I'd rather find out the answer to this question with a helmet on. I never wore one until a few weeks ago. I guess I decided the benefits (maybe a slight chance of preventing an injury) really outweight the cost (messy hair). I don't always wear it if I'm riding somewhere I don't think there's a good chance of getting hit by a car, although it could happen anytime.

haha me too!

my take on helmets is this: if you're in for serious head trauma, helmets ain't gonna help you. If you are involved in an accident at low speeds, a helmet might save you quite a bit of road-rash to your face, maybe stitches, might prevent a slight concussion, might make a more major concussion a slight concussion... so that being said, I always wear my helmet. My friend john wiped out and skidded for 30 feet or so, he got knocked out for about 30 minutes, and still had road rash on his face, but without the helmet, I do believe he'd be missing half his face and might possibly have had some more serious head trauma.

I flew head first into a concrete traffic divider at 20km/h and split a beefy Bell Metro clean in two. I was knocked unconscious for 5-10 minutes and other than a few stitches in my chin and some lingering neck pain, I suffered no real injuries. I have a hard time believing that I would've experienced the same results sans helmet.

m.

it's likely that helmets are worn in greater numbers in areas that are unsafe for riders (ie: NYC vs most of Europe) so of course more incidents will happen in areas where helmets are worn. correlation, not cause.

also, maybe helmets don't help prevent head injuries, but i still haven't ever heard a good reason why i SHOULDN'T wear one (aside from the weird part it's rubbing in my hairline) so i'll wear one until i do.

Wearing a helmet increases your risk of weirdo injuries because you're wearing a helmet. Just saying.

prove it.

The problem with this debate is that so much evidence is anecdotal.

People have an accident, the helmet breaks and they get light concussion. Conclusion - the helmet saved their life.
I had an accident a while ago, got knocked out, had mild concussion and wasn't wearing a helmet. Conclusion - I should have worn a helmet.
But neither of these situations prove anything. The helmet may have made little difference in the first or second examples.

I think the problem that these anti-helmet pages have is that although you can argue that helmets don't do much to protect you (my personal belief), it is pretty hard to prove that they cause injuries (that neck torsion thing seems a bit far fetched).

So the conclusion is that you should wear one on the balance of probablilities. I still don't cos i am a fashion victim.

I always wear a helmet. And I mean always. I'm wearing one right now. I even wear it in the shower, though I do take it off to wash my hair/face. However, when I do remove the helmet, I make sure I'm at my lowest potential energy state possible which (due to lack of space in my bathtub) is usually sitting indian style, leaning slightly forward. I do wear it in bed. It's actually quite comfortable. I alternate between a full motorcycle helmet and a football helmet. I found that the visor of the motorcycle helmet plus additional obstruction of my face was leading to many social inconveniences. For one, it made conversations difficult as my voice was muffled and the lack of facial expression made it hard to display emotion. I felt the tradeoff between communication and exposure to flying particulate hazards to be acceptable.

Awesome post, particularly the last point.

Well, we remained on the level of anecdotal "evidence"... At least there's not too much **** being thrown around.

Shants touched on one of the main points that the study brings up, too. I guess helmets do increase the frequency of injuries, because

1) They give you a false sense of security and you take more risks. That has been proven by a couple of studies. It may not apply to you personally, but it happens.

2) They may limit your field of vision, which is not fun.

3) They are a general nuisance. Your head gets hot in the summer, your neck aches (well, mine does), the strap cuts into your chin. All this can be pretty distracting, esp. to a somewhat newbie rider who is less savvy about when and at what he must concentrate (which intersections, road conditions are dangerous etc.).
Add to this the fact that they can be pretty damn uncomfortable, and move all over the place esp. if you buy the wrong one and/or don't adjust it right, so people will try and adjust their position and even the straps on the fly. Which, again in the case of a newbie, is a recipe for disaster. Also, if somebody wears a helmet with the straps very loose, or not strapped in at all, then they'd certainly be better off without it. Again, this may not apply to you personally, but it's a point for the helmet nazis to keep in mind when they bark "wear a helmet" to everyone they come across.

4) Already quoted: "Research suggests that rotational force causes most of the fatal and disabling brain injuries in road crashes, but there is no assurance that cycle helmets can mitigate it. Indeed, there is some evidence that cycle helmets may increase it." This is pretty surprising to me, but maybe a big piece of plastic strapped to your head with some parts sticking out is not always useful.


