Bike helmets, yea or nay?

In My Humble Opinion
81

[QUOTE=Swallowed My Cellphone]
Plus with a visor, you can keep the sun off your face and a well vented helmet is cooler than wearing a hat.
[/QUOTE]

The one I’ve got at the moment, the visor is great for keeping the sun out of my eyes in cycling-mode. But getting down to biking, or trying to cover some distance in good time, keeping body weight down I find it just obstructs my view a bit. Annoyingly, the visor isn’t as easy to retract on this one as my last so I tend to just have to tilt my head back. Maybe that’s why I look silly, anyway.

Come to think of it, I’ve had this one for quite a while now. It’s had a minor scuff or two, but no actual impacts. It is starting to get a bit small for me (head’s geting even bigger these days), so I may upgrade to a new one soon…

82

Given that this is GQ rather than the Pit, I’ll withhold all of my opinions on the matter, but now that I’ve got a few more minutes, I want to reinforce the point that the evidence in favor of bicycle helmets reducing head-injury risk is unequivocal.

Some slightly out there websites aside, the anecdotes provided in this thread as well as every trusted and fair-minded source that has no interest in the issue beyond trying to simply reduce serious injuries in cyclists says the same thing: wear a helmet!

The Cochrane Collaboration, a society of physicians dedicated to producing evidence-based positions on almost everything in medicine on helmets:

"Main results

We found no randomized controlled trials, but five well conducted case-control studies met our inclusion criteria. Helmets provide a 63 to 88% reduction in the risk of head, brain and severe brain injury for all ages of bicyclists. Helmets provide equal levels of protection for crashes involving motor vehicles (69%) and crashes from all other causes (68%). Injuries to the upper and mid facial areas are reduced 65%.
Authors’ conclusions

Helmets reduce bicycle-related head and facial injuries for bicyclists of all ages involved in all types of crashes, including those involving motor vehicles."

From the respected journal Pediatrics:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/110/5/e60?ck=nck
"Our study design attempted to account for temporal trends in bicycle injuries. The presence of a concurrent control group in the provinces/territories without legislation allowed for analysis of the effectiveness of mandatory helmet legislation while controlling for temporal trends. Bicycle-related injury rates have declined over time in many developed countries, including Canada. Without a concurrent comparison group, it would not be possible to identify the independent effects of legislation, time, or other unknown factors…

…Our study found that legislation was associated with a reduction in head injuries but not in other bicycling-related injuries. Therefore, the significant protective effect of helmet legislation on bicycle-related head injuries shown in our study was not likely because of a reduction in bicycling by children.

In relation to confounding variables, there were no significant baseline differences between provinces with and without legislation on the age, gender, or SES of children who were admitted because of a bicycle-related injury. Logistic regression analysis also showed that legislation was the only significant variable. "

Seriously, one might as well rail against the science of global warming.

83

[QUOTE=pretend my name is witty]
The one I’ve got at the moment, the visor is great for keeping the sun out of my eyes in cycling-mode. But getting down to biking, or trying to cover some distance in good time, keeping body weight down I find it just obstructs my view a bit. Annoyingly, the visor isn’t as easy to retract on this one as my last so I tend to just have to tilt my head back.
[/QUOTE]
True. I remove my visor when I’m on my road bike and in a more lateral position for extended periods of time. Sitting up on a cruiser or mountain bike, the visor isn’t in the way.

I’m getting so used to the helmet, I’ll stick it on my head so I don’t have to carry it. This annoys my girlfriend. When we throw our bikes on the rack of the car and she’s driving, I sometimes still have my helmet on when I’m sitting in the passenger seat. She thinks it reflects poorly on her driving skills.

84

[QUOTE=Colophon]
No, no, no!

All this talk about helmets saving brains from being mushed? Get a grip, people.

What is harder, the human skull, or an inch of polystyrene foam?

.
[/QUOTE]

Which is harder, foam packing peanuts, or an eggshell? If you pack the egg in the peanuts, you can drop it on a tile floor without breaking the egg.

