[Closed] Another helmet article - sensible this time!

To be honest I ride pretty cautiously whether I wear one or not. 😀 That being the case I can't see that I'm doing myself any harm by wearing one.

I can see that wearing one can subliminally have an effect on car drivers though. It kind of "dehumanises" a rider in some motorists eyes. I don't know if that paper mentioned it but in sure it's been discussed lots of times.

I'll keep wearing one anyway even if it's entirely a placebo fix to allow me to enjoy riding more. I worry about enough stuff as it is.

I’ve only read the abstract, but basically seems to argue helmets aren’t all they’re cracked up to be

I don’t believe it says that.  It does say that helmets reduce head injury but that a fixation on  helmet use distracts from the real causes of cyclist death and injury and the factors that prevent greater adoption of cycling in the US.

Basically, a cycle helmet is a good thing but if you get run over by a 38 ton lorry because the driver is on drugs, or the infra structure makes your commute inherently unsafe then a helmet won’t save you when you died of massive internal crushing injuries.

The risk of not wearing a helmet is likelihood of something happening and the consequence if it does.

The paper is a sensible study of likelihood but I don't think you can deduce from it that you shouldn't wear a helmet as an individual.

Removing the fixation on helmets could reduce the likelihood of getting a bang on the head in your lifetime from 5 times to 2 times. But the helmet might prevent any serious consequence all 5 times.

I've never been hit by anything (touch wood) but have hit my head twice due to just falling off, no one else involved. Both times I split my helmet and got concussion. So in my case a more relaxed stance on helmets could have had severe consequences.

Others will have totally different experiences but if you are going to use stats to decide whether to wear a helmet you have to see the full picture.

US article about US legislation.

If they were really worried about cyclist injuries from cars, then rather than obsessing about bike helmets, they would send cyclists more thoughts and prayers.

Be interesting to know how many people don't wear a helmet.  I have a feeling from my anecdotal evidence that it must be around 1% as I hardly ever se anyone not wearing a helmet when cycling (I don't wear one myself)

Any helmet debate is pretty pointless based on that.

Thing is I wear a helmet as it might make me safer but it makes others think cycling is unsafe and so dont do it and society suffers

I very rarely wear one, usually only on the mtb, so that makes it about 25% of riders 😉

I always ride one when mountain biking, rarely when doing other types of cycling though. This time of year, being bald, it’s a nice wool beanie.

I haven't read the article. I've broken 3 helmets due to head/harder thing interface, so I'll carry on wearing one.

mtbing: always, commuting: mostly, unless it's mostly segregated from speeding head-height wing mirrors. Pootle along a tow path or along a deserted lane to pick up a baguette: nah.

I also never wear one in the car, shower, or walking down the stairs, all of which statistically carry higher risk of head injury than cycling.

I was stopped by a park ranger in California a few weeks ago and asked (very politely) to put my helmet on (which I had taken off as it was hot, and I was slogging up an enormous hill).

True story bro.

Interesting....

I don't wear a helmet a fair bit of the time offroad. I'll think about where I'm going and take one along and pop it on if I want to. Maybe not....

This is in Germany and people are very happy to tell you what they think you should be doing, so I asked a few folk that commented, why they mentioned it.

All they said was, its cycling, you should wear a helmet which boiled down to "by association", cycling = helmets which isnt thinking too much about things really.... especially when a lot of my riding this time of year is on fire roads in the forest as the trails have too much snow.

I worrry about mandatory helmet wearing deflecting liability in an accident caused by a third party because the cyclist wasnt wearing a helmet, therefore indicating a degree of liability for the accident itself.

And Essel gets the prize for missing the point by the greatest distance, flattyre for selective quoting then agreeing with the quotee 😀

You could probably equally well study public fixation on hi vis vs accident reduction rate. Bet it doesn’t exist.