Gordon Ramsey…Ouch.

All this proves is that Gordon Ramsey should wear a helmet.

BruceWee for PM

Fight the good fight.

It included none of the newer helmets (MIPS/WaveCell) which are specifically designed to try and help with concussion based largely off the reports from 1999/2004/2016 and, yes 2021.  See, I could be “bothered” –  could you be bothered to actually look into the data?

Yes, actually.

MIPS is mostly pointless unless you were in the habit of gluing your non-MIPS helmet to your head and WaveCell works 73% better than not having WaveCell. 73% of what, i’m not exactly sure, they aren’t forthcoming on details of the baseline. But being the bike industry, 73% of not much still isn’t very good. Their modelling still assumes that everyone has no hair and glues the helmet to their head.

But I thought you’d already carried out a risk assessment & decided you don’t need a helmet. What data did you use?

Nope, I don’t wear a helmet for any activity I partake in.  I am admittedly not safety conscious and most of my younger years were spent doing very silly things on a BMX with no protection whatsoever and have followed that ever since.

The helmet preachers are telling me the risk of head injury is high when cycling and I am asking for the perspective against other activities – you know why don’t you, because it is likely to contain activities where they don’t deem it necessary to wear a helmet so I can shout hypocrite at them (i.e. who honestly wears a helmet when paying football)

Everyone seems to have a line they draw and the helmet wearers have drawn it at cycling.  I am fine with that and have never stated that people should not wear one.

When falling from standing to a flat prone position, a fall (2.3m/s) is almost 80% worse than a trip (4m/) and a fall from height (~9m/s) is almost 300% worse than a trip.  A cyclist doing 30kph is travelling at ~8.5m/s which is equivalent to a fall from height if the fall from the bike is sudden.  THIS is why it has more risk.  The likelihood of falling from the bike  may be only slightly higher than walking, but the consequences of doing so are much higher due to the velocity of the impact.

You can’t really translate horizontal velocity into vertical velocity.  A motorcyclist who crashes at 100 mph doesn’t mean they hit their head at 100 mph.

Of course, a fall at 30 kph is going to have more factors in play.  But if you gave me the choice between crashing at 30 kph and falling down a full flight of stairs I think I’d take the 30 kph crash.

I really think you are overstating the dangers of cycling and also overestimating the effectiveness of bicycle helmets.

This thread pretty much sums up the futility of internet discussions/arguments.

So – I know people who work on construction sites – never needed their helmet.

Should we remove wearing helmets from construction sites?

Has anyone checked TJ hasn’t fallen and hit his head? I thought he’d be all over this thread like a rash!

On relative risk……very little comparative data available showing differences between pedestrians and cyclists .What data is out there that i can find from a brief google-fu 15 minutes is from FullFact in 2012, based on 2010 data from TFL. (https://fullfact.org/news/it-more-dangerous-be-pedestrian-cyclist/#:~:text=For%20fatalities%2C%20there%20were%2056,27%20deaths%20per%20billion%20trips.)

What it seems to show is that risk of fatality is similar for pedestrians and cyclists (perhaps no surprise if you are a similar shaped soft object being hit by a fast moving hard object). However, taking into account KSI numbers (killed and Seriously Injured) cyclist risk is almost twice that of pedestrians.

Trying to analyse other data available from DoT is difficult as they do not seem to slice total numbers in relation to miles travelled. Maybe there are some datawonks on here who are able to crunch these numbers and provide additional illumination, but I am reasonably happy to take the FullFact numbers as good evidence.

As i cycle significantly more miles per year than walk – that again is going to further increase my risk of injury on the bike versus walking to the shops. So helmet it is.

and based on Mert’s reference- the conclusion of that paper was while not reducing concussion, helmets reduce severe head injury. Physiologically understandable.

“Helmeted patients involved in bicycle crashes are less likely to sustain a serious head injury, a skull fracture, or facial fractures compared to riders without helmets. The most common injury in patients with a bicycle crash is a concussion. Helmets did not prevent concussion after bicycle rider’s crash in our patient population. ”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32932191/

you pays your money and you takes your choice

This thread pretty much sums up the futility of internet discussions/arguments

There are a few folk dissing it but not saying why, what’s the point in that?

I find it informative. Some people are even using research and data!

As i cycle significantly more miles per year than walk – that again is going to further increase my risk of injury on the bike versus walking to the shops. So helmet it is.

Probably a good choice.  A lot of people walk more miles than they cycle and walk many miles a year in built up/high traffic areas but I don’t think I have ever seen anyone wearing a helmet while walking.

The risk appears to be lower but still a risk so back to my comment about drawing a line somewhere which is going to differ by person. We all take different levels of risk in most things we do.

You can’t really translate horizontal velocity into vertical velocity.  A motorcyclist who crashes at 100 mph doesn’t mean they hit their head at 100 mph.

Of course, a fall at 30 kph is going to have more factors in play.  But if you gave me the choice between crashing at 30 kph and falling down a full flight of stairs I think I’d take the 30 kph crash.

I really think you are overstating the dangers of cycling and also overestimating the effectiveness of bicycle helmets.

Don’t be obtuse.  The point was (and you know this) that speed has an effect on the likelihood of injury, even in the delta between a trip and a fall and that regardless of the actual speed of impact, a cycling fall at 30kph is going to be more severe the simply falling backwards (the +80% damage score above) and since a concussion is more likely to be caused via rotation, it’s more likely on the bike.

At no point have I made a claim as the the effectiveness of a helmet compared to not wearing one in scientific terms – I’ve simply stated that in a situation where a fall is possible, that the severity of that fall is higher on the bike and that in those circumstances, a good helmet will help.  Others (Mert, inadvertently) have shown that regardless of quality, a helmet does help and help significantly.

