[Closed] My helmet (probably) saved my life today

"In 20 years of Intensive care I've seen two cyclists.... and about 100 pedestrians and car occupants."

So that probably actually illustrates that in terms of patients you've seen vs miles covered by form of transport makes cyclists statistically far more likley to be in your care than car occupants and pedestrians?

As for the 'medics said it saved me' line, again, it's rubbish.

Whether they said it or not, that's what I would have believed anyway. And I did say "(probably)" in my thread title, and "likely" in my post, both of which aren't definites.

Besides, what do we mean by 'life' anyway. Sure, I may not have been killed without a helmet but maybe I could have ended up in a coma, or paralysed, or loss of memory which could have effectively ended my 'life' as I currently know it. It doesn't have to be about dying...

Cookeaa

I have said all this repeatedly but as Rob seems to have grasped many folk don't actually bother to read what I write.

I own two different helmets and wear them as appropriate. Pisspot helmet for jumping and some days at trail centres where I will take it off for the climb ( its too hot to ride uphill in) and a vented XC type when I am wearing it all day. The pisspot type would appear to give greater protection from my understanding of the evidence and have less of the risks of helmet wearing.

[b]The science on both sides of the argument is weak at best and biased at worst.[/b]

For the very last time I will try to sum up my position.

Cycling is a safe activity. Some forms of cycling are riskier than others. When the risks are low I don't wear a helmet as I am prepared to accept the level of risk - it is millions to one in some circumstances I simply don't like wearing a helmet so would rather not do so as I find them uncomfortable, sweaty and restrictive. I come from a generation that was cycling before cycle helmets were developed.

The protection that helmets give is often overstated as you seem to agree. They are good at protection from minor injuries - bumps scrapes and so on. They are not good at protection from major injuries. They might mitigate some major injuries but also exacerbate some and there is some good real experimental evidence to show this. This is my understanding of the evidence. The mechanism whereby helmets can make injury worse are thru increase in rotational forces. This has been shown experimentally. The result can be either broken necks or what is known as a diffuse axon injury. Cycle helmets are worse for the increase in rotational injury than many other sports helmets.

So when wandering around the countryside on low risk trails I don't wear a helmet as I am prepared to accept the very small risk of injury

When the risk of crashing is high I wear one as I want the protection from minor injuries.

Across the whole population there situation is slightly different. Helmet wearing puts people off riding bike. The health benefits from riding bikes outweighs the risk from riding bikes without helmets. To oversimplify more people will avoid heart attacks form the exercise of riding bikes than will die from head injuries. This is why the "you must wear a helmet" evangelicals annoy me so much. There is much evidence to support this.

There is also evidence to support that individuals who wear helmets are more likely to crash and that populations who have high rates of helmet wearing have higher rates of crashing and of head injuries and death

I like evidence based practice so I try to look at the evidence and to make valid assessments from following the evidence. Other people can
read the same evidence and reach other conclusions.

What we as cyclists should be agitating for IMO is:
Better research into what actually happens when people crash
Root cause analysis for crashing
Better testing and design for cycle helmets

Nonk - you are correct in that science can never prove this - all you can do is consider the evidence and make your own mind up. And you are absolutely right in that it was foolish of me to get involved in this again.

Tj - we are all entitled to our opinions but do us all a favour and STFU!
Ps..glad your ok kit

For the very last time I will try to sum up my position.

Can we hold you to that on this forever if so we have done some good today STW

Junkyard - Member

"For the very last time I will try to sum up my position."

Can we hold you to that on this forever if so we have done some good today STW

Yup.

There's evidence that the seatbelt laws have not saved nearly as many lives as claimed/thought.

What evidence?

Lots on seat belts here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_laws

Not going to argue about it though, and I always wear a seatbelt.

Does anyone actually care whether TJ wears a helmet or not? Ultimately, it's his decision. There is no compulsion for him to wear one nor should he if he doesn't want to. However, it would be a cruel irony were he to suffer a serious head injury when out on the bike on a low risk ride.

While it may be easy for TJ to take comfort from the science and statistics to justify not wearing a helmet, I'll continue to stick to wearing one in the event that the statictics end up not being in my favour and a perceived low risk ride ends up going wrong. I'd rather place my faith in a helmet to protect me than the science! Tree stumps and rocks are a lot less pointy and sore when there is something between you and them! 😀

Oh and Kit

Get well soon mate! Glad your helmet did the job!

