Lesson learned NEVER ride without your helmet !

[icowden]

Actually not a silly question. There’s a slightly higher risk you’ll injure your head walking than cycling. If your assessment was risk based. You’d not decide to wear a helmet cycling without also deciding to wear one when walking.

This is a good and fair point. The risks of head injury are higher for walking than from cycling. That's not why I wear a helmet though.
Repeated studies by doctors suggest that where a cyclist does sustain a head injury, the presence of a helmet is a factor in reducing the severity of that injury.
I have seen no studies suggesting the opposite.

So yes, it is very unlikely you will sustain a head injury, and helmets might therefore seem like overkill, but if you are involved in an incident, then the helmet may be the thing that helps keep your head intact. I like small but tangible benefits.

 

[MontyVeda]

This is a good and fair point. The risks of head injury are higher for walking than from cycling. That's not why I wear a helmet though.
Repeated studies by doctors suggest that where a cyclist does sustain a head injury, the presence of a helmet is a factor in reducing the severity of that injury.
I have seen no studies suggesting the opposite.

So yes, it is very unlikely you will sustain a head injury, and helmets might therefore seem like overkill, but if you are involved in an incident, then the helmet may be the thing that helps keep your head intact. I like small but tangible benefits.

do you really need a study suggesting that a helmet will reduce the severity of a head injury sustained whilst walking, or being involved in a road traffic accident, or banging your head at home? All of these are statistically more likely than cycling, yet all the focus is on only protecting your noggin whilst riding a bike. Don't you think that's a little bit strange?

 

[Ian H]

Repeated studies by doctors suggest that where a cyclist does sustain a head injury, the presence of a helmet is a factor in reducing the severity of that injury.
I have seen no studies suggesting the opposite.

How on earth were these 'studies' carried out?
There appears to be some evidence of helmets causing rotational injuries. There are claims that they can increase the chance or severity of concussion.

 

[Milkfloat]

This is a good and fair point. The risks of head injury are higher for walking than from cycling. That's not why I wear a helmet though.
Repeated studies by doctors suggest that where a cyclist does sustain a head injury, the presence of a helmet is a factor in reducing the severity of that injury.
I have seen no studies suggesting the opposite.

So yes, it is very unlikely you will sustain a head injury, and helmets might therefore seem like overkill, but if you are involved in an incident, then the helmet may be the thing that helps keep your head intact. I like small but tangible benefits.

These are the studies where you turn up in A&E with a broken collar bone after a fall and the first question that is asked is ‘were you wearing a helmet’, it does not matter than you did not bang your head at all, it all goes down as the same statistic. Doctors are the last people to believe if you want evidenced based statistics.

 

[icowden]

How on earth were these 'studies' carried out?
There appears to be some evidence of helmets causing rotational injuries. There are claims that they can increase the chance or severity of concussion.

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/9/e027845

Setting The NHS England Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN) Database was interrogated to identify all adult (≥16 years) patients presenting to hospital with cycling-related major injuries, during a period from 14 March 2012 to 30 September 2017 (the last date for which a validated dataset was available).
Participants 11 192 patients met inclusion criteria. Data on the use of cycling helmets were available in 6621 patients.
Outcome measures TARN injury descriptors were used to compare patterns of injury, care and mortality in helmeted versus non-helmeted cohorts.
Results Data on cycle helmet use were available for 6621 of the 11 192 cycle-related injuries entered onto the TARN Database in the 66 months of this study (93 excluded as not pedal cyclists). There was a significantly higher crude 30-day mortality in un-helmeted cyclists 5.6% (4.8%–6.6%) versus helmeted cyclists 1.8% (1.4%–2.2%) (p<0.001). Cycle helmet use was also associated with a reduction in severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) 19.1% (780, 18.0%–20.4%) versus 47.6% (1211, 45.6%–49.5%) (p<0.001), intensive care unit requirement 19.6% (797, 18.4%–20.8%) versus 27.1% (691, 25.4%–28.9%) (p<0.001) and neurosurgical intervention 2.5% (103, 2.1%–3.1%) versus 8.5% (217, 7.5%–9.7%) (p<0.001). There was a statistically significant increase in chest, spinal, upper and lower limb injury in the helmeted group in comparison to the un-helmeted group (all p<0.001), though in a subsequent analysis of these anatomical injury patterns, those cyclists wearing helmets were still found to have lower rates of TBI. In reviewing TARN injury codes for specific TBI and facial injuries, there was a highly significant decrease in rates of impact injury between cyclists wearing helmets and those not.
Conclusions This study suggests that there is a significant correlation between use of cycle helmets and reduction in adjusted mortality and morbidity associated with TBI and facial injury.

Seems good to me. There are more.

 

[Ian H]

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/9/e027845
Seems good to me. There are more.

