I've had crashes where a helmet would have made things worse, and where a helmet has made things worse.
The subject isn't as simple as you like to believe.
Pro-helmet article on BBC One Show right now
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I've had crashes where a helmet would have made things worse, and where a helmet has made things worse.
The subject isn't as simple as you like to believe.
Care to expand on that one?
How on earth is what I'm saying emotional blackmail? My argument is that having one on is better than not when in a crash. At no point have I mentioned family members or anything like that.
From what I'm read in this thread so far the anti-helmet argument seems to consist of either
- It's someones personal choice if they do or don't wear a helmet
- A helmet will make a crash worse
- A helmet won't make enough of a difference in a crash so there is no point wearing one
- There is no research to suggest helmets make things safer and any numbers quoted by pro-helmet people are pulled out of their arse.
2) Now who's pulling stuff out of their arse?
3) As I think it was stated earlier with some suspiciously round numbers, a helmet might be able to withstand 100 joules of forces, and a human skull 700 joules, that means that with the helmet you have 800 joules of resistance, without 700, for the sake of an unnoticeable weight and having to put it on I'd rather have that extra 12.5%. It would be interesting to see where those figures came from though...
4) Mainly its the assumption that having an inch of hard polystyrene and some plastic, between your head and the ground when you hit would be overall beneficial.
edit: for some reason my font sizes are messed up
My worst ever fall was at low speed, and the ambulance man did tell me I should have been wearing a helmet. It was similar to a clipless fail - on ice, very slow, front wheel wiped out, I went down hard on my hip and broke it. Pins, several days in hospital, three months on crutches. My hip hit the ground first, followed by my shoulder/arm (also hurt a lot, but that recovered), and my head not at all. Interestingly I appear to have managed to fail to put my hand out to catch it - a broken collar bone would probably have been a better outcome.
So that supports the theory that a clipless moment is quite likely to not result in a head injury.
It's based on the fact that a helmet isn't infinitely thin and light. Thus there will be crashes where your head alone will miss, but head plus helmet will hit, and that could well hurt quite a lot. I've had crashes like that. Example of the former - chain slip, down I go, head just touches metal railing, no injury. Helmet would have made that worse. Example of the latter - I stop for a lamb while wife isn't holding on to her handlebars, she hits my back, and gets a sore head, experience of me doing similar at other times says she would have missed without having a helmet on.
(oh, this is on a tandem :-) ).
But isn't this sort of stuff obvious if you think about it?
So now just one clipless fall over means that you will never bang your head from that type of accident. Maybe you can do it a few more times just to make sure, having seen it happen a few times my finding might be some what different.
Not one line so far has convinced me that wearing a helmet is a bad idea.
This post is starting to get very funny at times.
If you head stopped just short of the railing and having a helmet on would have hit it, then I would imagine any inertia left would have had little effect. Now if head had been traveling say 1mph faster then it would have hit the railing, I think luck may have played a part.
Now there is another point is somebody lucky to have survived and accident or unlucky because they had one.
Do you not think that your wife should be prepared for the unexpected at all time?
Not one line so far has convinced me that wearing a helmet is a bad idea.
This post is starting to get very funny at times.
If you head stopped just short of the railing and having a helmet on would have hit it, then I would imagine any inertia left would have had little effect. Now if head had been traveling say 1mph faster then it would have hit the railing, I think luck may have played a part.
Now there is another point is somebody lucky to have survived and accident or unlucky because they had one.
Do you not think that your wife should be prepared for the unexpected at all time?
Has anybody said that? I'm fairly sure they haven't. I have said a helmet could make a crash worse though, and I think that's reasonably obvious.
(I don't know why I'm getting involved in this - probably the biggest mistake I'll ever make!)
