While practicing my toe edge, my board got stuck in the snow. I fell on my back and hit the back of my head on the packed snow. I had a mild concussion.
Never doing that again.
I wonder if skyiing is safer with respect to head injures.
But the next most important protection for snowboarding is a wrist rail protecting your os scaphoideus, it's the larger bone in your wrist (just at the base of the thumb) and it's the most common snowboarding injury as you fall backwards and instinctively reach out with the hands behind you and the impact most often fractures the wrist bones. This happens even with you standing still!
Wear a helmet. You’re protecting yourself from other things than just your own lack of skill. (not to mention it’s mandatory in many parts of the world now)
Your perspective just sounds like someone refusing to wear a seat belt in a car because when you were a kid they weren't mandatory or common in cars. I would hope we can agree that would be foolish.
> If you're an advanced practitioner and not doing anything crazy, the risk seems low.
It seems pretty arrogant to assume that you'll never have a bad fall just because you have a lot of experience. On top of that, you can't control other people; maybe someone less experienced than you, who is stretching their skills a little farther than they should be, collides with you and you slam your head into an icy patch. Your advanced experience might not be able to help you there.
> I learned (and taught) at a time where people didn't wear helmets.
I really hope, for the safety of your potential students, that you don't teach anymore.
No, it's a matter of how bad it can be without it, but also, how likely you are to fall on your head. For instance, concussions are still common in car accidents despite the safety belt. Do you wear a helmet in your car? following your reasoning, you should.
> I really hope, for the safety of your potential students, that you don't teach anymore.
Everyone is free to decide what level of risk they're willing to take. This is true of wearing a helmet while skiing, but many activities are potentially dangerous (driving, cycling, sunbathing...) and we don't accuse people doing these activities of being foolish.
I'm not advising anyone not to wear a helmet, but as long as I don't have the obligation to do so, I won't, because I feel it's more enjoyable to not wear them.
You are like those government, forcing some BS like sopa/pipa/etc. Of course, helmet promoting always gets much of upvotes online - but isn't it so hard to open your eyes for looking some cons, not only pros?
> I'd rather not be one of those "he died doing what he loved" guys when it is entirely preventable.
I do know such a guy, it was my schoolmate who rode a motorcycle and somehow he has rammed a car with his head. Good helmet might have saved his scull from a crack. Not being drunk on that moment might have save him IMO more likely.
The thing is, it takes a single event to ruin your life. You get a single bad concussion and your life will always be much worse afterwards. You won't be able to concentrate, you'll have issues remembering things, your moods may change, etc. The list is very long, and very gnarly.
You have one head, and for the foreseeable future, serious injuries have lasting consequences.
To me that seems like an awfully bone-headed (no pun intended) mindset to have about such a precious item. Your head is what makes you you. It's one thing to engage in dangerous activities that are nevertheless fun. Life would be boring otherwise. But it's entirely a different thing to willfully and deliberately avoid such an obvious and low-effort risk mitigation as wearing a helmet.
I'm an avid motorbike rider with more than a hundred thousand miles under my belt. I can count the number of times a helmet saved me on one finger. But that one single case would've completely ruined my life if the helmet wasn't there.
Here in Europe, I think Michael Schumacher's ski accident in 2013 changed peoples' attitudes.
When I started skiing in the mid-to-late 2000s, there was maybe a 50/50 split of helmet and non-helmet wearers on the pistes. Since the mid-2010s, it's become extremely rare to encounter anyone not wearing a helmet.
I've been skiing in three different countries in Europe this month and could count on two hands how many people I've seen not wearing a helmet among thousands with.
The benefit of snowboarding is that you are much less likely to have a horrific injury like a major leg bone shattering. Most injuries tend to be cracked tail bones or broken wrists. With the latter, you can learn to fall correctly and that minimises the risk. Essentially you want to fall on your arm, and then roll onto your shoulders and back instead of taking your entire weight on your hands.
How does this happen? I fell down on the button lift and was forced to ski down from the button lift in order to enter the lower part of the piste. I thought I had enough skills to do it, but instead I lost all control and went straight down and eventually was going out of bounds, flying in the air hitting the rock with my head mid-salto and flying into the far edge of the lower (blue) piste area.
That helmet saved my head that day, I had zero injuries, not even a mild pain. In hindsight, this was a really fun experience! (in hindsight)
I was a loose projectile as a beginner, and it took quite a while to learn how to become a guided projectile.
The answer is: it depends. Friend of mine got pretty badly concussed skiing a blue run (easy) without a helmet.
I've done both skiing and snowboarding, always wearing a helmet for both after similarly hitting my head on day 3 of snowboarding (though without the concussion). Plenty of falls on both but I've hit my head a lot less frequently skiing than snowboarding. Still, it can happen and, realistically, it only needs to happen once for you to experience life changing injuries.
Wear a helmet, always, regardless of whether you're skiing or snowboarding. And don't screw anything to it or be tempted to wear a camera attached to it (GoPro, Garmin, etc.).
The first few days of snowboarding, people fall a lot. I'd recommend learning on days when the snow is fresh and soft.
Knowing that they got 2" the day before you go up is nice but not indicative of what you'll find when you get there, especially on a busy mountain where fresh powder and courdory get skiied off very quickly. You don't want to learn on boiler plate!
Helmets also give a degree of protection from tree branches when riding in woods or glades.
And remember - nobody is perfect - edges catch, visual/audio distractions - and snow conditions can change unexpectedly. Not to mention there is always the risk of being hit by someone else.
I've been more hurt skiing more than snowboarding. No head injuries, but ~15 years ago I sprained my knee pretty bad snow skiing. When that healed, I switched to snowboarding and haven't skied since.
The most hurt I've been was tearing an ACL wakeboarding. I pretty much retired from going hard on the wakeboard since it beat me up more than any other sport I've done including fights sports like BJJ.
I had a helmet on, but I still felt pretty sick for a while after. I suspect it was a mild concussion...
Also I was wearing a helmet but I don't believe they will prevent concussions?