So explain how they determine that any particular head injury would have been worsened or lessened by the presence or absence of a helmet. It's not a scientific study.

 

[icowden]

So explain how they determine that any particular head injury would have been worsened or lessened by the presence or absence of a helmet. It's not a scientific study.

It is a scientific study in that it was done by scientists (i.e. doctors) and published in a very esteemed Medical Journal. The study is very clear that:

Conclusions This study suggests that there is a significant correlation between use of cycle helmets and reduction in adjusted mortality and morbidity associated with TBI and facial injury.

In other words *if* you are in an accident, the correlation of helmet to injury suggests that the outcome is better if you have a bit of foam between your skull and the thing your head is hitting.

 

[Deleted User]

Wear a helmet or don't wear a helmet, why people let comments from a bunch of nobody's on the internet bother them I do not know?

 

[fossyant]

I wear a lid as I got used to it racing, simple. I've broken more bodily bones than my noggin. On road, the lid has saved my head from gravel rash at least twice, but didn't stop the other broken bones (skid marks on lid).

The only good thing is it did stop the medical staff worrying more about my head when I broke my spine. No, it's not my head - look at my lid, not a mark. I'm in absolute agony in the middle of my back, it's not my head. Had to say this a lot. It was a good job as I had a really bad break at L1/T12.

I MTB a lot, and every ride I get branches bouncing off the lid - rather that than my head (including my new commute). TBH, it's handy, just tip my face down, bonk, branch bounces off. Saves me slowing down to avoid the branch.

It's a personal choice, and I wish both sides wouldn't get so wound up. Do what suits you.

I also regularly ride without a lid too, depends what I'm doing. If I'm out training, and going quick, lid. If not, no lid. What 'hisses' me off is self entitled pedestrians (that clearly haven't been near a bike since a child) that say 'oh you should be wearing a helmet' when I'm cycling past them at 3 mph. I usually reply 'not when I'm going this slow'.

I do own 4 lids.... two enduro style in different colours (to match my kit), an XC/road helmet, and a fancy road helmet.

 

[Ian H]

It is a scientific study in that it was done by scientists (i.e. doctors) and published in a very esteemed Medical Journal. The study is very clear that:

In other words *if* you are in an accident, the correlation of helmet to injury suggests that the outcome is better if you have a bit of foam between your skull and the thing your head is hitting.

Here's an article showing why such a study cannot accurately determine what it claims to show. https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1131.html

 

[matticus]

It's a personal choice, and I wish both sides wouldn't get so wound up. Do what suits you.

Well yes, great: the problem is that lots of helmet people try to force everyone else to join in. They setup rides and clubs for this purpose. Or they impose workplace rules.

Surely you can see why this winds people up? I promise you, its not people disagreeing with me on the internet that is the problem! 😄

 

[Jody]

You can argue this one all day long and never draw a conclusion.

It's not going to stop a speeding Range Rover from altering the shape of your skull but in the majority of instances it will probably reduce the amount of force from an impact.

 

[Jody]

Here's an article showing why such a study cannot accurately determine what it claims to show. https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1131.html

Do we have anything more up to date? Most of the citations used are 30-40 years old.

 

[icowden]

Here's an article showing why such a study cannot accurately determine what it claims to show. https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1131.html

Yes that seems relevant.

Why don't you actually read the study in the BMJ?

Here is a snippet:

This shows rates of TBI (head AIS >3) by helmet use as well as anatomical injury pattern. For each anatomical injury pattern (chest >3, spinal >3, upper and lower limb injuries) a greater proportion of cyclists have no head injury in the group wearing cycle helmets, whereas in the group not wearing cycle helmets, no such correlation is seen, that is, of patients with similar body injury severity, helmet wearers had significantly lower rates of TBI.
Those patients not wearing helmets were more likely (table 4) to have a Glasgow Come Score (GCS) under 15 (p<0.001), were more likely to require neurosurgical intervention (8.5% vs 2.5%) and intensive care unit (ICU) admission (27.1% vs 19.6%, p<0.001.)

CT head findings
In comparing the CT head scans, there were some notable differences between the two groups (table 5). Those cyclists not wearing helmets were significantly more likely to receive TBIs and suffered a different pattern of injury to those wearing helmets. There were highly significant differences (p values <0.005) in the rates of skull vault fractures, base of skull fractures, pneumocephalus, cerebral contusions, cerebral contusions, subdural haematomas, extra-dural haematomas, sub-arachnoid haemorrhages, diffuse axonal injury, brain stem and cerebellar injuries between cyclists wearing helmets and those not.

Are you now going to argue that the CT Scans were made up, and that the clinicians were failing to calculate GCS properly? If the helmets were not a factor how do you explain the above?

 

[icowden]

Here's an article showing why such a study cannot accurately determine what it claims to show. https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1131.html

Or

Thees study you quote... I do not think it shows wha' you think it shows....