Here is what the site says about the issue: https://www.cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1019


People need to grow up and learn to make sense of statistics. You keep reiterating how individual experiences are not satisfactory and how statictics can be deceiving. Well, it's pretty easy to see when they are twisted and when they are not. When you are given the relevant part of the data, the links to scientific studies, position of medical, legal and sports organizations, and the bulk of raw data coming from official sources, then they are meaningful.
There are the stats of countries where helmet use grew drastically in a short period of time. Not much else changed, and head injury figures didn't go down.


Also, I suggested to "read and discuss" Some people seem to have only done the latter.


Of course, a helmet can come in very handy in a lot of crashes. I'm not saying the opposite. What I am saying, for sure, is that helmet advocacy is largely misguided and completely useless for the general population, and it'd be an absolutely idiotic decision to make helmets compulsory anywhere. The drawbacks outweigh the benefits by far. Make your own decision, everyone.

helmets actually keep you cooler in the summer because it channels the air right to your head

Haha

no, helmets are one of the biggest scams out there....

ever notice all the cyclists killed are all wearing helmets

>People need to grow up and learn to make sense of statistics.

You need to learn to make sense of statistics. Trying to draw a causal relationship between overall death rates and helmet usage based on the stats that you've shown is inappropriate, especially given the other information in the study.
For example, it's been shown that overall cycling rates are associated with crash rates- an increase in number of cylclists is assocated with a lower overall crash rate in the absence of changes to helmet usage.
The more people ride- the more overall cycling ability they have, and the more cars expect to be interacting with cyclists. The authors assert that the drop in cycling is connected to the helmet laws, but that data was was not actually investigated by the study.

If you want to look at the protective effects of helmets- look at people who have accidents, and seperate helmet wearers from non-helmet wearers.

Only 16.1% of patients with serious head injury used helmets, compared to 28.2% in those who did not have serious head injury. The odds ratio of helmet use against serious head injuries is 0.43 (95% CI 0.28-0.66) after adjusting for age, ethnicity and time.
Accid A. Prev. 2006 Jan;38(1):128-34.

Risk of head injury in helmeted vs unhelmeted cyclists adjusted for age and motor vehicle involvement indicate a protective effect of 69% to 74% for helmets for 3 different categories of head injury: any head injury (odds ratio [OR], 0.31; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.26-0.37), brain injury (OR, 0.35; 95% CI, 0.25-0.48), or severe brain injury (OR, 0.26; 95% CI, 0.14-0.48).
JAMA. 1996 Dec 25;276(24):1968-73.

Risk compensation:
Risk compensation theory and voluntary helmet use by cyclists in Spain.:
Committing a traffic violation was associated with a lower frequency of helmet use (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 0.63, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.58 to 0.69). The results suggest that the subgroup of cyclists with a higher risk of suffering a traffic crash are also those in which the health consequences of the crash will probably be higher.

The study focused on three safety devices: seat belts, motorcycle helmets, and bicycle helmets. This is a secondary data analysis using data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The results of this study indicate that risky behavior in adolescents is associated with their non-use of safety devices.
Annu Proc Assoc Adv Automot Med. 2001;45:23-36.

Looking at a more dramatic case- if helmets induce people to get in more crashes through risky behavior, or increase head/neck injury through "rotational trauma", then the effect would be much more dramatic in motorcycles- risky behavior is more risky, and the helmets worn are much larger, bulkier, more restrictive to vision, and hotter.
However, the opposite is seen- check out the hurt report. Motorcyclists with helmets are less likely to die on the road, and are less likely to suffer both head injuries and neck injuries. If they have fewer neck injuries, then helmet use- even with bigger, heavier helmets- is probably not increasing rotational trauma.

This is like another brakeless/non-brakeless thread.

my helmet doesnt work, it just sits there all ****ing day, unemployeed POS!

I will say this, and it's pure conjecture on my part, but here goes...

I do believe that the peripheal senses (not just vision, but spatial awareness, and proximity sensitivity,etc)
are limited and distorted by helmet use. The deprivation caused can play with the gyronomic equilibrium of the head/body relationship. This is the key to balance, which in turn is the basic dynamic principle of riding a bicycle.

Ironically, The only severe accidents I've ever had, I happened to be wearing a helmet.

I do believe that the times I've saved myself in hairy near-misses, I was saved by the uncanny principle of spatial awareness, and my body's ability to self-correct the gyroscopic aligment by "steering" with my head. [/theory]

However, the nasty crash that I mentioned earlier, where I scraped my head on the pavement at 20+mph, was caused by a thrown chain on a ghetto-rig hub. That was unavoidable, and the helmet prevented me from severe lacerations on the face and head, if not from a concussion.

I hope none of us have to prove this first hand...

