Wear your helmet kids!

Jon – because when riding trail centre the risk of crashing is higher – and the protection the helmet offers against minor injuries is worth having. They will protect against lacerations and bumps and bruises.

So when I have a high chance of crashing I wear one for the protection from minor injuries they provide.

and whilst i have no evidence to prove the fact i am sure that had he of been wearing a helmet his chances of survival would have been greatly improved!

This is the attitude I argue against – you simply don't know that and the evidence that they offer significant protection from life threatening injuries is unclear at best – absent IMO from much reading of much research

no i dont KNOW that, but had my friend of known what was going to happen i am sure he would have worn one and although it may not be proved i can wholehartedly GUARENTEE one thing. he wouldnt be any worse off than he is now!!

its common sense, the majority of what you have said appears insane, especially when you admit you wear a lid!!!

if you have something on your head (even though it might not be the best design) it is likely to offer some amount of protection. if i was to hit you over the head with a bit of 2×4 (wich i suspect you need) then i am sure that it would be less painfull and therefore less injury if you wear a helmet whilst i do it!!!!

likewise, i think it was you who earlier said that a cracked helmet "provides NO PROTECTION ATALL" whilst i agree that a broke helmet needs replacing, it will still offer some protection not only superficial wounds but some impact resistance aswell. To prove this point, if you have a broken helmet, take a peice of it, and put it on your hand, with the other hand take a hammer and hit your hand (not stupidly hard just gently)next remove the piece of helmet and repeat, wich one hurts more????????????? please answer this as it is not a retorical question!

Ugh, don't know why I am re-entering this discussion…

This is the attitude I argue against – you simply don't know that and the evidence that they offer significant protection from life threatening injuries is unclear at best

Completely and utterly wrong.

Head injuries occur due to rapid decelleration / acceleration (depending on how you like to look at it) of the brain and surrounding tissue. Helmets attenuate the acceleration of an impact down to a lower level to help reduce the possibility of head trauma. There is plenty of evidence around to support this. We design helmets which protect pilots ejecting at 600knts from an aircraft. If the helmets weren't there they would die. No question.

LHS – yes a helmet can be designed to cope with major accelerations – but cycle helmets are not the same as the ones you describe.

Do you have specific expertise in cycle helmets?

AS I repeatedly show the evidence that cycle helmets protect against major injuries is poor at best. There is a lot of good quality research that shows this.

If cycle helmets are so good they why does this happen

Robinson shows that, despite significant increases in helmet-wearing, there was no greater improvement in cycle safety than for pedestrian safety over the same period.

Paul Hewson finds no detectable relationship between helmet-rates and on-road cycle safety in Great Britain.

etc etc
http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=4689

If cycle helmet provided significant protection against major injury then you would expect to see this reflected in the accident stats. However clearly there is no reduction in serious injuries after an increase in helmet usage. Have you an alternative explanation?

Can you answer this LHS?

a report on children’s cycling from the National Children’s Bureau includes a very useful appendix surveying the literature on helmets. It states, “Those of us who cycle should be under no illusion that helmets offer reliable protection in crash situations where our lives may be in danger. Neither should we believe that widespread adoption of helmet wearing would see many fewer cyclists killed or permanently disabled. The evidence so far suggests otherwise.” Coming from a children’s charity, this is an important finding.

http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=4689

TJ, a couple of questions.

1) Do you understand that LHS works in the design of helmets that are similar to bike helmets, and has therefore done a lot more research than you?

2) Why do you think that a neurosurgeon would understand the physics and engineering of helmet design?

Molgrips – I understand LHS has expertise in helmet design – but its unclear how much in cycle helmets.

I would be very interested in his response to the quotes above. Or your response indeed. Why does the head injury rate not drop when helmet usage rises?

Why do you guys just dismiss anything that does not fit your "commonsense view"

A neurosurgeon will see head injuries and will have some idea about the mechanics of head injuries.

The only type of research that shows benefit is after the fact surveys of people in hospital with head injuries – these have a major flaw in thay do not have the whole data set so are not reliable.

I do not say the evidence is that helmets offer no protection. I say the evidence is poor and contradictory.

