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Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

What do you suppose happened to the rest of skateboarding that pushed it in the opposite direction?

Watching the olympics this summer, it was amazing to watch the street skating events with none of the competitors wearing any sort of protective gear. And it’s not like they didn’t need it either. They were getting wrecked in falls to the point where some of the couldn’t even finish the competition.

It was nuts watching it, since my last exposure to the sport was from the 90s where Tony Hawk would be padded out to the nines while standing around giving an interview by the side of the park.

What is going on that made helmets so uncool that you wouldn’t even wear one if you knew you were going to fall on your head?

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You wouldn’t generally exceed 15mph street skating. Competent downhill skaters can reach 50mph+, with world record speeds exceeding 80mph.

That alone makes safety gear much more essential for downhill.

In addition, if someone shows up to a spot without adequate gear, crashes and badly hurts themselves, it can cause the spot to be blown for other riders. Downhill skateboarding is much easier when you’re on the good side of local residents and police.

Also, since DH communities tend to be very small and tight-knit, if someone gets hurt you hear about it. I’ve personally witnessed multiple incidents leading to broken spines, countless minor injuries, and have had one friend die while skating. Either you take safety seriously or pay the piper.

There are more factors than this, would probably make for an interesting sociology dissertation.

> You wouldn’t generally exceed 15mph street skating.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but I wonder what the velocity of one's head hitting the pavement is if you just stand still and fall over.

That's 0MPH, but it still seems like it'd be enough to do damage.

I watched an old guy die in a parking lot because of this. His hat blew off, he bent over to pick it up, and then fell forward onto his head. He died soon after. Now, he could have had some kind of other issues leading to this (he was elderly and had mobility issues). My wife parked while I ran over to render assistance, I called 911 while a military medic tried to revive him but it was too late.

So yeah, that can be enough (might have been a heart attack as a result of the shock, I am NOT a doctor, but he was gone by the time the ambulance arrived).

Also, one of the reasons street fighting is so dangerous has nothing to do with MMA dudes, it's when someone falls down and hits their head. This happens all the time. They sometimes die from the fall.

> You wouldn’t generally exceed 15mph street skating. Competent downhill skaters can reach 50mph+, with world record speeds exceeding 80mph.

it's all context, no?

You wouldn't try to trick over a 17ft drop on a longboard, either. [0]

[0]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/kzn58e/the-leap-of-faith-was...

Sheckler has done bigger and many kids do more than 17ft drops for fun. When it comes to falling in street skating there is a certain pattern to falling and knowing how to “fall correctly” almost like stuntman do without helmets in movies all the time. Stuntman do sometimes wear padding, but not always.

Bombing a hill is very different from skating a stair set. The speed at which you do tricks is manageable to be able to tumble your body correctly if you fall (and you’re ready for that fall usually) but bombing a hill is an enormous amount of speed and you can’t prepare yourself for an unknown rock that throws you off.

That’s another somewhat important difference too with street skating, for big tricks you triple check the area and often sweep it because of those tiny rocks.

So context does matter. I’m not advocating against helmets but these are incredibly different things.

Edit: and fwiw I’ve hurt myself far more bombing hills than I have skating something like the big four in ATL. Notice how they fall: https://youtu.be/Ban0D24Aip4

(And the reason they aren’t making this trick is ironically they are not going quite fast enough)

Edit 2: and because I’m reminiscing a bit, the big four is hard because the run up is pretty short. You need good bearings and small wheels to gather the speed required. The only time I’ve ever seriously hurt myself in 15+ years of skating was doing a dumb trick in a standing position. Helmets are important for things like vert for sure where it’s lots of speed and lots of height, and if my kids and I go out and skate we wear helmets (they’re small and I want to set a good example). But most of street skating can be treated as though you’re a trained stuntman (because you basically are)

That’s the way it is! If you’re going to do stuff like that, learning how to crash gracefully is something you should learn up front. Tuck and roll!

Agreed. For what it’s worth, I think street skaters should wear helmets most of the time.

The 17ft drop is equivalent to the 80mph example in my post, and should definitely involve a helmet, gloves and impact padding (which can be worn under clothes).

> What do you suppose happened to the rest of skateboarding that pushed it in the opposite direction?

Widdershin's response is excellent, but I'll add a bit more context: the physical similarities between a skateboard and a longboard are very superficial (we can barely trade any hardware at all); that extends to the respective communities, which also have disjoint histories.

Longboarders trace their roots to surfers; likely someone bored of waiting for a good wave has put skateboard trucks on their surfboard. Some niche longboarding cultures/disciplines were inspired by surfing/SUP (surfskate, pumptrack, land paddle), and one major longboarding discipline is a lot about moving on and around the board ("dancing" on it).

