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Helmet-less riding?

So I'm working on a project for a class and would greatly appreciate your feedback.


Do you or anyone you know NOT wear a helmet while biking on public streets? Why do you or your friend choose to not wear a helmet?


I'm just wondering what attitudes and motivations are out there. Thanks :-)


2012-02-11 02:42:14

Uh oh. The helmet topic


marvelousm3
2012-02-11 02:47:57

I didn't wear a helmet up until i moved to Pittsburgh, which was June 2009. And the main reason i bought one, was so i didn't get crap on every ride i went on. Haha. I do wear one every day now though and actually just bought a second helmet. (Race looking helmets are for road bikes.) Haha. But i see helmets much like religion. You wear one? Cool. Believe in Jesus? Good for you. Doesn' mean you have to preach to others the safeties of wearing one. We know they are safer than NO helmet. In the very rare cases i forget my helmet or go out without one that's my choice, no one elses. And that, i suppose is how i feel about helmets.


I have the 'might as well' mentality about them now, i don't mind them..and my Bern helmet, i actually really enjoy wearing. It's insanely comfortable and looks good!


cpollack
2012-02-12 23:06:04

What Bern helmet do you wear? I can't wear my Brentwood in temps above 50 without it being too hot.


rsprake
2012-02-13 00:02:00

Uhhhhh, it's the Macon or Watts? I wanna say. Not near it right now..It's the visored one. I'm sure in the Summer it will be a bit toasty but i've only owned it for a week now, used it three times.


cpollack
2012-02-13 01:04:31

Wanna see what my Watts looks like after my wreck? =D

My mom (a physician) got all teary-eyed when she saw it. It's chilling.


I'll be doing business with Bern again. It did its job, and it was comfy, too. (Although I don't know whether I could have handled it during the hottest parts of the summer, to be fair.)


2012-02-13 01:59:44

Yes, please post pics. You appear to have a good head on your shoulders both before and after a major wreck, and the helmet made all the non-difference.


stuinmccandless
2012-02-13 02:08:30

i dont wear a helmut but i want to start wearing one are those bern helmuts the best ones i want to get a good one


bear250220
2012-02-13 02:20:01

My bern helmet has more coverage and less vents than my road helmet. Too bad I probably will get too hot to wear it in temps greater than 50 degrees, but I do appreciate how warm it is probably keeping me.


stefb
2012-02-13 02:47:52

What is the appeal of the Bern helmets over a decent road type helmet?


orionz06
2012-02-13 12:50:04

There may be some practical aspects such as, the hard shell may be more durable over time or something. But I think it's pretty much just style, an alternative for people who don't want to look like racer wannabes or "Cyclists", instead of just people who happen to be riding bikes. If that alternative gets people to wear helmets who would otherwise balk, it's a good thing. I have a white road helmet, a black mtn helmet, and am thinking of getting a Bern. Or Nutcase.


edmonds59
2012-02-13 13:49:17

The bern style helmets seem to give more coverage, as well, at least on the sides and the back.


dmtroyer
2012-02-13 13:58:47

I have similar reasons to those CPollack originally stated. I rode without for a while, but bought one when I was living in the suburbs in Maryland for a bit (the scariest place I'd ever been). Finally got used to it, and I feel like so long as I own it I can't justify not wearing it. If anything happens, it's easy to say I don't have a helmet, but I have one and just didn't feel like wearing it today? so I have it and I wear it... and I don't get yelled at by people in cars who think they know better.


aryn
2012-02-13 16:14:26

I've read a number of papers on helmet use.


Marko82 once posted a summary paper for me to critique. I haven't gotten around to it yet. I know what I think about that paper, but without actually doing a referenced critique, I see no reason to argue about it. (que: sigh of relief from onlookers)


The protection provided by a standard bicycle helmet is extremely limited. I wear a helmet for the same reason I used to wear a necktie: if affects how people react to me.


Various times I rode wtihout a helmet.


When I was kid, no one wore bike helmets. Ever. IIRC, I was well over 20 years old before I ever saw a bike helmet in a non-racing situation.


When I was arguing about the science, I rode without it on the street. It was a little scary. The first time I did it, I felt I was taking my life in my hand - even though before 1976, I had thousands of miles in without ever wearing a helmet. I found that there were situations where I felt very vulnerable.


But those situations, like going down a hill at 30 mph with traffic, are hazards that standard bicycle helmets are not desgned to be helpful in. They simply are not in the design specs.


That feeling of vulnerability was realistic, of course. But a helmet doesn't do much (if anything)to lessen that vulnerability.


The way people react to you without a helmet is very different. Getting yelled at, buzzed or cut off by cars, and shunned or ignored by other cyclists, was far more common without a helmet. The social aspects of riding without helmet were hurtful to me.


And what if a driver had killed me? I imagine the legal and media repercussions would have been, "He wasn't wearing a helmet. End of story." Even if I died of a crushed chest.


When I have ridden the trails to DC and back, there were some 90+ degree days that I took the helmet off. The irony is that these conditions, moderate speed with no traffic, are what a bike helmet is designed to handle.


mick
2012-02-13 16:57:26

I'm Downtown without a helmet myself today, planning on biking home. My biggest problem with being helmetless is that I'm also without my main blinky, which is attached to my helmet. I don't trust the ones on the bike, which tend to get blocked by what's on the rack, and anyplace else I've attached one it's gotten snapped off.


stuinmccandless
2012-02-13 17:29:05

Mick, I have another site for you that (I think) represents your views on the subject.


http://cyclehelmets.org/1045.html


*If the risk of injury when cycling is very small, so the risk of head injury is much smaller. It takes over 3,000 years of average cycling to suffer a serious head injury, and the risk of death through head injury when cycling is very small indeed. Cyclists are a little less likely to die of head injury than pedestrians or car occupants.*


marko82
2012-02-13 17:51:32

@marko wait. is that while wearing a helmet or not?


dmtroyer
2012-02-13 18:01:38

BTW there is one published study (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457506001540) which measured the response (measured by the gap while passing) of drivers to cyclists riding with and without helmets, among other things. It turns out the best response was to a cyclist wearing a woman's wig with long blonde hair and no helmet. Wearing a helmet actually made drivers pass closer.

So, for what it's worth, you're probably at less risk of getting pushed off the road by a car without a helmet than with one.

I think if you ask around you'll find the 3,000 years estimate is absurd. The risk of head injury is much higher than that. I myself have been riding for decades, not millenia, and have suffered a concussion -- I woke up in the emergency room after missing a turn. Broke my helmet but not my head.


jonawebb
2012-02-13 18:09:41

@marko



Mick, I have another site for you that (I think) represents your views on the subject.


http://cyclehelmets.org/1045.html


Marko, that is an excellent site. I'm not sure about the particular quote you made, but the site has excellent references for both pro- and anti-helmet studies.


mick
2012-02-13 18:23:46

I think the site’s position is that the likelihood of a fatal bicycle head injury is so small that it is hard to tell whether wearing a helmet helps or not. Our gut may tell us that wearing a helmet is a good thing to do, but the ‘statistics’ around the issue is less than conclusive.


According to that site, you are more likely to die of a head injury as a pedestrian than as a cyclist. I didn’t review their claim, but it sorta makes sense since just about all pedestrian ‘accidents’ involve getting plowed over by a two ton car, so yeah a lot of head trauma there. But a lot of bicycle/car accidents are less than fatal because of the cyclist’s forward momentum, higher body position, relative speed, etc. Mind you this is all speculation on my part. Hell, it might be that cyclist are in better physical shape than your average pedestrian and therefore have a better shot at recovery.


BTW, I am very pro-helmet (especially for kids), but I think after a certain age it should be up to the rider.


marko82
2012-02-13 18:37:32

"BTW, I am very pro-helmet (especially for kids), but I think after a certain age it should be up to the rider."


The primary reason that I wear a helmet is for the example it sets. I don't really have any reasons not to wear a helmet.


headloss
2012-02-13 18:50:17

I have had things fly up from the road. My eye pro and helmet took the impact, not my eyes and head.


Back to the Bern helmets. They just don't strike me as safer in that my experiences with that style of helmet (skate/freestyle BMX style) is that they often times hurt just as much when you hit your head. Has the padding inside changed drastically such that the helmet absorbs impact? In the woods I have fallen and had a helmet "crush" a great deal. I was fine, 100% fine. I know with my old helmet I would have likely had a massive headache. It seems that their protection is more for stuff flying up rather than impact.


orionz06
2012-02-13 19:52:36

For what it's worth, I got a head injury in my first year of cycling - a non-fatal one, if you were wondering. Definitely would have been worse without a helmet. Your mileage may vary?


Brains really don't like to decelerate rapidly, even from moderate-ish speeds like 20mph, and helmets can't entirely fix that. But they can, if nothing else, make it hurt a LOT less and prevent other (not-caused-by-sheer-deceleration) injuries when your head hits asphalt. (Meaning your brain may get knocked around and you may get a concussion or more even with the best helmet, but you might at least be able to avoid cuts and scrapes and giant bumps and bruises and additional headaches and broken skulls on top of whatever's going on internally.) Your call, if that matters to you.


@stu: I'll post those photos of my helmet eventually. The photos aren't actually that impressive compared to seeing the helmet in person and knowing about the accident + injuries, but they still make it pretty clear that I would have been worse off without it.


2012-02-13 20:05:47

The Berns are now made with the same deformable foam interior, the stuff that does the actual absorbing, as the more typical bike helmets. The main difference is the rigid exterior shell. If my head was heading for an actual pointy rock in the woods, I would want the Bern type.


edmonds59
2012-02-13 20:45:19

Ok, so the real difference now between the two styles is the drastic reduction in venting.


orionz06
2012-02-13 20:50:26

You could say that.


edmonds59
2012-02-13 21:07:56

I can't do mountain biking in the summer with my Bern. It's just too damn hot. It was worse than trying bikram yoga with a hangover.


