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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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AstraMonti

magicbastarder wrote: »

also, if i drive without a seatbelt, i'd definitely be more cautious driving. maybe i should stop wearing a seatbelt.

Stop with this argument please. A seatbelt has been proven to save lives, especially with a combination of an airbag. A helmet has not, it's nothing but a piece of foam.

magicbastarder

it's a perfectly legitimate argument to make if we are talking about the effect safety equipment has on behaviour. i'm not talking about the safety implications once an accident does take place.

but i'm quite happy to argue about the safety aspect of helmets, given that one probably saved my nose from being broken once. and it was nothing to do with my behavious being affected by the helmet.

monument

AltAccount wrote: »

As rebuttals go, this line of argument is really scraping the bottom of the barrel IMHO.

may as well stop wearing seat belts in case they spontaneously strangle you or stop locking the bleach away from your toddler in case you have a disinfectant emergency and your whole family gets Ebola because you couldn't get to the cleaning products quickly enough.

I'm not pro-compulsory helmets, but this isn't a valid argument not to.

magicbastarder wrote: »

to echo the two above posts - what you're suggesting is that whatever object they hit was within reach of the helmet, but not their head? that's a specious argument, especially given the damage visible; you'd be looking at a difference at best of less than an inch. and neither photo would suggest a glancing blow. you're really just grasping at straws with that one.

also, if i drive without a seatbelt, i'd definitely be more cautious driving. maybe i should stop wearing a seatbelt.

In a lot, of these rare cases, an inch will matter a lot. For example, if the body is still moving, and slowing, and a helmet hitting before and thus faster than a empty head would that could cause worse damage overall.

In such a case a helmet may reduce the risk of surface injury but increase the risk of traumatic brain injury or rotational injuries.

But possable results such as traumatic brain injury or rotational injuries are left out of the simplistic "helmets are good" and talking about details is "scraping the bottom of the barrel" arguments.

There have been threads on here showing people saying my helmet save me because they had no surface damage but some if these people did not get checked out for skull or brain injury and it turned out at least one or two did have mild injuries of those types.

AltAccount

monument wrote: »

In a lot, of these rare cases, an inch will matter a lot. For example, if the body is still moving, and slowing, and a helmet hitting before and thus faster than a empty head would that could cause worse damage overall.

In such a case a helmet may reduce the risk of surface injury but increase the risk of traumatic brain injury or rotational injuries.

I'm sorry, neither of these points particularly make sense to me. Can you elaborate please?

tomasrojo

AltAccount wrote: »

I'm sorry, neither of these points particularly make sense to me. Can you elaborate please?

There are a few papers published, cited up-thread I think, that said that helmets can make rotational injuries worse by increasing the effective diameter of the head and increasing the coefficient of friction (scalp and blood has much less drag than polystyrene and plastic). The strap of the helmet can also contribute to neck injuries.

There's a recent paper published that sets out to gainsay the idea of increased rotational injuries, but I'm not sure how good it is.

On the near-miss point, I believe that quite a lot of falls, not just from bikes, result in the had stopping quite near to the ground, with the arms taking the brunt of the blow. If you add on a few cm of extra diameter, you might find your head hitting the road, since your reflexes are calibrated for a smaller head. It's unproven, and possibly unprovable.

In other helmet-related news, compromise reached on Spain's helmet law. No all-ages universal helmet law, as originally planned, but still quite a lot more law than most other European countries.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=85728284&postcount=84

tomasrojo

tomasrojo wrote: »

It's unproven, and possibly unprovable.

Actually, can think of how it could be demonstrated (or disproven), but I don't see anyone paying for a study.

Capt'n Midnight

A hard shell full face motorcycle helmet will protect your head and face, there is no argument about this.

Mountain bikers and racers tend to wear helmets a lot more than average so there isn't much point in trying to force them to wear helmets.

A lot of casual cyclists wear helmets incorrectly, high at the front and with loose straps, these will offer almost zero protection if involved with a collision with a motorist travelling at average speed.

The message should be "if you are going to wear a helmet, do it properly"

Helmet legislation is typically aimed at people who don't cycle in a risky manner or even at higher speeds, a large fraction of whom wear helmets in a fashion that reduces their effectiveness.

A bike helmet will offer significant protection if you fall off your bike at 20Kmph and don't catch your head on the tarmac or hit it against a kerb. ( I reckon on one fall a year , and that's usually something stupid I've done especially by not taking enough care on obviously slippery roads. )

It won't offer much protection if a head is hit by a vehicle travelling at 40kmph

AstraMonti

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

A bike helmet will offer significant protection if you fall off your bike at 20Kmph and don't catch your head on the tarmac or hit it against a kerb. ( I reckon on one fall a year , and that's usually something stupid I've done especially by not taking enough care on obviously slippery roads. )

Significant, really? Based on what study?

