Helmets - the definitive thread.. ** Mod Note - Please read Opening Post **

Dermot Illogical

monkeybutter wrote: »

Nah, I want to see his point of view. Do you have a point of view yourself there?

Sure do. I don't believe that cycling in normal conditions is so unsafe as to require protection beyond that provided by a good chamois.
I also like the wind in my hair.

I don't mind anyone else wearing a lid, as it's none of my business. I dislike being told what to do by helmet advocates, but don't mind hearing their views as long as they aren't trying to be the boss of me.

It's all about freedom.

CramCycle

monkeybutter wrote: »

If you drove a car would you chose one with abs, seat belts and air bags or one without any of these?

I have driven many classic cars with several of these missing, the seatbelt is designed to protect the dashbard from damage by you in a collision in many instances of classic cars and would cut you in half alot of the time

monkeybutter wrote: »

Just trying to see the logic behind not wearing one.

Sometimes during the summer when it's hot I will not wear one.

But I have never come up with a logical reason not to wear one the rest of the year other than I don't feel like it or they look gay or I didn't want to have to bring one around after locking the bike up somewhere.

Rotational spinal/neck injury, I would use one if I was concerned about wether I could have an open casket at my funeral or not but in that situation I wouldn't really care that much.

hardCopy

monkeybutter wrote: »

Would you choose the same car with optional safety features or without?

Would you drive a car without a helmet?

monkeybutter

hardCopy wrote: »

Would you drive a car without a helmet?

Yes because of the other safety equipment.

Would I be safer with a helmet on though? Probably yeah as long as it didn't block my view.

hardCopy

monkeybutter wrote: »

Yes because of the other safety equipment.

Would I be safer with a helmet on though? Probably yeah as long as it didn't block my view.

Why wouldn't you use every available safety aid?

monument

monkeybutter wrote: »

Yes because of the other safety equipment.

Would I be safer with a helmet on though? Probably yeah as long as it didn't block my view.

You have no other safety equipment while walking, so why don't you wear a helmet?

doozerie

monkeybutter wrote:

I wouldn't choose a car without abs, seat belts etc.

If it's hot I will sometimes go for the cooler option yeah. I'm choosing comfort. On a day like today I'd go with a helmet.

Presumably then you are happy that there is no contradiction in those two choices on your part. So why does your question to Seweryn seem to imply that his making the same choices as you would be somehow hypocritical?

monkeybutter

monument wrote: »

You have no other safety equipment while walking, so why don't you wear a helmet?

You are making a logical point. Maybe I should wear a helmet when out walking. There's no logical reason not to.

monkeybutter

doozerie wrote: »

Presumably then you are happy that there is no contradiction in those two choices on your part. So why does your question to Seweryn seem to imply that his making the same choices as you would be somehow hypocritical?

I'm clearly not, I had a reason for my choice. Is he not wearing one based on comfort?

doozerie

monkeybutter wrote:

I'm clearly not, I had a reason for my choice. Is he not wearing one based on comfort?

I'm well confused now.

You say you don't wear a helmet sometimes - fair enough, that's your choice, and mine too on occasion as it happens.

You give reasons such as "you don't feel like it", "it looks gay", and "you don't want to have to carry it" - fine, at least one of those choices has me scratching my head but that hardly matters as you didn't even have to provide reasons in the first place.

Now you are apparently asking/challenging someone else to provide their reasons for making the same choice - why? Is this one of those "my reasons are bigger than your reasons" discussions?

NeedMoreGears

My own approach to wearing a helmet is much the same as Doozerie's above.

I generally wear one except

a). On short spins down to the shops or whatever (despite the fact that I can hit 35-40kph just by freewheeling down the hill)

b). when I'm not cycling

c). on the turbo


Mostly it's force of habit combined with my view that on balance it will reduce injuries in certain relatively low energy impacts. It also tends to put me in the right frame of mind from a safety perspective - much the same as putting on a seat belt and checking the mirrors when I get into a car (yeah I know helmets and seat belts are not necessarily directly comparable).

