My helmet (probably) saved my life today

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 F**KING 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