There is one significant thing. You keep saying that helmets don't reduce the chance of significant injury. Well considering most injuries are not head wounds then I guess you are right. Reduce your statement to helmets reduce the chance of head injuries then as ever you are talking out of your arse again. Anything that prevents a direct impact to your head will reduce injuries. Ever been hit by a low branch at speed? Makes your head rattle with a helmet on. Now imagine the feeling without a helmet? Think you would crash as a result? I do. Hence helmet = reduction of injury

Graham – please don't misquote

I keep saying that there is no good quality evidence of helmets reducing major head injury. indeed there is evidence both ways much of it badly flawed They clearly do reduce minor head injuries.

Would you get your young children to wear a helmet? I'm sure empirical evidence suggests LHS is correct and TJ is a gibbon.

Bontybuns – then lets see your evidence – I have provided many links to evidence that backs my case. have a read of it

TJ, you type some nonsense.

waderider – what and where? everything I have posted is backed by expert opinion and real research.

If cycle helmet provided significant protection against major injury then you would expect to see this reflected in the accident stats. However clearly there is no reduction in serious injuries after an increase in helmet usage. Have you an alternative explanation?

Yes……Show us a report that states/shows there is no reduction in serious HEAD injuries!

An article in Injury Prevention magazine by Paul Hewson finds no detectable relationship between helmet-rates and on-road cycle safety in Great Britain. A second article, also by Hewson (this one published in Accident Analysis and Prevention journal), reaches the same conclusion for child cyclists. Hewson emphasises that this doesn’t necessarily mean that helmets are ineffective; an alternative explanation is that there might be some benefits for particular groups and/or for particular types of cycling, and he points out that his own data cover on-road cycling only. However, he also argues that road safety professionals have no grounds for being involved in helmet promotion, given the lack of detectable benefits for on-road cyclists.

firstly, i am not sure paul hewson is qualified to say any more than his opinion, he is after all just a lecturer in statistics, and from what i can work out has done no scientific research other than analysis of statistics. wich makes him no more trust worthey a source than anyone here with real life experiance, however, for aguments sake….

Hewson emphasises that this doesn’t necessarily mean that helmets are ineffective; an alternative explanation is that there might be some benefits for particular groups and/or for particular types of cycling, and he points out that his own data cover on-road cycling only. However, he also argues that road safety professionals have no grounds for being involved in helmet promotion, given the lack of detectable benefits for on-road cyclists.

so he admits that his "OPINION" is on road use only and that they may have benifits for other users, mountin biking prehaps????

Cycle helmets are only designed and tested to withstand an impact equivalent to an average weight rider travelling at a speed of 12 mph falling onto a stationary kerb shaped object from a height of 1 metre.

to start with, this is the saftey standard test, so admitedly, this isnt the best test in the world and should be a bit more vigourous, however, that doesnt mean the manufacturers dont use better test's, indeed it doesnt mean they do either.

however, 12mph is the test and they have to protect you from that to pass the test.

i assume you have seen the advert on tv to reduce speeding, goes something along the lines of a kid saying at 30 miles an hour theres and 80 percent chance il live, at 40 mph theres an 80 percent chance i'l die.

so a 10mph differance is huge, so the 12mph test by my reckoning will make a 20mph crash more like a 8 mph one and a 40 mph crash more like a 28mph one, still enough for very serious injury but might be enough to save my life. therefore im happy

jon

Why do you guys just dismiss anything that does not fit your "commonsense view"

We don't. The thing is, we are discussing a range of issues, and coming to various conclusions based on that discussion. You seem to be latching onto one single semantic point and constantly pushing and pushing, despite it's fading relevance to the topic.

You ALWAYS do this, on every single thread you get embroiled in. It's a major flaw somewhere in the chain between your conscious, your language centres, your keyboard and our brains.

Just to clear things up:

We don't think helmets will save us from any harm
We don't think that helmets will help in every kind of crash
We appreciate that the research is patchy
We do however think that having 1" of foam between your head and the tarmac is better than nothing at all.

