PSA: Another study on the efficacy of bike helmets

http://amsterdamize.com/documents/NVC2011_paper.pdf

New studies show that the effectiveness of bicycle helmets have been hugely overestimated in the past. At this moment, it is not even certain that there is a positive effect at all: an upper limit of its effectiveness is currently 6%. Promotion of the bicycle helmet is counterproductive from a health point of view.

Mmmmm

Pointless debate, people have there views and risk acceptance levels.

having been hit by a car, landing on the back of my head, looking at what was left of my helmet, I will be wearing one when ever I’m on the bike no matter what research views are expressed.

I don’t care what other grown adults do, it’s their choice based on perceived risk

Great, just opened a beer.

lol.

simple test, bang head hard against wall with helmet and without, tell me which you prefer.

second test, throw yourself over bars at reasonable speed so head slides along ground, with helmet and then without, compare scalp loss/cuts/bruising/grazes.

and for that reason, I wear a helmet.

After I had a high speed crash into a 4×4, my helmet had some nice sharp deep dents in it, and I was very glad they were in the helmet and not holes in my head. simples really, i’ll let academics do their statistics and studies, but it really is pretty pointless based on the above.

and i’m out of this one before it all goes the usual way…

6 posts in and he hasn’t appeared yet…. must be in the flouncing thread

the perceived risks of not wearing one are far greater than the perceived risks of wearing one.
QED

I was in the pub drinking beer.

becauSE i AM A BRAVE CHAPPIE i DIN’T HAVE A HELMET ON DESPITE THE FACT BEEER RELATED HEDA INJURIES ARE FAR MORE COMMON THAT CYCLE RELATED ONES.

nOW LET ME HAVE A EAD OF MOE THAN THE CONCLUSION

Frikkin capslock

That’s not even a poor attempt at meta analysis.

My initial imnpression – its a paper designed to give the answer the authors wanted however a few interesting bits

There is a positive correlation between wearing a helmet and having a higher risk of an accident with injuries.

Been known for ages – since the Australian research and others more than 5 years ago..we need to know why this is tho

is it because helmets cause injuries?
helmets cause crashes?
People who are likely to crash wear helmets?

Rather, head injuries resulting in hospitalization are characterized by a very short average time of stay. Among patients who have to be treated in hospital for one day, almost half has head injuries. Among patients having to stay hospitalized for one week or longer, that drops to about one in seven

Very interesting – so lots of head injuries but nearly all of them are stitch ’em up and watch ’em overnight?

a bit to add to teh body of knowledge but nothing particularly new or revelatory.

We need to know why when helmet wearing increases head injury rates do not fall. this effect has been seen in many countries in a many studies so is real – but why?

Having skim read it, it appears that they were solely looking at helmets for road usage and not off road usage.

Clearly if you are hit on the head by a car doing 40mph then a helmet is of little practical benefit. Hitting your head on a tree at 15km/h is a different matter.

It was also interesting that France and the USA have the highest number of fatalities per billion km and yet they are at opposite ends of the helmet usage graph. Seems to suggest that there are many more important factors.

“We need to know why when helmet wearing increases head injury rates do not fall. this effect has been seen in many countries in a many studies so is real – but why”

maybe people take more risks when wearing helmets so eliminating the safety benefit? i have heard this is seen with other safety equipment in other areas

nosedive – its one possible explanation – risk compensation. I gave three other possible explanations but it would be nice to know for sure

It would be great to know for sure. Risk compensation would be where my money is. I just cant get my head around the mechanics of helmets causing injuries, and I know I am a lot more careful when I have an open face compared to full face lid.

needs a proper large scale study really, control groups etc

TBH I’d be astonished if there wasn’t a correlation between helmet use and injury… The significant groups that most predominantly wear helmets are also the groups taking the most risks. Not because they wear helmets of course, but because that’s the sort of riding they want to do. They’re 2 symptoms of the same disease- I want to ride my bike down a load of rocks, and therefore I wear a helmet, and also sometimes I smash myself to a pulp.

I really don’t know why this keeps going. If you want to wear a helmet wear it, if you don’t, don’t. I don’t want/need a study, I’m quite capable of making my own mind up.
I know I’d rather hit the deck with a lid on than without but that’s me.

I hit the deck once, 2 cars involved, I landed head first.
Glad I was wearing a helmet. That event would have ended or at least completely changed my life if I wasn’t.

Just wear a lid, kids.

no idea why the debate rages on, TBH.

Can we at least try to separate road from off-road in this stuff? They’re totally different. Different risks, different events, different protagonists.

Off-road is by far the simpler domain. The risk of coming off is much greater, the things you hit are not flat, the impact speeds are more often within the design parameters of helmets, and perhaps most importantly the only person generally involved is oneself.

The road is rather more subtle; one of the key complicating factors is the evidence that suggests wearing a helmet may lead to a greater risk of an incident occurring not only through personal risk compensation but also through the uncontrollable actions of third parties, ie drivers.

So on the road there’s no longer a simple “wearing a helmet will probably reduce the severity of an outcome of fixed probability” problem, it’s now “wearing a helmet will probably reduce the severity of an outcome of probability which is increased by wearing a helmet”. You’re now multiplying two inversely-related variables which have limited evidential data, which is decidedly not a no-brainer.

I wouldn’t get on a bike without wearing a lid for sure. It’s interesting to see results that the benefits arent shown statistically though (even if the paper is biased and just proving what the author wants it to prove). just makes me think that it would be really good to know what is \ isn’t working and it might improve the designs

terrahawk

the issue is you cant say for sure you wouldnt have been ok without a helmet. It goes against instinct and is impossible to prove but there is logic in it.

