That's the extent of your rebuttal? Duret's opinion? No counter-argument? How scientific of you, eagle's ass.

There is still not counter-argument. Although I think explanation may be a better term. I just had no clue what you where talking about or what "gyronomic equilibrium" even was? balance due to gyroscopic motion? your vestibular system? Why not explain yourself instead of criticizing a critique.

Your rebuttal was fine. It's your wacky cheerleader that I had to call out.

Real theory isn't written in a day. I've been following some research in sports "geniuses" which some researchers claim have what is termed "spatial genius". I took some of their studies, and threw it against the wall.

I may be a fan of Pollack, but I'm not about to make up some psuedo-science just to impress a few web junkies.

Give me a few weeks, and check back with me, I should have a paper ready by then.;) (busy with other writing projects right now).

I'd be dead without one.

I once rode without a helmet -in the 80's. I have a really cool dent in my head that happened 23 years ago that for some reason won't go away. The road rash I got on the side of my face was cool till they used this brillo pad thing at the hospital to get the bits of blacktop out of my skin. Feels so cool and free to ride without the helmet until you meet the road with your head.

You figure it out on your own or learn from others.

Bottom Line: If you crash and hit your head, a helmet may save you life or prevent PERMANENT brain damage. The choice is yours, of course.

I received a concussion and 5 staples in the back of my head from a crash where I wasn't wearing a helmet. I'm not officially qualified to evaluate my injury and accident, but I can't logically see how I would have been hurt nearly as bad if I had been wearing a helmet.

I think a lot of the arguments against wearing helmets are like the arguments against seatbelts. there are incidents where a helmet or seatbelt can actually cause injury, but for 99% of crashes, it's beter to wear one.

wearing a helmet is the new rockin a tri-spoke.

hahah, my new signature!

helmets are good if you think you will hit your head but guess what most trucks or cars are gunna hit you in the torso guess what helmet will preserve your brain but not your heart lungs and other vital organs

If I get in a wreck I will probably die anyway so I don't wear a helmet

The question is - do you post that way because of that fact, or in spite of it? :D

Yup

Just going to add a point here that I've mentioned a few times before.

You do not have to hit your head to get a concussion. A helmet will not protect you from such. You don't even have to hit your head. I found this out the hard way in a auto crash. I dismissed the police officer's efforts to call for an ambulance. I kept telling him nothing was wrong with me, I didn't even hit my head on anything.

Long/short: Three days later, I'm in the emergency room being diagnosed with a concussion. Seems that a hard jolt can cause the brain to impact the inside of your skull.

Do I wear a helmet? Yes, sometimes.
Do I believe it will protect me from a concussion or a black out after a minor crash? No, I've already have been given proof that an external impact is not required.
Do I believe, like my co-workers seem to think, that a helmet will save my life if I'm hit by a car? No. Everyone I know that has been hit (or killed) by a car, were wearing helmets and suffered internal injuries, broken bones, or cuts. None suffered from head injuries from an car/bike crash.

When you have a crash and you hit your head, it's highly unlikely that's the only part of your body that hit the ground and sustained an injury. But afterwards, your head is probably fine while your shoulder or knee or backside is in some serious hurt. When this topic comes up in the Roadie forum, almost everyone says they wear a helmet.

I've already cracked two helmets riding my mtb. and when I'm flying down a mountain at 45mph I'd like to think they'd find my head in one piece after my crash.

I wear a helmet even when I'm tooling around the neighborhood because you never know when grandma or that idiot high schooler is gonna come flyin' around the corner and you've got to ditch or die.

There's a very good, very fast roadie here in Huntsville that's currently not wearing a helmet and I'm sure that if I'm going 45mph down the mountain, he's up over 50 and taking chances that would have me peeing my shorts. All it takes is something small in the road, a bad tire/tube, or even an unexpected gust of wind and BAM! Game over.

Wear the damn helmet.

