Bicycle helmets do almost nothing to prevent concussions
gearfinder.bicycling.com
gearfinder.bicycling.com
It is very strongly pro-helmet. NOWHERE in the article does it suggest you should not wear a helmet.
It's about how to make helmets work better, specifically against concussions. Summary: pay more to get a helmet equipped with something called MIPS.
"The new rotation-dampening systems may not be perfect, but they are the biggest step forward in decades. The choices cyclists make with their money matter. You can pretend to protect your brain, or you can spend more money and get closer to actually doing it."
This MIPS style helmet is a large step forward in helmets. The standard helmet test is a just a straight drop from 6 feet with the helmet perfectly vertical. This is not how crashes happen.
Crashes happen while moving. There's some rotational stuff going on there, and that's what MIPS tries to focus on. Their tests[2] focus on this. An aspect of brain injury is diffuse axonal injury or when your brain undergoes unreasonable acceleration. The MIPS helmet has two shells so the outer one moves while your brain doesn't.
> President Barack Obama said that if he had a son, he might not let him play football; even some former NFL athletes agree.
This was refreshing to hear. Malcolm Gladwell compares football to dogfighting because football players can experience remarkable head trauma[3]. For me, a severe traumatic brain injury survivor, it's hard to see someone willingly put themselves through a brain injury and even harder to see the public glorifying a sport I see as dogfighting.
[1]:http://www.mipshelmet.com/home/
[2]:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8W5X0s2AhU @ 0:29
[3]:http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/offensive-play
And possibly submarine PR for a patent holder.
In places like New York, where their Citi Bike scheme has had huge success without helmets (23 million miles of riding, no deaths), utility cycling (commuting) has been made safe through a huge investment in the segregation of cycles from cars and pedestrians. The health benefits to the city are huge (as well as reducing congestion) and you get people of all ages cycling now.
In Australia where helmets are a legal requirement, city cycle schemes are failing, but this may also be to do with a lack in building out segregated cycle infrastructure as part of these schemes. It is still a mainly hardcore, male activity there.
The point is, helmets and cycling create flame wars with anecdotal evidence in favour "how it saved my life" and the response being that the health benefits to society of cycling far out weigh the risks of not wearing one (i.e. It's calculated in the UK, that a helmet law would kill 235 people per year more through obesity related deaths).
When I trundle to the shops or pop into town I wear a cap (being bald brings it's own problems), but should I go out on a club ride or go off-roading I wear a helmet as the risk of falling off is higher. I also wear one when I'm out after dark.
Wear one if you want, don't wear one. Just make sure you are out there riding. The health risks far outweigh the perceived risk of falling off your bike.
The real problem isn't helmets, it's the lack of segregating cycles from pedestrians and motorised vehicles. Making people feel safe cycling to and from shops, homes, schools and their place of work.
The point is, you are very much involved in creating flame wars by labelling the pro side as people who only have their superstitial, anecdotal fairy tales, while saying the contra side has all the cold, hard scientific facts.
Let's just leave it at that.
http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f3817?ijkey=I5vHBog6FhaaL...
I was in a collision a two months ago. The driver hit me on purpose, because I had call him a wanker, he became self defining in this, by swiping me with the rear of his car, thankfully the relative speed difference would have been at most 10mph, so I only had minor injury (three fractures).
The police, who have a job to collect evidence, were not remotely accepting that I was not doing anything wrong. My arm was injured, my head obviously not, so before the ambulance arrived someone had helped me remove it, and clip it to the holder on my bag. Immediately the police were questioning me, asking why I wasn't wearing my helmet when the accident happened.
My head never came close to hitting the ground during the impact.
The fact is that people are very judgemental. Cyclists who wear helmets tend not to be the ones who cycle straight through junctions at red lights whilst smoking a spliff such as the space cadet I saw this Monday the 6th, 9:30am, Highgate.
