what's the difference between a watersports and cycling helmet

CamperMan

as the title

what's the difference between a watersports and cycling helmet.

I am asking this because I have a helmet I bought for kayaking http://www.worldofwatersports.co.uk/Waterwear.21/Yak_Kontour_helmet.211.html and never used it, and I want a helmet for cycling.. is this up to the same standards of protection as a cycling helmet?

Thanks

Mycroft H

CamperMan wrote: »

as the title

what's the difference between a watersports and cycling helmet.

I am asking this because I have a helmet I bought for kayaking http://www.worldofwatersports.co.uk/Waterwear.21/Yak_Kontour_helmet.211.html and never used it, and I want a helmet for cycling.. is this up to the same standards of protection as a cycling helmet?

Thanks

I would imagine it would be fine.


I used a climbing helmet as my lid for a week when I left my helmet at home when I was in College.



They are pretty tough and stand up to a lot of abuse ( I still looked like a tit though )

My head overheating wasnt an issue as it was the dead of winter and bollock cold.

doozerie

I don't know the answer to your question but this page has some interesting info on kayak helmets, including the following:

Any kayaking helmet you choose should protect your forehead, temples, ears, and back of the head. River obstructions are likely to damage the side of your head rather than the top.

That might suggest that the top of kayak helmets have less protection than cycling helmets, but at the same time they obviously do focus on protecting some of the same areas that cycling helmets do - forehead and temples in particular.

The main concern that springs to mind though is that a kayak helmet would not be ventilated enough for cycling.

Del2005

doozerie wrote: »

I don't know the answer to your question but this page has some interesting info on kayak helmets, including the following:

Any kayaking helmet you choose should protect your forehead, temples, ears, and back of the head. River obstructions are likely to damage the side of your head rather than the top.

That might suggest that the top of kayak helmets have less protection than cycling helmets, but at the same time they obviously do focus on protecting some of the same areas that cycling helmets do - forehead and temples in particular.

The main concern that springs to mind though is that a kayak helmet would not be ventilated enough for cycling.

I'd assume that is in addition to protecting your head. A helmet is designed to protect the skull, some helmets protect more than your skull. My only reference is the skull helmets some motorcyclists use, mainly in the US, compared to full face most use. Though both are legal for road use and protect the skull, falling off is a different matter.

Zen0

A kayak helmet and a cycling helmet are completely different animals.

A kayak helmet has to be tough. If you take a swim in rough water, particularly shallow rough water, it could take a bit of a bashing. It's designed to spare your head from the worst of those knocks. However, unless you are into jumping massive drops, I would think the requirement to absorb significant amounts of kinetic energy is less than applies to cyclists. Climbing helmets have a similar task, principally to deflect stuff falling on your head (rocks, chocks and cramponned buddies).

A cycling helmet is not meant to take knocks at all, until you and the road have a very sudden coming together. At this point, the cycle helmet is designed to absorb significant amounts of kinetic energy by deforming, permanently. Once this has happened, you need to buy a new helmet.

The two have very different design goals. That's not to say a paddling lid will not give your head some protection, but they are definitely not the same.

Mycroft H

Zen0 wrote: »

A kayak helmet and a cycling helmet are completely different animals.

A kayak helmet has to be tough. If you take a swim in rough water, particularly shallow rough water, it could take a bit of a bashing. It's designed to spare your head from the worst of those knocks. However, unless you are into jumping massive drops, I would think the requirement to absorb significant amounts of kinetic energy is less than applies to cyclists. Climbing helmets have a similar task, principally to deflect stuff falling on your head (rocks, chocks and cramponned buddies).

A cycling helmet is not meant to take knocks at all, until you and the road have a very sudden coming together. At this point, the cycle helmet is designed to absorb significant amounts of kinetic energy by deforming, permanently. Once this has happened, you need to buy a new helmet.

The two have very different design goals. That's not to say a paddling lid will not give your head some protection, but they are definitely not the same.

No, not the same, stronger. Petzyl rate the Ecrin Roc to 10kN while the Snell standard (more strict then the AUS/NZ standards), the most rigorous standards of bicycle lid tests, only test to 5kN.

Impacts are going to be greater in the a climbing/caving environment, hence the lid is tougher. The actual plastic is designed to deform in this case while keeping the head isolated from the impact by using a strong strapping system. They have saved my noggin on more then one occasion.

Proportionally the caving helmet is going to have to endure heavier impacts then then bicycle helmet ever will. Now in saying that, I'm not to sure what I'd prefer having in a fall. The stronger climbing helmet that I know is stronger in both strapping and strength of the shell or the weaker, softer bicycle helmet which would have a gentler deformation upon impact (though would it have too much deformation at speed? now that is the million dollar question)

galwaycyclist

Theoretically the climbing and kayaking helmets are intended to protect your skull while the cycling helmet is intended to reduce the energy imparted to your brain in an impact. The cycling helmet is supposed to do this by having a crushable liner that absorbs the impact energies. So as already stated cycling helmets are effectively disposable, they are a use once and throw away item. It has been theorised however that cycling helmets may increase the risk of your brain being subjected to rotational forces and hence injured by that mechanism. This is the type of brain injury boxers tend to get. The type.of impacts cycling helmets are rated for are simple falls at low speed. They are not rated for impacts with moving motor vehicles.