I love the bit in TJ's article that says that a helmeted head is twice as big as a non-helmeted head....and hence is more likely to hit something..

who, ever, in the history of anything has had a bike helmet which makes your head twice the size?!!

glad you're OK though

From cyclehelmet.org's policy statement:

In particular we seek to provide access to a wider range of information than is commonly made available by some governments and other bodies that take a strong helmet promotion stance.

So its fairly clear where they stand then...

who, ever, in the history of anything has had a bike helmet which makes your head twice the size?!!

[i][b]TEAM MCCOY[/i][/b]

double post

My full face makes my head 1.5x bigger tops, so how does a polystyrine lid double it?

I agree everything is all down to the individual, but let's be honest, they do reduce the effect of injury most of the time, but if you feel like you have a low risk of crashing I can understand where you're coming from.

However having cylced on the road a lot to get places, I will always wear one even though I like to think I am a good cyclist. The reason being this: Sh*t Happens!

Case in point: came down a hill, with easily my braking distance between me and the car in front, and I'm having to feather my brakes to keep this distance. Some goon then overtakes me and tucks in within a meter of my front wheel. I'm rather annoyed and begin to back off, so that I have a sensible distnace between me and him. Before I can do this however the guy in front of him did an emergency stop (**** knows why), and I slam on my brakes but still smash into this twerp's rear end. My helmet hit his rear window and stopped my head doing so, and given I was still recovering from a mild concussion the helmet did it's job. It did not make me invulnerable, but I'm still glad I wore it.

Kit's accident is a much more extreme example, and the same happened to a mate of mine (though not as badly as Kit). The cyclists were not at fault in these crashes, therefore it makes sense to wear the helmet all the time as things beyond your control can happen. I am not an evangelical "wear the helmet or you DIE!!!!!" person, but common sense states that surely you might as well wear it for when things like this do happen, and given how many cr@p drivers there are out there these accidents are more common that most of us would like.

I'm with TJ on this!

I do wear a helmet. However people seem to have misconceptions as to what a helmet is designed for. A standard bike helmet is tested fo impacts up to 12 mph which roughly equates to going over the bars whilst riding slowly NOT being hit by a car, flying into a tree or rock off road etc.

Helmet wearing is a personal choice and should be based on an understanding of what they are designed to do. I really don't want legal compulsion and nor should you!

Edit! Can someone provide the stats showing that helmet compulsion in Australia made no difference to head injuries?

With a helmet on, one has a problem inserting head up ones ****....

adstick

Its linked to off the cyclehelmets.org site.

It is flawed research as well - there are some vilid critisims of it

A standard bike helmet is tested fo impacts up to 12 mph which roughly equates to going over the bars whilst riding slowly NOT being hit by a car, flying into a tree or rock off road etc.

So all instances of being hit by a car, flying into a tree or rock off road etc are at 12mph+

😆

If you value life and you have a family then its a no brainer for me to wear a helmet to reduce or avoid a serious head injury. If you feel your riding skills and ability do not warrant wearing then thats your personal choice, however even if you have been lucky for many years and come off or been knocked off without injury whilst [u]not[/u] wearing a helmet you then start to become complacent until the worst happens, I have a short ride to my local leisure centre and thought I would be okay not wearing a helmet until I nearly got knocked off by numpty drivers, suffice to say I wear my lid now.

i don't know much, but i do know that the dude on the far left, backrow of this pic:

[img] [/img]

is probably the most experienced trauma paramedic in the uk and is the lead paramedic for the London HEMS team and has been for many years

in his view EVERY cyclist must wear a helmet

FACTOID

i'm outta here~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>

The reason why most MTBrs including TJ should wear helmets is because they HAVE NO STYLE ARE BALD OR HAVE NAFF haircuts

So what bit doesn't make physiological sense? Slowing the deceleration rate of the brain inside the head is a good thing... As in you make it go from whatever speed it was doing to rest in as long a time as possible, thereby cutting down the damage that the inside of the skull does to the brain.

Kit: I'm glad that you were not seriously injured helmet or not.

IMHO and its just that MHO.....