However, it did protect my skull when I went head first in to a barrier wall at Ray's. I think I put a hole in the wall, but I wasn't too much worse for wear, well, except a slightly kinked neck. However, I didn't see any noticeable deformation of the helmet.


benzo
2012-02-13 21:23:57

It's worth noting Berns come in two varieties - they still have a multi-impact kind for skating and whatever (the kind you don't have to get rid of after a single impact) and a kind that meets bike standards with the styrofoam you'd expect in a bike helmet (the kind that has to be replaced after one significant impact). They sell some styles in both varieties (the men's Macon and Watts, the women's Brighton, etc.), so if you're buying a bike helmet, make sure you buy a bike helmet and not a "hard hat" or whatever they call the other ones.


2012-02-13 21:30:49

@pearmask - If stills don't do the helmet justice, I wonder if you could do a quick video? Do you have the technology to do that? (I wish I myself did, but that's another story.)


stuinmccandless
2012-02-13 22:07:30

spapperman - Helmet use has been well studied. If you are seeking information for an academic class, you would be better served by consulting the existing research. A quick search revealed several relevant papers:


The Bicycle Helmet Attitudes Scale: Using

the Health Belief Model to Predict Helmet Use Among Undergraduates

http://bit.ly/A4Idog (pdf)


Middle School Students and Bicycle Helmet Use: Knowledge, Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1746-1561.1998.tb00594.x/abstract


Barriers to Bicycle Helmet Use Among Children

http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/143/6/741


cornibe
2012-02-14 01:49:25

My helmet is a multitasker. It offers protection to my head in case of a fall, keeps my head relatively warm in winter, and flattens my hair, which is welcome now that I have short hair and it sticks up in every which direction.


However, I'd probably still wear it if it didn't do the last two things.


rubberfactory
2012-02-14 09:14:00

Stu, I do have the technology. Photography equipment is the other hole into which my money disappears (other than bike stuff). I'll post one eventually. Video/photo stuff is the kind of project that I tend to get way too wrapped up in, so I'll do it once I am caught up on real-life things. (Bike wrecks are not a good use of time when you are a graduate student. Blergh.)


I guess I should also minimize how much I post here about that accident until the legal stuff is figured out, but I don't know whether posting something like that would be an issue.


2012-02-14 17:33:33

Probably a good call. Hang onto it, and/or make the video while fresh in mind but keep it under wraps until the dust and lawyers settle.


stuinmccandless
2012-02-14 18:40:33

I read a few posts in the thread but the topic is too damn boring.


Sometimes I wear a helmet, sometimes I don't. I would say I wear one when riding more often than I don't. When doing other things like rollerblading I only wear one if I am with a yuppie skating group that won't let you be in their club without one.


Wearing one is not a bad idea, nobody should feel stupid for wearing one. Its a personal choice. My kids will wear one because I make them. When they are old enough they can decide for themselves.


Sometimes I wear a seatbelt in the car, sometimes I don't. Why? Because sometimes I feel like it, other times I don't.


I don't think it gets much more complicated or require this whole in-depth analysis.


I was hit head-on by a car going 30mph while I was also going 45mph down a hill. I flew over the car and landed 20 feet away in the grass on my back and sprung up off the ground and attacked the 90+ year old senile old hag who ran into me (who subsequently lost her license for life). The people who saw it thought they just witnessed someone's death until I got up and thought they were about to witness the death of an old lady.


I've been injured for an entire season TWICE while wearing a helmet as well.


They say cigars will give you cancer and make you die, then George Burns smoked cigars every minute of his life and lived to almost 100 years old (or older, who knows) while "Jim Fixx" the health guru dropped dead at 52.


I don't wear a helmet when I ski. I'm sorry but snow doesn't hurt as much as pavement. Trees? Sure... But I'm not wearing a helmet when I ski anyway.


You know you live in a country full of idiots when they need to get into these huge debates about things that are basically a personal choice where people's choices really have no effect on your own life (unless it is a spouse or good friend of course).


Do you think they are having a drawn out bicycle helmet debate in the 3rd world where kids are getting AK-47s for their 12th birthday?


adam
2012-02-15 19:13:53

Also... The hypocracy of MAKING people wear seat belts while some stupid pig on a billboard is telling you to "CLICK IT OR TICKET" just makes me feel the need to tell THEM to "SUCK IT OR F#CK IT!"


Yet people who ride motorcycles don't need to wear one. They also get to have the loudest exhaust known to man and that's cool but I can get a ticket from a pig for an air leak in my car's exhaust.


I think there are more important things to give a crap about this day and age than whether someone cares about their own personal safety or not who has nothing to do with you.


adam
2012-02-15 19:16:34

Hey pearmask, heres a link to some software that will let you make a 3D model out of your helmet !

3D models from photos


boazo
2012-02-15 19:47:53

sweeeeet. i'll have to try that if i can find a computer with the system requirements.


2012-02-16 02:28:06

My head is going to explode from just reading this thread. I can't comprehend..... Ugh.


stefb
2012-02-16 11:45:01

spapperman apparently hasn't come back to see all of this or participate and you guys just keep on yappin. :)


rsprake
2012-02-16 14:07:58

Internets version of a dropped cell phone call.


edmonds59
2012-02-16 14:35:31

Internets version of a dropped cell phone call.


Or getting stood up on a blind date...


reddan
2012-02-16 14:37:30

More like a blind group date, where the guy who originally planned the thing didn't show, but a bunch of other people did, and stood around jawboning.


jonawebb
2012-02-16 15:06:20

To the OP... what kind of class?


I can think of a number of reasons to poll "whoever" or mine ideas from here, but the useful answers depend on the question's context.


There's psychology - risk assessment/aversion, avoiding the questions, (not) wanting to look like a member of a group, confidence in effectiveness.


There's physiology - comfort, ease of use.


There's economics - perceived cost vs. perceived benefit.


When I don't wear one, it's because I think that I won't get pestered about it by the people around me (motorists, cyclists, pedestrians) AND believe the risk of needing its protection is negligible. This is most likely to happen on a trail, and least likely to happen on the streets.


ejwme
2012-02-16 17:29:37

@ADAM - you might be the coolest person on this board...EVAR!


FWIW - I generally don't wear a helmet when I ride. I don't race any longer, so don't see the need to "train" with one on, since I am not racing and need to replicate the heat and other itchiness, etc caused by wearing a helmet.


That being said, I do own a nice high buck ($150+) SpecialED race helmet that I occasionally wear (maybe half dozen times a year). Not sure why I choose to, but occasionally do. I now have a fixed gear bike with no brakes and I do tend to wear it when I ride that figuring my chances of hitting a car or something might be increased due to the lack of brakes. I always wear a helmet when I MTB - a hospital trip helped cure me of that. But I tend to crash a lot when I MTB since I am doing jumps and drops, etc.


Noting an earlier post, I think the Bern helmet are really good looking and if I could be sure one might be better ventilated- that might get me into more regular helmet wearing. I like the Watts - but I take an XXL and most shops don't carry that.


Finally, I've known three people personally to have been killed riding their bikes. One guy ran a stopsign and got hit broadside (massive internal bleeding killed him, not head trauma). he was not wearing a helmet. the other who was wearing a helmet, died from severe spinal and neck injury sustained in a race , the last was hit on a backroad by a passing car (was wearing a helmet) and again massive internal injuries.


I've generally been of the non-scientific mindset that if you "crash" your bike while riding you probably won't sustain major head injuries and if you get hit by a car, your injuries will probably extend well beyond head (and quite possibly be fatal), so the helmet becomes less important in both scenarios.


As i may have posted in the other thread - I also own and ride a motorcycle. This is a completely different argument. I ALWAYS wear a helmet, full leathers, gloves and full boots. If you are in a single-bike crash (you) at anything above a relative crawl - you are in for major head injuries at a minimum. And if you get hit by car - forget it. luckily, on a motorcycle (unlike a bicycle) the throttle can allow you to take evasive measure to AVOID getting hit by a car. You don't have that luxury on a bicycle - bicyclists are truly vulnerable and are highly victimized. this is why I generally think motorcycles are SAFER than bicycles. I know others in this forum feel similarly.


willie-p
2012-02-23 21:24:32

I don't believe motorcycles are safer than bicycles strictly based on the speeds involved - and the statistics I've seen (which I know are suspect) do not agree with you. What is "above a relative crawl", because that sounds like a speed you can easily reach on a bicycle.


As I posted in another thread, I wrecked my bicycle on ice doing probably 10-15mph a couple weeks ago and basically did a high-side. Pretty sure my knee and hand hit first then my head (right around the temple), so I'm not sure how much impact my head took. It felt like someone sucker punched me and I was woozy for a minute or two but basically fine after that. Not sure how much worse it would have been with no helmet - at the least the scratches on it would have been on my head instead and likely a nice bruise to go with it. Beyond that is just speculation. Does a helmet really have to prevent "major head injuries" to be worth wearing?


salty
2012-02-24 06:36:32

Really trying to avoid saying something that will touch off the helmet wars. I'd like to add one thing to the discussion: your chances of survival of a fall (of any kind, not just from biking etc.) from a height of just 10 feet are 50/50. Above that, you are more likely to die than live. So we are far more fragile than we generally believe.


jonawebb
2012-02-24 14:30:47

@Adam


"Yet people who ride motorcycles don't need to wear one. They also get to have the loudest exhaust known to man and that's cool but I can get a ticket from a pig for an air leak in my car's exhaust."


What good would a seatbelt do on a motorcycle? There's no protective box around it so keeping a biker in place is basically useless. If anything, I imagine the operator might be more likely to get crushed underneath it.


As far as sound goes, I think I've heard more people with aftermarket mufflers than I have have noisy bikes and my neighbors used to rev their sports bikes down my street all the time. (Not sure why they stopped recently; maybe because it's winter or I'm just not around.)


"I think there are more important things to give a crap about this day and age [...]" Can you please allow us the freedom to choose what we want to care about?


Seat belt laws were enacted because they save lives. I bet if you posthumously polled drivers whose lives could have been saved by seat belts, most would have chosen to wear it if they knew it would have saved their life.


As far as helmets go:



That's from a crash I had last Thursday, going down a hill about 30 MPH. Between my knee, hips, and shoulder I probably have about a four inch square of road rash, excluding the more lightly abraded areas.


Notice how scratched up the glasses are and how scratched up the helmet is. That would have been my forehead if not for the helmet. Also, it's cracked.


