Andy in Germany
Guru
- Location
- Rottenburg am Neckar
Where I live It's generally considered polite to wear other clothes as well.
Is there a stigma to only wear a cap?
- Thread starter LemonJuice
- Start date
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Where I live It's generally considered polite to wear other clothes as well.
classic33
Leg End Member
First part no, they don't. It also appears to be the heavy end for cycling helmets.
Second part, why? That weight won't want to deform on impact, is close to the spine, and can easily slide up the back up into the base of the skull.
It's just as likely to get caught, snag on something, twisting you round.
Mark pallister
Senior Member
Cycling should be what you want it to be
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
You said it was a camelbak, which I understood as a type of drinks bag. What are you drinking that won't deform (or burst) on impact?
I don't see it as significantly more likely to snag as the clothes already worn, either.
"Cycle helmets must adhere to standard EN1078, which states that a helmet must be designed to withstand an impact similar to an average rider travelling at 12mph falling onto a stationary kerb-shaped object from a height of one metre"
It clearly says a rider travelling at 12mph, so no, it's not that. As such, the aggregate of the 12mph travelling component along with the downwards acceleration of the fall would mean that the riders head would be hitting the kerb at a speed in excess of 12mph. I can't be bothered to calculate it accurately, but if you are correct with your guess about bonces achieving 12mph when falling from that height, simple Pythagoras theorem tells us that it would hit the kerb at just under 17mph.
Absolutely. There is absolutely no reason why they wouldn't.
From a financial standpoint (which I think is what you are getting at) there is no good reason to only just pass the test. Helmets must cost pennies to make. Even though they are not that expensive, the markup on them must be astronomical for what is essentially some polystyrene and a plastic shell. There isn't much cost to be saved by using less material.
What would be expensive is engineering it to just pass the test with perfect accuracy. It won't be that scientific - they'll just make something that will pass easily with a large safety margin so that poor manufacturing tolerances and changes in the raw materials are allowed for. It's not as if polystyrene is either expensive or heavy.
As for the advertising, I honestly don't think I've ever seen an advert for a cycling helmet, but I'm guessing that like in most forms of advertising, safety doesn't sell. Looking good/being aero/well ventilated has a better chance. Meeting the standard meets would fulfil the safety aspect for most buyers imo, and that's if they even care.
No doubt helped by use of helmets.
Lots of things are vanishingly rare or unlikely, but we/I still do things to mitigate those risks. Particularly where the consequences of the event that we are trying to mitigate happening could be life changing, or could even result in loss of life. I'm unlikely to crash a car, but I still wear a seat belt, for example.
Agreed. It's always going to be a compromise and the risk of head injury is always going to be there, but I'm happy to reduce it. For me, it's not a great hardship to wear a helmet. It obviously is for some of you.
Snell certification is (or was) rare in motorsports helmets compared other certifications. This was not because it was difficult or expensive to produce a compliant helmet, but because Snell charged a massive fee for the certification process.
matticus
Guru
The risk was tiny before helmets became a thing (you can check the stats) - and for whatever reason, they haven't decreased since the majority of "keen" cyclists were persuaded to wear them.
Go on - look it up!
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roubaixtuesday
self serving virtue signaller
If helmets made a significant difference, there would be clear falls in gear injuries with helmet uptake. There isn't.
Wear one by all means, but don't kid yourself it makes much difference either way.
Why the focus on severe brain injuries? Personally I'm happy to have a reduction in non-severe brain injuries. It's not a magic space capsule.
The important thing is that companies are working to make helmets better and better - hence the new wavecel / MIPS helmets which are quite expensive but offer far more protection than a standard helmet.
One of the difficulties in working out the relationship between injury and cycle helmet wearing is that if you aren't injured you don't get counted.So you can only measure events where there was an injury.
Just one study that finds a correlation between reduction in injury and wearing a cycle helmet.
academic.oup.com/ije/article/46/1/278/2617198
The important thing is that companies are working to make helmets better and better - hence the new wavecel / MIPS helmets which are quite expensive but offer far more protection than a standard helmet.
One of the difficulties in working out the relationship between injury and cycle helmet wearing is that if you aren't injured you don't get counted.So you can only measure events where there was an injury.
Just one study that finds a correlation between reduction in injury and wearing a cycle helmet.
academic.oup.com/ije/article/46/1/278/2617198
Ming the Merciless
There is no mercy
- Location
- Inside my skull
MIPS is trying to fix a cause of brain injury that helmets create. If you don’t wear a helmet that cause of brain injury goes away.
matticus
Guru
So I assume you wear head-protection 24x7? Your choice, doesn't bother me ...
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
One of the difficulties in working with mild brain injuries is that it's often very difficult to attribute them to a particular event, as the injury may only be diagnosed much later. So it's more reliable to look at the severe injuries.
Prove it.
That doesn't seem correct. We can do representative surveys of the cycling populaton (the census travel to work is one) and measure who isn't injured at all and what cycling equipment they use. (You can't only ask about helmet use, else you pollute the pool for future surveys.)
Or rather, it's a review not a study and it finds that correlation WHEN crashed. The "reduced odds" is a comparison against crashing the same without a helmet. It does not seem to even consider correlations between crashing or severity of crash and using a cycle helmet, so its later claim "These results support the use of strategies to increase the uptake of bicycle helmets" are unsupported by its evidence.
That getting through into publication then makes me doubt the objectivity of the researchers, reviewers and journal - so I looked at the underlying studies to check for "garbage in, garbage out". That paper includes an uncritical repetition of Thompson and Thompson's notorious banned-by-US-government 88% reduction claim and a lot of Thompson is also in "Characteristics of studies meeting selection criteria". I say that paper is obviously unsafe.
I'm now grumpy that I spent even that time looking at this paper. How about the helmet fans sometimes look at the shoot they're shovelling instead of wasting my lunch break?
matticus
Guru
Yebbut helmets MUST help in a crash. It's common sense. That's why skydivers wear them.
Can you prove otherwise?
Can you prove otherwise?
My critical thinking powers were not 'bestowed' by Human Factors Ltd, but were identified by them.
Neither have you specified in what way my logic is flawed. If you want to specify the flaws in my argument that's fine, but just saying it is rubbish is not a very clever way of debating.
If you want to get personal and mock, then you are just debasing any legitimacy in your own argument.
