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.

dratted double post

+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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=5339

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.

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.

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?

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.

Any thread with ‘helmet’ in the title and you know tandem fella will be on it. Again.

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.

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.

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 🙂

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…

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! 😆

I do most sincerely hope that the Omniscient Medical Professional never has a crash without a helmet….

Seriously.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kDDSuN8tJc&feature=related[/video]