Double post
Bike Forum
This really makes you want to wear a lid
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Posted 8 months ago #
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TandemJeremy - Member
When I wear one I wear it fastened and fitted properly - unlike the vast majority of cyclists I see wearing helmets. even at Glentress I reckon its a minority who wear the helmets properly
If you mean that the straps look loose when they aren't riding their bike (which you mentioned in a previous helmet debate), that doesn't mean that the helmet doesn't fit properly.
My strap tends to become tight only when I assume a bike riding position - hunched forward, jaw loose to suck in all that O2, neck extended, etc. If it was tight when I was off the bike, I wouldn't be able to breathe properly when riding.
Of course if you are looking at riders' helmets when they are actually riding, then that's just a little weird!
Posted 8 months ago # -
Junkyard - Member
Wearing a cycle helmet may increase your risk of a collision, because drivers leave less of a gap when overtaking cyclists with helmets than those without, according to recent research.In some research where no one was hit. It is conclusive of nothing and needs to be done in areas outside of Bath as well- unless of course you are suggesting we all move to Bath and cycle with a blonde wig to get a few more inches of clearance- I bet it is not matched for location or time of day,vehicle, driver age etc.
My favourite piece of poor research!
Strangely enough, when a man rides along wearing a blonde wig, people gave him more room. I could have told him that would happen for free.
Posted 8 months ago # -
Stoatsbrother - Member
For pootling along a canal path (low risk) or cycling on the road where lots of things you hit will squish you like a bug, there may indeed be no pointFriend of my other half fell off her bike while cycling through the village. There were no vehicles involved, I don't know the exact details of the fall, but she hit her head and was knocked out. She wasn't wearing a helmet & when she came round, found herself blind in one eye. This was several months ago, the doctors don't know exactly why she has lost sight in that eye, but it doesn't look like it's returning anytime soon.
Would a helmet have stopped her losing her sight? Who knows. I'd rather not take the chance.
A few months ago I had a stupid crash on the road & hit my head hard. I was OK (once I'd gathered my thoughts) & cycled home. My helmet had split up the middle of it and was wrecked.
It takes quite a lot of energy to split a helmet. I'm glad that energy went into my helmet & not into my skull.Oh, and if i didn't wear a helmet where would my spokeshirts light go!?
Posted 8 months ago # -
I can't believe people still trot out that: "head injuries rates don't fall when helmet use goes up" statistic.
I've broken 3 lids. In each case, my head was fine. In each case I am certain I would have sustained a head injury without one.
The only guy I know who refuses to wear one smacked his head on the ground and was carted off in an ambulance last year.
I still think that helmet use should be voluntary but non wearers need to get real - it IS self evidently more dangerous not to wear one and furthermore, if you do crash, the people you are riding with are the ones that have to pick up the pieces!
Posted 8 months ago # -
idlejon - thats a helmet that is not fitted properly you are describing. I think from observation eh majority of folk have their helmets far too loose. My helmets strap is tight when stood up and does not get any tighter in a riding position.
Junkyard - parachutes are not a reasonable comparator. I am not referring to you as a helmet evangalist but the hysterical fringe of people who make these massive inflated claims and who want to penalise all people who do not wear them
Posted 8 months ago # -
I still think that helmet use should be voluntary but non wearers need to get real - it IS self evidently more dangerous not to wear one
Shame the actual evidence does not back that up.
Posted 8 months ago # -
Posted 8 months ago # -
Posted 8 months ago # -
TandemJeremy - Member
idlejon - thats a helmet that is not fitted properly you are describing. I think from observation eh majority of folk have their helmets far too loose. My helmets strap is tight when stood up and does not get any tighter in a riding position.Nope. My helmets fit when I'm riding because the position of my head is different when I'm riding. I'm surprised that yours doesn't get any tighter - do you cycle with your head in the same position as when you are sitting? Of course when I say looser/tighter, I'm not talking about huge loops hanging below chins...
