Your “trail dog” isn’t cool, it’s a menace.
And three are a bloody liability, especially when you don't bother watching what any of them are doing on a busy trail.
If you don't use mudguards because of "looks" you are a bit of a pleb. If you think a brown streak up your arse looks better then you are deluded.
The rules are not sacrosanct..
Could have been my skull, at nearly zero mph. Not worth the risk to me. Can’t understand why anyone would chance it.
Closest I've come to serious head injury was either falling down a flight of stairs or being in a car crash. But I assume you can understand why anyone would "chance it" in those situations.
Bicycles are magical super-dangerous devices for giving you brain damage: for some reason, a bafflingly non-controversial cycling opinion.
26ers are where it's at!
And, yes - not wearing a helmet on any ride, however short, is....not very sensible.
Nobeerinthefridge
Member
........Lol, trying to take the climbing moral high ground cos you have more gears!
Not really. I ride slx 1x11 on my rigid because:
1x is for fashionistas
Rubber_Buccaneer
Subscriber
93% of 1X deniers still believe the earth is flat
Naw. It's got hills and that, innit.
Also, this is a thread for opinions. Statistics and opinions are different things until we are talking politics...
Additionally: MBUK officially became not worth reading at the same time as the adverts for "fear of a flat planet" tee shirts disappeared.
"Closest I’ve come to serious head injury was either falling down a flight of stairs or being in a car crash. But I assume you can understand why anyone would “chance it” in those situations."
No one I know has fallen down any stairs.
Several people I know have been involved in car crashes, however the injuries were not the sort that would have been prevented by a lightweight crash helmet.
All my family ride bikes and over the years both myself, my wife and my two children have fallen off. The only person who was hurt was my wife (a head injury) when a bar bag fell off its fitting and went into her front wheel. She wasn't wearing a helmet (she's Dutch.....) and she was very lucky.
My friends ride bikes and most have fallen off at some stage - some mtbiking but some just riding along for various reasons. There have been broken and dented helmets. I'm sure they have had other accidents but no head injuries that I'm aware of.
Its very clear that if you fall off a bike you are quite likely to hit your head.
In my opinion you are reasonably likely to fall off a bike at some stage in your life if you ride them a lot.
My controversial opinion is that it is sensible to mitigate the risk of striking your head whilst riding a bike. However I am not always sensible.
latest Dutch thinking:
The mental gymnastics people will go to to try and justify wearing a helmet whilst cycling but not whilst participating in other "normal" activities is stunning.
(note this is an opinion, not a direct response to any particular post. 🙂 )
if i want a first person perspective of a profoundly average mountain biker going quite slowly down a trail, i’ll go out mountain biking
I agree. Wait for me at the bottom.
In my opinion you are reasonably likely to fall off a bike at some stage in your life if you ride them a lot.
It's an oddity, but now I think of it, in 30-odd years of mountain biking, I've only ever trashed one helmet (hit head on a rock), and thinking back, I don't think I've otherwise crashed in such a way that a helmet would have really prevented an injury. I've only been road riding for the last 3-4 years and feel way more exposed here. Again, I'm yet to have an off serious enough to trash a helmet, but I feel far more exposed riding at speed in a group than I ever do battering down off-road trails and rock gardens. Certainly the one road ride I did where I forgot to take my helmet felt, at once, very liberating and very scary. I rode home far more carefully than I would normally have!
My kids wear helmets and my son has definitely bounced his helmeted-head off the tarmac more than once (yey for U12 circuit racing!) and even managed to knock himself silly in a CX race (a fair achievement!) They wouldn't think of putting a leg over a bike without a helmet, and I reckon this is a good thing.
Ebikes are the future.
I was the only non ebiker of 8 last night, despite being the fittest there, I had the least fun.
Fact.