If it wasn't for you labouring your point endlessly and ignoring ours (backed up with links you don't appear to read) this thread would have finished naturally pages ago.

TJ – This thread is proof that your a Gibbon.

nutsnvolks

The Robinson report linked to above shows no reduction in serious head injuries.

If cycle helmet provided significant protection against major injury then you would expect to see this reflected in the accident stats.

Not at all.

You are conflating head protection and road safety into the same thing.
I think all but the most obstreperous would acknowledge that as your head is plummeting towards tarmac, it would be preferable to have a bit of protection around your head.
But road safety involves lots of humans interacting in subtle ways and the protection that a helmet can offer can have fair less effect than some other causes.

A classic example the opposite way round was the introduction of seat-belt laws. Britain has been given as an example of a country that had credible statistical proof that seatbelts reduced injury (surprisingly no other counties have credible evidence that compulsion has reduced accidents), for years the British stats were used as justification for other countries introducing compulsion. However on closer inspection it turns out that most of the extra lives saved were between 1am-5am.
Why would seatbelts save lives at selective times?
Well it also turns out that the year that seat belts were made compulsory was also the year that the police started using breathalysers.
What was being observed was a reduction in death rates due to a reduction in drink drivers.

Neither of which means that you shouldn't wear a helmet, or a seat belt – you *will* be better off in a crash with them. But it is unlikey that either of them will reduce you chance of being in accident. Greater forces are at work, which mean you may or may not be safer which is one of several reasons that it's highly unlikely to see a causal link in accident stats.

Classic STW – you don't like the message you attack the messenger.

Look at teh childish tags and the childish insults.

everything I have posted is backed by expert opinion and real research

paul hewson who some of your quotes come from – a college lecturer on statistics – NOT an expert by any means in anything other than statistics, has he ever even seen a helmet??? who knows!

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a paper by Dorothy Robinson (a statistician at the University of New England, New South Wales in Australia)

– oh there it is again in your own post, published by an expert in statistics, but do they have all the statistics they need? such as the unreported crashes with helmet wearers that were unreported??? hmm, seems statistics are flawed therefore most of your argument is also flawed as all your evidence is based on info from EXPERTS IN STATISTICS

Why do you guys just dismiss anything that does not fit your "commonsense view"

because there is no sense in what you say

TandemJeremy – Member
Classic STW – you don't like the message you attack the messenger.

Look at teh childish tags and the childish insults.

A fair point TJ but only up to a point… While some of the responses are childish, there seems to be plenty of well reasoned stuff above which you seem to be neatly avoiding by crying foul. Classic TJ in fact – you don't like the way the discussion's going, you try to steer it away from the issue…

TJ I haven't resorted to childish insults.

I'm trying (as always) to show you what the problem is with these arguments.

You ignored my questions and my reasonable post.

Clubber – I don't know what I am supposed to have avoided? I really have done my best to answer questions put to me and to show my sources.

Wow.

If you think that not wearing a helmet and having your head exposed to rocks or hard ground is a good thing, you're a **** idiot. I've never read such utter bullcrap in all my life. Apart from maybe the bible.

Yes serious injury can still occur if you are wearing a helmet, it only offers limited protection from substative impacts, but i'm afraid that the skull is actually pretty fragile when it impacts hard objects. Any protection you can get is better than none.

TJ, your posting is irresponsibe. If anyone here takes in your twaddle and decides not to use a helmet and comes off worse, it's your fault.

People like you make me so bloody angry!

which you seem to be neatly avoiding by crying foul. Classic TJ in fact – you don't like the way the discussion's going, you try to steer it away from the issue…

couldnt agree more.

before i go i would also like to remind everyone (everyone being TJ) of one important thing.

this is single track world forum….

the original post was about an accident off road….

all your "evidence" is based on ON ROAD use…..

whilst i still strongly disagree with you, by your own admission (by wearing them off road) you admit that we are all correct in terms of what we are mainly talking about (off road use)

However i am sure your selective reading skills will by pass more facts,

have a nice day, i gotta go for now.

jon

FWIW, hysterical replies like yours rossi make me pretty angry too even though I fundamentally agree….

mtb rossis – you would be right if I had said

not wearing a helmet and having your head exposed to rocks or hard ground is a good thing,

But I haven't said that at any point

You are conflating head protection and road safety into the same thing.