Unfortunately, at 45mph, the helmet isn't designed to protect you.

i do think wearing a helmet gives me a false sense of security

Well, yeah, I can see that.

I'm constantly harrassed at work by my fellow co-workers who seem to think that a bike helmet will save me from being killed when or if I ever collide with an auto doing 35+. They always bring up a wreck that happened outside of town when a girl on a club ride ran head-on into a F250 pickup that crossed the into her lane. They just guess that she was killed because she wasn't wearing a helmet, but I know the family and she was wearing one. I have to explain to them that a bike helmet is only truly designed to protect you from falls, not bike/car collisions, the same as a motorcycle helmet. Anything else is pure luck.

But, it makes them happy when they see me wearing mine and I've concluded I'm on this earth to please others.

All the cats saying lids don't work sound like newbee kooks. I don't know ANYONE who has spent YEARS on a bike... ANY bike that would say they would be better off hitting their head without a lid. (And yes... being hit by a car will kill my a$$ 90% of the time... even with a lid. Anyone who assumes otherwise is a moron.)
I'm all for choice. What you do with your head is your business. BUT saying you would be better off NOT wearing a helmet when your head hits the ground is funny at best. Put this same post in ANY other forum on this site and you'll be laughed at.

I've spent years on a bike. Some younguns probably don't remember the days when a bike helmet was a leather brain retaining device. You've grown up being spoon fed by your parents and teachers that helmets are going to save your life.

The passion of the helmet advocate side makes me wonder if everyone under 30 has fallen victim to the brainwashing of the very companies selling helmets.

You can call me a moron (maybe a hypocrite, since I do wear a helmet at times) or you can call me one who questions the greed of these companies and the lengths they will go to just for profit. Let's look at it another way....what are these plastic helmets made of...petroleum based materials.

I wonder how many millions of dollars the oil companies make off bike helmets? You know how dastardly those oil companies are...they will stoop to anything to make a profit.

It is also very funny, at least to me, that the only side that resorts to name-calling is the advocates.

I think for this discussion to ever get worked out rather than people just get huffy and state their grand theory rather than debate the individual points of how a helmet is used and what it can do for a rider is to start from the bottom of the argument.

So start at the question of, does a helmet prevent a head injury when you hit your head?

Here's where it could lead from there.

Yes, ok so does this "gyroscopic wingwangs" cause people to hit their head more?

Does the risk increase factor actually exist? In what kind of people?

What causes most crashes that involve head injuries?

Are these common crashes?

etc etc.

Or how about we look at supply and demand. Parents demand safety products for their children when they do a dangerous activity. Someone says "hey, helmets seem to prevent people from spilling their brains everywhere." And thus demand and supply work themselves out and we have a new industry. Yes, helmets don't work for everything but they work for some things which can happen on any bike ride any day.

Also good way to bring in oil company conspiracies, we hadn't gotten off track quite enough. Maybe you work for a cycling cap company and are in fact trying to smear helmet companies so that people will go back to wearing just cycling caps with no guilt. Cause we all know they aren't very comfortable under helmets. Cause the greed and etc etc.

Tisk, tisk JW. Now who is name calling? I was racing BMX for Mongoose when Carter was the Prez. So save the "back in the day B.S" for the kids who think Merckx is a bike and Lance is the man.

"Evidence that casts doubt on helmet efficacy" states "Helmet laws in Australia, New Zealand and parts of Canada [15] have resulted in the great majority of cyclists wearing helmets, but there has been no reduction in rates of head injury relative to cycle use. An analysis of enforced laws in these countries found no clear evidence of benefit [16]." Citations 16 is whether mandatory helmet laws improve public health.

The big problem with this and many sources of information on bicycle helmets (pro or con) is that they often mix evidence that is looking at very different questions. For example, a question of whether a helmet use is associated with fewer serious concussions, say, in a crash below 20km hr is very different than whether mandatory helmet laws decrease public health by decreasing the number of active cyclists.