I would rather wear my helmet on even the "lowest risk rides" as:

a) something completely unexpected may happen
b) my maths is too poor to continually work out probabilities for every eventual riding environment
c) I ride for fun, I don't want to risk loosing that fun for even the shortest period of time and if a helmet MAY preserve this fun then thats the route I will always look to take

[center][b]Remember kids, don't lean safety by accident.[/b] :lol:[/center]

On a sidenote TJ would you use similar probability theory, or suggest it be used, in the use of a condom? Low risk sex vs high risk sex.

BTW this isn't meant to antagonize or lower the tone just interested* 😀

*please keep experiences to an overview 😆

letmetalktomark... yeah, not sure your condom argument is a good one there... as in low risk would be having sex with a long term partner whereas high risk would be having sex with a stranger, or during that time of the month?

I think I may be able to guess what a lot of peoples answers would be there!

Hmmm, in fact it shows exactly what TJ is talking about, making a decision based on the percieved risk of the activity... who'd have thunk it!

More than 100 posts about a helmet saved my life post... Never! 😉

Anyway, I've not read it because undoubtedly it's the same old guff about how they don't do anything for you being spouted out by the same usual suspects, same as it was on my Helmet thread the other week...

So...

[b]PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Stop the thread someone now![/b]

We've heard it all before!!! 🙄

Stupid for following the scientific evidence? The science is not good but it is clear that if you are uninjured after an accident wearing a helmet then you would not have been killed with one. You might have been injured.

http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1019.html

Stupid for believing that a load of guff from a website with an obvious agenda is science. Besides, if you refer to the first line of tosh on their website, any fool will realise that you can't prove a negative. It is clearly possible to prove that someone has died due to head injuries, it is equally possible to prove whether they were wearing a helmet or not. What isn't possible is to account for all those people who do not get onto any statistical data simply becuase they haven't reported that nothing happened when they bashed their head.

In the meantime I'll go with my personal experience which is :-

3 smashed helmets in my garage, no head injuries apart from self inflicted (mainly an assault on brain cells through alcohol and drugs)
3 people known personally to me dead as a result of head injuries, none of them wearing a helmet
Nil people known to me seriously hurt or killed due to a head or neck injury whilst wearing a helmet

QED in my world.

Is it stopped? Oh no.. still going...

In my experience.... my chain slipping and me piling into the ground without a helmet hurt an awful lot (I was pootling to work in cycle lane in Cambridge.. stoopid really).

however, sliding at 20mph across a pavement into a bin head-first, with a lid on, hurt a lot less..

ergo, scientificness says helmets = good idea

While we're bringing in personal experience and spurious research...

A friend of a friend** studied coroners reports on people killed by head injuries in bike accidents over [i]x[/i] years in [i]y[/i] town/city. In every single case, the other injuries sustained would also have killed them.

* a doctor
** retired orthopaedic consultant with years of A&E experience, former doctor to British Cycling and the Milk Race, long time cyclist
IIRC, x = 1 year and y = Manchester, but this may be wrong.

i suffered a blood clot on the brain and quite a long recovery having fallen off without a helmet. I survived having being given 33% chance of doing so and a much higher chance of severe difficulties afterwards (much like Micheal Watson the boxer). I sustained no other life threatening injuries.

With a helmet the worst I have done is shaken myself up a bit and bled from my knees and elbows.

Why would anyone ride a mountain bike without a helmet on?

Goan - Member

So what bit doesn't make physiological sense?

Goan - Member

TJ - that is about the biggest crock of shit i've ever heard.

The helmet has more functions that absorbing impact. It also reduces the deceleration of the brain inside the skull by moving when you have an impact,

The helmet moving in what way where? Utter nonsense.

Teh helmet reduces the linear acceleration of your head It works best when in continuous contact with your head and does not move relative to your head.

thereby reducing the extent of internal injury to blood vessels etc. I'm pretty sure I dont really need to tell you about the benefits of that....

total confusion. The tearing of blood vessels happens with a rotational acceleration not a liner one - Tearing of the blood vessels is precisely the sort of injury that is caused by rotational forces that can be exacerbated by a helmet.

Focal head injury from liner impacts or diffuse axon injury from rotational forces from oblique impacts..

Berm Bandit

Yes the cycle helmets org site is obviously biased - however it does have references to real peer reviewed research and meta studies. Follow the links to the science

to all the people with me to tales your all wrong as its not science 🙄

[i]Why would anyone ride a mountain bike without a helmet on?[/i]

What's the most commom cause of head injury?