The only real data I've seen is the one about the proportion of people admitted to hospital with head injuries, which implied that helmets prevent serious head injuries. I'm curious as to whether or not there is data about injuries that don't make it to the point of being admitted to hospital - do we know whether helmet wearers vs non-helmet wearers are less likely to get a head injury in the first place? What about injuries requiring an ambulance that aren't head injuries? (The one well-known study that I mentioned above specifically looked at head injuries - it didn't look at people admitted with non-head injuries.) Is there any data about collisions/accidents/whatever that people essentially walk away from? Is there a difference between helmet vs non-helmet in those cases? I'm also wondering whether or not the helmet actually makes your head effectively 'bigger' and that things that impact your helmet may not actually impact your head.
Is there anyone who has links to this kind of data? Have these questions actually been studied? How would you go about studying incidents that people walk away from / don't necessarily report?
FWIW I wear a helmet on my 9 mile commute mainly because it is a nice way of keeping my hair in place, the sun off my head and mainly because of force of habit, but when I'm pootling around the city centre or going to the shops I don't.
The only real data I've seen is the one about the proportion of people admitted to hospital with head injuries, which implied that helmets prevent serious head injuries. I'm curious as to whether or not there is data about injuries that don't make it to the point of being admitted to hospital - do we know whether helmet wearers vs non-helmet wearers are less likely to get a head injury in the first place? What about injuries requiring an ambulance that aren't head injuries? (The one well-known study that I mentioned above specifically looked at head injuries - it didn't look at people admitted with non-head injuries.) Is there any data about collisions/accidents/whatever that people essentially walk away from? Is there a difference between helmet vs non-helmet in those cases? I'm also wondering whether or not the helmet actually makes your head effectively 'bigger' and that things that impact your helmet may not actually impact your head.
Is there anyone who has links to this kind of data? Have these questions actually been studied? How would you go about studying incidents that people walk away from / don't necessarily report?
FWIW I wear a helmet on my 9 mile commute mainly because it is a nice way of keeping my hair in place, the sun off my head and mainly because of force of habit, but when I'm pootling around the city centre or going to the shops I don't.
threebikesmcginty
Corn Fed Hick...
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You could have spent the money on beer.
Who'd be collecting it?
You appear to be reading more into my post than there is.
What I am pointing out is that there are cases when a helmet makes things worse, in response to people saying they can only make things better.
I think my wife should be prepared for what can reasonably be expected, not everything which is unexpected. The former includes sudden stops when there are sheep on the road, the latter includes earthquakes, meteorites, etc. All risk assessments take into account the chance of something bad happening as well as how bad it is - if the chance is very low, which a lot of "the unexpected" is, there's less point in trying to protect against it.
I've had it happen a few times when tired or tired-and-emotional or failing to trackstand. And I've banged my head on the ground both with and without a helmet. And the conclusion I draw from these events is that it's not sensible to draw conclusions from anecdata.
NormanD
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I've found two solutions to the whole debate
A. all cyclist shave their heads and have a helmet shape tattoo placed there instead. so if you wear a helmet or not it still looks like it
B. All cyclist have their heads cut off, thus removing the offending item of debate, your bonce
Oh wait there's a problem with solution A .. what colour to choose
A. all cyclist shave their heads and have a helmet shape tattoo placed there instead. so if you wear a helmet or not it still looks like it
B. All cyclist have their heads cut off, thus removing the offending item of debate, your bonce
Oh wait there's a problem with solution A .. what colour to choose
youngoldbloke
The older I get, the faster I used to be ...
Leaving aside the pros and cons, why do we seem to be subjected to weekly chat show/ phone-in discussions/ newspaper articles about this? Often conducted by/ contributed to/ edited by, by people who know little or nothing about the subject. The elephant in the room is the possibility of COMPULSION, and not only in regard to helmets, but also hi-viz, cycle lanes, bells, day-lights and so on, and so on, imposed on cyclists by those with very little knowledge or experience.
Hang on there just a cotton picking minute. You can't turn pro-choice into an anti-helmet stance.
You're right, my apologies.
On a slightly more neutral note - why are helmet debates so long and bitter?
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