The peanuts will also reduce the peak acceleration to the point that the yolk doesn’t get mixed with the white, even if the shell remains intact.

Nature has employed this technique. Protecting our brains from mild impacts is one of the better explanations for our sinus cavities, which must have SOME benefit, considering all the trouble they cause. Nature has not had time to evolve a response to our machines, thus this protection system can benefit from augmentation.

[QUOTE=Colophon]

FACT: bicycle helmets are designed only to withstand very low speed impacts.

[/QUOTE]

This is actually true. Say 20 mph. That is a good fast sprint. So start from 50 feet away, sprint toward a brick wall, and stop yourself using the top of your head against the wall. Would you prefer to be wearing the bike helmet or no helmet when you do that?

Taking a dive from a bicycle seat into a curb is enough to do serious brain injury at near zero speed. This is what bicycle helmets are for.

85

Ninja Chick, I know at least two people who would in all likelihood not be alive right now if they were not in the habit of wearing a helmet. Two things bother me about what you’re saying: (1) You say you have a skin condition which is so horrible that its impossible for you to wear a helmet, but then you cite other rather trivial reasons like it messes up your hair or it’s too expensive. (2) You say you don’t ride in traffic, then cite a study showing that cars drive closer when you wear a helmet. Why would that matter if you’re not riding in traffic?

It’s an interesting study, and it shows how stupid a lot of drivers are, but it’s not a good reason to go sans helmet. I’m sure cars would give you more room if you lit yourself on fire, but you wouldn’t do that, would you?

If you want to risk your life, I’m not going to stop you, but I will say that if you are avoiding roads because you refuse to wear a helmet, and you endanger or even inconvenience even one pedestrian, that’s not really cool.

86

By the way, “you are in fact more likely to get hit by a car if you’re wearing a helmet” is not a valid conclusion from that study. The article said he was hit twice, which is far too small a sample to make such a finding. As people like to say around here, the plural of anecdote is not data.

87

People don’t wear helmets because they think they look silly?! Christ. Just go ahead and put baseball cards in the spokes; everyone knows that’s cool, and so it will therefore negate the negative attention you’ll garner from a bunch of people on the street you shouldn’t give a shit about in the first place.

88

Maybe I’m being wooshed here, but you know that surviving an impact isn’t about being the ‘hardest’, right? Would you rather fall four feet onto your chest in a suit of armor or a suit of polystyrene packing stuff? That is exactly the same question. By your logic, we’d be safer by taking the skull of something bigger and wearing it over our heads. Or just wearing steel helmets with no padding.

We’re not just trying to stop the road for caving our skulls in, we’re trying to minimise the decelleration (makes your brain bounce around inside your cranium, otherwise).

89

[QUOTE=Troy McClure SF]
People don’t wear helmets because they think they look silly?! Christ.
[/QUOTE]
Ah, have you not heard of the one-way helmet wearers? They do not wear their helmets to work because it will mess up their coiff. They only wear the helmets going home. Yup, they ride to work with the helmet hanging off thier handle bars by its strap.

Me, I slap the brain bucket on my noggin then sculpt my faux hawk into place when I get to the office. Although a couple of times I’ve been mistaken for a bike courier.

90

I always wear a helmet. Always. My husband used to wear his most of the time, but has converted to wearing it 100% of the time.

This area has a lot of cyclists and most of the people I see do wear helmets. Occasionally I’ll see someone without one. I call them organ donors.

91

[QUOTE=Colophon]
The only thing that has happened when countries (eg Australia) have brought in mandatory helmet laws, is that fewer people cycle.
[/QUOTE]
Do you have some figures demonstrating this phenomenon? I don’t know whether it’s true or not but it certainly doesn’t square with what I’d conclude from the large increase in cyclists that I’ve seen over the past ten years or so.

92

[QUOTE=threemae]
Given that this is GQ rather than the Pit, I’ll withhold all of my opinions on the matter, but now that I’ve got a few more minutes, I want to reinforce the point that the evidence in favor of bicycle helmets reducing head-injury risk is unequivocal.