Motor Vehicle Accident.

Why would anyone drive without a helmet on?

Half of all Traumatic Brain Injuries involve alcohol.

Why would anyone drink without a helmet on?

Anecdote is not the same as data...

[url] http://cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2022.pdf [/url]

Read this. Properly read it, and try to understand what the figures show.

This is the perfect scenario; before and after helmet compulsion laws...

when will everyone realise TJ will never let it go?, i'm off to other threads, enjoy your bantering

when will everyone realise TJ will never let it go?

he'll be the last standing for sure

However - I have noticed a softening of his position over the last year or so

Mate -did she run you over because you're a ginger. If you can prove this you'll be sorted for a few quid for sure! xx

TJ is an self-confessed anarchist so why even argue, he'll disagree out of principle.

If nobody wore helmets I'm sure he WOULD wear one himself. 😀

[b]TJ, do you like CountryLife butter, and if so what are your reasons?[/b]

Does TJ have a brain injury for not wearing a helmet! :lol:Or is perhaps his brain rattles around in his skull so It doesnt reduces the deceleration of the brain inside the skull by moving when you have an impact. 😆

I've read a couple of these helmet threads, and there seems to be more rational thought behind TJ's responses than a lot of his detractors'.

Risks of head injury related to activity are on a big smooth curve from staying in bed at one end to jumping out of a 5 storey building headfirst at the other.

It's up to each individual to decide at what point they start protecting their head. For people to say that doing any activity involving balancing on 2 wheels crosses some sort of Rubicon past which only the stupid don't wear helmets is ridiculous, as there are plenty of activities on the curve which are far more dangerous, which the same people don't wear hemets for.

All the science guff is by the by.

nedrapier +1

nedrapier Thank you

I'm stupid but still wear a helmet so there!

hey Kit glad to hear that your OK....

I had a similar experience 15 years ago, a car hit me from behind on the Dumfries bypass, through me up in the air and on to the bonet... still on my bike, I can remember it as if it was yesturday... I can remember thinking I was going to meet my maker that day... back then I never used to where a helmet Cu's nobody did then.. miraculously all I did was bang my leg a bit.. totalled my bike though, then 2 months later I got knocked of my bike again.. at that point I gave up commuting on a bike and started to drive..

hope your injury's heal soon

TJ - go and get your helmet, stick it on your head, fasten it and give the helmet a wiggle. Does it move? Of course it does. So what do you think it'll do in a high speed impact?

As for the blood vessels only being damaged by rotational forces - can you explain that one to me please.

hang on TJ you promised never to post about helmets again.

can everyone stop provoking him please - he's not goign to change his mind and he problably won't change yours either.

Why would anyone ride a mountain bike without a helmet on?

What's the most commom cause of head injury?

Motor Vehicle Accident.

Why would anyone drive without a helmet on?

Half of all Traumatic Brain Injuries involve alcohol.

Why would anyone drink without a helmet on?

Anecdote is not the same as data...

The funniest thing yet by far. Professional drivers race and rally do wear helmets for that purpose. Also as far as stats go, a motor vehicle accident is easy enough to record data wise where as i'm not exactly gonna phone up the statistics nerds and mention that today at Glentress i had 4 accidents because cycle wise only hospital visits count as accidents rather than the millions of other non hospital accidents that actually do happen. This is where scientific research actually is............ erm...................... bollocks!!

Goan - go and look at the research.

Google diffuse axon injury and focal brain injury. Tearing of blood vessels is part of a diffuse axon injury which happens when the brain roates in the skull. Straight on impacts do not cause this type of injury. Basic stuff.
Look at the TRL stuff on how helmets work. The less they move on your head the better they work. If your helmet wobbles out on your head the less well it works - this is one of the key findings fromt eh TRL research

I am bored of this now and everyone is bored of me.

Aww, Get back late from work and find I've missed a helmets rammy.
Re. the medics comments; I remember sitting in Edinburgh Royal about ten years ago with a succession of different doctors trouping round, looking at the bloodied cycling gear, and repeating, mantra-like that "my helmet had DEFINATELY saved my life". Of course, any piece of polystyrene I owned was actually sitting on a shelf at hame 20 miles away at the time.
Medic's say that phrase the same way that hairdressers say "goin' on holiday? blah blah"- its a way of keeping the punters happy and maybe giving them some sense of control over their accident, Helpful bullsh*t in other words.
I'm slightly more bolshilly anti helmet than TJ, but would support his comments as a sensible middle ground.
I'd certainly not be wearing one for commuting in Embra' though.