So what, you say, this article is convincing. Well, no it's not. It's a narrative review with no critical evaluation of any of the evidence quality, it mixes levels of evidence as if they're equivalent (which they're not), and provides no apriori statement of a clear hypothesis and so mixes studies that appear to be designed to answer very different questions. There is a clear partisan position here as well. Which is fine, opinions are like *******s, everybody has one. But there's an onus on an author to use transparent and clear methods when putting forward an opinion. This author doesn't: the work is unconvincing, welcome to the interweb.

Finally, someone who speaks the truth!

Remember, these are the same people who forced us off the elegant penny-farthings onto the so-called "safety" bicycle, so that they could profit off the lubricants used on the wholly superfluous "chains".

Also, does anyone nowadays remember the exposure of the pneumatic tire cabal, who brainwashed cyclists into discarding their long wearing, puncture resistant solid gutta percha tires for the diabolical pneumatic tire, and then bread the goathead thorn in their underground chambers of evil so that they might profit off the pain and sorrow of cyclists?

Now, not content with the obscene and unholy profits of their previous perfidy, they have introduced these "helmets", and secretly planted EMT agents who strike unhelmeted riders in the skull while transporting them to the hospitals where studies are being performed on the "protective effect" of said infernal devices.

I salute you for your ability to stand up to these evil men.

mmmm... goathead thorn bread...

I guess you didn't see the sarcastic attitude in that post, but it reflects my frustration with those who just blindly say and think what they have been coached to say and what to think all their lives. As well as, municipalities taking up helmet laws as proof that they are concerned for our safety...and go no further. Helmets have become nothing more that a cause to be championed at the expense of true safety.

Which also brings up a point from the 1970's and early 80's. BMX and "trick" riding almost required helmet use since it was so similar to motorcross. The question then was why was it spilling over to road biking?

'cause all it takes is one turnip to spoil the show. Like Stalin said, one person is a tragedy, one million is a statistic... at least I think he said that, I read it ona website somewhere.

It's hard to imagine a helmet having a negative effect during any kind of accident. It's possible, like you get a strap caught on a fence post and it snaps your neck in the fall, but not even the minimal extra weight is going to have any effect during an accident in terms of your head hitting the ground at any significant velocity or not. Sure, those extra couple hundred grams on your head may be just the difference to make your head hit the ground, but not with any velocity. If it were a question of whether your head would hit the ground with the helmet or not hit the ground without it, then even if it did hit the ground I bet you wouldn't even put a little mark on the helmet, that's how slow it would be going.

In terms of the helmet giving a rider an over-confident sense of security -- sure, it happens, just like when you have 4 wheel-drive and it snows and you don't slow down, or you think ou can take the corner in the rain because you just put new tires on your car. But you can't blame the tires -- or the 4 wheel-drive -- for any injuries sustained in the wreck, nor the helmet for your carelessness.

If you look at human physiology, helmets make a lot of sense.

The brain is very delicate. It's injured much more easily than other body parts, the things on your head are much more susceptible to permanent damage. Neural tissue, once damaged, does not grow back. Land on your arm heavily, you have multiple fractures, which can be re-set and healed. Land on your head heavily, and you have a subdermal hematoma that will likely give you brain damage.

When we ride bikes, we move faster than our bodies have evolved to protect... our brain cases evolved for the optimum balance of movement, weight and protection at running speeds over mostly yielding ground. With bikes, you move much faster over harder stuff. Yeah, there are always exceptions (dash your head on a rock) but the odds are much higher.

I know that's somewhat amateur physiology, but it seems like common sense to me. If you're going faster than a run, on hard material, it's wise to wear a helmet. If you're tooling along at walking speed on a beach cruiser, it's not really necessary.

god. what a mess this is.


considering the brain is pretty important, as the previous post says, it doesn't hurt to have an extra layer over it. i'd rather break an arm than my head i guess.

but i can't say how it is riding with one, i've never worn one, but i'm starting to look around, my girlfriend is getting me one because she hates how fast and far i ride without one.