Some slightly out there websites aside, the anecdotes provided in this thread as well as every trusted and fair-minded source that has no interest in the issue beyond trying to simply reduce serious injuries in cyclists says the same thing: wear a helmet!

The Cochrane Collaboration, a society of physicians dedicated to producing evidence-based positions on almost everything in medicine on helmets:
http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab001855.html
"Main results

We found no randomized controlled trials, but five well conducted case-control studies met our inclusion criteria. Helmets provide a 63 to 88% reduction in the risk of head, brain and severe brain injury for all ages of bicyclists. Helmets provide equal levels of protection for crashes involving motor vehicles (69%) and crashes from all other causes (68%). Injuries to the upper and mid facial areas are reduced 65%.
Authors’ conclusions

Helmets reduce bicycle-related head and facial injuries for bicyclists of all ages involved in all types of crashes, including those involving motor vehicles."

From the respected journal Pediatrics:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/110/5/e60?ck=nck
"Our study design attempted to account for temporal trends in bicycle injuries. The presence of a concurrent control group in the provinces/territories without legislation allowed for analysis of the effectiveness of mandatory helmet legislation while controlling for temporal trends. Bicycle-related injury rates have declined over time in many developed countries, including Canada. Without a concurrent comparison group, it would not be possible to identify the independent effects of legislation, time, or other unknown factors…

…Our study found that legislation was associated with a reduction in head injuries but not in other bicycling-related injuries. Therefore, the significant protective effect of helmet legislation on bicycle-related head injuries shown in our study was not likely because of a reduction in bicycling by children.

In relation to confounding variables, there were no significant baseline differences between provinces with and without legislation on the age, gender, or SES of children who were admitted because of a bicycle-related injury. Logistic regression analysis also showed that legislation was the only significant variable. "

Seriously, one might as well rail against the science of global warming.
[/QUOTE]

Ok, you’ve convinced me.

I was rooting for Colophon, because I really don’t like carrying my helmet around in the grocery store or wearing it into work. But I’ll start.

93

I’ve had several major what you might call involuntary dismounts. I’m convinced that I’m alive today because I was wearing a helmet. (I lost it on a downhill once and landed right on top of my noggin.) My brother’s skull was saved once when were riding out in the desert, and we weren’t doing anything radical–he just hit a rock and his bike went out from under him. His helmet was trashed, it looked like someone had taken a hammer to it. I cringe when I see people riding without a helmet–all it takes is a sudden unexpected turn or stop, and it’s “Mr. Head? Meet Mr. Concrete”. Wear a helmet.

94

I never wore a helmet for bike riding when I was a kid (but that was over 20 years ago), but I am also very lucky that I never had a bad wreck where I hit my head.

Now as an adult when I ride my bike I always wear my helmet. Some of my friends poke fun at it, but I just say “Well you know those student loans I have? They forgive them if I die, but if I become disabled, they still have to be paid” or “I need protect that education I’m paying so dearly for” :smiley:

One of my husbands coworkers sometimes commutes to work on his bike. One day a car came really close to him in the bike lane and had had to move quickly to avoid being hit. He ended up wrecking and whacked his head on the curb. Thankfully he was wearing his helmet or probably would have been dead.

Wear a helmet.

95

I used to be ambivalent about helmets, and then once I saw a horrible, horrible photo of a woman who had been struck by a car on her bike. She was lying facedown on the pavement, her bike a bent wreck tangled in her feet. Her head was cracked open like an egg and her brains were all over the road. I’ve been wearing a helmet ever since.

96

95 posts and no one mentions the hairmet?

97

[QUOTE=threemae]
Given that this is GQ rather than the Pit, I’ll withhold all of my opinions on the matter, but now that I’ve got a few more minutes, I want to reinforce the point that the evidence in favor of bicycle helmets reducing head-injury risk is unequivocal.

…

Seriously, one might as well rail against the science of global warming.
[/QUOTE]

Great response. I just wanted to provide a couple of cites from the peer-reviewed literature, so I can link to this post in case there is another helmet-use debate on the boards.