Posted 8 months ago # -
stumpy01 - fair points - and I wear a helmet for everything. But anecdote isn't proof. There may be - in a road context - negative safety things about helmet wearing or drivers attitudes to helmet wearers which may balance the obvious advantages. I could give you tons of examples in medicine where the obviously intuitively safer/correct option was actually wrong...
jimification - I was wearing a helmet which I broke, was knocked unconscious and was carted off to hospital and scanned after a fall at Swinley a few months back. Do I blame the helmet, say it saved me, or say it did not help? I prefer to think it saved me - but I don't know. As I said above - we know that skiing helmets mitigate severity of head injury - we also know motorcycle helmets reduce death rate. We don't actually know this properly for cycle helmets, I personally suspect it does for MTBing in woods. But the "self-evident" is often wrong
And that statistic someone else happened to trot out is part of the current state of knowledge.
Posted 8 months ago # -
Posted 8 months ago # -
dratted double post
Posted 8 months ago # -
+1 jivehoneyjive
I'd venture that 30% of people I see wearing helmets don't have them fitted/placed right, i.e. tilted way back on their head with their forehead exposed or, in the case of a guy I saw last weekend, riding along with the helmet unbuckled.
If there were a way to factor in data on ill-fitted/improperly worn helmets into the number of injuries excacerbated by wearing a helmet, might present completely different stats.Few years ago I came on a scene where a woman who crashed while not wearing a helmet--just a simple sideways fall going around a tight turn and she smacked the side of her head on a rock, caving in her skull above her ear. Not a pretty sight--she ended up partially paralyzed and lost ability to speak---with a helmet it would have likely not resulted in any injury. Got my attention---I won't even ride around a neighborhood street without a helmet.
Posted 8 months ago # -
if the chinstrap is in the right place and the helmet is in the right position then the strap tightness will not alter significantly in different head positions. I suggest your chinstrap is too far forward
Posted 8 months ago # -
For me it's not necessarily about whether helmets would help in some circumstances, it's whether everyone should wear them at all times in case those circumstances come about. For me it's not really clear that in general that's much more likely for cycling than it is for any number of other things where wearing a lid would appear laughable.
Posted 8 months ago # -
I still think that helmet use should be voluntary but non wearers need to get real - it IS self evidently more dangerous not to wear one
Shame the actual evidence does not back that up.
You are over egging the pudding there- if i did not like you I would accuse you of a gross simplification
That is ONLT tru if you cherry pick data but it would be fair to say it is open to debate.
IMHO there are two seperate issues
1. Do helmets prevent injury to the wearer when they crash - most folk say yes as does research except for rotation which is the minority of accidents
2. Does wearing a helmet reduce the likleyhood of an accident - probably not but then again why would it. Doe sit increase the risk of an accident - possibly but the evidence is not robust enough IMHO
Even if you accept it driver education is the issue here.
£. you could argue that reducing participation causes more deaths as unfit people dont get healthy but I am not overly concerned with that side issue tbh.Most can see points 1 and 2 and weight accordingly. TJ can see point 2 and every accident in point 1 cannot be proved to have been helped[ reduced injury] by a helmet
Posted 8 months ago # -
The other point is the relative risk Junkyard. risks are low. Millions to one. Drinking helmets would prevent more head injuries as would driving helmets
Posted 8 months ago # -
On your third point junkyard
In short, we estimate that a law making helmets compulsory for cyclists may result in an overall increase in 253 premature deaths (265 more from reduced cycling, 12 fewer from the reduced pool of cyclists receiving fatal head injuries), with the overall costs of such a law between £304-415 million per year. In addition, there would be a one-off cost to the remaining cyclists of £180 million to equip them with helmets, plus replacement costs. A similar figure, of $400 million was estimated by de Jong (see right) for the costs of helmet compulsion in the UK.