Having said that, I doubt a helmet will do a lot for me in a high speed collision with a motor vehicle. If others want to wear one/not wear one, it's up to them.

Seweryn

monkeybutter wrote: »

Would you choose the same car with optional safety features or without?

If both cars costs the same then I possibly would, otherwise I am not sure and I wouldn't care much. I didn't want to go that route really. My point was that driving is more likely to cause head injuries than cycling, so if you wear a helmet on your bike then doing it so when driving makes even more sense.

monkeybutter wrote: »

Would I be safer with a helmet on though? Probably yeah as long as it didn't block my view.

You probably would, and there are helmets designed for drivers. Why they are not popular? Why you can't order one with your new car? Surely, it is in nobody's interest to tell us that driving is deadly dangerous.

Amazingfun

My 2cents:

I'm a long time cyclist in Dublin CC, and have never worn a helmet. Like many others, I feel both speed and awareness of surroundings are things that factor in to safety on the road, and being that I am a female over 40 now, I tend not to cycle like a speed-demon young one, lol, so that is in my favor.

I've never had a problem (yet!) that wasn't handled by slowing down and/or looking ahead/around and anticipating the idiocy of others. That last one has saved me more times than I can count at this stage! I think my scariest moments have come mainly from Bus Drivers who swerve into bike lanes too quickly sometimes, but I've managed to stay alive and unscathed so far.

**Someone above mentioned the 'wind in the hair' thing. I admit this remains one of cycling greatest pleasures for me as I have hair down to the middle of my back and I often use my morning cycle as a replacement for a hair dryer, haha....in the good weather that is!

tomasrojo

Raam wrote: »

Does wearing a helmet not make it safer if you fall, even a little bit? And those who advocate not wearing one, is it a safety thing or a style thing or a macho man thing or what? Or is there some evidence that a helmet doesnt actually give you any protection or even that wearing one could be dangerous in itself.

On the basis of what I consider the better evidence (the population-level data for head injury rates in jurisdictions that have raised helmet-wearing rapidly over a few years), I have concluded that helmet-wearing doesn't raise or diminish your chances of a serious head injury very much. A helmet is an object approximately the size of your head, so it is quite an encumbrance when you're off the bike.

So I stopped wearing one after Dorothy Robinson's studies started appearing in the scientific literature. It was around that time that I came across the data for the relative risk of cycling compared with other common activities, and realised that how I felt before I was exposed to a lot of road safety campaigns was actually correct: utility cycling is not dangerous.

I don't "advocate not wearing one", but I think the whole subject is a waste of time and energy that could be better spent on strategies to diminish the likelihood of bike-motor vehicle collisions in the first place, which is actually what most people who wear helmets are afraid of and are trying to mitigate.

Raam

I've said it before but the reason I wear one stems from seeing a friend knocked down in a low speed accident and going over to help him and being acme to see through to his skull where he hit the kerb. This from the days before helmets were common place.

I don't actually believe that a helmet will take effect in the vast majority of incidents that might befall a cyclist but there might just be the one that it does.

Besides the lip on the front of mine keeps the rain out of my eyes.

Wishbone Ash

Amazingfun wrote: »

I tend not to cycle like a speed-demon young one, lol, so that is in my favor

You assume that cycling safely will protect you from being involved in an accident but unfortunately it doesn't prevent others from being careless. I was brought down twice in 2012 by the actions of careless motorists and I was cycling in a safe manner on both occasions.

RayCun

NeedMoreGears wrote: »

Having said that, I doubt a helmet will do a lot for me in a high speed collision with a motor vehicle.

I doubt that too. If a car drives straight into you at 60 km/h no helmet in the world is going to help. But my guess is that a lot of cases where a bike crash is caused by a car, what happens is that a car pulls out in front of a bike, or overtakes too close and clips the bike's handlebars, or the bike is doored, and so on. So the collision the helmet is protecting you in is you vs the road/kerb/car, at the speed you were cycling.

galwaycyclist

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

You assume that cycling safely will protect you from being involved in an accident but unfortunately it doesn't prevent others from being careless. I was brought down twice in 2012 by the actions of careless motorists and I was cycling in a safe manner on both occasions.

