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

Felloffmebike

I'm sure this has been discussed before but I'm interested in a lot of recent comments about wearing or not wearing a helmet. It never occurred to me not to wear one but recently I'm picking up a lot of people who seem to have a different view. Why is that? 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.

I'm not looking to start an argument, just interested in the different views.

Mod note

Title changed - this can hopefully be considered the definitive helmet thread that can be pointed to whenever anyone wants to start another discussion on the subject - I'll put a link from the FAQs to it also

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Comments

PokeHerKing

doozerie wrote:

It actually can, as addressed at various points during the thread.

Could you point me to those spots please? Sorry, new to the cycling forum and haven't the time or patience to read through the whole thread.

Thanks

tomasrojo

One unambiguous, but thankfully rare, drawback to wearing a helmet is asphyxiation in children. It's not a cycling issue, per se, but children sometimes go from cycling to climbing activities without taking off the helmet, the helmet gets caught in branches or climbing bars, and the child is seriously harmed or dies. There are warnings on helmets very often now about not wearing the helmet except on a bike.

A potential direct drawback is your head being bigger. This, theoretically, can convert near misses into hits, given how your reflexes work when you fall (throw your hands out and absorb the shock with your arms; it isn't unusual for the head to come quite close to the ground in this process). The greater effective diameter can also increase rotational acceleration (or has been shown to in lab tests; whether it happens much in the real world is contestable), and this can exacerbate diffuse axonal injuries, which is where the layers of the brain shear away from each other.

None of that is manifestly clear either though. The bit about not letting kids climb wearing a helmet is good advice though. That one is clear.

WindomEarle

Chuchote wrote: »

Seriously, though, I was in Holland a few years ago and was chatting to friends, and (secondhand…) one had a friend who was a young brain surgeon and who was pressing him to wear a helmet because of the head injuries he'd seen; he said that the feeling among brain specialists over there is that helmet use would be a good thing.

Yes, it may well be a good thing - for cycling, walking, driving and going drinking.

But why do many of us (including me) only wear a helmet when we cycle, and not for any other risky activities?

tomasrojo wrote: »

Traffic light discipline is better in higher-income areas, I think, too. I don't have a statistical source for that.

Jeez, definitely not in my personal experience. The fastest most blatant red light jumping that I've seen has been at the Luas bridge in Dundrum.

Chuchote

WindomEarle wrote: »

Yes, it may well be a good thing - for cycling, walking, driving and going drinking.

But why do many of us (including me) only wear a helmet when we cycle, and not for any other risky activities?

Mm. Do we, though? We wear helmets when rock climbing, when hurling (though oddly not when playing soccer, where people head the ball)…

Jeez, definitely not in my personal experience. The fastest most blatant red light jumping that I've seen has been at the Luas bridge in Dundrum.

+1m%

Part of the l'Oreal Mercedes syndrome, where many drivers of expensive cars take the attitude "Out of my way, peasant, my time is important."

CramCycle

PokeHerKing wrote: »

Could you point me to those spots please? Sorry, new to the cycling forum and haven't the time or patience to read through the whole thread.

Thanks

I know one of them is from me as I now have quite annoying neck problems as during a crash my helmet caught the cross bar of a rear window and snapped it back. If I didn't have a helmet, it would not have happened. I might also have cycled at a different speed, meaning I might not have even been there for the incident to occur.

This is an anecdote and should not be read as a reason not to wear a helmet, much like my old college friends story about being plastered and splitting his helmet open (thus saving his life in his story) on a cycle in to town one night should be a reason to wear helmets.

Chips Lovell

WindomEarle wrote: »

But why do many of us (including me) only wear a helmet when we cycle, and not for any other risky activities?

Sentiment. Most people believe cycling is far more dangerous than many other activities, e.g. "you're taking your life in your own hands on the roads".

Whether that belief is rational or not is rarely examined.

doozerie

PokeHerKing wrote: »

Could you point me to those spots please? Sorry, new to the cycling forum and haven't the time or patience to read through the whole thread.

Thanks

Ditto.

Dermot Illogical

PokeHerKing wrote: »

Could you point me to those spots please? Sorry, new to the cycling forum and haven't the time or patience to read through the whole thread.

Thanks

Search the thread for "rotational" and it should find you that stuff. Knock yourself out.

Seweryn

Chuchote wrote: »

Mm. Do we, though? We wear helmets when rock climbing, when hurling (though oddly not when playing soccer, where people head the ball)…."

What about driving? That is more dangerous than all of the above activities?

PokeHerKing

doozerie wrote:

Ditto.

Ha! Fair enough, I thought you'd have a particular study/post in mind when you made that claim.

I'll have a Google on the subject tonight.