Capt'n Midnight

AstraMonti wrote: »

Significant, really? Based on what study?

oh dear, it's you know the whole standards thing for bicycle helmets

Because if they didn't offer significant protection in at least some scenarios then it would be illegal to sell them as safety gear.

Again the point here is that they can't offer anything remotely close to the level of protection that a real motorbike helmet would offer if you were hit by a motor vehicle travelling at normal motorist speeds.

The federal government is withdrawing its long-standing claim that bicycle helmets prevent 85% of head injuries, in response to a petition filed by WABA under the federal Data Quality Act.

monument

Insightful letter to the BMJ on the British Medical Association support of helmets:

For many years the British Medical Association opposed compulsory cycle helmets on the basis that they would reduce rates of cycling. It only changed this policy as a result of the Ontario study. Apart from this single isolated study in unusual circumstances (high rates of voluntary wearing and no enforcement of the law) all studies of the effects of cycle helmet legislation show that the rates of cycling fall. The serious doubts about the study raised by this new work must surely raise questions about whether the BMA should continue with this policy.

The BMA already says that legislation should only be introduced when rates of helmet-wearing are already high, as they were in Ontario, but this nuance is not widely recognised...

...Whilst there are risks to cyclists that can and should be reduced it is time for us to also to consider the deaths that are caused by a morbid preoccupation with cycle danger.

Read it in full under the second headline here: http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2674?tab=responses

AstraMonti

Significant is the wrong word, it's misleading and it's exactly why we are in this religious-like attitude about the magic hats.

If you want to word it right just say "Under extremely specific conditions, helmets might provide some adequate padding to the head".

Anything beyond this line, IMO, is plain ridiculous.

doozerie

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

A bike helmet will offer significant protection if you fall off your bike at 20Kmph and don't catch your head on the tarmac or hit it against a kerb.

Bear in mind that the focus of helmet testing (last time I read up on it) is projecting the helmet, with a weighted form inside it, from a height directly onto a hard object. The shape of the hard object is varied to mimic different surfaces and from what I recall the shapes include a rounded surface, a flat surface to mimic "road", and an edged surface to mimic kerb. Essentially the test mimics a fall from the bike while the rider is stationary and I don't believe there is any part of the testing that tries to take anything other than entirely downward momentum into account. As such, falling off your bike at 20kpm is, to the best of my knowledge, untested, as is falling off at 50kph or arguably (depending on how close you believe it to be to stationary) at 5kph.

As Astramonti says, the subtlety of the wording can hugely influence the meaning that people take from a sentence so given the sensitivity of this topic I think it's important not to imply an accepted/proven degree of protection for which a typical helmet is not actually tested.

I've not read the testing standards in a while though so I'd be keen to hear if they've changed (i.e. improved) in that time. I suspect not, given that there appears to be no strong demand from the greater public that the testing standards change (or if such a demand exists it doesn't get reported in the media that I typically read). Hence the importance of a thread like this, where such things can be raised and discussed rationally and assumptions can be challenged so that we all come away from it perhaps better informed but at least more sceptical/questioning of assumptions that the likes of helmet manufacturers are quite happy that we simply swallow wholesale.

magicbastarder

AstraMonti wrote: »

Significant is the wrong word, it's misleading and it's exactly why we are in this religious-like attitude about the magic hats.

interesting that you use the word 'religious', because i often see 'unproven effect' being taken as meaning 'negligible effect' by people campaigning against a mandatory law.
'has not been proven to' does not mean 'has been proven not to'.

i would be against a mandatory law too, but i don't ride without a helmet.

Mucco

magicbastarder wrote: »

don't forget that the breakage in the polystyrene is not necessarily indicative of the impact; helmets are designed to work *by* breaking; that's one of the main ways they absorb the impact. still, looks like a bad enough scrape.

I'm interested in mechanisms of how helmets absorb the energy in a fall. How does the polystyrene breaking absorb the energy - chemical bonds breaking? Has anyone done calculations as to how much energy this would absorb?

MajesticDonkey

AstraMonti wrote: »

Anything beyond this line, IMO, is plain ridiculous.

Forgive my ignorance (if that's what you'd call it), but in my opinion, and I'm sure in the opinion of the majority of cyclists out there, saying that a helmet does not offer good protection is not plain ridiculous - it's completely and utterly ridiculous.