Uh no she doesn't appear to assume anything of the kind. If you read the rest of her post.

Amazingfun wrote: »

I've never had a problem (yet!) that wasn't handled by slowing down and/or looking ahead/around and anticipating the idiocy of others. That last one has saved me more times than I can count at this stage! I think my scariest moments have come mainly from Bus Drivers who swerve into bike lanes too quickly sometimes, but I've managed to stay alive and unscathed so far.

**Someone above mentioned the 'wind in the hair' thing. I admit this remains one of cycling greatest pleasures for me as I have hair down to the middle of my back and I often use my morning cycle as a replacement for a hair dryer, haha....in the good weather that is!

She is clearly talking about cycling defensively. Cycling safely, as you put it, could imply the cyclist as a passive participant following certain "rules" regardless of the situation. How do you know you were cycling "safely"?

droidus

RayCun wrote: »

I doubt that too. If a car drives straight into you at 60 km/h no helmet in the world is going to help. But my guess is that a lot of cases where a bike crash is caused by a car, what happens is that a car pulls out in front of a bike, or overtakes too close and clips the bike's handlebars, or the bike is doored, and so on. So the collision the helmet is protecting you in is you vs the road/kerb/car, at the speed you were cycling.

The apocryphal German study estimated a reduction of serious head injury of 80% if appropriate helmets were worn in cars.

RayCun

Sounds apocryphal all right. Between seat belts, airbags, and roll cages, drivers already have a lot of protection in low-to-mid speed collisions. How many collisions are going to fall in the sweet spot between "gets past all other safety devices" and "might as well be wearing a hat"?
Or by "appropriate helmet" do they mean "tougher than a motorcycle helmet", and by "reduction in serious head injuries" do they mean "let's ignore everything that happened below the neck"?

droidus

That study does exist IIRC, I think I saw a link to it here. Regardless it seems that a lot of people think that mandatory helmets for drivers could save lives and prevent injury

'Helmets would be substantially more effective than many vehicle design options"

http://www.cycle-helmets.com/car-helmets-atsb.html

Some more here:

http://www.copenhagenize.com/2010/05/driving-without-dying-helmets-for.html

Mandatory helmets for drivers?

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/18301/maryland-considering-mandatory-helmets-for-drivers/


It seems to me that every argument that can be made for cycling with a helmet can also be made for driving with a helmet.

Dermot Illogical

RayCun wrote: »

Between seat belts, airbags, and roll cages, drivers already have a lot of protection in low-to-mid speed collisions. How many collisions are going to fall in the sweet spot between "gets past all other safety devices" and "might as well be wearing a hat"?

Still....what harm can it do to wear one? If there's any possibility that it could help, how could anyone object?

RayCun

droidus wrote: »

That study does exist IIRC, I think I saw a link to it here. Regardless it seems that a lot of people think that mandatory helmets for drivers could save lives and prevent injury

'Helmets would be substantially more effective than many vehicle design options"

http://www.cycle-helmets.com/car-helmets-atsb.html

Almost as effective as driver airbags, and more effective than side impact airbags and improved restraints.

droidus wrote: »

Some more here:
http://www.copenhagenize.com/2010/05/driving-without-dying-helmets-for.html

Same study

droidus wrote: »

Mandatory helmets for drivers?

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/18301/maryland-considering-mandatory-helmets-for-drivers/

This article was posted as an April Fool's joke.

droidus wrote: »

It seems to me that every argument that can be made for cycling with a helmet can also be made for driving with a helmet.

Cars come equipped with a wide range of safety measures that are more effective than helmets to protect the driver in case of collisions. Bikes don't, it's helmets or nothing.