I was able to ride home. I'm not sure that would have been the case if I wasn't wearing the helmet.


Another time I fell on a patch of black ice and the back of my head hit the pavement. I was wearing a helmet. I kind of phased out for a few seconds and got the tinny ringing noise in my ears. I was able to get up and go to work. If I wasn't wearing the helmet, I think I would have had a mild concussion.


When I was a freshman in high school I didn't wear a helmet. One of my neighbors always cautioned me and said I should. One day after a field trip I went unconscious while riding my bike home. My forehead hit the pavement and I just laid in the street like a sack of potatoes until an ambulance came and got me. That time half my face was scabs and I got a mild concussion.


My life may not have been saved by helmets, but I think it's certainly saved me trips to the hospital, scrapes, and lowered my potential of lost wages.


sgtjonson
2012-02-24 15:17:48

Wow Pierce, I hope your ok. Were you on 885?


marko82
2012-02-24 15:24:21

I am indeed okay, just missing some skin.


Yep, the road I've been on hundreds of times... Going down Lebanon, got a yellow in the middle, lady hit her brakes ahead of me, then I hit mine (I don't think I was tailgating either) and it was slippery.


I also realized my rear brake was out of tune, so when I hit the brakes, my front wheel probably slipped out more so because of the inadvertent unequal application of braking


sgtjonson
2012-02-24 15:35:05

Glad you're OK.

Technically I think you had a mild concussion. Moderate concussion is when you lose consciousness but can remember up to the point of the accident (that's what I got when I woke up in the emergency room after missing a turn. Helmet cracked but not my head). Severe concussion is when you lose memory prior to the accident.


jonawebb
2012-02-24 15:59:35

@salty:


Does a helmet really have to prevent "major head injuries" to be worth wearing?


+1


dmtroyer
2012-02-24 16:07:18

re noisy motorcycles: I have a neighbor who I really like, but she's got a boyfriend who rides a Harley. I know when he comes over (every time). I know when he leaves (every time). I know which direction he turns off of our street, and the next street, and even the street after that.


I don't want to know these things. I wish them both well and I'm glad she's happy with him, I just wish the vehicle they both enjoy so much were a little quieter (thank god he's not one of those people who sits down, starts up, and revs it for half an hour without moving). If they were prone to traveling later at night, I'd not wish them well, and I'd not be able to be friendly.


While the two worlds overlap in some interesting ways, and with some interesting people, I'm not sure I'd call them similar enough for any kind of comparison at all. Besides, motorcycles have more and better paid lobbyists. (this is my impression - is it true?)


ejwme
2012-02-24 16:16:56

@ejwme: Motorcycles certainly have scarier lobbyists. For example, Exhibit A versus Exhibit B:





reddan
2012-02-24 16:24:53

PA motorcyclists also have their own lobbyists


http://www.abatepa.org/


I.E. They became lobbyists for their own cause


sgtjonson
2012-02-24 16:30:11

re motorcycles: A few things. I will NEVER not wear a helmet on my motorcycle. I always wear a full face helmet, gloves, armored jacket, and shoes that cover my ankles. I do ride in jeans, and that's a tradeoff/risk I'm willing to accept.


I will also admit to having a slightly noisy exhaust on my bike. The stock exhaust is pretty quiet, and on the highway especially, there's no hearing it over wind noise. My aftermarket one helps me to be heard by drivers a bit more, maybe making me less invisible to them. I also like the way it looks and sounds. That being said, it's nowhere near the noise level of some of the Harleys and other bikes you hear.


kgavala
2012-02-24 16:53:57



I like graphs. This one shows a steady decline in motocycle fatalities until states start repealing mandatory helmet laws. Then the rate begins to immediately start a steady climb. I should like to see the data from before 1993 but it is fairly clear.


Freedom. But at what cost?


The libertarian in me says that people should be free to do whatever sort of moronic things they want but the socialist in me realizes that as more people kill and severely injure themselves because they are not wearing helmets the more hospitals fill up with patients, the more trips the ambulances have to make, the more police we need to manage traffic while the mess is cleaned up, the higher insurance premiums go up, the higher medical costs go up as hospitals have to manage the increasing levels of carnage. At some point society decides that they don't want to keep paying for everyone else stupidity and institutes restrictions for the good of all. It happened with seat belts and other automobile safety features. It happened with motorcycles as well but society forgot, influenced by a powerful special interest.


The cycle continues.


kordite
2012-02-24 17:20:35

@Dan: I thought that was a 'bent lobbyist, actually.


bjanaszek
2012-02-24 18:37:15

@Brian: Why are you dissing Scott like that?