See http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1139.html for more information

CamperMan

galwaycyclist wrote: »

Theoretically the climbing and kayaking helmets are intended to protect your skull while the cycling helmet is intended to reduce the energy imparted to your brain in an impact. The cycling helmet is supposed to do this by having a crushable liner that absorbs the impact energies. So as already stated cycling helmets are effectively disposable, they are a use once and throw away item. It has been theorised however that cycling helmets may increase the risk of your brain being subjected to rotational forces and hence injured by that mechanism. This is the type of brain injury boxers tend to get. The type.of impacts cycling helmets are rated for are simple falls at low speed. They are not rated for impacts with moving motor vehicles.

See http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1139.html for more information

what would "low speeds" be.. 5 mph?

galwaycyclist

CamperMan wrote: »

what would "low speeds" be.. 5 mph?

Yep thats pretty much it. I don't think any of the stsndard cycle helmet tests have a significant forward motion component.

CamperMan

5 mph is useless, most of the time i am doing 15 mph on the MTB

doozerie

CamperMan wrote: »

5 mph is useless, most of the time i am doing 15 mph on the MTB

That's one of the reasons why helmets are not the miracle safety device that the hysterical calling for their use by some people would have you believe. At least one of the test of the ability of a helmet to withstand impact is carried out by essentially mounting the helmet on a weight and dropping it directly onto a hard surface (different tests use different shaped surfaces from what I can remember). On the bike the closest thing to such an impact is toppling over from a stationary position and your head falling directly onto the ground with the weight of your body behind it. In that scenario a helmet will probably protect you, assuming you land on the helmet rather than your chin, face, shoulder (in which case the helmet could result in greater danger to your neck, for example), etc. In any other kind of impact, whether the helmet will provide you with protection is debatable as is whether the presence of the helmet will actually introduce other dangers (helmet creates larger target area than a bare head, helmet may catch/snag on something in an impact while your bare head wouldn't have, etc.).

Basically, there is a lot of hype around cycling helmets which portrays them as essential to your safety. It's not as simple as that, to say the least.

Lumen

Just because a helmet isn't "designed" or "tested" to protect against a given impact force doesn't make it useless.

In a crash I'd rather be wearing a helmet, and if I didn't have a helmet I'd rather be wearing a woolly hat. My woolly hat isn't Snell tested either, AFAIK.

doozerie

I don't think that anyone is suggesting that a helmet is useless but any discussion of helmets should have room for rational debate about the questions around helmet testing (whether the testing is adequate to justify some of the claims, or assumptions, made for helmets) and the implied (in the media and in the bicycle helmet industry) "necessity" of a helmet when riding a bike. And in particular when comparing helmets designed and tested for different purposes it makes a lot of sense to focus on the design and testing in trying to determine whether a helmet is usable in a different context.

As for woolly hats, well as a raw material wool seems to work well for sheep. I've not heard of a single case of a sheep either having died or having been badly injured while riding their bike, therefore any protective material made of wool passes the media and public hysteria tests making all other tests moot. The ultimate protection would probably be provided by a tarmac hat though - I've yet to hear of an impact of a cyclist with the road where the planet came off worst so its tarmac layer is clearly very effective and we should perhaps steal a leaf from its book and wear such a layer ourselves.

tomasrojo

doozerie wrote: »

On the bike the closest thing to such an impact is toppling over from a stationary position and your head falling directly onto the ground with the weight of your body behind it.

The test headform in Europe has a mass of 5kg, so I'm not sure the bit in bold is true.

the human head weighs between 3.5 and 5.5 kilograms

http://www.strangequestions.com/question/How_much_does_the_human_head_weigh%253F_36

doozerie

tomasrojo wrote: »

The test headform in Europe has a mass of 5kg, so I'm not sure the bit in bold is true.

Fair point, I couldn't quite remember the details of the tests it has been so long since I read up on them so I clearly recalled it incorrectly. It does make me wonder though whether the test should take some element of body weight into account. Of the falls that I've had admittedly most of them have involved my head hitting the ground side on and therefore without the weight of my body behind it but I've had at least one over the bar spill where I landed head first with my body weight behind the impact so I wonder whether helmets are tested for that kind of scenario. Ironically, that was before I ever started to wear a helmet and my head demonstrated itself to be perfectly capable of dealing with the impact without harm (well, nothing more than a headache anyway) - I'm not too sure whether to be comforted by my head's apparent solidity though...