Everything Ian says is right and sensible. But it could lead to the conclusion TJ draws – that the benefit of helmet-wearing is a bit marginal in terms of reducing the odds of you ending up with a serious head injury on any given ride. You aren't going to crash. If you do, you may well not really hurt yourself at all. If you do, you may well not hit your head. If you do, it's possible that the helmet will make things worse, or no better. If you crunch it, you probably end up with a very, very marginal reduction in risk of injury from wearing the helmet per mile ridden. Of course, once you're into an incident which sees you whacking your head off something, you're much better with the helmet on, but that is massively unlikely. Meanwhile, if you're wearing the helmet you're definitely getting your hair messed up, you're going to have a sweaty head, and be stuck carrying a poly-shroom. All of which could get your date off on the wrong footing. It's a complicated world. 🙂

FWIW, hysterical replies like yours rossi make me pretty angry too

Sorry about that.

Clubber +1.

big dummy – the helmet could also increase your risk of having an accident. some of the evidence seems to point that way. Its one of the areas that more research into would seem to be indicated

if you're wearing the helmet you're definitely getting your hair messed up, you're going to ahve a sweaty head, and be stuck carrying a poly-shroom. All of which could get your date off on the wrong footing. It's a complicated world.

do you have real statistical evidance from expert statistical analysers to prove that what you are saying is fact? cos if not then how can TJ take your word for it, if he chooses to read that bit

This thread is evidence that internet arguments can never be won. I'm waiting for the comparison between hitler and nazis to be posted up, then the thread will be complete. 😀

I'm not aware of any peer-reviewed studies that demonstrate a solid causal linkage between wearing a cycle-helmet and unsuccessful dates. This is speculation and extrapolation based on a very small and self-selecting data-set. But I'm still right. 😀

Ah but scientifically speaking, there are no facts, just degrees of probability 🙂

Can't believe this thread is still going on, but there does seem to be one key omission from the arguement.

All the discussion revolves around contradictory evidence about trauma to the brain resulting from rapid decceleration. I completely disagree with TJ but see where he is coming from. Interestingly there seems to be no statement on exactly what type of impact would be made worse by a helmet which

What a helmet clearly will protect against is an impact from a sharp rock. The speed of impact may not be enough to cause deccelarative trauma but the force at the point of impact could still easily be enough to fracture the skull. Even if there is no fracture, a helmet could still prevent severe laceration to the side of the head. All the statistics seem to focus on road cyclists or children rather than mountain bikers and the very different terrain and crash types we experience

Whilst I accept that a helmet could possibly be ineffective or worse in some accidents, it will provide protection against the majority of accidents that the majority of mountain bikers have. I'll take that risk

big dummy – the helmet could also increase your risk of having an accident. some of the evidence seems to point that way. Its one of the areas that more research into would seem to be indicated

please show me EXACTLY what the evidance is that suggests helmets INCREASE RISK OF HAVING ACCIDENT please dont supply some rubbish from a lecturer af statistics but a proper piece of evidance that suggests that the rubbish you ae now uttering is remotely true.

the only thing that can possibly do that is the people wearing them having increased confidance and doing more than they normally would /are capable of, however this is down to the person not the helmet.

Not so actually – there is some evidence to suggest that it's true – sure TJ will post it shortly – however since the majority of accidents I've had in which I've hit my head have happened unexpectedly and not in situations where I was testing my courage or percieving myself to be taking a risk, I'm still happy on balance to wear one all the time.

And I suppose the simplest test would be, if you went riding without a helmet on, would you ride exactly the same? I reckon I'd be a least a bit more careful.

Nuts and volks – there is plenty.

However its statistically based or small sample so you will reject it

I suggest you follow some of the links I gave – its all there

There are 3 strands to this
1)risk compensation
2) car drivers giving less room
3) your head is bigger and heavier with the helmet on so more likely to hit things

Thank you clubber.

These biking nazis are not wearing helmets. Case closed I believe. 😀