reddan
2012-02-24 20:03:41
So, I'll follow the tangent and speak up for the motorcyclists here. There are two types of people that ride motorcycles: people that don't wear helmets, and people that actually know how to ride a motorcycle. Generally speaking, the people you see cruising on their Harleys are amateurs who ride short distances a few times a year. Motorcycles are extremely deceptive in that they feel very easy to ride, until the moment that they don't. Anyone who has ridden a motorcycle for any appreciable length of time eventually experiences the moment when they learn how quickly their control over the vehicle reaches its limit in terms of its ability to avoid an accident.. That's why anyone who has ridden a motorcycle for any appreciable length of time wears a freaking helmet. (It's also why such a large percentage of the MSF's excellent motorcycle safety course is firmly focused on using attention-focusing techniques to try to minimize the chances of getting into an incident in the first place, rather than just talking about recovery techniques.) Yes, it's completely stupid that motorcycle helmets are not required in Pennsylvania. Please don't use that as a reason to not wear a bike helmet. Because the people riding motorcycles without their helmets are basically playing Russian Roulette with a semiautomatic. It is not a question of if they will be seriously injured in an accident; it is a question of when.
peterb
2013-06-03 12:54:16
I lost my helmet last week and did a couple days of helmet-less riding before it showed up. I freely admit it was cooler and more comfortable going without. It felt freeing, even. And if I were just riding the GAP or something I'd probably go without. But I felt indulging that line of thinking too much would be dangerous. I put a time limit on things... if I couldn't find my helmet that weekend, basically, I'd just buckle down and buy another. Fortunately, I found it. I was relieved, and I found slightly to my surprise I didn't mind putting it back on again. Perhaps it's that being klutzy and not all that confident, I just come up against the edge of my feeling of control a little more often. But ultimately, I think it's the same story for anyone... it's fine without until it isn't. And maybe that never comes, maybe even for a majority of riders. But if it does, dunno, the perhaps slightly elevated risk of a rotational neck injury doesn't scare me like THUNK head hitting the pavement.
byogman
2013-06-03 13:08:37
October 15, 2008. ER doctor to my wife: "If he had not been wearing a helmet, he would most likely be dead." End of discussion in my world.
ajbooth
2013-06-03 13:38:24
I heard of doctors saying that. More than anything, it is an indication of lack of rigor in medical education. For the most part, bicycle helmets are too flimsy, and skulls too thick, for the helmets to make much difference other than as a fashion object. If it is unsafe to do without a bicycle helmet, it is also unsafe with a helmet.
mick
2013-06-03 13:42:26
Something new on this: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/really Why are they comparing bike head injuries with sports injuries? The hundreds of thousands of car-related head injuries are not listed as "sports injuries," are they?
mick
2013-06-03 13:48:56
I got hit, thrown over the hood of a car, and landed on my head. The helmet cracked. As it was, with the helmet, I suffered a concussion, and don't remember anything for ten minutes after the crash. Including getting my phone out of my seat bag and calling home and work to tell them what happened. I came to in the ambulance, and it was ten minutes before I could tell them my name, where I was going, and how old I was. Would it have been worse without a helmet? I believe so. Dead? I'll never know. But I'll also never take that chance.
ajbooth
2013-06-03 13:52:14
@Mick, the danger is not in the skull cracking, it is from a brain bleed. Helmets are flimsy so they absorb the impact of the crash and prevent the shock to your skull that would result in this. I was riding my bike to work one morning, with new panniers on the back, missed a turn and hit a curb because of the unfamiliar handling, and woke up in the emergency room. Helmet had a nice crack right over my right temple.
jonawebb
2013-06-03 14:09:53
jonawebb wrote:... I was riding my bike to work one morning, with new panniers on the back, missed a turn and hit a curb because of the unfamiliar handling, and woke up in the emergency room. Helmet had a nice crack right over my right temple.
This. Like @byogman, I went for a while w/o a helmet due to forgetting it at my sister's house in CT. I actually ended up stopping wearing a helmet for several months... but, I eventually realized I wear a helmet because I am 1) clumsy and 2) tend towards the obliviousness side of the spectrum. If I get hit by a car, a helmet may or may not save my life/mitigate the damage. But it's already saved me from two serious falls and a one low hanging branch. YMMV, more graceful/observant cyclists could very well be fine. But for me this is a choice that works.
myddrin
2013-06-03 14:22:27
Picture of my son's helmet after going down on the perfectly flat jail trail moving around 18 mph on a misty morning when his foot slipped off the pedal and into his wheel, causing him to endo. He bent his steel frame, buried his chainring into the frame, and warped both wheels. Had this been his scalp, I can't even imagine...
sarah_q
2013-06-03 14:23:46
I occasionally forget my helmet, but I try not to make a habit of it. I don't have a story of my own, but I do have this: My mother had a college friend who, around the time I was born, was hit by a car while riding without a helmet. I was 20 or so when he died, having never regained consciousness.
epanastrophe
2013-06-03 17:35:05
Bike helmets SAVED MY LIFE TWICE in ONE YEAR. Well worth the sixty bucks each one cost. Both times no cars were involved. 'Nuff said.
screbner
2013-06-03 17:42:09
How is it that I know over a dozen people whose lives were "saved by a helmet"?
mick
2013-06-03 18:02:19
Related: Washington Post asks, Do bike helmet laws really save people? (For my own part, I find that when I do end up without my helmet, I ride more carefully and am given more space by drivers, such that I seem to be marginally less likely to need that which I am without. Perhaps only confirmation bias, though somewhat borne out by Ian Walker's research into motorist behaviour around male- and female-appearing cyclists with and without helmets...)
epanastrophe
2013-06-03 18:34:25
I am a very good athlete, so I really just don't understand the need for a helmet. As I watch other cyclists riding about in a fashion that is... well not exactly smooth and fluent, I would have to agree, most people should not only wear a helmet, most probably shouldn't be on a bike and should consider walking instead.
gg
2013-06-03 19:39:21
Mick wrote:How is it that I know over a dozen people whose lives were “saved by a helmet”?
...because you know lots of bike riders who wear helmets, and it turns out that the research shows that bike helmets are effective at saving lives? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23706604 (Bicycle Helmet Laws Are Associated with a Lower Fatality Rate from Bicycle-Motor Vehicle Collisions.) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23377086 ("Helmet use was associated with reduced risk of head injury in bicycle collisions with motor vehicles of up to 74%, and the more severe the injury considered, the greater the reduction. This was also found to be true for particular head injuries such as skull fractures, intracranial injury and open head wounds") http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23071369 ("Not wearing a helmet while cycling was associated with an increased risk of dying as a result of sustaining a head injury")
peterb
2013-06-03 19:39:23
Eh, wear one, don't wear one, it doesn't really matter to me. Helmets are out there and available, everybody knows helmets exist, it's up to each individual to decide whether to use one or not. Sometimes I wear one, sometimes I don't, it's not really anyone's business. I see dozens of people out toodling along on cruiser bikes at 8 or 9 mph without helmets and I don't think they're in particular mortal danger. The best thing is that they're out riding. At this point in history, I do find evangelizing about helmets incredibly freaking annoying. This is one of the most rational statements I've seen about the issue: http://momentummag.com/features/moving-the-conversation-beyond-helmets/
edmonds59
2013-06-03 20:19:12
I do wonder how much it depends on how fast you're riding. If you're "toodling along" at single-digit speeds, even if you fall over you're probably not going to get hurt particularly bad; you might even manage to not hit your head at all. On the other hand, if I'm riding to work at 20mph and go down, there's a good chance I'm going down head first or nearly so, and I like the idea of at least having something between my scalp and whatever I land on. I don't support helmet laws because, yes, they scare people off, and the people they scare off are the people who aren't likely to need them. I support wearing helmets because you never know when you _will_ need one, and, well, better safe than sorry.
epanastrophe
2013-06-03 20:29:47
gg wrote:I am a very good athlete, so I really just don’t understand the need for a helmet. As I watch other cyclists riding about in a fashion that is… well not exactly smooth and fluent, I would have to agree, most people should not only wear a helmet, most probably shouldn’t be on a bike and should consider walking instead.
trolly troll troll troll. Thanks for the valuable insight into your superiority. If i was as amazing as you I wouldn't waste my time complaining about every god damn thing under the sun on a message board, I'd be outside being totally pro.
cburch
2013-06-03 20:31:51
@cburch, true, but let's pick this apart anyways. It'll be fun!
I am a very good athlete, so I really just don’t understand the need for a helmet. As I watch other cyclists riding about in a fashion that is… well not exactly smooth and fluent, I would have to agree, most people should not only wear a helmet, most probably shouldn’t be on a bike and should consider walking instead.
Maybe you are very athletic. You know what? So are a lot of people who get nailed. Whether they do comes down to a complex stew of riding style, luck, where they ride when and in what conditions, and how much. From an old thread I seem to recall that you had no interest in the behaviors statistically proven to be safer, and that your appraisal of your riding style markedly differed from another who rode with you. Your statement was then that your fellow rider "couldn't understand" your riding style because you used a mirror. Well, a mirror is a nice aid, but not a mysterious one. It does not make much of any difference in what basically is and is not a safe way to ride. And nobody is especially objective about themselves. I'll take his assessment over yours any day. I also recall later in that thread you were hot on a brakeless fixi and riding in that style because it's so fast (reading only the tiniest bit between the lines, I'll take that to mean that you don't plan on stopping much when you ride the thing, which is a dangerous plan). And then you acknowledged the danger of it, but said it's your choice. Indeed it is, but when you make plans like that, and broadcast that you're throwing caution to the wind there's no reason anyone should think later that you really care about safety all that much. So then, if safety isn't your thing, why post on this? To brag about yourself, or to down people who go about their business in a slower, less skillz oriented way? Cause that's all that's left. Look, athleticism and skillz can help in some situations, but many of those situations can be avoided in the first place by riding in a way that's more visible to and predictable for drivers. Most riders who aren't elite still manage to ride in a perfectly safe way. Being willing to stop, and generally not expecting skillz to get them through any dumb situation they put themselves in (and therefore not putting themselves in dumb situations) helps with that. And lastly, those that are not athletic are the ones that much more to gain in terms of years to their life and life to their years by taking up riding. It takes character to put yourself out there, damn the appearances. When I see someone who's badly out of shape struggling hard and very slowly up a hill, I give a nod of respect. You should learn to do the same.
byogman
2013-06-03 22:12:02
gg sucks.
stefb
2013-06-03 22:22:44
To go along with Ben, For me i still consider road riding to be the most dangerous riding i do, more so than downhill, dirt jumping or cross country. And I have ruined helmets many times pushing my boundaries in those disciplines, including splitting a few in half. There's no way I'd be caught on the road without a helmet. i would be willing to wager that i and many other helmet wearing commuters i know would leave your bike handling skills in the dust begging for mercy. This is a group that includes actual pro cyclists, ultra endurance riders, trials riders, downhill racers, fixed gear freestylers, dirt jumpers and all sorts of other amazing athletes. The most accomplished cyclists i know always wear a helmet for the same reason that i do, on the road you DON'T ultimately control your level of risk. The drunk, angry moron texting his boss and screaming at his wife while eating a burger and going 10mph over the limit while running red lights to do a no-look right hand turn does, and I don't trust that asshole.