Lumen

PokeHerKing wrote: »

Ha! Fair enough, I thought you'd have a particular study/post in mind when you made that claim.

I'll have a Google on the subject tonight.

You could start at the beginning of the thread and stop at the point where you feel like arguments are being repeated.

It won't take very long.

tomasrojo

This guy posts on the UK CTC forum, and he gives what I remember as a pretty complete explanation of why he doesn't wear a helmet anymore (I don't agree with all of them).

http://mjr.towers.org.uk/proj/cyclynn/helmets

If nothing else, it does collect quite a few of the more common arguments and references in one short article.

endagibson

Dermot Illogical wrote: »

Knock yourself out.

Wearing a reading helmet may reduce the chance of that happening.

Chuchote

Dermot Illogical wrote: »

Search the thread for "rotational" and it should find you that stuff. Knock yourself out.

(But only if wearing a helmet while knocking yourself out.)

HivemindXX

Chuchote wrote: »

Mm. Do we, though? We wear helmets when rock climbing, when hurling (though oddly not when playing soccer, where people head the ball)…

Right, although people wear helmets while hurling because it is mandatory right?

I think the original point is that being drunk is pretty dangerous based on the accident statistics but yet people never wear helmets for that (unless they have ones with beer cans on the side). We also know that car occupants die of head injuries but for some reason the "but if it saves even one life" argument is not deployed in an effort to make car helmets mandatory.

Carawaystick

Chuchote wrote: »

Mm. Do we, though? We wear helmets when rock climbing

Rock climbing helmets are designed to protect the wearer against falling stones, and have a secondary protective use to reduce the impact of banging a wearers skull against rock while not performing a climbing move. They are absolutely not designed to protect from impacts from falls.

There is very little chance of falling stones at an indoor climbing centre, which is why no one at Awesome Walls for example, wears a helmet.

Chuchote

If only they could be designed more beautifully. I got a MIPS helmet and I look like Ming the Merciless in it.

endagibson

Chuchote wrote: »

If only they could be designed more beautifully. I got a MIPS helmet and I look like Ming the Merciless in it.

And the problem is?

Chuchote

HivemindXX wrote: »

Right, although people wear helmets while hurling because it is mandatory right?

I think kids were getting blinded because the ball moves so fast and with such force.

Eamonnator

Chuchote wrote: »

If only they could be designed more beautifully. I got a MIPS helmet and I look like Ming the Merciless in it.

Is that the MEP with the beard? Luke something or other? or the chap in Flash Gordon?

Chuchote

Flash's nemesis, with the huge globular head. Though I lack the straggly goatee.

NiallBoo

Eamonnator wrote: »

Is that the MEP with the beard? Luke something or other? or the chap in Flash Gordon?

They both have the dodgy facial hair.

It gives +2 protection against road-rash, but -1 healing.

Chuchote

Ming the Merciless

I love Sean nos

Bosnia and Herzegovina repeal helmet law.

Tenzor07

I love Sean nos wrote: »

Bosnia and Herzegovina repeal helmet law.

Great news, now for Australia next, and may cause other jurisdictions to reconsider any mandatory helmet laws...

Chips Lovell

I expect the campaign for mandatory DIY helmets to start up straight away:

Comparing data for other activities, Woodward and his team found that the risk of cycling on the road for half an hour, three times a week, was the same as it was for engaging in DIY at home twice a week.

Cycling was seen as five times safer than for going horse-riding for an hour and a half twice a week, 140 times less hazardous than spending half a day skiing four or five times a year, and 530 times less dangerous than playing rugby once every three weeks.

You'd be a fool not to.

buffalo

Jep Gambardella wrote: »

mandatory DIY helmets

I read that as 'helmets that you make yourself via DIY should be mandatory'.

It'd make for interesting designs if nothing else...

Chips Lovell

Paper maché, toilet roll tubes, double-sided sticky tape. Job done.

Fian

Not absolutely sure if this is the right thread for this - but I think it probably is. Not a post about whether helmets should be mandatory, rather a question relating to helmets.

I have had 2 helmets chewed up by my dog, kids leaving doors open, dog getting access to parts of the house she is not supposed to have and finding something with plenty of scent on it to chew on. No longer really a pup but she is less than 18 months old, I am hoping she will calm down in the next year or so.

Anyway I have a replacement in the post. My question is - is there any kibnd of (waterproof/weatherproof) spray i could treat the helmet with? Some kind of really bitter or foul tasting chemical that would not poison the dog? Basically i want something to make her not want to chew on my next helmet.

Actually I will cross post this question into the pets forum too, maybe this is not so much the wrong thread as the wrong forum.

tomasrojo

As far as I know, this forum is for all helmet posts, not just partisan bickering!

Put an Ikea hat rack in your hall way and leave it up there? Has coat hooks too.