Helmets, why we shouldn’t wear them.

(I wear a helmet but glad it’s not compulsory)

you know i don’t think we have ever had this discussion 😀

I hardly ever wear a helmet, not that it matters really. I only wear one on group rides to avoid the dripping tap of nagging…

TJ to the forum TJ to the forum

Damn you are too fast flashy

I wear a helmet if im riding for sport, not for transport.

I figure if you don’t wear a helmet it’s great for the rest of us. you’ll be out the gene pool quicker and hopefully before spawning.
Oh, and J.C. look at the bike he’s riding, (Mikael-Colville Anderson of Copenhagen Cycle Chic) He’d probably snap his baguette too if he crashed.

I only wear a lid when I’m planning on crashing.

As ever: The idea is that people are frightened of cycling because helmets makes it seem dangerous: The fact that compared to most other forms of transport it is dangerous & therefore people wear helmets seems not to have occurred to our Danish friend (& others)

Matt O&A – for future reference http://www.flickr.com/photos/bucklevision/5619037564/ 😉

By a bizarre coincidence, this popped up today in the BBC local news:

“A teenage cyclist whose head smashed a van window in a crash in Cambridge believes her cycle helmet saved her life.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-16315005

“If I hadn’t been wearing the helmet, I wouldn’t be here”

“The fact that compared to most other forms of transport it is dangerous & therefore people wear helmets seems not to have occurred to our Danish friend (& others)”

With (in 2010) 111 cyclist killed in the UK and a total cycling mileage of 3.1 billion miles I make it around 27 million miles cycled for each cycling death. Dangerous??

Not a big enough risk I’m going to worry about it.

http://assets.dft.gov.uk/statistics/releases/road-accidents-and-safety-annual-report-2010/rrcgb2010-01.pdf

pleas feel free not to were a lid, more pension money for the rest of us

If you don’t wear a lid it’s personal choice. Having said that I don’t ride with anyone not wearing one.

oldnpastit – Member

“A teenage cyclist whose head smashed a van window in a crash in Cambridge believes her cycle helmet saved her life.”

Lots of healthcare professionals thought my helmet saved my life when I had my big road crash, even though I wasn’t wearing it 😉

I’d like to see the number of head related injuries in the TDF before and after compulsory helmet use. Must be documented somewhere.

What always amazes (and scares) me, is the amount of faith that people seem to put in helmets. Anyhow…

what a great adult response, wel structured and thought out!

For those who want to skip watching that video, what he seems to say is that after 2 yrs of looking at various reports on the safety of helmets there still isn’t any conclusive evidence one way or another on their overall safety. What he does say is that he saw a decrease in helmet use when helmet wearing was heavily promoted and that that combined with the fact that cycling is healthier for you and better for the enviroment means that overall, promoting helmet use is a bad idea.

He doesn’t say that helmet use is a bad idea once you have committed to riding a bike. It was possibly the worst tedx talk I have seen

Its my head and I am convinced a helmet will save it, esp a full face, and body armour. Let no-one tell me what to do with my head/body. You lot do what you want with yours. Happy days.

Yawn…. Not again

I’ve come off a couple of times and been glad a had a helmet on. Saved my life? Prob not. Saved me from some pretty nasty cuts and whacks? Definitely.

If you hit a skip lorry polystyrene won’t help much but it’s useful when bouncig off trees.

I’ve come off a couple of times and been glad I had a helmet on. Saved my life? Prob not. Saved me from some pretty nasty cuts and whacks? Definitely.

If you hit a skip lorry polystyrene won’t help much but it’s useful when bouncig off trees.

Toys19… I think cough cough is having a … troll. Or he is just a complete knob that doesn’t actually have a bike to ride so will never fall off it. He certainly doesn’t compete in any mtb events…

If you don’t wear a lid it’s personal choice. Having said that I don’t ride with anyone not wearing one.

Does that mean that everyone you ride with wears one, or if someone turns up for a ride without a helmet you refuse to ride with them?

Just interested as to how you handle it if it’s the latter 😉

Here’s a nice vid of some (mostly helmetless) naughty boys
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=aNCPEzdZs5s[/video]

imnotverygood – Member

As ever: The idea is that people are frightened of cycling because helmets makes it seem dangerous: The fact that compared to most other forms of transport it is dangerous

Nope – its actually very safe. One of the safest forms of transport

Its estimated that compulsory helmets would lead to 200 more deaths in the uk. Save a very few from death by head injury. cost loads from disease of inactivity as people are put off riding bikes.

A good selection of links and summary of the arguments

http://www.ctc.org.uk/desktopdefault.aspx?tabid=4688

The evidence for helmets actually reducing death rates over populations is very thin at best

The evidence for helmets actually reducing death rates over populations is very thin at best

You know as well as anybody that a lack of evidence does not mean that there is no association. It only means that there is no evidence.
As you know almost everything you do in your job as a medical officer does not have evidence to support it.

I wear one all the time but each to their own. I couldn’t care less.

Hugor – just look at the data – there are a number of studies that show no correlation between increasing helmet usage and reduction in deaths. Not absence of evidence – evidence of absence.
http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=4689

Actually almost every intervention I do in the medical world is based on evidence these days. evidence based practice

Evidence is only as good as the study design – I’ve read most of those articles before as this topic comes up all too frequently both in places like this and in my work life.
I still don’t think they are conclusive.
I come from a country where helmet wearing is compulsory and I feel pretty strange not wearing one. My country is a whole lot hotter than this one so we have even more reason to not wear them.

I could challenge you on the strengths of your evidence based medical practice but its off topic and would bore everybody else. I’d rather do it in person over a beer than defeat you in a public forum like this. 😆 joking mate
I’m in Edinburgh from tomorrow for a little while if your free. Not bringing the bikes though – going for Hogmanay.

Does that mean that everyone you ride with wears one, or if someone turns up for a ride without a helmet you refuse to ride with them?

Just interested as to how you handle it if it’s the latter

In my experience, people aren’t such complete ballbags in real life. It’s only on forums that they come up with these hardline views.

If helmets were compulsory for car occupants, it’d save many more lives than making cycle helmets compulsory. So fair’s fair – everyone should be made to wear them or none.

In fact it’s been shown that cycle helmets are actually more effective at protecting car occupants than they are at protecting cyclists.

I dare say compulsory hivis jackets for pedestrians would save more lives than it being compulsory for cyclist. It’s still not a reason for not wearing one

Klunk

From the point of view of restrictiveness, even the official promotion of helmets may have negative consequences for bicycle use. If the importance of wearing a helmet is stressed, the implied message is that cycling is extraordinarily dangerous.

Which leads to less people cycling and more dying from diseases of inactivity

“Those of us who cycle should be under no illusion that helmets offer reliable protection in crash situations where our lives may be in danger. Neither should we believe that widespread adoption of helmet wearing would see many fewer cyclists killed or permanently disabled.

still no one posting that a helmet make their accident worse, still very scarce on the gound for 30%

Ok so, whenever this argument comes up, all I’ll ask people is this:

If I were to knock you on the head with a hammer or lump of concrete, would you rather be wearing a helmet or not?

If you think of it in those terms, it’s quite simple really. 🙂

I’ll take the helmet please Elf