cburch
2013-06-03 23:18:55
I didn't know gg stood for Gaston Gaston? No one bikes like Gaston!
headloss
2013-06-04 02:11:50
@byogman, Nicely said.
marko82
2013-06-04 09:23:18
byogman wrote:I freely admit it was cooler and more comfortable going without.
Ben, I sweat a lot and I found that bandana works really nicely by wicking sweat, evaporating it and cooling my head.
byogman wrote:But if it does, dunno, the perhaps slightly elevated risk of a rotational neck injury doesn’t scare me like THUNK head hitting the pavement.
Yeap.
mikhail
2013-06-04 09:29:19
gg wrote: ... As I watch other cyclists riding about in a fashion that is… well not exactly smooth and fluent, I would have to agree, most people should not only wear a helmet, most probably shouldn’t be on a bike and should consider walking instead.
Well isn't that special. You know, when I was 10 my hobby was walking/running across fences. Around baseball diamonds, ice skating rinks... anything really. Whether they were topped with metal bars, or a 1/2 inch wide plank of wood, I could make it across almost anything. Later, I made my own tight rope rig between two trees. Adults suggested that I look into working the high iron when I grew up. I was balanced and graceful as child. In my mid-20s a virus attacked the sheathing that surrounds my nerve cells. I won't go into details about the illness or the long, long recovery. But I'll just say that to the day (15 years later) when I'm tired, I get a little wobbly, my fine motor control is off, and yes I might have some issues concentrating. So, yeah... when I've ridden 50, 60 or a 100 miles it might affect my riding. Although I doubt its anything that people who know me or have ridden with me have noticed. And I take what I feel are appropriate measures to compensate for that, taking into account the safety of myself and others. One of those things is that I wear a helmet whenever I ride. That way if I suddenly decide to turn a 10 mile ride into a 60, I'm all set. But your statement has made it clear to me that whatever the reasons for my failings, I am clearly unworthy to be on a bicycle. I'll stop cycling forthwith.
myddrin
2013-06-04 11:40:39
I think as part of Bikefest we should have an event where we can sit in the shade of a nice tree somewhere along gg's commute. We could then be enthralled by his athleticism and superior cycling skills as he goes by. I think it would be well attended.
marko82
2013-06-04 12:13:17
Mick wrote: How is it that I know over a dozen people whose lives were “saved by a helmet”? @peterB because you know lots of bike riders who wear helmets, and it turns out that the research shows that bike helmets are effective at saving lives? Please cut the shit, dude. Don't patronize me then cite three paper where two of them are trash. You're wasting my time here. I started riding in the 1950's and, as far as I know, no bicyclists wore helmets then. The people I've known that have died in traffic accidents, and there were many, were all in cars. If all these guys who"would have died" if they didn't have a helmet were real, then I'd have known friends to die on bikes. A LOT of them. I haven't. I really believed in the efficacy of helmets until I started reading the scientific literature "supporting" it. Plenty of people have good careers publishing rah-rah helmet papers that are a waste of time and paper. Peter, one of your papers is actually interesting. It seems to actually show what it proports to show. That is interesting because there are very few (if any) pro-helmet papers for which this is true. I've searched befreo and had not found any. (Zip. Zero. Nada.) So if that paper does hold up, it's really important. Some signal amongst the copious noise. I'll have to look at it carefully later. The exercise of riding a bicycle is a health benefit that overwhelmingly outweighs the risks. Some minor difference in safety with helmet-wearing, if it even exists, doesn't change that. Convincing people that riding a bike is so unsafe that you need a helmet? That is a dishonest and unhealthy message that increases mortality.
mick
2013-06-04 14:12:21
@Mick, I'm not sure if you're including me in the list of people whose lives were saved by wearing a helmet, but I'm not including myself. I might have died, but there's a good chance I would just have had brain damage. Which, you know, concerns me quite a bit, too. If you ask around when you're on group rides you'll find quite a few people who have had an accident where a helmet made a difference or would have made a difference if things had gone a little bit differently. My own accident is nothing special, and it's only the third serious accident I've had in a lifetime of riding. And in the other two my helmet didn't matter -- could have, though. So, I'm guessing, if you ride without a helmet the chances are pretty good that it won't make a difference. But the downside is pretty rough.
jonawebb
2013-06-04 14:20:49
Speaking of asinine debates, can we talk about the superiority of circumcision versus not being circumcised? I'd also like to start some discussions about theism versus atheism, Star Trek (Original) versus Star Trek TNG (specifically, which is better), grape versus raspberry jam, jam versus jelly, Coke versus Pepsi, bacon consumption versus veganism, and the best way to prepare a steak for the grill... I assume this is the proper thread for all of those topics?
jaysherman5000
2013-06-04 15:09:12
Seriously? Star Trek TNG is totally better. Also, atheism beats theism hands down, raspberry jam is better, jam is better than jelly, Coke beats Pepsi, veganism is better, and the best way to prepare a steak for the grill is by cooking it sous vide and then finishing it at high temperature. Ask me something hard.
jonawebb
2013-06-04 15:13:48
Star Trek would have been better if it featured bacon. Bacon makes everything better.
atleastmykidsloveme
2013-06-04 15:16:43
Star Trek is a serious subject and should not be taken lightly. I have had many serious debates about the greatness of Star Trek. If you want to make jokes there is always those silly Star Wars movies.
marvelousm3
2013-06-04 15:20:34
Mick, you make a sarcastic comment, and then swear at someone who responds with a little bit of snark an links to three scientific papers - not very constructive. If you think some of those papers aren't valid then go ahead and say so, but so far the most egregiously unsupportable claim made so far was when you claimed that bicycle helmets are too flimsy to protect a human skull. There may be a debate about whether it's important from a policy perspective to encourage helmet use for cycling, but the idea that a proper bike helmet won't improve your chances when your head hits the pavement is ridiculous. http://www.vitalbmx.com/videos/member/ARF-Presents-Certified-vs-Non-Certified-Bicycle-Helmet-Impact-Test,43560/kylecarlson,363
willb
2013-06-04 15:26:53
@Mr. Marv: I take my bacon very seriously. And it makes EVERYTHING better. Even sci-fi movies featuring the dude from Fantasy Island (the one with the accent, not the little dude - although he did have an accent, too.).
atleastmykidsloveme
2013-06-04 15:58:52
@AtLeastMyKidsLoveMe I was going to suggest a helmetless/helmet/vegan/vegetarian/omnivore debate if we wanted to get into a REAL debate, but since I just watched an episode of Star Trek TOS, I'll jump on that TOS is pretty jokey. I watched The Menagerie, where Spock contrives all these things to get to a planet they're forbidden from contacting and Kirk is like "What the hell Spock, I would have gone, no problem." And then the whole reason they went there was to drop off a former Captain who is like the old guy in the wheel chair from Breaking Bad with the bell for yes and no (robot chair can control movement, but not language, makes no sense...) and the old guy meets up with a lady who he previously was like "You're ugly and deformed, so obviously the only solution is to leave you isolated on a planet of aliens..." and they both go in ugly exile together Also, the reason the lady gave why she was deformed was "the aliens didn't know what humans looked like" but the aliens are humanoids and look essentially human with just big craniums Makes no sense! Also, the latest movie was bleh. Crappy remake; and any remake that tries to reuse iconic lines from the original always fall flat IMO
sgtjonson
2013-06-04 16:32:57
@Pierce No! Noooooooooo! [Smashes glass] I will not sacrifice the *The Message Board*. We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. You invade *every thread* and we fall back. You assimilate entire *posts* and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further! And *I* will make you pay for what you've done! Consider that your final warning for insulting Star Trek, go pick on Star Wars it can't defend itself.
marvelousm3
2013-06-05 08:28:09
An interesting and timely article in Bicycling Magazine this month: http://www.bicycling.com/senseless/ And Mick, before you pooh-pooh the article because it came from a source you might call trash, read it.
ajbooth
2013-06-05 08:32:50
mr marvelous wrote:@Pierce No! Noooooooooo! [Smashes glass] I will not sacrifice the *The Message Board*. We’ve made too many compromises already; too many retreats. You invade *every thread* and we fall back. You assimilate entire *posts* and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further! And *I* will make you pay for what you’ve done! Consider that your final warning for insulting Star Trek, go pick on Star Wars it can’t defend itself.
best captain ever.
cburch
2013-06-05 10:18:22
"And he piled upon the driver's white hump the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. If his chest had been a cannon he would have shot his heart upon it."
epanastrophe
2013-06-05 10:25:01
@WillB
mick
2013-06-05 10:55:26
ajbooth wrote:An interesting and timely article in Bicycling Magazine this month: http://www.bicycling.com/senseless/
I read the article... VERY interesting. Thanks for posting. I do hope the concussion reducing designs make their way mass market and ideally cheaper before long. We'll see. Brings to mind a Simpsons episode where Homer was a boxer successful principally because his head could take an absurd amount of pounding because his (tiny) brain was surrounded by a lot of fluid.
byogman
2013-06-05 11:11:42
Mick wrote:As near as I can see, if bicycle helmets were as sturdy as motorcyel helmets they would protect your head from injury effectively.
Actually, after reading the Bicycling article, it sounds like the problem is that current helmets are too sturdy. But the bottom line is that, sure, current helmets protect, but not from the most common kinds of injuries that people intuitively attribute to them. They're still under development. I'm still at "wear one, wear one not..." If you ride in any manner that you can refer to as "athletic", if you are tracking and logging your time/speed/distance, paying attention to your Heart Rate Monitor, or trying to get a package across town in 15 minutes, a helmet is probably a good idea. If you're biking across town to get a double decaf soy latte instead of walking, meh.
edmonds59
2013-06-05 11:15:52
This topic got me researching alternative helmet tech that is supplemental to existing CPSC standards: MIPS - which is supposed to mitigate concussion risk by allowing slipage between EPS foam and the head, reducing rotational energy. ConeHead - Uses dual density foam to provide more protection in less severe impacts in addition to more powerful impacts and still meet CPSC standards. Cardboard Lattice - Used only on the ABUS Kranium helmet, supposedly works well to slow impacts and may even provide multi-impact protection. Paired with EPS foam for additional protection. Not yet CPSC certified, but now available in the UK. These are all kind of interesting, I'm considering a mips or conehead technology in future helmet purchases.
benzo
2013-06-05 11:18:52
ajbooth wrote:An interesting and timely article in Bicycling Magazine this month: http://www.bicycling.com/senseless/ And Mick, before you pooh-pooh the article because it came from a source you might call trash, read it.
That article is good because it addresses the fundamental problem: Why AREN'T bicycle helmets effective? It takes what the author refers to as "studies from Seattle" more seriously thatn he should. i wouldn't believe Thompson, Thompson and Rivara if they said "hello. " They each have had multimillion dollar carrers promoting helmet use on evidence that is a flimsy as the devices. *** Also, I want to reiterate how very important this paper, cited by Peter B is. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23071369 This appears to be an honest, well-designed study and appears to show a protective effect from helmets. That is really imporpant to me because I haven't seen such a study before (and it isn't because I haven't looked). If this the results of this study are replicated in other honest, well-designed studies (which are extremely rare in this field), then it has to be taken seriously. Trust me, I will be looking carefully at the study and any critiques of it. Other than DL Robinson's great study (which showed no protection) I haven't seen good papers on bicycle helmets. http://www.bmj.com/content/332/7543/722.2 It seems to me to be a serious problem with science. As long as you show a protective effect, you can get published with some not-very-good helmet studies in peer-reviewed journals. *** On another forums, someone wrote that in certain neighborhood (presumable including one I travel through twice a day), people assume that if you are on a bike, you are a kid or a crack addict. My helmet effectively protects me from that impression. I wish it provided similar protection in the event of a crash.