CramCycle

RayCun wrote: »

Cars come equipped with a wide range of safety measures that are more effective than helmets to protect the driver in case of collisions. Bikes don't, it's helmets or nothing.

Cars come with a wide range of safety measures that have been shown to be useful/effective over time. Helmets for cyclists are one of the only claimed safety devices for bicycles but for some reason has little or no known evidence showing them to be either useful or safer in comparison to not wearing a helmet.

tomasrojo

Well, in addition to helmets, there are also the options of spine protection and "air bags" (Hövding).

Robotic exoskeletons will be next.

RayCun

CramCycle wrote: »

Cars come with a wide range of safety measures that have been shown to be useful/effective over time. Helmets for cyclists are one of the only claimed safety devices for bicycles but for some reason has little or no known evidence showing them to be either useful or safer in comparison to not wearing a helmet.

Two things
1. a lot of money is spent on testing cars and their safety devices with crash test dummies etc. The same amount will never be spent on testing bike helmets
2. the real world tests we have of car safety devices - car crashes - are subject to a lot of investigation. Any crash that does serious damage to a car is recorded, and over time you can see how many of these serious crashes resulted in serious injuries. Bike crashes aren't recorded in anything like as much detail. If someone gets wiped out by a truck an accident report will get filed. If someone is in a collision and is seriously injured, a report will be filed. If someone is in a collision and walks away, 99% of the time no report will be filed.
So the only data available is necessarily vague, "there was this amount of cycling, and this many head injuries. Now there is this amount of cycling and this many head injuries". Attributing any change, up or down, to helmets, would be crazy when there are so many other factors that aren't being measured.

droidus

RayCun wrote: »

Quote:
This article was posted as an April Fool's joke.

Ha. Sorry. But take a look round, this has been seriously proposed.

droidus

+

"Bike helmets make way more sense for motorists than cyclists.

If you are hit by a car while on a bike, a helmet will do very little to spare your brain as it decelerates from, say, 60kph to 0 in 3cm of foam.

If you are hit by a car while driving, a bike helmet will be much more effective because its role in deceleration occurs after the car's crumple zone (70cm+) has dissipated much of the force. That means when you smash your head against the windscreen or crumpled canopy, the velocity of your head is much much lower than in a car/bike collision.

An interesting study here that found bike helmets for motorists could reduce serious head injuries by up to 40% - much more effective than airbags.
http://www.monash.edu.au/muarc/reports/atsb160.html"

RayCun

As I said, in a head-on collision between bike and car a helmet will do no good. A helmet is going to be useful (if ever) when your head collides with the ground at cycling speed.

That study in the link compares the efficacy of driver helmets with padding the interior of the car, side airbags, and improved restraints. It's the same one referred to in one of your links a few posts up. It does not say helmets would be more effective than steering wheel airbags.

droidus

RayCun wrote: »

As I said, in a head-on collision between bike and car a helmet will do no good. A helmet is going to be useful (if ever) when your head collides with the ground at cycling speed.

That study in the link compares the efficacy of driver helmets with padding the interior of the car, side airbags, and improved restraints. It's the same one referred to in one of your links a few posts up. It does not say helmets would be more effective than steering wheel airbags.

Er... no. its a different study by the same people. The first one was published in 2004, the second in 1997.

Im also surprised you were able to find such a conclusive reply to claim that was never made.

The fact is that most cars don't have curtain airbags or padded interiors. Helmets are both the cheapest and most effective solution in these cases.

The estimated benefit for protective headwear (in the form of a helmet) is between $380 million (assuming a fully airbag equipped fleet) and $500 million (assuming no vehicles with airbags). Estimated harm benefits are also given for other protective measures such as air bags alone, both front and side-mounted bags, and improved seat belt systems and penetration resistant side window glazing. The benefits are presented in terms of the savings per vehicle for two discount rates, 5 and 7 per cent. At the former discount rate the estimated benefit in savings of head and face Harm are $154 per car for padding of the upper interior, and $476 and $626 for protective headwear for cars with and without airbags.