just do it thought muscle memory. Same deal with falling but a vastly more helpful ability. Athletic people tend to fall in a controlled manner while non-athletic people go ker-splat.

First, a few points:

1. As a general surgeon, you do not deal nor are qualified to deal with head trauma. Neurosurgeons and neurologists are for this purpose.

2. As a doctor, it is unlikely that you do any bench research and hence you have no personal expertise in head injuries. If you are doing research, you can correct me.

Nevertheless, as someone educated in the sciences, I expect that when you claim helmets 1.don't work and 2.cause injury that you have read sufficient data that has formed your well-informed position. As such, the only thing that matters here is research. I would like to ask you if you could kindly share all the papers written on the topic that support your two claims. I am very open-minded and would love to see any data that suggests helmets do not work, no matter what the application is.

I would also like to take the liberty and address a few point you made. When you are reading a study that says helmet legislation increased the number of fatalities, you must tread very carefully to interpret that data. I did see a few articles like that as well. However, there is a big difference between a helmet causing those increased fatalities and the number of people who wear helmets and think they are invincible, therefore start riding more aggressively. The latter has been shown to happen. That is more of a psychological effect than anything related to helmets. Furthermore, when you read that this or that legislation did not decrease helmet fatalities, you must also try to see whether the study actually looked into the rate of helmet use. Legislation means nothing if people are going to ignore the law and not wear helmets or if they are going to wear helmets and assume they can do all types of dangerous maneuvers.

Here are a few, quick citations for you:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18646128

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8571008

Why don't you go jump off a bridge? You're always putting yourself at risk, why not go all the way, right? Crossing the street is always risky, so why not run across a busy freeway?

The whole point of protecting yourself during risky activities is to minimize that risk. You mention drivers, but what do drivers do when they're partaking in an activity with increased risk? They wear helmets. Of course, if the world was perfect, they wouldn't need them. Why do skydivers have backup parachutes? In a perfect world, the first wouldn't fail, and it's just added bulk and weight.

The world isn't perfect. Sometimes, when you're doing something risky, things happen. People with brains think that giving themselves reasonable protections when, not if, that happens is a good idea.

First of all, I would just like to say "I told you so" about this thread devolving into this. Secondly, I present this video as evidence that it can be very hard to just "curl up in a ball and protect your head with your shoulder" in a crash. Sometimes things happen very fast and the forces involved can send you pretty out of control. I've posted this video before so I apologize if you've seen it already. Watch the guy on the outside of this corner. He is #329 and is wearing a blue and orange kit. He does his best to avoid the wreck but his back wheel gets hit and he is sent flying off his bike. When he hits the ground, his head is snapped back and makes pretty hard contact with the ground. If he had not been wearing a helmet, it looks extremely unlikely that his head would not have contacted the ground. He sent me a message after I put he video up saying he was fine and his helmed was broken and he needed a new one. Actually, just read the message from him and his direct quote was "My Giros Ionos helmet is trashed." So, that means the helmet absolutely absorbed some of the impact when it hit the pavement. Additionally, the helmet will prevent soft tissue damage/road rash on the head which isn't necessarily a life threatening injury, but it's a good added bonus. Anyway, here's the video. Best to watch it in HD.

NOTE:
http://inside.mines.edu/~gmurray/25t...Cheesehead.jpg

These two guys just fell off their bikes. Which one would you rather be?

What if I don't want to do something risky, I just want to ride my bike?

I think cat 5 crit racers are way under-protected if they're just wearing a standard bicycle helmet.

Some forms of cycling are risky, that's the point. If you don't want to take risks, you're welcome to ride around a padded room with training wheels. The rest of us realize there are risks we take by the very nature of road cycling, and want to minimize those risks without giving up what we like doing.

Yep, protection levels are a personal thing. Looks like less than 50% of these guys think a helmet is required on a training ride.

That's a VERY difficult question. I'm not sure I could answer :lol: Since that foam cheese thing was neither designed to function as a safety device nor actually made of cheese, it doesn't really factor in.

