young Ed
Veteran
only thing is crashes and being knocked about is much more frequent and are to be almost expected in a rally car
Cheers Ed
I love helmets
- Thread starter steveindenmark
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Cheers Ed
GrasB
Veteran
- Location
- Nr Cambridge
The problem is while a roll cage prevents total survival space collapse in major impacts, e.g. getting crushed, it does reduce the survival space. This means when the world is spinning around at silly velocities your head is more likely to come into contact with a rather hard bit of metal. A helmet will help absorb these impacts. I'm not entirely convinced that in modern cars a crash helmet would actually do any good because the main cause of helmet strikes in a motorsport vehicle isn't present.
young Ed
Veteran
no one's stopping you wearing a helmet in your car you know?
Cheers Ed
Wobblers
Euthermic
- Location
- Minkowski Space
All these are rather different to cycling, so any comparison will at best be of very limited use. In particular, a soldier's helmet, designed to resist high speed shrapnel serves a vastly different purpose to a cycling helmet, which is designed to cope with a low energy impact. Or, to be more accurate, to meet (just barely in many cases [1]) a number of not terribly demanding standards.From unpleasant personal experience, you don't have any time to react when you lose the front wheel: a horse rider, having further to travel, has more time to contemplate, and prepare for the inevitable landing. My line manager was describing the nasty set of injuries she got the last time she fell off her horse (no head impact). Even then, horse riding is not the safest of activities - I have the impression that it is more dangerous than cycling - does anyone have any figures?
There is also the issue that such things like helmets are pushed for the sake of Something Must Be Done rather than whether or not they are actually useful.
[1] Helmets are sold on lightness and ventilation. To improve impact resistance necessarily requires more material (curse those damn laws of physics!) which rather defeats the marketing blurb. Hence there is a tendency for helmets to be designed down to the standards. A bike helmet designed solely on impact criteria would look rather different to what is actually sold - no ventilation holes for starters. In fact, it would look startlingly similar to motorcycle crash helmet. Fancy wearing one of those whilst tackling a Strava segment?
Wobblers
Euthermic
- Location
- Minkowski Space
I think the point @User's making is that there is no push for motorists to wear helmets, nor any assumption that they must be irresponsible idiots for not doing so. Nor any danger of compulsion.
Big Nick
Senior Member
Thank you for your candour Adrian
They also offer protection to pedestrians in a fall........
srw
It's a bit more complicated than that...
The short answer is "no-one knows, but probably".
Make of these what you will, courtesy of Dr Google.
http://www.bhs.org.uk/our-charity/press-centre/equestrian-statistics
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8339097.stm
http://www.riders4helmets.com/2011/02/equestrian-sport-statistics-facts-what-you-should-know/
"Rate of serious injury per hour estimated to be the same for horse riders as motorcyclists; 15% of hospital admissions involve head injury." (This, in passing, I note, from a website advocating the use of helmets, and with the obligatory "a helmet saved my life" comments.)
http://www.medequestrian.co.uk/ride...ks-of-riding/risks-of-injury-risk-management/
What we really need is an obsessive who owns a horse-box and has an equestrian-related business of his own - and who is expert on absolutely everything.
Big Nick
Senior Member
It's hard to find any concession made in previous threads so it was helpful to see your thoughts 'laid bare' so to speak and it gives your opinion further weight in my view
Mugshot
Cracking a solo.
What @User said is correct @Big Nick with regards to the other threads on this topic. I can't ever remember seeing anybody saying that wearing a cycle helmet could not be of benefit if the circumstances were correct, I am however, (although I'm not going to go and check) resonably sure that a number of people that tend to be labeled "anti-helmet" have said they could and would be in some situations. I am not sure I have ever seen anybody on here that is actually anti-helmet.
The "just in case argument" for wearing helmets will almost certainly be thrown into the mix in these discussions and given that helmets can offer a certain level of protection in certain circumstances this tends to be seized upon,
"Ha, well there we are then, if they offer protection sometimes then I'll wear one, thank you for proving my point!"
What tends to be missed or ignored is that the likelyhood of it happening is rather similar to several other everyday activities, walking for example. So whilst you are correct in your position that they can and indeed do offer some protection, maybe that needs to be weighed up against the chances of it actually happening.
I don't want people to see cycling as dangerous, I'd like people to see it as a perfectly acceptable and safe way of getting from A to B, the more people that cycle the safer it becomes, but the more that cyclists and non-cyclists are lead to believe that cycling requires a helmet because it's dangerous the less people cycle ergo it actually does become more dangerous and it becomes a downward spiral.
The "just in case argument" for wearing helmets will almost certainly be thrown into the mix in these discussions and given that helmets can offer a certain level of protection in certain circumstances this tends to be seized upon,
"Ha, well there we are then, if they offer protection sometimes then I'll wear one, thank you for proving my point!"
What tends to be missed or ignored is that the likelyhood of it happening is rather similar to several other everyday activities, walking for example. So whilst you are correct in your position that they can and indeed do offer some protection, maybe that needs to be weighed up against the chances of it actually happening.
I don't want people to see cycling as dangerous, I'd like people to see it as a perfectly acceptable and safe way of getting from A to B, the more people that cycle the safer it becomes, but the more that cyclists and non-cyclists are lead to believe that cycling requires a helmet because it's dangerous the less people cycle ergo it actually does become more dangerous and it becomes a downward spiral.
Mugshot
Cracking a solo.
Here's a couple of recent examples from my facebook, have a look at the comments.
Self explanatory this one
I think this video shows a cyclist in a stand off with a car that has blocked the cycle lane.
It honestly makes me sad.
Just so you know both these were posted by people I have as friends not by myself, none of the comments are mine.
Self explanatory this one
I think this video shows a cyclist in a stand off with a car that has blocked the cycle lane.
It honestly makes me sad.
Just so you know both these were posted by people I have as friends not by myself, none of the comments are mine.
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Big_Dave
The unlikely Cyclist
- Location
- Alfreton, Derbyshire
Back in '87 I had a bad accident on my bike, no-one had bike helmets back then, I sustained quite bad head injuries fractured skull (forehead) and broken nose and left half my face on the tarmac and half the gravel off the road embedded in my face, my teeth went straight through my bottom lip with a hole big enough to fit my tongue through. initially I could only eat soup/drink through a straw. Although a open face helmet wouldn't have helped that much, I always now wear a helmet, it's my choice to do so, if you don't wear a helmet that's your choice, my view is some protection is better than none.if a helmet only stops gravel rash/bleeding then it has served it's purpose
Profpointy
Legendary Member
your mishap may well have been mitigated by a helmet. The problem is that there are seemingly an equivalent number of incidents made worse. In australia and Ontario, post compulsion the injury rates are about the same (worse maybe) - so for every injury prevented or reduced another has been caused or worsened. On balance they don't appear to help at all
Big_Dave
The unlikely Cyclist
- Location
- Alfreton, Derbyshire
Life is full of risks, you make your own risk assessments whether that is the right decision I guess we will never know either way, if it ever becomes law to wear an helmet then you will have no choice, for those who are against wearing an helmet would you give up cycling because of it, probably not.
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