Posted 8 months ago # -
Friend of my other half fell off her bike while cycling through the village. There were no vehicles involved, I don't know the exact details of the fall, but she hit her head and was knocked out. She wasn't wearing a helmet & when she came round, found herself blind in one eye. This was several months ago, the doctors don't know exactly why she has lost sight in that eye, but it doesn't look like it's returning anytime soon.
Would a helmet have stopped her losing her sight? Who knows. I'd rather not take the chance.
That's very unfortunate, but it's not really evidence of anything. I knew a kid at school we got hit by a car while walking on the pavement. He had some pretty serious problems for a while (including tourettes) but eventually got over it.
Wearing a helmet probably would have helped him a lot. But I don't think many people would start wearing a helmet for walking to the shops because they'd rather not take the chance.
I'm sure lots of people on here could come up with anecdotes about people getting head injuries doing all sorts of things. For cyling to be a special case I think it needs to be shown that it IS a special case, and AFAIK that hasn't happened.
Posted 8 months ago # -
I think as mentioned earlier the data is flawed. I fell at CYB destroyed helmet and pretzeled wheel. No report helmet took all the impact. Just online to get a new one. I know from many offs how my helmet has saved me from injury over the years. No amount of statistics will convince me I'm better off without one. Member of CTC as well and I see the same old data trotted out by them as to why you don't need a helmet a cotten race cap is good enough. Interestingly it tends to be the more senior members view.
Posted 8 months ago # -
Member of CTC as well and I see the same old data trotted out by them as to why you don't need a helmet a cotten race cap is good enough.
Do the CTC really say that about riding at CyB?
Posted 8 months ago # -
Next time someone asks me why I don't really use forums I'll show them this thread.
It's like religion.
You're not hurting anyone except potentially yourself so feel free to do what you want as long as you don't force your beliefs on me. It really is quite simple. Why do you lot try to make others come around to share your views?
It's just pointless.
Posted 8 months ago # -
Any thread with 'helmet' in the title and you know tandem fella will be on it. Again.
Posted 8 months ago # -
Stand by for a controversial opinion.
I think that the CTC may be a tiny bit against helmet compulsion and there fore have a very different slant when presenting the findings on the relative merits of wearing or not wearing one.
The CTC were also very creative with stats when it came to motorcycles sharing bus lanes.
I too am against helmet compulsion but not to the point where I would twist stats to strengthen my argument.Posted 8 months ago # -
TJ, isn't there a slight inconsistency between
You simply do not know what the outcome would be otherwise
and
Makes injury worse in 30% of cases
What is the control group for the worse cases? Case control studies for this type of intervention with matching will be unreliable. I could however design the ideal prospective randomized clinical study of helmet protection, but sadly short of training rats to ride bikes, I'd never get past the ethics committee.
As someone who split my last helmet two months ago in a sideways fall (collarbone fractured
), I'm of the opinion that they are beneficial, on balance. And shall continue to wear one off road and in traffic.
Posted 8 months ago # -
djaustin - the 30% rotational injury was found in an experimental study. Dummies in helmets fired from bikes at various trajectories and the resultant rotational accelerations in the skull measured. It found 30% high enough to cause damage. I can't find the reference right now. There have been a few studies done in that way with differing results. but all show the effect even the TRL which is very pro helmet.
You are right - its completely impossible to ascertain after the event if someone gets a DIA (Diffuse axon injury) if the helmet helped or hindered.
Its a shame about the ethic committee thing. a decent study would advance knowledge a lot
Posted 8 months ago # -
Going waaaay back to page 1...
the neurosurgeon argument is he would rather have a focal injury that (sic) a Diffuse one.
I'd rather get hit in the head with a diffuse pillow than a focal hammer...
Posted 8 months ago # -
I've had a decent look at those ctc studies and also the ones they link to.
its great what you can prove when you are sampling from instances of the result you are trying to prove, innit!
Posted 8 months ago # -
I do most sincerely hope that the Omniscient Medical Professional never has a crash without a helmet....
Seriously.
Posted 8 months ago # -
Posted 8 months ago #
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