mick
2013-06-05 11:41:58
@benzo, very interesting. The problem I have with these helmets is there is no way for me to know if the technology actually works. That's why I've written to the CPSC asking them to update their requirements. Who knows, may work...
jonawebb
2013-06-05 11:55:19
I did like the "neck tie" comment.
edmonds59
2013-06-05 11:59:12
Articles and science and everything else aside, I go from personal experience. I was wearing a helmet, landed on my head, and wound up with stitches, a concussion and a broken helmet. Given my state immediately after my crash, I shudder to think how much worse my injuries would have been without a helmet. Therefore, in my little corner of the world, helmets are good, and helmets protect. I liken it to health insurance. It protects you from the catastrophic, but for the little bumps and bruises, you're on your own.
ajbooth
2013-06-05 12:19:17
@mick, having read both papers, I think you're misunderstanding the question we are asked to answer. Our question is something like: "Given that I'm already doing everything reasonable to protect myself, should I wear a helmet?" The BMJ study was directed to a very different question, which was "Do helmet laws reduce head injury?" Helmet-wearing interacts with a large number of other variables that influence safety, as the study points out. The study says, given all these variables, there isn't justification for helmet laws, which impose a significant expense on riders, discourage riding, etc. But that question isn't one we individual cyclists have to answer for ourselves. And the NIH study does address that issue -- by looking at post-mortems of cyclist head injuries. According to that study, wearing a helmet does reduce your risk, because cyclists without helmets had a much higher rate of head injury. So the first study addresses a public policy question, and the second study addresses a question relevant to us here. And confirms that helmets do, in fact, protect against head injury in an accident.
jonawebb
2013-06-05 12:22:38
I agree with those who feel this is a personal preference. I wear a helmet most of the time. I use the same theory I use for wearing plaid pants and white shoes for golf. The more look and act like I'm dressed for the activity, the better I think I am at it. Seriously, I wear the helmet on commutes, road rides and mountain biking. I simply feel safer and I can attach my lights and such. It's also reflective. I wear a bike specific helmet in warm weather and a snowboarding helmet in the winter I rarely wear it on the GAP in the on the crushed lime stone. I wear a baseball hat or something only to keep the sun off my bald dome. I don't care what you wear, just get out there and pedal.
durishange
2013-06-05 12:47:27
Related, via Greater Greater Washington: Feds will stop hyping effectiveness of bike helmets
Two federal government agencies will withdraw their longstanding claims that bicycle helmets reduce the risk of a head injury by 85%. The decision comes in response to a petition the Washington Area Bicyclists Association (WABA) filed under the federal Data Quality Act.
epanastrophe
2013-06-05 13:01:38
ajbooth wrote:An interesting and timely article in Bicycling Magazine this month: http://www.bicycling.com/senseless/ And Mick, before you pooh-pooh the article because it came from a source you might call trash, read it.
Well, the article itself is kind of useless (I receive a paper copy of the magazine). But some references are much more interesting but rather hard to get if you don't have access to databases and subscriptions.
mikhail
2013-06-05 14:11:31
"This helmet saved my life" I think what Mick is saying is that, "no, it did not. Your head would have been about the same helmet or no helmet." I don't know the research, so I cannot say either way, concussion-wise. From my previously mentioned crash on this thread, where I was wearing a helmet, which cracked, I now have to wear reading glasses, have short term memory issues, and sensitivity to light on my computer monitor. (Initial concussion evaluation at UPMC was $1k alone) And that being said, I think my skin would have been in a LOT worse shape if I wasn't wearing the helmet. I have this weird protrusion of scar tissue on my shoulder and it'd look kind of hideous on my face. Proper bike maintenance, maintaining a lower speed, and allowing a greater following distance all would have helped prevent the crash in the first place, so for whatever that's worth...
sgtjonson
2013-06-05 15:47:52
Another sector heard from. Awesome. If I may, this may actually better represent where Mick is coming from, as it does I: "I’m not anti-helmet, but I am anti-propaganda when it comes to companies capitalizing on fear and the perpetuation that bicycling is or even should be perceived as a dangerous activity." Plus I'm going to start following this guys blog. http://georgehahn.com/2013/05/30/so-i-dont-wear-a-helmet-get-off-my-ass/
edmonds59
2013-06-06 17:10:29
edmonds59 wrote:“I’m not anti-helmet, but I am anti-propaganda when it comes to companies capitalizing on fear and the perpetuation that bicycling is or even should be perceived as a dangerous activity.”
I'm Mick Young and I approve of this message.
mick
2013-06-06 17:51:10
stefb wrote:gg sucks.
I don't know why, but this post had me laughing all the way to work on my ride. It is short, to the point and well stated. My post was my twisted sense of humor that doesn't have a very good effect in typed form. Actually, it doesn't have a very good effect spoken either. Sorry about that post, but I did like this reply. Why say more?
gg
2013-06-08 06:57:10
Why say more?
Because I LIKE writing essays dammit! Except when I'm tired. G'night!
byogman
2013-06-08 22:05:47
Mick wrote: If riding a bike helmetless was really that dangerous, I would have had friends who would have died on bikes
Has no one here actually had a friend who died while riding helmetless? Because I did. And he would still be alive today if he had been wearing his helmet. That's why I'll always, always wear a helmet, no matter where I am or where I'm going. I really don't give a crap if people wear helmets or not, just like I really don't care if people decide to play Russian roulette or not. In both cases, it's perfectly senseless if they die, but they made their choices and understood the risks. Likewise, I certainly have my own opinion on whether people who fail to wear helmets or decide to play Russian roulette are fools or not. I've made my own choice. My choice will never bring my friend back to life, but maybe it will prevent me from joining him sooner. That's good enough for me.
michaelcycle
2013-06-12 10:03:46
I started wearing a helmet after reading a letter to the editor in Bicycling Magazine many years ago. The writer was describing the struggle they were having learning to ride a bike again after a helmetless fall on a quiet ride on a deserted street two years earlier. They could not remember the fall, just that they were riding and then they were waking up in the hospital with minor brain damage. That was good enough for me. I figured at the time my brain was worth the $35 insurance. I did have a fall a few years ago- I think I slipped on wet leaves. I only remember waking up lying on my back with some cyclists standing over me saying "Are you ok man?" Bent my glasses, broke the plastic strap holder on the helmet, and scraped the side of my face pretty good- had a nice black eye. The helmet was scraped worse than my face. I figured with that sort of damage, it could only have been worse without the helmet.
helen-s
2013-06-12 12:09:12
"Has no one here actually had a friend who died while riding helmetless? Because I did. And he would still be alive today if he had been wearing his helmet." Sorry you lost a friend and that sucks, but please don't claim to magically know that he would still be alive if he had a helmet. No one knows that including doctors and the cop that was there or whatever.
gg
2013-06-12 12:56:33
Conversely, can you really say "I don't have any friends who died...?" You don't and can't know how many friends that you would have had but for the fact that they died before you had the chance to meet them. I've had the same argument about children's car seats. Statement: "I don't know why we need car seats, none of us had them and we are fine." To which the response is "Yeah, because only the ones that lived are hear to talk about it." Personally, I've known two people who had severe bike accidents. One was my cousin who was killed by a drunk driver at age 7... a helmet wouldn't have done anything. He was hit by a driver going over 75 in a 30 MPH zone. The other I worked with when I was a home health aide for people with traumatic brain injury. In a wheel chair, issues with memory, anger, talking, smelling and as well motor & impulse control. His family was convinced a helmet would have made all that go away. I would point out that of that about 15 people I worked with at the time, he was the only bike-related accident. One other was a pedestrian hit by a cop in a high speed chase and the others were all car-related.
myddrin
2013-06-12 14:56:08
I started riding dirt bikes at 10 yrs old, so helmet use was drummed into my empty head throughout my formative years. As an adult I continue to wear a helmet (started using one while skiing a few years ago), the only person I know that does not wear a helmet has already posted. Some people say that if aren't you crashing, then you aren't trying hard enough. That said, I don't know if helmets save lives, but they damn sure prevent stitches. It is the difference between getting up and continuing your ride vs. a trip to the ER.
ericf
2013-06-12 17:22:31
gg wrote: “Has no one here actually had a friend who died while riding helmetless? Because I did. And he would still be alive today if he had been wearing his helmet.” Sorry you lost a friend and that sucks, but please don’t claim to magically know that he would still be alive if he had a helmet. No one knows that including doctors and the cop that was there or whatever.
I am resisting the urge to swear heavily when I tell you that yes, I DO know that he would be alive today if he had been wearing a helmet. How fascinating that you seem to know the details of my friend's accident better than I do.
michaelcycle
2013-06-13 09:30:29
@MichaelCycle I am resisting the urge to swear heavily when I tell you that yes, I DO know that he would be alive today if he had been wearing a helmet. It's surprising to think that knowledge of that could be so definitive. I sure there are people who have died that would have survived with a helmet. Just not clear on how someone could be certain of that. For it to be a certain thing? I don't know the details, but I just don't see how that could be. Could you explain more?
mick
2013-06-13 13:24:33
Does it really matter? This is his friend, for Pete's sake.
jonawebb
2013-06-13 13:29:32
I took a rock to the face once, right above the right eye... thrown by kids. FWIW, I was wearing a helmet while riding a dirtbike and needed stitches. :(
headloss
2013-06-13 14:07:23
There's an article discussing injury and helmets at http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/bike-sharing-can-mean-safer-biking/?hpw. It mentions several of the well-known studies on helmets, and other things cities are doing to reduce accidents. A couple of points from the article: -- Helmets would prevent about 85 percent of head injuries from cycling. -- Preventing accidents is more important than preventing injury from an accident. I agree with both of these statements. I think a lot of the arguments against helmets come down to an overemphasis on the second statement, to the extent that the significance or even truth of the first one has to be denied.
jonawebb
2013-06-13 15:01:01
The "85% " number came from Dr. Frederick P. Rivara, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington, who conducted some of the seminal work on bike helmets in the mid-1980s. Helmets would prevent about 85 percent of head injuries, he says. I've read the much-heralded works of Thompson, Thompson, and Rivara. Those works convinced me that much of the bike helmet "research" out there is not just mistaken, but actually dishonest. If you carefully read their stuff - and the criticism of it- you might start to understand why people that were formerly helmet supporters, such as my self, get so angry about the subject. Basically, there is data that other people interpret as saying "People with insurance are both more likely to have their take their kids to ERs with minor injuries and are more likely to have their kids wear helmets than people without insurance." Rivara, et al, interpret it as indicating that helmets would prevent 85% of deaths. The same methodology would likely show that helmet use would prevent 85% of broken legs , too. The three of them have all had multimillion dollar careers out of helmet advocacy, though.
mick
2013-06-13 15:54:18
I wear a helmet... because I look rad in it and it makes me feel awesome.
Anonymous wrote: So I’m working on a project for a class and would greatly appreciate your feedback. Do you or anyone you know NOT wear a helmet while biking on public streets? Why do you or your friend choose to not wear a helmet? I’m just wondering what attitudes and motivations are out there. Thanks :-)
turboweasel
2013-06-13 16:31:08
