Been involved in quite a nasty incident today which has seen a riding mate flown off from the scene in air ambulance to Selly Oak hospital (30-odd miles away which took them 12 minutes!!).
It happened on the road bit on the way to the technical bit of a route which we do most weeks and sometimes go flat out down in the dark, just lost it on a pothole and went end over end for about 30 feet along the tarmac. Was out cold for about 5-10 minutes and now is in hospital with a fractured skull and bust arm. He was wearing a specialized D2 helmet which is one of the best, that is now in bits, dread to think what would have happened if he wasn’t wearing it.
Paremedic turned up reasonably quick but the air ambulance took a while to find our location despite constant communicattion via mobile phone with the control, top tip is to take something bright to wave about to attract the attention of the spotter.
Not a good day really but could have been much worse but for the helmet, air ambulance and luck. Get well soon Dennis

Glad to hear your friend is OK-ish! Saw plenty of kids out riding at Cannock Chase today…without helmets 😡

Hope your friend recovers.

We had a demo day and some guys turned up without helmets and then were a bit pi$$ed off when they couldn’t join the test ride which takes in a rather quick downhill bridleway,,, i dispair for some people 🙄

I don’t ride without one, I can’t see why people don’t.

hope your pals better soon!

Hope he gets well soon. I’d agree, if you don’t value you head, don’t bother with a helmet.

Get well soon Dennis. Hope the recovery is quick.

There’s no need to wear a helmet if you’re not planning to have an accident…

That’s what I used to tell my lads. Took them a while to catch on. 🙄

I never leave home without mine. Even feels wrong if I nip over to the post office without it. However, I’m pro choice. We do tend to mollycoddle people rather than letting Darwin do his thing!

A dozen or so serious head injuries a year to non helmeted bikers. Millions of miles cycled. You work out the odds

A dozen or so serious head injuries a year to non helmeted bikers. Millions of miles cycled. You work out the odds

What’ve the odds got to do with it? These ‘odds’ you like so much wouldn’t have been improved for markenduro’s mate if he’d not been wearing a helment now, would they?

Who knows what would have happened if he had not been wearing a helmet? Helmet in bits means the helmet failed.

No, helmet in bits means that it absorbed much of the energy from the impact…

Isn’t that the way helmets work??? They absorb some of the impact, and break doing so. Which means your head doesn’t break (as much).

i dont wear a lid when im at the skate parks but when im riding xc then i always wear one but can see why some people dont!!

Saw a lad at fairholmes today on a yellow gemini with yellow wheels, all the gear and then a woolly hat!!
HTF will a wooley hat help if you crash you 8″ full bouncer?? made of kevlar mebe? TBF riding a yellow bike with yellow wheels my chosen head gear would have been a balaclava!!

Really? I think it would be fair to assume that he wouldn’t be any better off.

Helmet in bit doesn’t mean the helmet failed to do it’s job, just that the forces applied to it eventually overloaded the helmets capacity to absorb them. The helmet will still have reduced the force to his head. In the same way that if your fork bottoms out it hasn’t failed, just been overloaded.

TJ, you make no sense this time.

The helmet should have crushed. Without seeing it its hard to say but normally a helmet that is in bits has failed. It should remain in one piece but crushed / cracked. I would say the very fact he got a fractured skull shows the helmet failed given the type of crash

Amen – I will not ride with anyone who wont wear one.

TJ, I think you are wrong this time. Both times I’ve hit my head hard in an off, the helmet has shattered, only staying together with the internal harness. Both times I got up, checked myself over and rode on. Hitting the ground that hard with my head, with no ill effect, means the helmet did a pretty good job IMHO.

BaldyS you rode on after a bump on the head and a shattered helmet!! Shame on you

Amen – I will not ride with anyone who wont wear one.
personally I always wear one, but I’d never ride with anyone who had that attitude.

A helmet is a fragile piece of equipment. On seeing a damaged one, it is easy to assume that a serious injury has been prevented. Cycle helmets split very readily, and often at forces much lower than those that would lead to serious head injury. Helmets work by absorbing impact energy through the crushing of an expanded polystyrene liner. Once compressed the liner stays compressed. It does not bounce back to its original form like reusable helmets for some other activities. If a helmet splits before the liner has partially or fully compressed – and this is often the case – then it has simply failed. It will not have provided the designed protection and may in fact have absorbed very little energy at all.

If a helmet splits after fully compressing, it will have reduced initial forces to the head, but thereafter it will afford no further protection and any residual energy will be transmitted to the brain. Cycle helmets fail catastrophically, not gradually, so it is a mistake to believe that they provide useful, if reduced, protection at higher velocities. In high impact crashes, such as most that involve motor vehicles or fixed vertical objects like concrete barriers and lamp posts, the forces are so great that a helmet will compress and break in around 1/1000th of a second. The absorption of the initial forces during this very short period of time is unlikely to make a significant difference to the likelihood of serious injury or death.

Helmets provide some protection when there is only partial compression of the liner and they may work better if in addition there is no split or breakage. This is most likely to be the case in crashes that result from low-speed falls without any third party involvement and where, without a helmet, injury would be relatively minor. If the liner suffered no compression, the helmet almost certainly played no role in preventing injury and without the helmet there would have been no injury of consequence anyway.

From cyclehelmets.org – and anti helmet compulsion site that pulls together a lot of good research.

Just a thought, but if markenduros mate (hope he gest well quickly) wnet “end over end” and the both the helmet and his skull broke during this, then isnt it possible that while the helmet might have had some benefit in the initial impact, on subsequent impacts it was of no use (broken) leading to the fractured skull?

Stoner – quite possible. as are many other interpretations.

Oh – forgot to say – get well soon.