I really like the phrase "Wear a helmet, fight helmet laws"

Reasons I wear my helmet:
1) its white and mostly closed-cell polystyrene so it helps with the summer heat.
2) god forbid something happens, I probably won't suffer permanent hair loss (somehow cranial road-rash sounds like a recipe for losing a bit of one's hair)

Explain? How does a couple hundred grams on your head which blocks neither your ears nor your eyesmess with your "proximity sensitivity" or your "gyronomic equilibrium." What are these senses and how are they effected by the helmet. If you are talking about your vestibular system I don't see how an external helmet could effect the functioning of some fluid filled tubes and little weights. If you are suggesting that the helmet some how effects you the acoustic properties of your head and therefore your hearing I think it is safe to say that traveling at 20mph effects them alot more.

Half a sentence seems to be missing, but I guess you say that the drop in cyclist numbers increases the risk, and that's why helmet laws don't work. Even if that's true, helmet laws are still ********. But things like drivers' awareness to cyclists probably don't change in 3 years, so I guess it's irrelevant


Quite likely the correlation between helmet use and rule-abiding is... Uptight people tend to do the proper thing: wear a helmet, stop at the stoplight. Rebels, messengers, punks etc. don't do either. That doesn't really mean that putting on a helmet doesn't give you a false sense of security. We all know that traffic rules don't have all that much to do with a biker's safety anyway, so the whole point of looking at that data correlation is debatable. If I put on a helmet, I may become even more reckless


Thanks for a good post, though. I'll try and wrap my head around the rest when I'm more concentrated.

>[LóFarkas]Half a sentence seems to be missing, but I guess you say that the drop in cyclist numbers >increases the risk, and that's why helmet laws don't work. Even if that's true, helmet laws are still >********. But things like drivers' awareness to cyclists probably don't change in 3 years, so I guess it's >irrelevant.

I can't locate the study i was thinking of right now- however, in it they looked at the rate of cycling along particular roads, and the accident rate & found that as more cyclists went through an area, the accident rate for that road went down, both for bike and car-bike crashes. This effect was area-specific, and occured over a relatively short time span- drivers apparently look more for bikers in areas where they've seen them recently.

>That doesn't really mean that putting on a helmet doesn't give you a false sense of security. We all
>know that traffic rules don't have all that much to do with a biker's safety anyway, so the whole point of >looking at that data correlation is debatable. If I put on a helmet, I may become even more reckless

Wasn't it you arguing aginst the use of anecdotes? If you want to argue against helmet laws on the basis of decreased safety to cyclists after their introduction, you've got to prove that wearing a helmet is linked with an increase in risk. If the risk comes from a false sense of security, then when you look a population containing helmeted & non-helmeted riders, the helmeted riders should have a higher rate of serious injury than the non after you control for other factors (age, time of day, etc). I don't think that anyone has done this, and several studies have shown the opposite.

Libertarian arguments about individual freedom are free from this constraint, though i think that the helmetless motorcycle lobby is stupid.

Actually, a regulation that could be more useful in preventing injuries than helmet laws would be lights.
People night riding without lights are hugely overrepresented in accident data. Look at the dutch bikes- nobody wears helmets, but nearly every bike has lights and reflective sidewall tires.

I have not. However, i have noticed magical thinking in reporting on bicycle crashes- some biker gets hit and killed by a some driver swerving onto the shoulder in their suv & the reporting focuses the blame on the lack of a helmet, as though it put out a force field sufficent to stop three tons @ 75 mph.

someone, i think possibly on this forum once said it best, something like...

"you don't wear a helmet to save your life, you wear a helmet to avoid turning into a vegtable and becoming a burden to the people who love you until you finally die"

This sort of argument can be brought to the next level by simply saying you shouldn't be out on a road with your 20lb bike and open face styrofoam helmet shoulder to shoulder with 2 ton rolling chunks of metal piloted by people who must only pass a joke of a licensing process.... if you give a crap about those in your life.

It's not that simple.

Also, comparing motorcycling to bicycling is an inviting concept but not nearly as logical as it might seem. The equipment and physics involved are actually quite different. At least too different for use in arguing the effectiveness of bicycle helmets or making ones own choice to wear one.

i was pretty much all about only wearing a helmet in the winter, when i had a greater likelihood of slipping and falling at lower speeds. however, i recently had a dream about having part of my scalp ripped off as i slid across the payment. it sort of stuck with me, so i took it as an omen of sorts. i didn't like my bell citi, i do like my bell alchera. it was mildly uncomfortable near my brow during a few 95*+ days. the rest of the time i forget i'm wearing it.