@aracer (i wasn’t going to post further but couldn’t help this)-
Congratulations on surviving your pothole crash. This neither proves nor disproves the relevance of helmets.
A helmet is relevant when the area covered by the helmet is a point of impact. This is the main reason the 15mph-ish thing is actually fine. By the time you start bouncing your head you have probably lost most of your velocity. If, say you had taken a long low dive from the bike you might have destroyed your jaw or rolled awkwardly and damaged your back – and a helmet wouldn’t have done Jack). You could have tangled your legs in the bars, gone over sideways and been runover by a passing car while prone in a position you would not otherwise have been in and again a helmet could not have helped in the slightest. Even suggesting that a helmet (especially a minimal roadie helmet) will do much to protect the face or any other area of the body not under it is almost as laughable as imagining that a cycle helmet is a magical defence against a 30+mph car that will let you walk away uninjured.
Conversely, the trend to deeper coverage at the rear of the head in mountain bike helmets coupled with the realistically slower pace (of non down-hill) off-road cycling compared to a racer on tarmac alters several of the usual entry points in the debate. It is also a consideration that a road accident is a very different proposition to misjudging a hillside trail and ending up on rocks below – the likely impact profiles are completely different.
Where a helmet will help is very specific impacts to the cranium that can cause concussion (which can be benign or life threatning) or cause serious damage to things like the ability of your optic nerve to chat to your brain. Many times you may simply scuff, graze and cut yourself up; lose teeth, bruise or break cheeks, jaws etc. Other times you may be less lucky- which is really the key word.
All activity can be shown to hold risks. Helmets simply make some of the less palatable risks less likely. I suspect that if in your example you were to attempt to sue, the question of why you didn’t see the hole and rode into it would be raised. If you were simply going too fast then this is pretty much indefensible. Remember; the purpose of a helmet is not to make injury impossible; it is to substantially reduce the risk of crippling yourself in certain circumstances.
I understand you are big enough to make your own decisions but I do not believe you can predict how or indeed, if you are likely to hit the ground or any other given obstacle on a given day before you even get on the bike – therefore the risk assessment is actually more of a la-la song, but if this makes you happy then that’s fine.
What I find strangest about cyclists and helmets is that by and large motorcyclists and horse riders agree they are a useful thing. Likewise in most of the country it’s been the accepted norm to wear seatbelts since about 1978 or whenever it was (exceptions for parts of West Yorkshire and probably other places that I haven’t lived in). So why is cycling different?
I really don’t care that you don’t want a helmet or even if you wear one or not. What I object to is your wrong-headed ‘logic’.
