Comment by rconti | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rconti | Hacker News Reader

There's some interesting research out there suggesting that head/neck injuries are actually more common among helmeted bicyclists than the non-helmeted. The factors include the extra weight of the helmet, the size of the helmet causing the helmeted head to strike the ground when an unhelmeted head would not have, and additional risks taken by helmeted riders (think: risk homeostasis). Unfortunately I can't find the link that was making the rounds a few months ago.

In my own personal anecdotes, I have had one major bicycle wreck where I somersaulted into a car, one bicycle wreck where my chain snapped and I flung myself over the bars onto the street, and a couple of low-speed (~10mph) motorcycle offs where I collided with the ground but my head did not touch. Though there was one motorcycle case where the side of my helmet dragged on the ground slightly from about 5mph; it's arguable whether my head would have hit.

That said, I have hit my head incredibly hard snowboarding, after catching an edge at very low speed ("last run of the day!" type thing), and always always always wear a helmet every single time I ride a bicycle or motorcycle or snowboard, just as I always wear a seatbelt in the car. It's just a habit, and a good one.

Bicycling magazine had an excellent article that delved into this: http://www.bicycling.com/sites/default/files/uploads/BI-June...

Their assertion was that this boiled down to: do you want open head trauma or closed head trauma?

I'm not so sure that it's quite that simplistic, but seeing the data on how the helmet industry is needlessly hamstrung by outdated standards from 30 year old standards bodies is pretty startling and depressing. This alone should make you reconsider your notions of how safe your helmet really makes you.

(Of course, I still wear mine.)

I've seen this repeated many times, and people usually have this mixed up. Helmets on bicycles DO save lives: the majority of bicycle accidents are low speed (<15 mph) and they often don't involve severe trauma. I knew a guy in college who fell off his bike while trying to navigate around pedestrians at very low speed (walking speed). He wasn't wearing a helmet, and ended up with a brain injury that robbed him of the 3 years of his life he spent re-learning how to walk and speak. He's fine today, but still has a gnarly scar on the side of his head.

The same is not true of motorcycle helmets. The forces involved in motorcycle accidents are a lot higher, so fewer accidents are survivable even with a helmet. Motorcycle helmets also make you feel fucking invincible, so I can definitely see why people would take more risks.

But by the same measures you can claim bicycle helmets are important, they would be just as important for walkers as cyclists. Or people in cars.

Just because people don't wear them in those instances doesn't mean they shouldn't. Also, it's less likely to fall over walking than to fall over riding a bike, one is inherently less stable than the other. Get pushed walking and stumble back a bit, get pushed riding a bike and you'll most likely fall over.

I imagine you catch your self more reliably when walking, too, and avoid head injuries.

Yes, but if you throw in the fact that walkers have far fewer crashes to the pavement than walkers then it is not the same. And cars have seatbelts...

Walkers hit their heads all the time. People die from it. And seat belts do not prevent brain injuries.

I looked into car helmets a few years ago [1] and my takeaway was that in older cars helmets would have helped, but cars made in the last 20+ years have enough interior padding and airbags that helmets wouldn't add much if anything.

If you convince me otherwise I'll start wearing a helmet in the car and advocating other people do so too.

[1] http://www.jefftk.com/p/car-helmets

> But by the same measures you can claim bicycle helmets are important, they would be just as important for walkers as cyclists.

Because, of course, walkers are elevated and moving at 20 to 30 km/h on an inherintly unstable platform.

It doesn't matter what they are doing, it matters if the basis for claiming helmets are useful for cycling apply to walking. And they do. The testing bicycle helmets undergo is in fact approximating the speed of a walking person falling over on their head. Research has failed to support the idea that helmets offer a net benefit for cycling. I suspect the same would hold true of walking if people took the insanity to the next step and push helmets on walkers.

This kind of research is interesting (for sciences sake), but I think it is important to bring up the fact that no-one is saying wearing a helmet doesn't help in situations where life altering head injuries would otherwise occur. It is probably fair to say that in the severe head injury probability distribution, it removes a bunch of probability from the "severe/dead" part of the curve, and adds a bunch to the "minor/tweak" part of the curve, which I'm ok with.

Chris Boardman, an Olympic cyclist for GB, recently appeared on BBC News to talk about cycling safety while not wearing a helmet during his demonstrations. He gives his reasons in this short video https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=974497519231053&set=vb....

I certainly don't disagree with him, or with you, that there are plenty of other safety aspects to consider while cycling, but I'd always wear a helmet anyway.

That was great, and only 37 seconds long!

In Ireland there are lots of bike safety campaigns and messages but the two things that have contributed most to the uptake of cycling have been the Bike to Work scheme (tax free bikes) and the Dublin Bikes (city bike rental) scheme. Arguably, the increase in the number of cyclists has done more for cycling safety than all the efforts of the campaigns.

Interesting trends regarding the "fearlessness" in the NFL suggest that all the advances in modern head protection cause the player to feel a greater sense of invincibility, thus resulting in bigger hits/injuries -

Exibit one, Kam Chancellor, The Touchdown Canceller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mThE69llX34

While it will never happen, what if they considered removing helmets from the game? - These guys would be so much more cautious (e.g., Rugby) of how they hit. Tons of injuries still? Sure, but I'd be willing to guess a massive decrease in major head trauma.

Back to bikes, regardless of the data, I'm still protecting my own head whenever I'm commuting while not protected by a steel cage.

One fundamental difference between rugby and NFL is how many players are involved in frontal impact on each play or phase of play. In rugby football you are only allowed to tackle a player with the ball (except in rucks and mauls, which are by their nature more structured) whereas in american football there seem to me to be a whole lot of players running headfirst into each other on every play.

Having said all that, my experience with rugby players is that there is a certain bravado about injuries, that if you haven't cracked a few ribs, broken a clavicle, had a stud through your cheek, etc. then you aren't playing hard enough; and should therefore buy the next round

Another thing to keep in mind: head and neck injuries might go up because accidents which would have resulted in death now result only in an injury.

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