BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Love the gif - great demonstration of how it folds.

I am...skeptical that something designed to collapse is going to hold up in any sort of collision...

@buffalo b

Bicycle helmets in general don't hold up for any sort of collison. That is one reason why there is argument about them.

It's true, they are useless. Mine got a nice crack in it, right over my right temple. I woke up in the ER.

But then again, without the helmet you may not have woken up. My last fall knocked me out and scraped the side of my face, also giving me a black eye. I am convinced it would have been worse without a helmet.

Jk, hs. The anti-helmet folks are always saying the helmets don't work because they break, like car airbags.

If they didn't break they wouldn't work.

@jonawebb: I fell on my right temple as well about three years ago, but I fortunately didn't suffer from any head trauma or loss of consciousness. My helmet also cracked at the impact site, but my understanding is that the bicycle helmet is designed to do that to absorb the impact. A lot of people also don't know the bike helmet should be replaced every 8 years or less because the sytrofoam liner will degrade over time. However, I'd suggest replace the helmet sooner as most people drop their helmets on the ground from time to time, and that might lead to structural failure in less than 8 years.

Here is a link to some info on helmet replacement: http://www.helmets.org/replace.htm

P.S. The crash I had three years was a spectacular one, and I am glad I got away with just a cracked helmet, some rash on my face and shoulder, and a minor shoulder joint subluxation. I was making a short trip to work at about 7 mi/hr, and I accidentally overlapped my foot with my front fender, and that thing got sucked into my front wheel and stopped the front wheel cold. I was instantly threw over the bar, and landed on my head, shoulder, and then my body. An oncoming port authority bus driver saw the whole scene, stopped the bus and checked if I was ok. The funny thing was that my first reaction was to get away from the scene because I felt so embarrassed. I waved at the bus driver to tell him to go on, and then checked my injury and my bike. My injury was as stated above. The fork of my bike was bent backward and had to be replaced, but otherwise fine. This experience taught me to wear my helmet all the time no matter what occasion it is.

I was hit, and thrown over the hood of a car in 2008, landing on my shoulder and my head. I was knocked unconscious, came to in the ambulance. The doctor in the ER told me, in these words (and with my wife in the room) "If you were not wearing a helmet, you would be dead."

Helmets are non-negotiable in my world.