The CycleChat Helmet Debate Thread

[MontyVeda]

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I'm no expert in head injuries through heading the ball in football, but given that so many people throughout the world (kids included) participate in football, if there were people constantly suffering brain injury, do you not think something might be done about it?
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is this the case with cycling too? Given that so many people throughout the world, (kids included) participate in cycling, are these people constantly suffering brain injury?

 

[shouldbeinbed]

Well you have your view, I have mine, I'm not as "hard nosed" as you would believe actually.

ok.

I'm no expert in head injuries through heading the ball in football, but given that so many people throughout the world (kids included) participate in football, if there were people constantly suffering brain injury, do you not think something might be done about it?

American football, mining, asbestos workers, loud industries. damaging and deeply injurious worker activities are allowed to run on for far far far longer than is good for the participants before the clamour gets too loud for the financial income imperative all round to be overcome.

Football has always have a very big financial imperative to get over. the financial and global impact of Cycling makes it less so than soccer and IIRC it was Andrei Kivilev's death that was the straw that broke the camels back in the sport side of cycling.
That straw has not yet snapped in other sports but in a few the creaks are being heard ever more loudly and in some damn big arenas. Go and read about American Football Dave Duerson is the guy jefmcg references or Junior Seau (player at the absolute peak of the pro game in his day), or the 1st and 2nd year rookies quitting pro football, or the promising college players refusing to turn professional and earn millions, or a recent dual sport (Baseball too) sensation Bo Jackson who now says he'd advise his children never to play Pro football and if he had his time again he'd be solely a baseball player.
As I mentioned Hundreds upon hundreds of damaged players and bereaved families have a billions of dollars law suit in its final stages. The idea of helmet less & padless football has been seriously suggested and younger players only get to play 'touch' football not the full contact
Your argument shows a very narrow strand and little apparent awareness of how long term, known about industrial injuries play out in various fields and of the clamours around head injury in any other physically active pursuits.

My old man played to a reasonable level back in the 70's with "real mans" balls, he's not lost it yet at 73.

ah right, a single anecdote defeats the increasing ranks of evidence and medial opinion.
There's 100 year old smokers, maybe we should all start puffing away on woodbines again. Also again as someone generally advocating helmets, your own example and put dogmatically as you have, does rather detract from your overall opinion that a helmet makes a head safer.

Use the football angle if you like but they are not all thickos, there's plenty of other muppets in other sports.

I never said all footballers were, I never mentioned footballers previously, I simply picked up on your comment that appeared to be associating intellect with earning power rather than physical coordination.
On that logic, high level scientists or the cleverer Mensa members not Donald Trump would be fighting it out for the US presidency. Your suggestion of raw intellect = money maker is not valid IMO and thats all I pointed out.

I shall leave it here though.

 

[ufkacbln]

How have the last few posts got through the mods? Seriously.
Irrelevant mumbo jumbo.

Given aside the reference to a West African symbol of female oppression......



Is there such a thing as relevant "mumbo-jumbo"

 

[ufkacbln]

Well you have your view, I have mine, I'm not as "hard nosed" as you would believe actually.
I'm no expert in head injuries through heading the ball in football, but given that so many people throughout the world (kids included) participate in football, if there were people constantly suffering brain injury, do you not think something might be done about it?
My old man played to a reasonable level back in the 70's with "real mans" balls, he's not lost it yet at 73.
Use the football angle if you like but they are not all thickos, there's plenty of other muppets in other sports.

The problem is that there is an acceptance of these head injuries
Cyclist falls and has head injury - why were they not wearing a helmet as they should prevent the injury
Footballers, boxers and others all have head injuries or long term issues due to head impacts
Pedestrian, driver, or anyone else and it is perfectly fine.

You raised football.

First of all one anecdote does not compare with the reported evidence. These "early footballers" do have problems and it has been frequently reported (but ignored. The classic dismissal of evidence rather than deal with the reality

Here is one such report

I work in imaging and it is know that footballers DO have problems from heading the ball. One report in "Radiology" showed that:

The study imaged the brains of 37 amateur soccer players, 21 to 44 years old, and found that players who reported “heading the ball” more frequently had microstructural changes in the white matter of their brains similar to those observed in patients with traumatic brain injury. These players also performed poorly on cognitive tests, compared with players who reported heading the ball less. The study, published online in June in Radiology, found evidence of a threshold—1,800 headings—above which the effects on memory begin to manifest.