In these other longboarding communities (perhaps except pumptrack), you will see people using helmets and other safety gear much less often, and it's probably fair. But I've never, ever been dissed by any of these people for wearing a helmet, even if just cruising.

short answer: branding

long answer: branding

anecdotally, am a daily skateboarder and long time snowboarder who is guilty of having an ego, and even wear pads to protect a couple massive contusions (swellbos) but i never wear a helmet, so ill frame it like this: 95% of the time i am not that much at risk for serious head injury when skating, and even though i take it for granted, there is an element of knowing how to fall/bail early and skating just within my means.

however on a snowboard, i am much more acutely aware of the consequence -- my casual and super comfort "resting" level is like 25-35+ mph, which is a car accident, which is almost always a threat for serious head injury.

there is a huge difference between tripping at about walking/jogging speed and hitting your head versus at 35mph, and this realization happened after 15 winters of safe riding without a helmet.

the reality is, i am just not that worried about it -- ego or no ego, except when i snowboard, which i will not do without a helmet anymore.

./shrug

Not to mention the risk of getting hit by another snowboarder or skier.

Before 2009: very few adult skiers in Austria and Germany wore helmets, pretty much only the racers and children who were legally required to. I felt like a dork wearing mine, but I experienced a scary near-miss my first season on these relatively crowded slopes.

After 2009: at least 80% of adult skiers in Austria and Germany wear helmets, from the looks of things. Most frequent non-wearers are very old, permanently tanned Austrian men who literally have 5000+ ski days behind them or young ladies with nicely-done hair and make-up much more interested in getting good pictures for Instagram than actually skiing.

What happened in 2009? The Ministerpräsident (think US state governor) of Thuringia, Dieter Althaus, was flying down a black (expert) slope, turned onto a blue (beginner) slope with enough momentum behind him to go up it and crash into a lady from Slovakia.

He was in the hospital for weeks, living to earn a criminal judgment for negligent homicide, paying tens of thousands of Euro.

She died on the way to the hospital.

He was wearing a helmet.

She wasn't.

The absolute crush of helmet sales then and continued rates since are sometimes called the "Althaus-Effekt".

That's also the year Natasha Richardson died from a head injury she received while skiing. That was all over the news (at least in the US/Canada, and probably England).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha_Richardson#Injury_and_...

Interesting. I wonder if these 2009 events were a turning point worldwide. I recently returned to downhill skiing after last skiing in the 90s, and was absolutely shocked by the number of skiers wearing helmets. Like 90-95%. Whereas when I skied as a young man in the 90s, it was something like 0-2% (basically only a handful of children). The skier side of my brain still can’t get used to the idea of wearing one of these ridiculous things, but then again the logical side of my brain points out that I wear a helmet while cycling so it makes sense. Almost everything else about downhill skiing is pretty much the same today (the skis are shorter and fatter for some reason), but the helmet wearing was a massive sea change that happened without me.

For some reason you say? I don't think you could make a circle on the (empty, of course) slope with older skis :)

I cracked two helmets hitting my head on iced slopes. Every time I was able to stand back up (although dizzy and with a headache) and bless my initiative to wear a helmet. As they say, your mileage may vary.

Protective gear was always uncool in street skateboarding. Vert (Tony Hawk's main discipline) was the exception. From what I understand it's about being counterculture, punk etc. Today even bowl riders mostly don't wear helmets or pads, and crashing in a concrete bowl is arguably even worse than on a wooden ramp.

There's a big difference between the speeds you travel at in a bowl and in very skating.

Speed doesn’t matter when you hit your head.

I had a friend who fell while ice skating at the speed of a slow stroll, and hit the back of his head. He was dead a week later.

And just getting a concussion can result in measurably decreased mental capabilities for months.

Dad time: you’ve got one brain for your entire life. Stop relying on luck to keep it in working order.

> And just getting a concussion can result in measurably decreased mental capabilities for months.

Permanently, not months. All concussions result in some permanent damage, some moreso than others.

But it totally does matter when you fall and smack your elbow. OP mentioned that bowl skaters are wearing no protective gear (pads/helmets), not just talking about helmets.

The distance from 1M air out of the bowl to the bottom is a very long way!

It’s a style thing (as dumb as that is in practice).

You just don’t look “cool” switch back smithing down hollywoood 16 wearing a helmet.

I skated a ton growing up and it was beaten into you at skateparks how dumb you looked wearing a helmet. No major head injuries but definitely had some close calls. I look back and cringe and how stupid that was.

The "style" thing also applies to BMX - brakeless, no helmet and no knee/elbow pads.

Natural selection is rife.

The women's winner did wear a helmet - 13-year-old NISHIYA Momiji. I think because she was underage, the rules forced her to wear helmet.

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