Like I said, do what you like, but don’t anecdotally claim that helmets won’t/don’t help or that the risks associated with a cycling accident are the same as walking/running/moving around your house – these statements are simply not true and that is borne out in the evidence and facts that I and others have presented.

Sure, many of the benefits may be exaggerated, but I’m not sure that wearing a helmet disproportionately disincentivises people from riding, but I’m not for a mandatory helmet law.

Keep it up, only 6 pages to go

but I’m not sure that wearing a helmet disproportionately disincentivises people from riding,

I think there is evidence to suggest it does (Australia?) but not sure what type of cyclists and what the impact would be.  I am guessing it would be casual cyclists who may just walk, bus, car etc,. if they are really put off just because a helmet is legally required.

I have never worn a helmet in my life but if they became a legal requirement I would probably wear one but no way would it stop me from cycling, which I would imagine is the case for the what seems like a handful of recreational cyclist I see who don’t wear a helmet.  Key point there is that I hardly ever see anyone not wearing a helmet so any discussion around their use is pretty much a moot point anyway!

“Helmeted patients involved in bicycle crashes are less likely to sustain a serious head injury, a skull fracture, or facial fractures compared to riders without helmets. The most common injury in patients with a bicycle crash is a concussion. Helmets did not prevent concussion after bicycle rider’s crash in our patient population. ”

The biggest problem with the pedestrian and cyclist populations is the massive amount of under reporting. In an RTC, with motor vehicles involved, emergency services are physically in attendance in something like 40-50% of cases and aware/logged in something like 80% of cases, so it’s a very “complete” data set. We know who got injured and how in many cases.

On the other hand there are thousands (tens of?) of pedestrian and cycling incidents with absolutely no report at all.

Has anyone checked TJ hasn’t fallen and hit his head? I thought he’d be all over this thread like a rash!

It’s an unwinnable argument, the data (as a complete data set regarding health, protection in event of an accident blah blah blah) is in conflict with “common sense”, marketing, anecdata and what the man down the pub says.

OK, since we’re into day three let me once again try to make my position clear.

Helmets most likely reduce your chance of injury, regardless of activity.  However, helmet compulsion and even helmet promotion reduces the likelihood someone is going to ride.

The goal should be to get as many people riding as possible.  Getting as many people as possible cycling is the single biggest thing that will make cycling safer.

That means those who feel safer wearing helmets should be encouraged to do so.  Those who don’t want to should not be shamed for not doing so.

I’m not saying anyone shouldn’t wear a helmet.  What I’m saying is people who insist on going around making all the hilarious comments like, ‘must have already hit your head’ and ‘guess you don’t mind if we just ignore you if you have an accident’ are really not helping to make things safer.  The opposite, in fact, as people who might like to cycle but don’t want to wear a helmet are less likely to do so.

Yes, it’s probably a marginal effect.  But then so is the likelihood of a helmet ‘saving your life’.

Wear a helmet.  Don’t wear a helmet.  Both are perfectly valid choices and that should be the end of the discussion.

It won’t be, but it should be.

It might be off topic for this helmet thread, but apparently Gordon Ramsey had an incident.

Has anyone heard about what happened? Was he hit by a car or etc?

The reports I’ve read are so vague as to what happened that it looks deliberately so which is a bit weird.

 Key point there is that I hardly ever see anyone not wearing a helmet so any discussion around their use is pretty much a moot point anyway!

Last time we had a helmet chat on here I did a rough study on cyclists I saw on one of my eight mile commutes back home from central London. The non-helmet wearers were in the majority, iirc it was something like 35-20. Lots of people on hire bikes and normal people (as opposed to people in cycling kit) going bare headed and free from the tyranny of polystyrene!!!!

central London

..is in no way representative of the rest of the country

..is in no way representative of the rest of the country

But that would be a hell of a commute wouldn’t it -cycling from the rest of the country to home every evening, on a fixed gear.

Of course it’s not the same, hence not drawing any great claims about it. Nowhere in the country is going to representative of the rest of the country. Central London isn’t even the same as outer London where I was heading – so what? It’s just more anecdotal bs like everything else on this thread. I saw lots of people riding without helmets one day, more than were wearing them on that day.

I have never done an actual count so maybe I will as my perception is that around 95% of people wear helmets as it is noticeable when they are not.  For ‘proper’ cyclists I see when I am ‘proper’ cycling I would say it is even higher than that.

I was actually expecting it to be the other way around but there were a few hire bikes (and there’s a lot more of them now), some guys who looked like site workers commuting and just people going about their day.

The sky news article posted by the op must have been amended, as as far as I can see its just a celebrity chef offering his opinion on helmets based on his own exp. Coming to the thread late, I’d assumed he’d enacted some kind of compulsory helmet wearing law

Fortunately it appears I’m still allowed to do whatever I like when it comes to wearing one. I choose to wear one as i see zero reason not to, but I really don’t care whether you do or not.

I see the squabbling continues…

My own experience says a helmet might help even just by reducing road rash on ya bonce but never having volunteered for a back to back with/without test, we’ll never know.

At the very least,  assuming it doesn’t get broken, the polystyrene hat can be used as a handy bowl to carry bits back to a loved one expecting the return of their formerly intact significant other…

This is an argument without end. It’s opinion, some informed, some disguised as fact. Whilst it’s a choice, make your own and try and avoid preaching to the people who choose the opposite. It’s a bit like trying to convince someone to take up (or drop) religion… Utterly pointless.