There are campaigns in the US to have an age limit (10) where heading the ball is banned until that point. Others want the age to be 14, as succinctly put by the Sports Legacy Institute, and organisation campaigning on head injuries in sport:

“If we were to take a pillow and slam it as hard as we could against a child’s head, again and again, we would be charged with child abuse. But that’s exactly what it’s like when a player is hit in the head with a ball from pretty close.”

However whenever these question of head injuries are raised away from cycling they are dismissed as irrelevant, off topic or "this is a cycle forum" and a refusal to engage.



Perhaps the real point is that we SHOULD be concerned about head injuries as a whole rather than simply campaigning, and trying to enforce restrictions on a minority group


It may be cynical, but could it be that there is a vested interest in cycling head injuries because there it enables the whole motor lobby to transfer blame for their deficits and faults to the victim, whereas there is no such "benefit" to the sports bodies and no incentive to deal with head injuries

 

[mjr]

IIRC it was Andrei Kivilev's death that was the straw that broke the camels back in the sport side of cycling

I think so too, but I've found very little about Kivilev's fatal crash online except things like "a relatively low-speed (probably 35-kph) collision with two other racers on a slight uphill, some 40 kilometers from the St. Etienne finish of the second stage of last week’s Paris-Nice. [...] Kivilev fell face first on to the pavement and fractured his skull, which caused cerebral edema."

In other words, it seems it was a bike pile-up, a collision type that helmet manufacturers often warn that their helmets aren't designed for - plus he fell onto his face, which isn't covered by a helmet. Exploiting that death to force helmets onto racers isn't the worst thing UCI did under Verbruggen, but it seems double plus ungood.

 

[EnPassant]

There is a difference between helmet use for [football], american football and indeed amateur boxing (where helmet use has also been suspended I believe) and cycling.
In each of the first 3 hitting ones head is to be expected to varying degrees, for cycling they are only there as a prophylactic in the event an accident occurs (in the same way they are for Motorsport).

So firstly the issue of repeated head impacts (which is arguably increased in frequency and severity by helmet use) is not the reason for their promotion for cycling whereas it was/is for 2 of the above 3 mentioned sports and if introduced would also be for the 3rd. Since the argument here is that it is the brain hitting the inside of the skull that does the damage and not the skull hitting something else, the retraction of use in one of them (and discussion in the second) doesn't seem to me to be a valid argument against their use for prevention of injury in accidental one off circumstances*.

And secondly the risk compensation aspect is different in that if one is definitely going to hit ones head (or have it hit), one takes less care when a helmet is worn. If it is only there in case of an accident, the risk compensation whilst still existing is not necessarily going to increase the severity and frequency of hits.

*Although personally, having been convinced here that cycling helmets are not the safety feature they purport to be, I'm well aware that ceasing to use them for different reasoning in other areas will naturally be used as an argument for their removal in cycling, and this (as the current [non]efficacy of helmets stands) is a good thing, even if for the wrong reasons.

 

[jefmcg]

My old man played to a reasonable level back in the 70's with "real mans" balls, he's not lost it yet at 73.

Seriously? The fact that you know one person who doesn't show evidence for brain damage from an activity, does not prove or even indicate that an activity is safe. I grew up with a generation that didn't have baby or child car seats. No one I know or my family knew died. That doesn't mean leaving your kids unrestrained in a car is a good idea.

Also, it may be dose related - maybe your old man would be mentally more agile if he had cycled instead of playing football.

 

[shouldbeinbed]

There is a difference between helmet use for [football], american football and indeed amateur boxing (where helmet use has also been suspended I believe) and cycling.
In each of the first 3 hitting ones head is to be expected to varying degrees, for cycling they are only there as a prophylactic in the event an accident occurs (in the same way they are for Motorsport).

So firstly the issue of repeated head impacts (which is arguably increased in frequency and severity by helmet use) is not the reason for their promotion for cycling whereas it was/is for 2 of the above 3 mentioned sports and if introduced would also be for the 3rd. Since the argument here is that it is the brain hitting the inside of the skull that does the damage and not the skull hitting something else, the retraction of use in one of them (and discussion in the second) doesn't seem to me to be a valid argument against their use for prevention of injury in accidental one off circumstances*.

And secondly the risk compensation aspect is different in that if one is definitely going to hit ones head (or have it hit), one takes less care when a helmet is worn. If it is only there in case of an accident, the risk compensation whilst still existing is not necessarily going to increase the severity and frequency of hits.

