zonatandem

Bumpers on cars have killed people . . . and so have airbags . . .
So eliminate bumpers and get rid of airbags and all motorists will be safer?
I wear a helmet and have crashed a few times at 30+ mph . . . no strangulation issues!

vol

What a silly board.

indyfabz

Naw. I am scared of suffering permanent damage or death from after hitting my head and bleeding due to the fact that I take blood thinners. Then there is the case of a woman I knew who worked at a LBS. She crashed at pretty slow speed when a car pulled out front of her. I went to see her in the hospital after she had been awakened from her medically-induced coma to treat her closed-head injury that would almost certainly have been prevented had she had a brain bucket on. I nearly tossed my lunch when I saw her. The bright side was that she wasn't strangled and was breathing, albeit through a tube.

Chris516

I can't take blood thinners because of a (congenital)brain aneurysm. So, I sort of identify with you on health severity.

GravelMN

Learn to adjust your straps and wear a helmet properly and you will have no problems with strangulation. Wear a helmet or don't, its your choice, but this is a very silly argument.

GravelMN

Just to give your theory the benefit of the doubt, I tried on my helmet with the straps on the loose side. I pushed the helmet forward from the back as you describe, pulled it straight up, and tried several other variations and in every case the strap pulled against my jaw, not my trachea. Even when I pushed or pulled so hard as to make it very unpleasant, I could easily breathe. IMHO any impact that would cause a helmet strap to cut into or crush the trachea would probably break your neck, crack your skull, or take your head clean off with or without a helmet. The only scenario I can think of where the helmet strap would choke you might be if the strap and head band were both extremely loose and the helmet got hung up on something. But again, the far greater risk would be that your neck would be broken by hyperextension before you would strangle.

I searched for any information on the subject from reliable medical, scholarly, or public safety organizations and all I could come up with was a few, very isolated reports of children having been strangled when their head became entrapped in playground equipment or, in one case, a ski lift (ski helmet of course) and the weight of their bodies hung from the strap for several minutes. I found one article that alluded to a hyoid bone fracture attributed to a motorcycle helmet strap in a high speed motorcycle vs motorcycle collision but the conclusion that the fracture was caused by the strap, and not contact with part of one of the motorcycles or another object, was poorly supported.

Yep, you are more likely to be hit by a meteorite than to be strangled by your bicycle helmet.

Dave Cutter

+1 Welcome to Advocacy & Safety.

vol

GravelMN #31 : Thank you, I appreciate it.

Gigglesnit

I'm thinking on my list of unlikely ways to die on my bicycle, tree limb falling on my head trumps strangulation by helmet. Who knows, maybe the helmet would even save me from the tree limb death?

ItsJustMe

If you wear your helmet with the straps loose, you might as well not be wearing it IMO. In an accident it will probably either flip off your head or cause more harm than good.

Most people (the cycling public that is, not necessarily the people serious enough to study these things) in my observations are wearing their helmets with the straps so loose they're going to be basically useless.

himespau 

The only way you're going to get strangled by your straps is if you wear them super loose and ride very fast through the branches of a low hanging tree that catches your helmet and holds it tight, pulling it off your head as you ride by. That will cause the straps to be pulled back into your throat. Do it hard enough and it might crush your trachea. Maybe. Two easy solutions though: (1) wear your helmet straps appropriately tight. I know you think not having full range of motion in your jaw won't let you breathe, but you'll be able to breathe/drink just fine. (2) don't ride through the thick branches of low hanging trees. Have to be very thick to not break when they caught your helmet. Thick enough that they'd probably mess up your face (especially if you weren't wearing a helmet) as you rode through them.

Bines

What if I fall off and my head gets stuck between the spokes?

StanSeven

Use 36 spoke wheels and your head won't fit. Or carry wire cutters like those things to break car glass under water

Rich Gibson 

My late father-in-law used a similar argument against automobile seat belts. If you had an accident they would keep you from exiting the car. Uh-huh! Around the same time a neighbor was involved in an accident in which his car rolled. The youngest child, a boy was not strapped in and was ejected through a shattered window but miraculously escaped being rolled over by the car.

Rich

vol

Thanks for sharing. That could be even more true if the car catches fire.

baron von trail 

I guess we can choke to death on chewing gum too.....

wphamilton

Right idea, but since you've mentioned this a couple of times I thought I'd point out that the odds of losing the contents of your noggin are much less than 1 in 100. One in a million is closer (but not there yet). So by your calculation, more accurately it would need to be $500 million worth, to wear the helmet. Since you seem like you want to persuade people to wear one, you might want to adjust your argument. As stated, with realistic odds, it's not very compelling.

I'd probably prefer to pose first a nominal value of lifetime earnings, or a general "life value" used by government estimations. Such as the EPA for example. Say that's 10 million for a specific age, for example. Then say, one in a hundred thousand odds of a serious head injury (not necessarily losing everything, but serious). That's $100 risk. A helmet is less than that, and you might only need one ever, so in that case it would make more sense from a strict monetary calculation.

I realize that a lot more granularity than that is needed. But realistically 100 bucks isn't going to make or break you over a lifetime. The real key that everything hinges on is, what are those odds in reality? one in 100 like you say, one in ten million? At either extreme it's a no-brainer decision. Somewhere in the middle though, it's a coin toss.

We'd probably agree though that the odds of choking on the helmet straps are way less than the odds of a head injury. There are some records of small children choking on playgrounds, where they slipped through something wider than their heads and narrower than the helmet. I couldn't find any examples of something similar for adults though.

wphamilton

I'd heard that too, and probably said it myself a time or two. I'm sure that it's happened. But it turns out that being "thrown clear" in an auto accident is generally a much greater risk than otherwise, so the argument is refuted.

kickstart

I saw the results of being "thrown clear" on the interstate in Gallop NM, it was a rather ghastly sight.

vol

Reminder: this is not about whether one should wear a helmet--let's not risk this thread being moved to the Helmets debate thread.

Gallo

really is this about the potential danger of being strangled? As a reasonable person considering the very remote possibility of this happening and I agree it could. Helmet too loose and too big an ill fitting thrown in an odd position while unconscious and paralyzed or unmovable due to other injuries or conditions. Even unconscious the brain fights for life and would cough or otherwise move when loosing air in an involuntary reaction. The same type of reaction that prevents one committed to drowning themselves in a bathtub to not succeed. And if all of the events come together in a perfect scenario sure it could happen.

Not likely or even remotely likely or remotely remotely likely......

If this is not justification for not wearing a helmet although a very very weak one then what is it? By posting this question it would seem that you want to take the helmet thread discussion out of the helmet thread and have so far been successful.

You took this risk in post #1

I-Like-To-Bike

Even less compelling since helmet wearing is unlikely to significantly alter the odds of suffering severe/fatal trauma from high energy traffic collisions/accidents.

vol

All I was trying to get opinions on is whether it's possible or how likely it is. The consensus here apparently is that it is extremely unlikely. So far so good.

wphamilton

I'm not trying to argue either way, just trying to be helpful to 79pmooney in case someone did want to confront him about it. That sort of thing does happen on the internet ...

I-Like-To-Bike

You mean you really didn't know the answer about how likely such an event? That doesn't seem likely either.