I ride my mountain bike without a helmet. I always wear my helmet when I am on my motorcycle, before I even start it in fact. I am comfortable with falling correctly onto hard surfaces.
If I was to take up downhill racing, or if I decided to ride on snow, I would strap on a helmet.
In my city, anybody under 18 has to wear their helmet. Good idea.
Another thing, if you have children, and you decide to take a bike ride with them, make them wear one, and YOU need to wear one too. Teach by example.
I am sorry, the post above was not very well thought out or arranged, rather discombooberated I dare say.
Now I am off to continue watching a Monty Python Flying Circus marathon on BBCA.
Like a lot of folks, I grew up before bike helmets appeared on the scene. So I never wore 'em.
But a couple years ago, while having an introspective moment, I was considering that I wore helmets while riding horses, and helmets while flying open-cockpit ultralights and experimental airplanes, and while this sort of safety equipment wasn’t exactly wonderfully comfortable it wasn’t that bad, either. And certainly, the helmet did me some good that time I was bucked off a horse and came to a halt by slamming into the side of a barn, whacking my head along with multiple other body parts. And I kind of wish I had been wearing a visor as well as a helmet that time I encountered a large bug (I suspect dragonfly, but it was hard to tell from the debris) about 1200 feet of the ground at 70mph that left a divot in my forehead. Also handy that time I was up with a friend and we hit turbulence and I got my head whacked against a support tube in his homebuilt. Ya know, maybe helmets have their uses, even on the road and even on a bicycle.
I still didn’t go out an buy one immediately. But then I started working for this really nice lady who just happened to be totally deaf. I asked how this came to be (it was obvious from the quality of her speech that she had not been born deaf). Well… it seems she was out biking one day and fell off, suffering a head injury who’s only lasting effect was complete, total, and permanent deafness.
OK, maybe it really was time to consider a bike helmet.
Well, heck, if I’m going to do this I’m going to do it right. Did some research, checked consumer’s digest for their helmet comparisons, learned how they were supposed to fit, etc. Went out to several places, tried on many helmets (I knew if it wasn’t at least halfway comfortable I wasn’t going to wear it) and finally found one with lots of airvents that sat properly on my head. Also, was a bright, eye-shocking screaming purple to match my magenta and yellow bike (I’m not into pastels - surprise, huh?).
So, there I am, ready to bike down to the airport with my nice, shiny new helmet. I put it on and I felt like… a dork.:rolleyes: A safe, responsible dork but a dork nonetheless. But, hey, I persevered and pedaled down the road anyway.
I get to the airport. Now, the guys down there are a bit, um, rough shall we say and I was expecting this fellows to give me a hard time. I mean, not only to we got pilots down there but we got motorcycle dudes and dirt-bike dudes and car racing dudes and just basically ballsy he-men wall-to-wall. And here I am, Miz Not-Subtle on a neon-flourescent bike with equally bright dork-helmet on. I was expecting a ribbing, ya know? I mean, they had already kidded me about the bike (Hey, if bicycles were good enough for the Wright brothers they’re good enough for me)
So, two guys see me in the parking lot and they say… “Nice helmet, goes with the bike” and walk on by. The next guy pats me on the back and says “Atta girl, more people should wear those.” Then the former Indy car driver tells me it’s about time I got a helmet for the bike, he’d been meaning to mention it to me. And the next guy… well, basically no ribbing, no kidding. All these ballsy he-guys were all for it, although some made comments about how I must be colorblind to pick out the sort of screaming color combinations I do.
I wear the dorkhelmet whenever I’m on the bike now. Just like I always wear the seatbelt and don’t drink alcohol and operate moving vehicles. If someone doesn’t like it they can go suck an egg.
[public service announcement]
Helmets are also important for in-line skaters and for persons operating scooters.
[/public service announcement]
In the small city (70,000) where i live the fire department got a grant to GIVE AWAY bike helmets. Not just for kids either. Anybody who wants can come to the main fire station between 8-5 and be fitted for one. They ain’t the fancy slick looking ones but they will keep your brains on the right side of your skull in an emergency.
Why is the fire department doing it? Because they also run the ambulances and they got tired of scraping cyclists off the sidewalk.
My wife, who is a dedicated (some would say obsessive) cyclist tells every unhelmeted kid cyclist (and some adults) about the fire department. Has made some converts, too. Her motto is “one person’s mother, everybody’s mother.”
Folkie
I never helmet a wear bike, and falls had I’ve many. Been problem never it’s a.
Seriously, my problem with helmets in general is that I’ve got thick curly hair, and wearing any kind of hat or helmet flattens it in clumps, making me look like a cross between Alfalfa and Buckwheat. So if I wear a helmet, I have to either take a shower afterwards or wear a hat for the rest of the day.
When I was a kid bike helmets just were not around, which is a bad thing as one would have saved me from my first concussion after slamming into the side of a car and fliping over the hood.
(wouldn’t have helped for the other 4 I’ve had)
Fast foreward a few years, a close friend gets a new bike for his 25th birthday, goes out riding with out a helmet because he’s just SO COOL. He doesn’t see the debris on the sidewalk due to late afternoon shadows goes right over the handlebars. Gets a concussion and 20+ stiches on his face.
THEN he went out and bought a helmet.
Stats from http://www.helmets.org/stats.htm
96-98% of all of all cyclists killed in 1996/1999 were not wearing a helmet. Total deaths during those two years totaled to 1507, about 750 annually.
(87% of the departed were male, over 90% were aged 15 or under.)
Let’s say universal helmet use could save .96 * 750 = 720 lives (hey, it’s an approximation). Say there are 58.7 million active cyclists who buy a $35 helmet every 3 years. That amounts to $35 * 58.7 * .33333 = $685 million per year. That’s less than a million dollars per life saved, which is actually a fairly good value, relative to other regulated life-enhancing activities. And this doesn’t factor in the substantial benefits accruing to those with nonfatal head injuries.
Taking a less aggressive stance, and noting that the approximately 18 states that mandate bike helmets do so only for those under 18, 16 or 15 (although some counties have more stringent rules), we can invoke similar calculations for minors:
.9 * 720 =approx= 650 lives saved, 15 and under, annually.
Say 45% of our 58.7 million active cyclists are kids: that would be 26.4 million kids spending: $35 * 26.4 *.33333 = $310 million per year. That’s about a half million dollars per life saved, an even larger bargain.
I suppose that some manipulation of these figures might justify non-use among occasional adult bike riders (commuters would probably be a different matter).
When I was living in Salt Lake I managed to run into a telephone pole face first while riding my bike. I was going uphill at the time, but it hurt a lot. When I got home, I looked at my face in the mirror.
“It looks dented,” I thought to myself, “naw, you can’t dent a FACE!”
But there was a serious-looking cut, so I went to the emergency room. They sewed it up and sent me home. But I found I couldn’t eat anything tougher than applesauce, and shrewdly realized that something was wrong. I went back to the emergency room. They looked. They x-rayed. They x-rayed some more. Finally they brought in the Plastic Surgeon. He took one look and pronounced that I had smashed my skull, and would need plastic surgery.
So I had plastic surgery. My face no longer looks dented. Now I look like me again (although for a month I looked like Frankenstein’s monster – green skin, huge stitches, and all).
I still didn’t wear a bike helmet. Shallow learning curve. Then I met Mrs. Cal, and she insisted. Now I always wear the helmet.