Surely it's quite obvious that wearing a helmet will protect the head from general falls, no? Surely it's quite obvious that any accidents where the helmet is "to blame" could be viewed as "freak accidents"? It is to me. Please explain the contrary for anyone that disagrees, without stating "it hasn't been proven". Something doesn't need to be proven to be obvious.

Capt'n Midnight

monument wrote: »

Insightful letter to the BMJ on the British Medical Association support of helmets:

This from DCC

Unfortunatly the article is behind a paywall :mad:

A letter from two medics in this week's British Medical Journal calling into question the British Medical Association's stance on bicycle helmet wearing.

The BMA originally did not support helmet wearning but on the basis of one Canadian publication switched to being pro-helmet.

Time for another change perhaps?

http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f4340?etoc

steamengine

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

Forgive my ignorance (if that's what you'd call it), but in my opinion, and I'm sure in the opinion of the majority of cyclists out there, saying that a helmet does not offer good protection is not plain ridiculous - it's completely and utterly ridiculous.

Surely it's quite obvious that wearing a helmet will protect the head from general falls, no? Surely it's quite obvious that any accidents where the helmet is "to blame" could be viewed as "freak accidents"? It is to me. Please explain the contrary for anyone that disagrees, without stating "it hasn't been proven". Something doesn't need to be proven to be obvious.

+1............it's like being on a sinking ship and refusing to wear a lifejacket because by jumping into the water from the deck one could snap one's neck, or one could choke using the whistle. !

AstraMonti

magicbastarder wrote: »

i would be against a mandatory law too, but i don't ride without a helmet.

I don't think anyone will ever ask you not to put one if that's what you like.

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

Forgive my ignorance (if that's what you'd call it), but in my opinion, and I'm sure in the opinion of the majority of cyclists out there, saying that a helmet does not offer good protection is not plain ridiculous - it's completely and utterly ridiculous.

Sure let's inject some group thinking to make your opinion stronger. Nah. Tell me, exactly, how does it offer good protection. I mean, really break it down to me.

Something doesn't need to be proven to be obvious.

See? That's why I call it religious-like attitude. Yes it has to be proved, and no it's not obvious. As I said before, in very certain conditions it might be helpful, but calling it "significant protection" is , again IMO, plainly wrong.

I've no problem with helmets, if you want to wear one, wear, just don't tell the rest that they're in danger if they don't wear one.

MajesticDonkey

You sound very much like you have a large chip on your shoulder regarding this.

AstraMonti wrote: »

Sure let's inject some group thinking to make your opinion stronger. Nah. Tell me, exactly, how does it offer good protection. I mean, really break it down to me.

Yeah, seeing as you brought it up, let's inject some of that group thinking. No (club) cyclist I know would go cycling without a helmet. I'm simply giving MY experience. I already asked someone to break down to me how it does the contrary. Tell me:

Do you think the selling of helmets is just a big marketing stunt?
If not, why are they being sold and promoted as "safety equipment"?

AstraMonti wrote: »

See? That's why I call it religious-like attitude. Yes it has to be proved, and no it's not obvious. As I said before, in very certain conditions it might be helpful, but calling it "significant protection" is , again IMO, plainly wrong.

Well, IMO, it is in very certain conditions that the helmet might do more damage than be helpful.

AstraMonti wrote: »

I've no problem with helmets, if you want to wear one, wear, just don't tell the rest that they're in danger if they don't wear one.

I didn't. To be honest, from your "tone of voice" in that post, you are the one pushing that helmets are the source of all evil - not me saying the opposite.

Like I said, these are all personal opinions and experiences.

doozerie

MajesticDonkey wrote:

Surely it's quite obvious that wearing a helmet will protect the head from general falls, no?

Quite obvious? No. Possible? Yes. Likely? Well that depends entirely on circumstances, it depends on what you mean by "general fall", it depends on the helmet design (do you land on the back of your head? - if so then a skateboarding helmet might provide better protection than a cycling helmet), it depends on the speed at which your head hits another object, it depends on whether you are wearing the helmet correctly, it depends on whether you put as much instinctive effort into preventing your head colliding with an object as you would without a helmet (i.e. are you putting too much faith in your helmet), it depends on whether your helmet snags on anything during your fall, etc., etc.

To take another example, the statistics clearly show that lots of people die in car collisions every year whereas the number of cyclists that dies is extremely low by comparison. Is it therefore obvious that we should all just stop travelling by car due to its apparent risk to our lives? Generalisations are dubious at the best of times, add in some righteous indignation and they become utterly silly.