*Although personally, having been convinced here that cycling helmets are not the safety feature they purport to be, I'm well aware that ceasing to use them for different reasoning in other areas will naturally be used as an argument for their removal in cycling, and this (as the current [non]efficacy of helmets stands) is a good thing, even if for the wrong reasons.

agree again but Gridiron is a high profile current & easily researched for the layperson example and was as near as on topic response to JS's argument that I could make so as not to increase his ire by veering further from the path than he is happy with But you can pick the other industries I mentioned and find the problems, vibration white finger, asbestosis, other lung diseases, deafness, carpal tunnel syndrome in typists, fossy jaw back in the days of matchmaking by hand. JS's idea that if heading a football was dangerous something would be done about it is blown out of the water by even superficial awareness of many other industries inside and outside of the sporting arena.

 

[EnPassant]

agree again but Gridiron is a high profile current & easily researched for the layperson example and was as near as on topic response to JS's argument that I could make so as not to increase his ire by veering further from the path than he is happy with But you can pick the other industries I mentioned and find the problems, vibration white finger, asbestosis, other lung diseases, deafness, carpal tunnel syndrome in typists, fossy jaw back in the days of matchmaking by hand. JS's idea that if heading a football was dangerous something would be done about it is blown out of the water by even superficial awareness of many other industries inside and outside of the sporting arena.

This is precisely why I believe this thread is worthwhile. It is hard to find unbiased information, one only has to search for 'cycle helmet safety' to find reams upon reams of utterly biased opinion.
Whilst there is undoubtedly some biased opinion and even bickering here, (points scoring, confirmation bias, etc etc) I believe that anyone genuinely attempting to discern the answer to the question 'should I wear a cycle helmet?' approached without preconceptions, has a better chance if they read this entire thread (and followed some of the links) than by a random search.
Yes, people make errors in logic; yes, some posts are only tangentially related; and yes, sometimes it wanders completely off-topic. But as you point out above this isn't necessarily a bad thing and ultimately this thread is as good a resource as I have ever found for determining the answer to the question.

 

[ufkacbln]

Which comes back to my cynicism

There s a massive benefit to the motoring lobby to be expolited with cyclist head injuries, but a massive (perceived) dis-benefit to the sports listed

Imagine the fuss if you took head contact with the ball from football

 

[srw]

There s a massive benefit to the motoring lobby to be expolited with cyclist head injuries,

There is?!

There's a small disbenefit in that cyclist head injuries are a minute part of what's pushing up insurance costs, but other than that the "motoring lobby" (aka motor manufacturers and a handful of gobby journalists and website owners) have some far jucier prospects on the horizon - notably self-driving cars. Which will make cycling even safer.

 

[ufkacbln]

There is?!

There's a small disbenefit in that cyclist head injuries are a minute part of what's pushing up insurance costs, but other than that the "motoring lobby" (aka motor manufacturers and a handful of gobby journalists and website owners) have some far jucier prospects on the horizon - notably self-driving cars. Which will make cycling even safer.

The fact is that you can kill, maim or injure thousands per year and then with the support of unprofessional opinions from paramedics et al, a few lying charities and a bunch of zealots you can with full support of the public pass the blame on to the victim for not preventing the injuries you have caused

That is a massive benefit

 

[srw]

The fact is that you can kill, maim or injure thousands per year and then with the support of unprofessional opinions from paramedics et al, a few lying charities and a bunch of zealots you can with full support of the public pass the blame on to the victim for not preventing the injuries you have caused

That is a massive benefit

For someone who so frequently, and correctly, points out that there's a lot of over-stating of the benefits of helmets by some organisations with an axe to grind it's odd that you've fallen into the same trap. There are only about 3,000 cyclists killed or seriously injured a year in this country in total. And any head injury causing concussion or worse counts as a serious injury. That includes all kinds of injury - not just head injuries caused by motorists.

You'd be verging on hyperbole if you said that there were "thousands a year" of cycling KSI in total. "Thousands" normally implies rather more than three thousand. Strip out all the injuries that are not head injuries caused by motorists (only about half of cycling injuries are caused by motorists) and there certainly aren't thousands.

I'd also disagree that there is a lot of blame-passing, or that there is a lot of benefit to the "motoring lobby" (which I'd argue doesn't really exist except as a fairly amorphous blob) from doing it - but those are matters of opinion rather than fact.

 

[ClichéGuevara]

If it's any consolation, my imaginary friend's leg is healing nicely.

 

[Shut Up Legs]

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/bike-helm...ll-likely-save-your-life-20160914-grg5mo.html

Cycling will never be popular in Australia, with attitudes like those demonstrated in this article.