I don't think I ever rode a bike with a helmet until I was in my 40s. Now I hardly ever do not. I had a couple of days when, for whatever reason, I didn't have a helmet. I lived through it, even with about 25 miles of riding. But not having it on caused me to use a bus when one became available. But I do have mixed feelings on the topic, as I have a mixed experience base. * The helmet definitely did help me in a 2010 wreck. * The helmet definitely did not help me in a 2012 wreck. * Both were on-road, essentially one-vehicle situations. I almost never wear a helmet while riding the unicycle, never have. I am much, much more likely to break my tailbone or an arm or polish skin than hit my head.
stuinmccandless
2013-06-13 20:04:56
jonawebb wrote:Does it really matter? This is his friend, for Pete’s sake.
Normally it really wouldn't matter, but this is a thread about helmet usage. There is no way of knowing if a helmet would save someone.
gg
2013-06-13 23:59:42
Geez, It's just nice to use some discretion within the community. Otherwise conversations like this just wind up devolving in to a flame war.
benzo
2013-06-14 07:57:37
Effectiveness of helmet studies are basically case-control studies. Essentially what you do is look at head injury cases, and determine how many of those people were wearing helmets. Then you look at a comparable population (controlling for things like age, gender, years of cycling, etc.) and count how many of the people in the control group wear helmets. You can then determine the effectiveness of helmets in preventing head injuries by division: if say 25% of the control population were not wearing helmets, but 75% of the population with head injuries were not wearing helmets, then not wearing a helmet triples your chance of head injury in an accident. It's a well-established technique; there's nothing wrong in using it. @Mick disputes the 85% figure, which he says comes from a study Rivara published in 1989, but there are many other studies -- see http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/userfiles/ccoch/file/Safety_on_the_road/CD001855.pdf for a review. These studies were done by many different researchers on different populations and they all found similar results, varying from 65-88% protection depending on the type of injury. Wearing a helmet or not is a personal choice, but you don't really get to believe or not in the effectiveness of helmets in preventing head injury. You either pay attention to the facts, or you ignore them. And whether you pay attention to the facts or not shouldn't depend on whether you think helmet manufacturers hype cycling danger to sell helmets; maybe they do -- I'm not saying cycling is terribly dangerous. I'm just saying that if you're in an accident, helmets greatly reduce the chance of head injury. Edit: BTW, I'm also not saying there aren't more important things than helmets in reducing injury. It's much better not to have the accident in the first place than to try to prevent injury during an accident.
jonawebb
2013-06-14 10:49:52
I do feel motorists don't bother me as much because I am wearing jeans, no helmet and a muscle or t-shirt. They think I am one of them, because I don't have a helmet. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060911102200.htm Maybe I ride safer due to no protection? http://www.researchgate.net/publication/230848775_Emotional_reactions_to_cycle_helmet_use Helmets do very little for concussions (brain hitting inside of skull). http://www.bicycling.com/sites/default/files/uploads/BI-June-13-Helmet.pdf
gg
2013-06-14 11:52:16
I would rather come out of a crash with just a concussion rather than a concussion plus leaving some flesh and blood smeared onto the roadway.
helen-s
2013-06-14 15:15:55
@gg, the case-control studies effectively take into account these effects. Suppose motorists avoid people without helmets to such a degree that wearing a helmet makes you much more likely to have an accident. Then we'd expect to see very few cyclists without helmets with injuries due to accidents compared to the control group, but in fact there were a lot more. The same argument applies to people with helmets riding more recklessly. And some of the studies looked explicitly at brain injury, and found that helmets do, indeed, reduce it significantly. This isn't saying that those effects don't exist -- people probably do give cyclists with helmets less space -- but helmets are so effective against head injury that they swamp the other effects.
jonawebb
2013-06-14 15:27:24
gg wrote:Helmets do very little for concussions (brain hitting inside of skull).
And you were talking about death which is different than injures. And this fact is well known.
mikhail
2013-06-14 15:42:01
The same argument applies to people with helmets riding more recklessly. Jonawebb, I'm having trouble seeing this. Let's imagine that helmets don't help at all, but riding safely does. Suppose we study 100 riders. To make things simple, they're all of the same age, gender, etc. 75 ride safely. They also all wear helmets. 25 ride unsafely, and none wear helmets. The safe 75 get 20 head injuries. The unsafe 25 also get 20 head injuries. (The difference, we're supposing, is entirely due to riding styles, not helmets.) Of the 40 injuries, 50% were wearing helmets. Is the control group the remaining 60 uninjured, or all 100? In the first case, we're got 55 safe helmeted uninjured riders plus 5 unsafe unhelmeted uninjured riders, so 8% of the control group weren't wearing helmets. In the second case, we've got 25% not wearing helmets. But in either case, there's a huge difference between 50% and the others, "proving" that helmets work, even though in this example they don't. It's merely that our safe riders also choose to wear helmets. It seems like, unless you're controlling for whatever besides helmets could really be causing a difference in head injury rates, a retrospective study like this can only measure "helmet use or something else correlated to helmet use", and can't distinguish between the two. Or have I misunderstood how you'd interpret the above data? Please explain how to interpret it so it shows that, in this pretend example, helmets aren't helping.
steven
2013-06-14 16:38:46
For the record, I am not condoning not wearing a helmet at all. I am merely saying that people should do as they please regarding it. I wear one if I am on a ride that requires it, but that is about it these days. I mean, I am riding a fixed gear going under 20mph, it isn't like I am riding a Ninja doing a wheelie on Rt 28 in traffic. Do what you feel comfortable with. I did find those studies kind of cool though. I never see helmets in much of Northern Europe. Of course drivers are much better than here in every regard.
gg
2013-06-14 23:50:41
@Steven, you start with two groups, the control group and the case group. The control group is just there to measure helmet usage in general. So suppose 75% of riders wear helmets as in your example. You have 40 riders in your case group, half wearing helmets. So in your example we see helmet usage leading to more head injuries (I'm assuming all accidents involve head injury in your example.) But that is not, in fact, what the case-control studies show. Helmet usage leads to less head injury. So, as a result, we can conclude that recklessness associated with helmet use, if it exists, is not so common as to overwhelm the protective effect of helmets.
jonawebb
2013-06-15 09:36:10
One thing I read about helmets, is they suppress cycling because they create a climate of fear, instead of a climate of joy and happiness. Lets face it, when you see people riding in places like Sweden and Finland, they are gleeful and very few wearing helmets. When you see people ride around here, they have a more cautious look and are usually wearing a helmet. I never was big on the fear thing. The chances are very slim a helmet will make any difference for myself. Sure I could be flattened and there is some outside chance a helmet might have made some difference, but I just don't have fear for that tiny chance. I like to think of cycling as a joyful time and I ride route to get away from cars even if it takes longer. I deal with cars, but you would be amazed at how few bad areas you deal with once you know the entire area like the back of your hand. For example, if you are coming out of Pittsburgh and want to take Penn, I ride this cool alley route that even has a tiny sidewalk involved. No cars. It is great fun, but of course riding on Penn would be faster. I think this kind of cycling is way more important than riding in areas like 5th Ave past Ellis School into Oakland with a helmet and feeling safe because you have that plastic thing on your head. Anyway, if everyone was riding with no helmet, I suspect there would be more people willing to give cycling a try because it doesn't look so scary. I think a lot of people would cycle if it didn't appear to be like a death wish.
gg
2013-06-15 10:01:44
People having to wear mandatory seatbelts, strap their kids in, and the proliferation of air bags to reduce injuries or death (which happen frequently) does not seem to scare people away from traveling by automobile.
helen-s
2013-06-15 11:55:17
@bb, another reference to the 1989 Rivara study. Many studies by other researchers since -- see the review article... Edit: BTW I totally agree with people deciding to wear helmets or not. People can decide. Just don't claim that they don't protect against head injury in an accident.
jonawebb
2013-06-15 12:08:48
helmets don't create fear, awful infrastructure and even more awful drivers do. a helmet wont save me if i get run over by some idiot doing 50 while texting on a 25 mph city street, but it will help a lot if i slide out on some ice and fall over in junction hollow going 5-10mph.
cburch
2013-06-15 21:22:26
So in your example we see helmet usage leading to more head injuries The point is that in my made-up example, there's zero actual connection between helmet usage and head injuries. So the fact that this type of analysis says otherwise demonstrates a flaw in the analysis. This is why case-control studies don't provide great evidence. As Wikipedia puts it, "Case-control studies are observational in nature and thus do not provide the same level of evidence as randomized controlled trials. The results may be confounded by other factors, to the extent of giving the opposite answer to better studies. A meta-analysis of what were considered 30 high-quality studies concluded that use of a product halved a risk, when in fact the risk was, if anything, increased." The links in the article show how this type of study can produce results that are completely wrong, not because the researchers made errors, but because this type of study is very limited in what it can show. So it's important not to put too much emphasis on studies of this type, or to imagine that having a large number of similar studies of this type provides additional "proof". Like I said, this type of study cannot distinguish between helmet use and any other factor that varies in the same way, unless the researcher specifically finds a way to account for that other factor, whatever it might be (riding style being just one example). Of course, a lack of solid research doesn't prove helmet are useless either. It could well be that the studies are, in whole or in part, measuring the effect of helmet use, not some other factor. But we just don't know for sure (or not from case-control studies, anyway -- perhaps there are better studies out there somewhere).
steven
2013-06-16 02:10:39
Interesting about case control studies. I certainly am not buying into those wild numbers, stating a helmet helps 85% or whatever. Too funny. I also wonder who is coming up with this nonsense? The helmet industry/lobby? Anytime there is huge money to be made trust of an industry pretty much gets tossed. It is all about the almighty dollar. Oh yeah, remember to replace your helmet every other year or so. That is what the industry says. They go bad! If your helmet is older than that, might as well not wear it! Goodness!
gg
2013-06-16 07:35:46
Steven wrote:Like I said, this type of study cannot distinguish between helmet use and any other factor that varies in the same way,
So what you're saying is, helmets themselves might not protect against head injury, but riders wearing them somehow acquire the ability to protect their head somehow. Oh...kay. Well, if that was true, until we figure out how that remarkable protective ability is acquired, wouldn't wearing helmets be a way to access it? It's beginning to feel like I'm arguing with someone who just won't believe in global climate change or evolution or something like that. No matter what evidence I provide, there's always an out -- not contrary evidence, but some thing the study didn't take into account. But maybe you don't know that in science, disproving a commonly held theory, while it's not easy, is a way to get famous. If helmets really weren't protecting from head injury someone would do a study that shows that. And it's just not happening. There's no helmet manufacturers association secretly guiding the work of researchers all over the world. If you want to show helmets don't work, you have to find some evidence that they actually don't work -- not that they don't work as well as they might, or that some particular study had a flaw, etc. -- but that people wearing helmets had head injury at the same or greater rate that people not wearing them.
jonawebb
2013-06-16 14:03:51
Correlation does not imply causation i.e., it might be that the safe people are the ones who would wear a helmet. I always wear a helmet - but the few times I've crashed my bike my head has not hit the ground at all, not even a scuff mark. Did the helmet prevent me from having a head injury? No. Could it have? Maybe. I think that is the point being made in not trusting these studies.