By the way, Im very glad that Kit is OK, but an experienced STWer should know waayy better than to post a thread title like that 🙂

tj i respect your right not to wear a helmet but and its a bloody big but my mother was a doctor until she retired a couple of years ago she could bore you to death with the physics of what goes on inside your head during an impact even at very low speed basics being that your brain does not stop moving after you have and can suffer some serious trauma from hitting the inside of your skull and most but not all of this trauma can KILL YOU so you can try to blind me with so called facts but this women know more about this than you have ****ING FORGOT so you carry on taking that chance but don't tell me what you think is fact cause it ain't

And does your mum think that bike helmets work to prevent serious head injury?

fatsimon mk2, can you tell me what peer reviewed papers on head injuries and cycle helmets your mother was the author of?
You start by 'respecting rights and finish with insults, Is this helpful?

I'll ask her later when i speak to her but had lots of conversation about this subject years ago when when i was a scooterboy and like i said she could bore for England on this subject and as a side note around the time i was a scooterboy i dated a nurse who worked in a&e in London and heard plenty of gory tales about bike messangers that suffered offs

*Muffled yelping*

I promised to argue this no more.

your right West kipper not helpful just a subject that gets my goat a little bit and no no published paper just lots of first hand and bloodied hands on experience of head vs concreate/tarmac/kerb etc

well you need to go back to page one of this to find why you get on everyones tits tj.
kit pitches in with a tale of great escape and an upbeat medic with a cheery.. might just have saved your life comment.
joyus post allround.
but sure as eggs is eggs you get tj with..welll actually if you apply the data i think you will find that...zzzzzzzzz.
and yet you use one if there is a risk. 🙄
sorry man i like your well thought out informative posting but today it was a fail in my view.

sorry, TJ said that the chances of crashing on a bike are "millions to one" . LOL!

Cullenbay - no I did not.

What I said was that the chances of crashing and getting a serious head injury that would be prevented by a helmet when riding on a traffic free easy path are millions to one.

Glad your ok Kit

A friend went under an HGV 5 years back whilst out cycling.
It turn left across her and she got dragged under its wheels.
Cue heli-air ambulance into London.
Everything was a mess including her.
Except the helmet, which was untouched!

I wear a lid all the time I'm on a bike. Period.

Helmets, especially for everyday cycling, are an emotive issue, and its important to counter the relentless propaganda surrounding them.
If and when they are made compulsory, the numbers of cyclists on the road WILL go down- usually by 30% when laws are introduced. Why do you think that the pro compulsion campaigns are supported so enthusiastically by the motor industry / motor insurance industry?
First we'll have to wear helmets, then maybe hi-viz, then body armour, and when casualty rates are still going up , 'something will have to be done', and we will be banned from the road for our own safety.
Thats only one good reason why you should THINK carefully about their promotion.

I got chatting with a guy 3 years ago.
He’d been out mountain biking on his own one evening, went over the bars and regained consciousness in the dark.
He couldn’t move. He had his phone but couldn’t get to it or work it.
After a while he gained some limited movement in his fingers and toes and I guess a limited range of movement in his bottom!
He then shuffled, clawed and pushed himself back along the trail.
He said that after about 2hrs he realised he was going the wrong way!
All the time he was getting colder and colder as it was about this time of the year up in the Scottish Highlands.
The colder it got, the more feeling and movement he gained.
So he shuffled 180 degrees about so that by the dawn he’d made his way, on his backside, to the roadside where a lorry driver spotted him in the morning and called for an ambulance.
He was by now seriously hypothermic, which actually saved his life as it took down the swelling to the broken vertebrae in the back of his neck!
Guess what – he wasn’t wearing a lid!

Why should it be emotive?

Think: if, when you teach your children to ride their first bikes, would you or did you have them wearing a helmet?
And whilst out with your children on these rides, did you or do you wear one too?
Lead by example perhaps?

Teach them well & it never becomes an issue. Take them to the events you enter perhaps, MM, Sleepless, whatever and they'll witness the same - riders in helmets on bikes. Big deal!