Just had an update, operating today on arm, has concussion and fractured skull plus other cuts, grazes and bumps and similar effect to whipash. Crash was at least 25 mph and he bounced about 30feet on the tarmac. Helmet was held together by outer shell but cracked inside on right hand side where fracture is. It functioned as designed. Absolutely no doubt in my mind that had he not been wearing it we would now be arranging a funeral. By all means have the choice to wear one or not, i know what my choice is and it’s a no brainer. Paramedics did a great job, well impressed by how cool, professional and caring they were. I can’t begin to tell how scary it is and how helpless you feel to see your mate unconscious on the floor and not know much first aid, think i will be looking into doing a course after this.

Here’s to a speedy recovery for him.

TJ trying to be contraversal on a helmet thread, change the f%#&ing record.
The fact the helmet is in pieces means it did exactly what its supposed to do.
Markenduro – I hope your friend recovers fully, ’tis a shame though when the ever predictable TJ appears on a helmet thread spreading the same old tripe. Perhaps his brain really isn’t worth saving.
Go on TJ, do the “pedestrians should wear helmets thing”, its brilliant that arguement.
Oh and Stoner, better he was killed in the initial (harder) impact eh?

Hope your mate gets better soon.

meanwhile

Bruneep – Its unfortunate that these threads even turn into PUAC threads.
Hopefully those riders who dismiss the benefits of wearing a helmet or try to find some pathetic anchor on which to downplay their effectiveness are carriers of Organ Donor cards, though methinks folk who would rather risk a serious head injury from a relatively minor bump for lack of a cheap piece of protection probably don’t care enough to carry such cards.

Sooty and jim – I am not trying to be controversial for the sake of it but trying to introduce some realism and trying to do is show the fallacy that helmets provide full protection.

It is quite possible that in this case the helmet failed as the rider got a fractured skull and the helmet was split.

TandemJeremy I’ve read the stats as well. Its hard to find a population study that supports helmet wearing. I’m enough of a scientist to understand the popultion stuff. It’s worth bearing in mind that most studies are about cycling in general not off road cycling. The worry being that on a road a helmet may bring cars closer But…

You’re long piece about helmets not working at high speed was from an anti helmet website. Hmm not exactly a neutral source.

Stats asside I think a helmet saved my life. I bought a helmet because you had to have one for an XC race. I was leaving the house to ride on easy off road paths to my girl friends flat wen I saw my helmet and thought that will be useful in the morning, in traffic, so I’ll wear it to carry it.

My memory is riding fairly fast on the trail then….

Walking round carrying a bike on my shoulder with the forks hanging loose, they had sheared off in the lower head set race. I was lost looking for a phone box.When I found one it took ages to remember any phone numbers. I lost about an hour we think.

The front of my helmet was crushed and the ends of the bar ends muddy. No other marks any where so it looks like I ploughed in head first. Did I lie unconcious for seconds or minutes or not at all. I’ve know idea.

So IMHO

The cost of wearing the helmet is low, the potential benefits high
Don’t think you can guess when you need them
If you ride an Overbury’s Pioneer do that check they remembered the reinforcing sleeve where they braze the steerer tube into the crown

Happy ridding

No one has said helmets provide full protection.
Yes the helmet failed (as designed) and in doing so reduced the force of the impact. This is how crumple zones work too.

Go on TJ – at least acknowledge that the helmet may have prevented a more serious injury

Uplink – it may have done, it may have made little difference it may have made it worse. The probability is the helmet reduced the impact but by a minimal amount as it did not function as designed and the impact was outside its design parameters

All 3 permutations are possible and nothing can be extrapolated from a single incedent.

Sooty and jim – it is designed to crush not break. Breaking into pieces is a sign the helmet failed – it depends on whether it failed before crushing or after crushing whether it did any good or not.,

A helmet that breaks into pieces is a helmet that has failed

I have to admit I am pro choice when it comes to Lids if you dont want to then dont, its a bit like smoking its your choice if you do or not (however smoking does affect others in a way not wearing a lid does not But you get my point?)

However I wont leave the house with out putting one on infact it feels really odd with out wearing one it’s a habit for me. I have no assumption that wearing one will save me in all situations but it will/ has in some and I’ll play the odds thanks and keep wearing one, as will my two kids once they are big enough to start riding. To be frank I think people not wearing one esp when trail riding are plain daft. But thats there choice.

Hope he’s alright – where were you riding?

A helmet that breaks into pieces is a helmet that has failed

But if the shell compressed, then surely that’s a sign that some impact has been absorbed, thus the helmet DID do its job prior or breaking? Sure, if you’ve no lid then you’ve no lid to break (“fail” as you put it). Your head, however…

Mine broke up on the one and only big head/tarmac crash I’ve ever had, shame about the rest of me.
Sent a thankyou to Bell, basically they said the lid would gradually break up on impact/s which was good enough for me.

Wearing the old hairnet style ones back in the seventies cost me five teeth in quite small crashes.

I hope Dennis is doing well and hope he makes a speedy and full recovery!

My mate had a similar accident the day after he bought a helmet when on holiday in Chamonix ten yaers ago. He wasn’t seriously hurt however, but the rock he landed on was embedded in the helmet. If he hadn’t decided the buy the helmet the day before i’m sure he would have died of a nasty injury!

In this thread i’ve read a load of in depth stuff about foam compressing and that if the forces for which a helmet is designed to withstand are exceeded, then it will fail thus giving no protection at all. What about point loading then? Point loading without a helmet means a fractured skull. With a helmet you are giving yourself a vastly better chance, even if the helmet gives out, it’s still done it’s job!

The arguments posed against wearing a helmet in this thread are completely ridiculous and the people making these comments damn well know it!

Message to all those who think a helmet is pointless: GET A HELMET AND ALWAYS WEAR IT!!