It was interesting, that despite the obvious location of the collision, A lane that the car should not have been in, the Police were been told off by the paramedics for been hard on me, taking me off gas+air (mild anesthetic) so I could be breathalised for signs of alcohol consumption would be one good example of how I feal they acted poorly. Only after they found my pilots license did the police start to treat me with any dignity or respect, it was frankly shameful, as the other party had already admitted he used his car to injure me to a witness. Best of all, the driver isn't even been charged with assault.
Many Ozzies cycle recreationally.
Helmet laws are definitely a major impediment to cycling as transport. Distances, and infrastructure issues are an impediment too. It's not Amsterdam where most journeys are <5km on flat roads on cycle lanes, but it could work for more people than it does work for.
Calculated by whom? Do you have any more information on how the calculator arrived at this figure? To me 235 seems a lot more precise than I would have expected.
The real issue is actually making cyclist safer, not making them feel safer. Even segregated paths are not a solution if they have to cross traffic.
I am not sure how to solve this problem short of pushing oil up to a $1000 a barrel - even then I suspect a lot of drivers would rather give up eating rather than give up their car.
Why ? Because if they are improperly designed like say their design doesn't match up with roundabouts or crossings etc then it is actually more dangerous to use them. Likewise often the cycle lanes have drains which can catch tyres.
And you are being pretty ridiculous by mentioning the health benefits. Cycling without adequate infrastructure is dangerous. Much more dangerous than a bit of a cardio. It is far better for people's health to educate them to stand up and take a walk a few times a day.
Fix the infrastructure first. Then start encouraging the family to ride to work or school.
Wearing the helmet doesn't just add a certain amount of padding to the head without any negative side effects: For example, motorists keep less distance while overtaking you [1] and making helmets mandatory reduces cycling by up to a third [2].
I would really hope that people would look at advocating helmets as a public health intervention, and judge all its effects together.
[1] http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/articles/releases/overtaking11090... [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410838/?tool=pu...
This is pure hyperbole. As someone who has been hit by 6 cars, most accidents are minor. Sure you will end up worse off, but only a couple have I not been able to ride away from, and that was because my wheel was damaged.
Of course, I started to wear a helmet after about the 3rd time.
You are far less worried about risk than me - if I had been hit 6 times by cars while on a bike I would not even be able to look at a bike without feeling ill let alone ride one.
Learning these rules really makes all the difference. Would you prefer to get into an accident and not get killed (thanks to a helmet), or to significantly reduce your chances of getting into an accidents altogether?
A note on gear: get all the lights (front, back, laser lane) and reflectors (for individual spokes and tires too) that you can, set them up to blink, and use a bell and a mirror
However, I used to be strongly in favour of mandatory helmet laws. Now I tend to think they need to be more targeted and used as a blend of changes. I think riding on footpaths should be allowed (with a strict speed limit) without helmets, as well as on separated bikepaths, again with a speed limit. On roads they should be mandatory.
This is thinking from the 1950s. All of these things have failed dramatically.
Anyway, if it was to me, then
a) I'm a cyclist (over 6000km and 115,000 vertical meters this year. That's further than I drove).
b) Of course pedestrians deserve space. I'd prefer to change the laws to allow non-helmeted riding on separated bike paths only, but that would be useless as where I live most separated bike paths don't link up which means people must either ride on the road or (illegally) on the footpath to get between them. In a world where not everywhere is Copenhagen or Amsterdam I'd prefer to see children ride to school with their parents on footpaths than not ride. I'd prefer to see people who worry about helmet hair ride to work on footpaths and separated bike paths than not ride. Where I live both these things are currently illegal.
c) Yes. Riding on roads needs to be made safe. That does not preclude encouraging more diverse transport choices by making other changes too.
I find too many cycling advocates come from entrenched pro or anti-helmet positions and aren't prepared to look for compromises. That isn't helpful overall.