MajesticDonkey

doozerie wrote: »

To take another example, the statistics clearly show that lots of people die in car collisions every year whereas the number of cyclists that dies is extremely low by comparison.

Is it because they wear helmets? Maybe motorists should start wearing them.

steamengine wrote: »

..it's like being on a sinking ship and refusing to wear a lifejacket because by jumping into the water from the deck one could snap one's neck

It's more like insisting that passengers on sailing ships have plenty of lifebelts, but those on modern steamships (for example, the Titanic) don't need them, as modern ships are perfectly safe and nothing bad ever happens on them.

droidus

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

Something doesn't need to be proven to be obvious.

Er.. you haven't read this thread have you? If I were you I'd take a step back, start from the beginning, and maybe have a look at how helmets are tested and rated before you say anything else...

magicbastarder

doozerie wrote: »

To take another example, the statistics clearly show that lots of people die in car collisions every year whereas the number of cyclists that dies is extremely low by comparison.

according to this BMJ article, it's about an equal risk.
http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2674?tab=responses

lots more people are hurt in car accidents primarily because there are far more miles travelled in cars than on bikes. but as the article above mentions, the (roughly equivalent) danger for cyclists is amply countered by the health benefits.

MajesticDonkey

droidus wrote: »

Er.. you haven't read this thread have you? If I were you I'd take a step back, start from the beginning, and maybe have a look at how helmets are tested and rated before you say anything else...

I've read some of the first few pages, and the last 5-6 pages. I probably won't read the other 30 pages.

droidus

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

I've read some of the first few pages, and the last 5-6 pages. I probably won't read the other 30 pages.

Well, the answers you seek are in there... somewhere.

tomasrojo

It does seem perverse to argue that the subject of such intense promotion and at times compulsion might not be very worthwhile, but, as Ben Goldacre's editorial in the BMJ said, their direct benefit has, after several decades, turned out to be too modest to detect.

There may be a compelling explanation why a very effective device in practice has virtually no effect, but I've yet to hear the definitive answer.

doozerie

magicbastarder wrote: »

according to this BMJ article, it's about an equal risk.
http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2674?tab=responses

lots more people are hurt in car accidents primarily because there are far more miles travelled in cars than on bikes. but as the article above mentions, the (roughly equivalent) danger for cyclists is amply countered by the health benefits.

I wasn't suggesting that the risk was hugely in favour of cyclists, I was saying that to some it would be an "obvious" conclusion to draw. My point was that something "obvious" does not always live up to its name.

The reality is that things are rarely obvious, and this applies to the benefits, or not, of cycling helmets as much as to anything else. Unfortunately though the debate frequently ends up in arguments because everyone has their own definition of "obvious" and it rarely matches with anyone else's definition.

smacl

doozerie wrote: »

...it depends on what you mean by "general fall", it depends on the helmet design (do you land on the back of your head? - if so then a skateboarding helmet might provide better protection than a cycling helmet), it depends on the speed at which your head hits another object, it depends on whether you are wearing the helmet correctly, it depends on whether you put as much instinctive effort into preventing your head colliding with an object as you would without a helmet (i.e. are you putting too much faith in your helmet), it depends on whether your helmet snags on anything during your fall, etc., etc.

So basically what you are saying is that there are so many variables in play that the potential benefit, or potential extra danger, in wearing a helmet is extremely difficult to determine. Many of the studies seem to focus on situations where head trauma has required medical attention, or simulation of impacts under different scenarios, as opposed to surveying a cycling population that wears helmets ,and determining the frequency of accidents where the helmet was or was not beneficial. On this thread there have been a number of anecdotal cases where the helmet was of benefit, and one that I'm aware of (CramCycle) where the helmet was the cause of increased injury. It would be interesting to do a larger study of regular Irish cyclists to get a flavour of the number of incidences where the helmet had positive / negative value over a period of years cycling, and document the circumstances of the accidents.

For example, in three years of regular cycling, mostly rural leisure some urban commute, I've had two spills. On static fall getting used to cleats, the other towing my daughter through a cattle grid on the Mayo greenway. Neither involved head injury. Over the same period I've witnessed two other accidents close up, one where a helmet wasn't worn when my brother in-law got taken out by a car pulling into a drive and ended up in hospital with a couple of stitches to the head. Another on a sportive where wheels touched and one guy hit the deck hard on the shoulder, helmet worn in this instance but didn't affect the outcome one way or another.

I'm also aware first hand of the negatives involved with helmets, where both my daughters and wife hate them, and my daughters cycle less as a result.

rollingscone

Ahem,