MontyVeda
a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
- Location
- Lancaster... the little city.
Just an assumption based on the observation that helmet wearers seem to fall off more.... no idea why, they just seem to.
The CycleChat Helmet Debate Thread
- Thread starter Shaun
- Start date
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- Tags
- helmet helmet debate
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Justinslow
Lovely jubbly
- Location
- Suffolk
Based on what? A belief or evidence?
MontyVeda
a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
- Location
- Lancaster... the little city.
just following this thread since it began. That's my observation.
Justinslow
Lovely jubbly
- Location
- Suffolk
Oh I don't know, we've had various examples of people saying they had accidents without wearing helmets.
MontyVeda
a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
- Location
- Lancaster... the little city.
...all claiming 'my skull save my life!'
Justinslow
Lovely jubbly
- Location
- Suffolk
Well @martint235 did........all claiming 'my skull save my life!'
Interestingly did you see the pic of what a human being would look like following evolution to counter accidents (not particularly bike related)
https://www.bicyclenetwork.com.au/general/policy-and-campaigns/2793/
MontyVeda
a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
- Location
- Lancaster... the little city.
Skulls save lots of lives. They're pretty good things.
Justinslow
Lovely jubbly
- Location
- Suffolk
I think "Doctor who" may have already got there before them.
mickle
innit
- Location
- 53.933606, -1.076131
Crash simulation shows helmet protection
6 April 2016. Research at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden has shown that bike helmets can reduce the risk of concussions by 54 percent, and drastically cut the risk of skull fractures.
The findings are based on computer-simulated reconstructions of bike crashes in which the riders wore no helmet and sustained head injuries.
Researchers can now apply advanced kinematics to real injury data from medical databases and build advanced crash reconstruction and simulation models.
Remarkably the study showed that helmets would reduce the chance of skull fractures by 98 per cent.
Strain in the brain tissue, which is associated with brain injuries, was reduced by up to 43% for the accident cases studied when a helmet was included.
This resulted in a reduction of the risk of concussion of up to 54%. The stress to the skull bone went from fracture level of 80 megapascals (MPa) down to 13–16 MPa when a helmet was included and the skull fracture risk was reduced by up to 98% based on linear acceleration.
Even with a 10% increased riding velocity for the helmeted impacts, to take into account possible increased risk taking, the risk of concussion was still reduced by up to 46% when compared with the unhelmeted impacts with original velocity.
KTH neuronics researcher Madelen Fahlstedt says the simulations of the crashes—and their impact on the brain—drew upon data from the U.S. National Institutes of Health Visible Human Database, which captures the complex behavior of soft tissues.
"Together with researchers in Leuven, Belgium, we have recreated kinematics of three bike accidents where riders lost control of the situation, fell and hit their head," Fahlstedt said.
"We captured the cyclists' movements during the accidents and then applied the kinematics in terms of speed, just before the blow to the head, on a detailed computer model.”
To assess the impact on the brain, the researchers compared the results of their simulations with CT images, in which bleeding was evident in the brains of the crash victims. Then, they conducted simulations with and without helmets to see what would happen.
"We can see how much the brain tissue is stretched in the collisions, and that the tissue is stretched most in those areas where the impact occurred," she said.
"We saw a great reduction of stress on the bones, as a result of wearing a bike helmet, from 80 megapascals down to 10 megapascals. This figure indicates how much load you put on a given surface, and translated into more understandable terms, this means a reduction from 100-percent risk of skull fracture down to 10 percent for those wearing helmets.”
The researchers said there had been some controversy regarding the effectiveness of helmets in preventing head injuries among cyclists.
Epidemiological, experimental and computer simulation studies have suggested that helmets do indeed have a protective effect, whereas other studies based on epidemiological data have argued that there is no evidence that the helmet protects the brain.
The objective of this study was to evaluate the protective effect of a helmet in single bicycle accident reconstructions using detailed finite element simulations. The results of this study show that the brain injury risk and risk of skull fracture could have been reduced in these three cases if a helmet had been worn.
Madelen Fahlstedt et al. The protective effect of a helmet in three bicycle accidents—A finite element study, Accident Analysis & Prevention (2016).
Why only cycling safety helmets and not step ladder safety helmets, car occupant safety helmets or old-lady-slipping-on-icy-footpath helmets?
srw
It's a bit more complicated than that...
Scroll down the page. It confirms that increasing the number of cyclists increases cyclist safety by much more than other interventions.
Justinslow
Lovely jubbly
- Location
- Suffolk
Well as @Mugshot pointed out they seems to be an interest in bike helmets.
But to be fair I guess the findings could be applied to a bike helmet on a head during "any" activity in the event of a head impact.
It simply states how a helmet helps.
Big Andy
Über Member
- Location
- Huddersfield & Leicester
I assume because that is what they decided to study. Perhaps there isnt any debate on the benefits of step ladder safety helmets?
Big Andy
Über Member
- Location
- Huddersfield & Leicester
An interesting read. Makes some assertions that counter some of the claims regarding helmets.
Helmets prove test of time
13 July 2015. Twenty-five years ago Victoria became the first jurisdiction in the world to make bike helmets compulsory, and the results have confounded the skeptics.
Helmets have proved to be a highly effective injury prevention device.
And they have won broad acceptance from the riding community, with counts in Melbourne showing more than 99 per cent of riders with helmets.
Because wearing helmets has become normalised behaviour in the state, they do not have any negative effect on the growth of riding.
According to the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) in 1990, 24 cyclists died on the state's roads, following 34 the year before - more than triple the number of cyclists who were killed on Victorian roads last year (10).
TAC chief executive officer Janet Dore hailed the 25-year milestone, praising the dramatic reduction in deaths and severe brain injuries from bike crashes since the ground-breaking legislation was introduced.
"Studies in recent years show that wearing a helmet is the single most significant factor in reducing the magnitude of head and brain injury in a crash," Ms Dore said.
The TAC receives around 1000 claims from injured cyclists each year. In the past five years, just six per cent of these were for head or brain injuries.
In 2013, a TAC survey of 200 injured cyclists found 81 per cent thought wearing a helmet helped prevent a more serious injury. Those who didn't agree said so because their head was not involved in the impact.
"To reduce road fatalities by more than half—including cyclists—in the past quarter of a century is a fantastic achievement, especially given cycling's ever-growing popularity," Ms Dore said.
"Add to that the bike safety education programs rolled out in primary schools across the state and dedicated bike lanes in urban areas and you can see a really positive trend that's emerged in cyclist safety in Victoria.
"The challenge now is to make even greater gains in preventing road trauma and accept that we all have a role to play in achieving our vision of zero deaths and serious injuries."
Some further statistics:
- cyclist injuries recorded between 2010 and 2013: 78 per cent were recorded as wearing a helmet; 5 per cent not wearing a helmet and 17 per cent were unknown (Victoria Police data).
- 28 per cent of killed or seriously injured children (<18 years of age) were recorded as not wearing a helmet, compared to 5 per cent of adults aged 26 and over (Victoria Police data).
Big Andy
Über Member
- Location
- Huddersfield & Leicester
I am however still against compulsion.
srw
It's a bit more complicated than that...
That's a lie. The data to rebut it has been supplied many times in this thread.