marko82
2013-06-16 19:55:35
riders wearing them somehow acquire the ability to protect their head somehow. No, I'm saying that safe riders do various things in an attempt to improve their safety, like riding in the correct direction on one-way streets, using lights at night, slowing down when approaching intersections, etc. One of those things is wearing helmets. Some combination of those things is effective. To determine which particular things are effective, a mere case-control study doesn't help. A study would need to tease out helmet use from all the things that accompany it. A case-control study can tell you that it's beneficial to be the type of safe rider who wears a helmet and does a bunch of other things for safety. All together, it proves that they make you safe. It can tell that helmet use is a good marker for whether you're such a safe rider. If you wear a helmet, you're more likely to do all those other things. Imagine there's a button that says "Safe riders rock!" It's super-popular among safe riders, but everybody else thinks it's dumb. As a result, it serves as a good marker for safe riders. A case-control study will prove that people with these buttons get in fewer accidents. But a safety campaign centered on increasing the popularity of the buttons will not be effective. Pinning a button on as many unsafe riders as possible won't make them safer. Could helmets be like those buttons, to some extent? If you want to show helmets don’t work I'm not saying that. I'm saying if the only data we have is a big pile of case-control studies, then we just don't know. They might work great. They might not be doing much. We have no good evidence one way or the other, as far as how they work in practice (unless there are other, better studies out there). I think they probably do work (and I always wear mine), but I'm merely guessing. Claiming there's research and science proving they work in practice is what I'm objecting to. I'd love to see some well-designed research that tries to disentangle helmet use from other factors, to see if we can measure their effect outside of a lab. But I don't see how you could do that with a mere case-control study.
steven
2013-06-16 22:46:23
Steven wrote: I’m saying if the only data we have is a big pile of case-control studies, then we just don’t know.
I think we know more than that. We all ride bikes. Several of us have had slide outs or whatever. I think most would agree it isn't all that easy to hit your head unless something hits your head. It isn't going to be the ground unless you are flying over your handlebars. That kind of wreck is rare. Therefore, I think we really know the answer. Helmets do very little in reality, but they make some companies one heck of a lot of money. If you get hit by a bus, it might help, but it might not. For the most part they are sort of overkill. The skull is pretty tough. Anyway, this is not my thing. If you are a fear type, then wear one. I just don't see a reason to.
gg
2013-06-16 22:59:06
I found this interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_evidence Case control studies rank pretty low, but better than case reports (the experience of me or my friends), which, other than intuition based arguments have comprised most of the back and forth here. So helmet wins there in my book. You're not going to get randomized controlled trials with people no matter what. To the extent there are really controlled conditions it's in a lab, measuring accelerations with and without a helmet. You can argue that more or different conditions should be measured, but by the info we have, helmets do reduce accelerations. Another win in my book. I think it's fair to argue whether helmet wearing is worth it due to the risk being so low. I probably wouldn't on the GAP only, or riding in Amsterdam or Copenhagen. But I think it's pretty strange to argue that they don't make you at least ~a little~ safer.
byogman
2013-06-16 23:35:55
I find yinz lack of faith disturbing.
headloss
2013-06-17 00:21:24
@Steven et al, those things would reduce accidents, but not head injury. So the case control studies could account for that by comparing total injuries to head injuries.
jonawebb
2013-06-17 06:11:48
Grant Peterson of Rivendell cycles tends to make a lot of the same points about helmets. He also mentions that cyclists who swerve around a bit in traffic tend to be passed with a bit more space by drivers in general. However, people have different reasons for riding. Some people like to ride on sketchy gravel roads and dirt paths with less predictable conditions for fun, and have a high risk of sliding out. These people probably want helmets. Some people are just trying to ride a couple miles to work on 25-35mph speed limit streets with lots of stop signs and red lights. These people may or may not want to wear helmets. Some people ride all winter and have to control their bike in snow, rain, ice, and slush. These people probably want helmets. Other people are just trying to ride a few trails for exercise or for fun. These people may or may not want to wear helmets. Some people ride road bikes and want to ride fast and train hard to.... umm.. ride faster and longer, these people probably want helmets. Some people are just trying to load up their pannier bags with groceries. They may or may not want to wear helmets. Some people go flying down hills on narrow trails in the woods, just inches from trees, these people probably want helmets. Other people want to ride to a cafe, bar, or restaurant to meet up with friends a few miles from home without driving. These people may or may not want helmets. Some people ride bikes with massive suspension systems and go flying off jumps while flying down trails, these people probably want helmets. Other folks play weird games like bike polo and go over the bars, flip backwards, topple sideways, and get smacked with mallets, these people probably want helmets (some want face cages too). I think it really depends on what kind of riding you are doing, hat your risk tolerance is. If you're especially concerned about concussions, you can try sourcing MIPS, Conehead, or import an ABUS Kranium helmet to go beyond CPSC levels of protection. However, if you want to do certain things like race, go on most cycling club rides, go on a flock ride, then you are required to have a helmet (possibly due to insurance requirements or group ethos).
benzo
2013-06-17 08:35:49
^That - is it, right there, everything. Excellent. Nice work. It's entirely possible that the OP's "project" had nothing to do with helmet use, per se, at all. Rather, it may just to have been to find out how long some X group of people on the internet could keep this festival balloon of an issue aloft.
edmonds59
2013-06-17 09:02:16
byogman wrote: But I think it’s pretty strange to argue that they don’t make you at least ~a little~ safer. ______ They no doubt make you a little safer. I don't think you can argue that. Even if it was .05%, that is a little safer. I think it would be more like 3-7% safer, but that is just a guess. I ride a fixed almost all the time, so my top speed isn't exactly blistering down a hill. The last crash I had was going over railroad tracks at an angle that wasn't quite enough with a semi-flat rear tire, that I was unaware of. The tracks caught my rim and threw me sort of face first over the right side of my handlebars. I extended my right arm to soften the landing. No major problems with that crash. The most dangerous part of my rides are probably going over the Highland Park Bridge at night. If I bite it on that sidewalk, that could be a problem for my head. Therefore, I don't fly across it. I am more cautious. I ain't getting any younger!
gg
2013-06-17 10:18:03
To the extent there are really controlled conditions it’s in a lab, measuring accelerations with and without a helmet. But behaviors change when helmets get involved. Motorists may drive farther away, or more slowly, when they see helmetless riders. Risk-taking cyclists with no helmets might also be more likely to ride close to cars. Or just the opposite: cyclists with no helmets might decide to stick to trails. Does all that outweigh the clear pure-physics benefit of helmets? So the case control studies could account for that by comparing total injuries to head injuries. That's a very good point. I've now read the 2009 Cochrane review you posted, and I see it included only studies which did that. They wouldn't have been fooled by my examples. So I guess my main argument is with the way you originally described the studies, not the actual studies. Thanks for posting the link. Still, it would be nice if those studies could directly address the question of whether helmets reduce the number of head injuries. They instead address the related question of whether helmets reduce the number of head injuries among cyclists who crash.
steven
2013-06-17 13:07:33
IIRC, one of the criticisms commonly levied at the Thompson case-control studies is that the source data, if not restricted solely to facial and cranial injuries, also indicates that helmet use is correlated with lower incidence of broken legs. This does not mean that there is anything wrong with the source data, or with the means of analysis...it simply points up a problem with drawing conclusions regarding causal factors. Personally, I'd be shocked if helmets did not decrease injury to some extent. How much is hard to tell, as, to my knowledge, no mass-market vendor of cycling helmets specifically states what types of collisions their helmet is rated to withstand. The only available clues are the published testing protocols...reading said protocols is one of the reasons why I have no confidence in any of my helmets to protect me beyond a nigh-stationary fall.
reddan
2013-06-17 14:56:02
@reddan, that's basically Steven's objection, too, but at least one of the studies from the Cochrane review explicitly considers it, McDermott 1993: 'Protective effect of helmets does not appear to be due to cautious riding behavior by helmeted cyclists. This is based on observations that “collision of cyclists” head, face, or helmet with motor vehicles occurred slightly more often to helmeted casualities than to unhelmeted casualties (17.6% versus 14.5%).' It's also interesting to note that one of the claims people sometimes make about helmets is that they don't really help because cyclists with helmets just engage in more risky behavior (which McDermott sort of supports). Now we're saying that cyclists with helmets are more cautious. Shows how important it is to actually measure. Also, BTW, these multiple studies show a large protective effect against head injury -- it's not slight. Of course, you're not protected against anything else -- but the brain is the one organ in your body where even a small injury can seriously mess up your life.
jonawebb
2013-06-17 15:20:02
Not quite sure the date on it, but Bicycling magazine has a massive article on helmets and cycling concussions: http://www.bicycling.com/senseless/
epanastrophe
2013-06-19 10:17:13
Yeah, I saw that, even wrote to the CPSC to ask about what they were doing to update helmet standards to handle concussions better. But as a result of this discussion, I now think that helmets are so good (and serious bicycle accidents so rare) that it's probably a waste of time. If you're wearing a helmet, you have a very good chance of avoiding brain injury, including concussion, if you're in an accident. Maybe a better designed helmet would make that chance even better, but it's probably not worth it.
jonawebb
2013-06-19 10:27:17
marko82
2013-06-19 11:47:56
@jonawebb et al, those things would reduce accidents, but not head injury. So the case control studies could account for that by comparing total injuries to head injuries. That seems reasonable - even necessary - for a scientific study on helmets. It isn't usually done. It is the major tactic of DL Robinson in opposing helmet laws. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457500000737 Have there been people who have used that sort of control and found helmets to be effective? (Serious question. I'd like to know, but am too lazy to search.)
mick
2015-02-23 22:42:34
I've read enough Thompson , Thompson and Rivera to disbelieve whatever they say - even if it just "hello." They are my go-to example for "How science goes wrong."
mick
2015-02-24 11:57:40
I think if you got brains you would want a helmet but that is your decision . I think the most dangerous thing most of us do is drive a car and I would think a helmet / neck brace and a 4 point safety harness would be a good idea especially for Highway travel but we would not want to mess up your hair and make car travel inconvenient !
cowchip
2015-02-24 16:42:03
I've had 2 OTBs. (Yes, I'm that stupid). In the first case I think I landed mostly on my face and ended up with a fractured cervical bone. Not sure the helmet did that much good that time. The second time I landed on my head and cracked my helmet (also, had a a concussion). I just bought a new helmet; though the concussion was annoying (I was out for ~2 days and I still have some residual effects). But I'm told that the alternative would most likely have been a DoA. As all other regular riders, I'm convinced that I know what I'm doing and that I'm always in control. But I still wear a helmet. I don't feel a helmet is necessary for share-bikes. The bikes are too clunky and slow to let you get yourself into trouble. Of course there's the cars, but I'm not sure personal protection helps all that much in those cases.
ahlir
2015-02-24 22:50:31