Personally I wear a helmet because I mostly have minor falls and accidents and it does a good job of stopping me hurting myself (minor cuts scrapes and general sore head stuff). Whether it will help me if/when I have a big spill isn’t really relevant to me.

That said, I do feel uncomfortable not wearing a lid, particularly off road. Thats probably more down to habit though.

“Whether it will help me if/when I have a big spill isn’t really relevant to me.“

Eh? If/when you have a big spill, it will surely be relevant to you.

We need to know why when helmet wearing increases head injury rates do not fall. this effect has been seen in many countries in a many studies so is real – but why?

You ride more. Basically a casual cycling will ride once every blue moon. Get hook up buy a helmet and ride more. Therefore increasing the time spent on a bike and the likeliness to have a crash. Second hypothesis, is you get a helmet and get some training thus increasing yoru skills. You catch up with one of your fellow casual riding friend decide for a pootle only for him not to be as gnar as you are and hitting the ground.

As for the severity of injures, and it is where our opinions parts, it is still a quite an expensive burden on the society that we shouldn’t have to pay if it can be avoided. If helmet for motorcycle was to be not mandatory in cities (speed limit of 50km/h) would you still wear one?

Bez

Since there is no consensus on whether it will be a benefit or a danger, and the arguements each way seem to change depending on the type of impact etc. I’m of the opinion that I will keep doing what I do and hope it never comes up.

If conclusive evidence is found either way that will change but until then I hope I dont have a big spill. Kinda like I hope I dont get run over by a bus/struck by lightning etc.

Northwind – Member

TBH I’d be astonished if there wasn’t a correlation between helmet use and injury… The significant groups that most predominantly wear helmets are also the groups taking the most risks.

Again a possible answer but we don’t know

terrahawk

no idea why the debate rages on, TBH.

because of stuff like in this paper. More people wearing helmets does not equal less head injuries – thus across the population there is no significant protective effect.

We need to know why this is. Are the helmet ineffective? is risk compensation a factor?

calumlorimer – Member

Personally I wear a helmet because I mostly have minor falls and accidents and it does a good job of stopping me hurting myself (minor cuts scrapes and general sore head stuff). Whether it will help me if/when I have a big spill isn’t really relevant to me.

a sensible viewpoint – minor spills they work for – no one would doubt that – preventing cuts bruises and so on they work for

Juan – we don’t know that – indeed one hypothesis is that the skilled and experienced riders don’t wear helmets – they tend not to crash – its the unskilled inexperienced riders that wear helmets and they tend to crash – but again – we don’t know.

head injuries resulting in hospitalization are characterized by a very short average time of stay

Spent 5 hours on a friday night at A ‘n E waiting to get stitched back together.
Everybody else that came in after me was in need of more urgent attention for sure .
Decades on, I still remember that feeling after I reached round the back of my head and gave it a rub, then realised my fingers were under my scalp.
I don’t want to repeat either experience.

oooh, who wants to hear my anecdotal evidence?! it seems to my on my commute that more people riding on the off-road cycle paths seem to have helmets than those on the road. which suggests that helmet wearers are more risk-averse. it seems counter-intuitive. but no matter, i’m tough-skinned, and await your onslaught 🙂

I’ve always contributed to these threads as a fellow thinker with TJ, there is a common, widespread acceptance that wearing a helmet will protect you from just about everything short of a nuclear blast that is simply not borne out by any evidence.

The weight of anecdotal evidence only serves to promote the idea that helmets are always great, and that there are no possible downsides to their use.

Shame that no-one can actually demonstrate in any sensible, unbiased scientific way that they work.

I choose the cyclists version of Pascals wager; I wear one, but I really don’t believe in of its protective properties.

The debate keeps going because people in power keep making the suggestion that the best way to make cycling safer woould be to make people wear helmets rather than improve cycle infrastructure for instance.

Even without this in law, you are already deemed to be negligent if you are not wearing a helmet when you get hit by a car. This only occurs if you are cycling, but not if you are walking, regardless of whether you are at fault.

People always seem to miss the main point which is that the *risk* of a head injury whilst cycling is very similar to lots of other activities which people seem to assume don’t require a helmet, drinking, walking, climbing the stairs etc.

Even without this in law, you are already deemed to be negligent if you are not wearing a helmet when you get hit by a car.

No you are not except in very unusual circumstances

One court case said you could be considered to have contributed to your injury if it could be shown that a helmet would have prevented the injury – but as it cannot be shown ( and was not in that case) then you are not deemed to be negligent.

there is another case where someone on guided day refused to wear one and got injured and was deemed to be at partial fault. he was a newb and his instructer wanted him to wear one – he also did other stuff against his instructors advice and was found partly to blame for his injuries.

Get knocked off your bike by a car and you will not have your compo reduced for not wearing a helmet
Insurance companies try it on but have never suceeded except inthe one case – which did not set precedent

I see this a lot in motorcycle crashes.
Any gear worn MUST have saved them from terrible injury, and any injury sustained without gear would in no way have happened with gear.

I’ve been injured pretty badly with gear on and crashed fine many times without.

While snowboarding (at an X-Scape) I hit my head in a way I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have nearly as seriously if I’d just been wearing the beanie I had previously, rather than a helmet that jutted out a chunk further.

As above, I often do wear a helmet these days, but not in specific expectation of it doing much. I only bought one in the first place to enter events (well, I got a free one on freecycle from the 80s that looked like a toaster first, then Sainsburys had them half price at £6.24 or something, so got a slightly more up to date version.)

Sadly it’s one of those things that even taken holistically there probably isn’t a way to get a good answer; and taken on a case by case basis is going to be massively less certain what the ‘safest’ path is.