Ti29er, Shouldnt he have been wearing a back/ neck protecter?
If anything by increasing the size/ leverage on the head a helmet could perhaps had made things worse.
But without a careful reconstruction with a field of live volunteers, we'll never know, one way or another.

I'd also probably not want my kids to wear helmets.
Of the wains I see, a good 90% are wearing them in such a way as to make the risk of injury greater( ill fitting or delibarately skewed back to not mess up their hair, for instance)

TJ - bit of a lazy answer that one.

"I'd also probably not want my kids to wear helmets."

Let's see what the mother has to say when it comes to it! 🙄
By the same token, just because other fathers aren't getting it right, doesn't mean you have to follow their poor examples.

Ultimately, you have to make assessments.

My ex's brother worked in a head injuries clinic in the US. The horror stories he had to tell don't bear repeating; and so you have to make a judgment call on what you feel is best for you based on what you know and what you knowledge you have gained from others.

There are enough guys on here who will tell you about hitting a tree, a kerb, head butting the ground in particular to know beyond reasonable doubt that it's the wisest thing to do whilst out mountain biking; but ultimately, it's your choice.

Goan What is the point in me continuously repeating stuff? Everything I have said is backed up by real peer reviewed evidence.

Have you read the research? Do you understand the anatomy and physiology of brain injury especially diffuse axon injury?
Follow the links in wiki to read some real research
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1039.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn418-soft-hat.html

TI 29r

Its a pity the real evidence does not back that up

There is no good evidence that helmets across populations reduce head injuries.

Many doctors are gainst helmets and complusion

http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1171.html

ti29 your wasting your time with real life things mate if its not been peer reviewed you have no voice yknow.

Do you, or have you ever reported having had a crash whilst out biking, having head butted a tree perhaps, re-adjusted your lid (?), shaken the grass from your clothing, checked the bike over and then without fail reported a non-injury to the NHS ?

Thought not!

Ti29er, helmets are a RECENT phenomenon- not that long ago no-one wore them ( and in many countries most still dont), and yet head injuries seem( when population level studies are undertaken) to go UP when compulsion is introduced.
Now every kid I know survived the evils of a helmet free childhood( including cycling, fights, falling out of trees etc)
I also know a lot of cyclists, many of whom are fairly 'old school' and I still dont know one who has had a serious or fatal head injury(I'm sure there is one of you that does, but these are totally the exception that proves the rule)

TJ - yes I have read some of the research and do understand the anatomy, physiology and biomechanics of brain injury.

When you are citing wikipedia and a site called cyclehelmets as your examples of real research your argument starts to lose credibility. The New Scientist article is about enhancing the deceleration properties of helmets.

i wore a lid as a kid after a mate died falling off the back of a moped whilst riding along with bmx's

If we apply the same criteria as we might do with say smokers.

That is, with the best will in the world, a self inflicted injury.
Ultimately, how much real sympathy can one extend when smokers develope cancers, be they smoking related or not?

So, how much real and genuine sympathy do you think you'd receive were you to sustain a head injury whilst out cycling from the non-medical profession?

For me, I've experienced enough, heard enough and witnessed enough to know without doubt nor hesitation that wearing a helmet is a given for me, my family and friends.
You choose your own path, based on your own wisdom, knowledge and experiences.

Jedi, Shouldn't your mate have been wearing a motorcycle helmet for something that dangerous?

tj why is it that you are now happy to include the fact that doctors are against helmets when it was a doctors opinion in the op that got you started?are those doctors crash investigators tj? hmmmmmmm.

Getting a bit tired as a topic this, but it always goes the same way; those of us like TJ do our best to argue in a sensible way, providing as much evidence as we can, and get juvenile comments and. anecdotes in return.
Those of you advocating helmet use at all times; are you really sure you should be involved in such a dangerous activity that your helmet is the only thing that is preventing your certain death or disability?
It's just nor that dangerous, or you wouldn't be allowed to by your mums...

There is evidence that smoking causes serious illness
There is no evidence that vented polystyrene cycling hats save lives

Do you, or have you ever reported having had a crash whilst out biking, having head butted a tree perhaps, re-adjusted your lid (?), shaken the grass from your clothing, checked the bike over and then without fail reported a non-injury to the NHS ?

Thought not!

its a good point. I have already broken one lid this year and had a real head-banger last week. I told everyone on here of course 🙂 but the NHS never got the call