- Side impact from vehicles turning across the bicycle lane. This is the most common cause of fatalities in road accidents in London, and if the vehicle is going at speed, nothing can be done with or without a helmet. Usually, however, the vehicle is slowing to turn, or just clips the rider who hasn't had time to react. When this happened to me, I banged into the side of the van which was cutting me off, and my helmet kept my head from hitting the vehicle, likely right at the temple, which could have caused significant damage.
- Unintended dismount. I find a huge number of "accidents" are really accidents that were just barely prevented by a quick manoeuver, which often leaves the cyclist on the ground. I have avoided collisions quite frequently, but still ended up doing a little barrel roll off the bike. In these cases, I may not be moving fast, but it is nice knowing my helmet will keep me from a kerb to the head.
-Scrapes and abrasions. This is the most painful injury, and one of my most gruesome accidents involved a nasty abrasion on my face - had I not been wearing a helmet, it would have probably meant about half of my scalp was rubbed off as well, so very happy to have been wearing a helmet in that instance.
The "crash test dummy" proof that we don't need helmets doesn't stack up in my experience because I think a confident cyclist is more likely to have oblique and "minor" accidents rather than major direct collisions, and major head trauma is just not going to be prevented by a $40 piece of foam and plastic.
Helmets work. Governments around the world wouldn't be making them mandatory just to screw with people.
The $40 helmet is one of the great success stories of the past half-century. Like seat belts, air bags, and smoke detectors, bike helmets save countless lives every year. They do a stellar job of preventing catastrophic skull fractures, plus dings and scrapes from low-hanging tree branches and other common nuisances.
Also, surely it depends on which type of helmet we are talking about? Talking about "helmets" in general does not make much sense when there are so many of them adhering to several different standards.
There's nothing inherently particularly unsafe about cycling (at least no more unsafe than many everyday activities), even while sharing the road with cars.
The only thing that makes cycling unsafe in certain countries are the drivers, and the culture that puts cars above other traffic to the point where it's apparently okay to run over the odd annoying cyclist.
Comparing cycling with walking on foot is, well, unusual to me to say the least. Of course, you can fall down walking as well, but as a cyclist, you are faster and you are sharing the road with other bigger/heavier vehicles. I would not dream of going on a bike to cycle in and around my town (somewhat hilly terrain, relatively narrow roads) without a helmet.
And yet, the actual level of cycling deaths is comparable to pedestrians. It's quite low.
The way to solve these problems is to reduce the abuse of motorised transport.
The benefit of the helmet is prevent a crack in the shell, your skull, so your brains don't spill out onto the pavement in a crash. It's not perfect, but given your are traveling at high rates of speed on a hard surface, the insurance is your brain mostly intact inside the shell versus a scrambled mess on the ground.
Preventing concussions - the yolk from slamming into the inside of the shell - is a hard problem. The brain is floating in liquid - the cerebrospinal fluid. To take another example, drop a ping pong ball into a glass of water. Now try to move fast without the ball hitting the side of the glass. The amount of padding on the outside of the glass won't do much to prevent the ball from hitting the inside of the glass.
It's not just crashes you need to worry about. Even roller coasters cause concussions, albeit small ones, but still with cognitive decrements.
The helmet did not touch the ground, but if it had, it would have prevent countless scrapes in my face or scalp. Not deadly fractures, but something painful and probably disfiguring.
My point is: a proper helmet (think BMX) prevents a lot more than fractures.
The gloves surely had a lot of work to do as well, and saved my left hand from any scratches.
"Bicycle helmets do an outstanding job of keeping our skulls intact in a major crash. But they do almost nothing to prevent concussions and other significant brain injuries."
The major message of the article is that the standards ignore the topic.
"The government standard for bike helmets will in all likelihood never change. "With the CPSC, those standards are carved into stone," David Thom told me. "It may take an act of Congress to revise them.""
But luckily:
"In the late 1990s a Swedish neurosurgeon named Hans Von Holst grew weary of seeing helmet-wearing patients who'd suffered brain injuries in bicycle and equestrian accidents. In most cases, the damage had been caused by rotational acceleration. Working with Peter Halldin, a mechanical engineer at Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology (...)" they discovered something new:
"Studies have shown that most bike falls result in an impact angle between 30 and 45 degrees. The Swedish team invented a test rig that examined drops at those more realistic angles.