I clearly take far more risks while training with a helmet on then without one. I'm not sure "minimize" is a word I use in connection with helmet use. The exception being a helmet "minimizes" the volume of my hair during a ride.

Sorry, I should have used the :sarcasm: :eyeroll: emoticon when I wrote that so you know it was not a genuine belief..at least not with me.

I've worn a helmet, from motorcycles, to bicycles for 30+yrs...

I ski also...friend of mine as I was making some turns came up from behind and I cut across and he clipped the back of my skis....I went highside...then backward and fell about 30mph...on a groomed run. The back of my head of course when I finally went down hit the ground...it was a pretty good whack...after 15 seconds of figuring out if I was ok...jumped up, got my gear and went on my way. Helmet took the blow and didn't break...but the probability of my head hitting the groomed/packed snow as hard as it did withouth, would have likely concussed or KOd me. I know how a helmet actually works and functions in a crash having experienced them. Are they perfect? No. Do they indeed help often positively...more often than not.

Capital E, dude. Look before you call someone out like that.

Irony, it's what's for dinner dood.......

how can people get so passionate about not wearing helmets.

1 - I don't care if you chose to wear a helmet or not
2 - I wear one to enforce my kids wearing theirs, which is easier if I'm doing it too

With that said...

My main complaint about bicycle helmets is they offer best protection on the first impact. Just because my grape bounced off the ground, it doesn't mean I'm done crashing and banging my head off the ground.

If you are eating your cheese helmet, I recommend 2 blocks all around.... :D

Motorcycle helmets seem to have multiple impacts designed into them per crash, bicycle helmets have 1. Seat belts are designed to keep you in place through a multiple collision incident.

I'm fascinated this thread is 4 pages (at the time of my commenting) and hasn't been moved yet.

It is fascinating how worked up both sides get over a choice....

It certainly is, although I was RATHER worked up about it when a municipality near me passed a helmet law. Since it seems the cops aren't really going to enforce it much I've calmed down and things are back to normal. I'll go militant again if I ever get stopped for no lid.

Wore a helmet for every ride 1988-1998 (or so). Only for certain rides since then.

:lol: Exactly my point.

1) Absolutely wrong. As a general surgeon we are dealing with head trauma ALL the time, as initial evaluator and initiator or therapy and diagnostics . The neuro guys come in later.

2) No personal experience expertise in head injuries. Absolutely, completely, totally wrong. From scalping injuries, to skull fx's to Oh why bother. Clearly you are clueless about what our experience is.

Your last point , however is valid. Though some posit the torsional injury from increase in head diameter it is also true that more aggressive riding may be part of the problem in wearing helmets.

Bravo! Says everything I would say. I would only add that I, in most circumstances, do not wear a helmet. I assess the ride I am going to take and make a decision as to whether or not I will wear one. If I am going to be riding in a pack of riders, or in a large volume of automotive traffic, I will probably wear one. However, my normal rides are on mainly country or rural roads. I trust in MY ability to ride a bike competently, but when I am exposed to others(cyclists or cars) I don't trust their ability to not cause a fall. If I am hit on a rural road, the speed I would be hit at will be significantly higher than any cycling helmet would be rated for anyways, so in my mind it would not be of any help.

The main reason I felt the need to post is this though, people talk about "anti helmeters" as getting too angry or passionate about this subject. It has nothing to do with the helmet per se, it has to do with the constant need for others to tell us what we already know "Hey! You're not wearing a helmet!" Uuuhhh....thanks? Why do believers in helmets have this need to tell us that we need to have a helmet on? A lot of you say in this thread, "I don't care if you wear a helmet or not", but there sure are a helluva lot of you that do care.

I passed an overweight woman on a bike one day wearing her helmet when she decided to take her fist and knock on her helmet, implying "hey stupid, where's your helmet". In hindsight I should have told her straight up that she was fat and probably suffering from heart desease which may cause her death. There is no difference in the two statements.