By 2008, after years of sketching, testing, and prototyping, they had a working model. Their MIPS (Multi-directional Impact Protection System) helmet contained a low-friction slip plate between the head and EPS liner. On impact, the helmet rotates independent of the MIPS liner, absorbing some rotational acceleration."
The $40 helmet is one of the great success stories of the
past half-century. Like seat belts, air bags, and smoke
detectors, bike helmets save countless lives every year.
They do a stellar job of preventing catastrophic skull
fractures, plus dings and scrapes from low-hanging tree
branches and other common nuisances.
"If you crash at 15 miles per hour in a normal helmet, your head will be subjected to around 220G [G-force], whereas the new design absorbs more of the impact and means you experience around 70G instead," says Surabhi.
Or to be less glib, the statistics he quotes seems very open for interpretation. "Stat #3: As more people buckled on helmets, brain injuries also increased". Need I say it? I think we're all pretty post hoc ergo propter hoc'd out at this point
It would be have been nice if the article mentioned this option.
But certainly not safer for any pedestrians or cyclists on the road.
Bicycle helmets in general are not supposed to be re-used after a crash; a Hovding is no exception.
http://jalopnik.com/5582380/how-the-truth-about-motorcycle-h...
"Ford has long been controversial with major helmet makers, authoring 'Blowing the Lid Off,' the seminal expose of the flawed Snell M2005 helmet safety standard. In it, he proved through objective scientific testing that helmets made to that standard transmitted more forces to riders' heads than some less expensive helmets made to the DOT standard. Ford's article turned conventional wisdom on its head, proving that certain less-expensive DOT helmets were, according to his testing, capable of transmitting lower forces to a rider's head than the typically more expensive Snell M2005 brain buckets."
The original article: http://web.archive.org/web/20070305231245/http://www.motorcy...
More seriously the people who ride bicycles on streets with cars are much braver than me. I have been lucky in life and seen few examples of serious accidents, but of those I have experienced first hand around 25% have involved people who were riding bicycles.
Personally I feel some chilling effect (sometimes I cycle without helmet, so some friction is certainly there). But it's not very strong.
On the other hand, I have never consciously experienced a difference in car driver's behaviour whether I wear a helmet or not.
And I certainly am not cycling in any riskier way when I'm wearing my helmet. If you do, you should really think about what you're doing.
They have to be, because they don't have budgets and per diems. The pro-helmet side makes a fortune from selling helmets. The anti-helmet side runs on passion - whether that passion is for the truth as they see it (or as experiment and study have shown), or simply 'government out of my cornflakes' libertarian rage.
Anyone who is discouraged from cycling due to having to wear a helmet would more than likely also be discouraged by many other reasons - bad drivers, bad weather, flat tire, etc.
The biggest threats from cars in my experience is when the driver doesn't know you are there.
They look sturdy. Lots of people ride with them in Bogotá. I use a motorcycle helmet as it helps a lot against the usual rains.
No silly social issues against helmets. Everyone minds their own business here.
I assume it meant "the acceleration of a naked head upon hitting the surface is estimated as 1000g", as I can't make sense of it otherwise. It would also help to say what height he dropped it from or the impact speed.
Considering that a lot of people use in-ear headphones or casually check their texts while biking in Copenhagen, the added distractions of a helmet still seems like a net win.
As for the potential Darwin prize winners with earplugs - this is something that should be a matter of legislation first, not the stupid useless helmets.
On this basis and on other points, I believe the helmet causes me far more danger than the helmet protects me from. I am speaking personally: I don't know if this applies to other people and I would personally not dare to use headphones or check texts while cycling.
I obviously will never know for sure if I'm right about this, but generally not wearing a helmet is the decision I believe is correct for me.