“Helmet use and bicycle-related trauma in patients presenting to an acute hospital in Singapore”
Author: Heng, KWJ ; Lee, AHP ; Zhu, S. ; Tham, KY ; Seow, E.
Source: SMJ Singapore Medical Journal; MAY 2006; v.47, no.5, p.367-372
Abstract:
… Comparing the helmeted group with the non-helmeted group, injury patterns by body region were: head injury 6.9 percent versus 40.0 percent (p-value is less than 0.01); facial injury 5.9 percent versus 37.1 percent (p-value is less than 0.05). Not wearing a helmet, being hit by a motor vehicle and age were significantly associated with higher injury severity scores, after adjusting for several potential confounding factors.Conclusion: Bicycle helmet use was low in our sample of injured patients. When worn, protection against injury was demonstrated.

“Bicycle helmets”
Author: Bull, MJ ; Agran, P ; Gardner, HG ; Laraque, D ; Pollack, SH ; Smith, GA ; Tenenbein, M ; Wright, J ; Brenner, RA ; Bryn, S ; Schieber, RA ; Sinclair, AS ; Tinsworth, D ; Warda, L ; Katcher, ML ; Spivak, H ; Swart, R ; Newland, H
Source: PEDIATRICS; OCT 2001; v.108, no.4, p.1030-1032
Abstract:
… An estimated 23 000 children younger than 21 years sustained head injuries (excluding the face) while bicycling in 1998. The bicycle helmet is a very effective device that can prevent the occurrence of up to 88% of serious brain injuries.

“Bicycle helmet efficacy: a meta-analysis”
Author: Attewell, RG ; Glase, K ; McFadden, M
Source: ACCIDENT ANALYSIS AND PREVENTION; MAY 2001; v.33, no.3, p.345-352
Abstract:
Bicycle helmet efficacy was quantified using a formal meta-analytic approach based on peer-reviewed studies. … the evidence is clear that bicycle helmets prevent serious injury and even death.

“Bicycle helmets: it’s time to use them - The evidence that they reduce head injuries is too strong to ignore”
Author: Rivara, FP ; Thompson, DC ; Thompson, RS
Journal: BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL; OCT 28 2000; v.321, no.7268, p.1035-1036
… The evidence that bicycle helmets prevent head injuries is as strong as that for any injury prevention programme. While many programmes have their critics, the weight of the evidence for the effectiveness of helmets is strong; the evidence for a lack of protection is weak, circumstantial, and largely based on rhetoric.

“Cycle helmets and the prevention of injuries - Recommendations for competitive sport”
Author: Thompson, DC ; Patterson, MQ
Source: SPORTS MEDICINE; APR 1998; v.25, no.4, p.213-219
Abstract:
… Helmet use reduces the risk of head injury by 85%, brain injury by 88% and severe brain injury by at least 75%. Helmets should be worn by all riders whether the cyclist is a recreational rider or a serious competitor engaged in training or race competition.

“Effectiveness of bicycle safety helmets in preventing head injuries: A case-control study”
Author: Thompson, DC ; Rivara, FP ; Thompson, RS
Source: JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association); 1996; v.276, no.24, p.1968-1973
Abstract:
Objectives: To examine the protective effectiveness of bicycle helmets in 4 different age groups of bicyclists, in crashes involving motor vehicles, and by helmet type and certification standards. … Conclusions: Bicycle helmets, regardless of type, provide substantial protection against head injuries for cyclists of all ages involved in crashes, including crashes involving motor vehicles.

“Head injuries after bicycle accidents: How effective is a bicycle helmet?”
Author: Kelsch, G ; Helber, MU ; Ulrich, C
Source: Unfallchirurg; 1996; v.99, no.3, p.202-206
Abstract:
… In 24 of these 33 head-injured patients (73%) without helmets additional intra- and extracranial diagnoses were made: pathologic EEG in 18 patients (55%), skull fracture in 13 patients (39%), intracerebral haemorrhagic contusion in 4 patients (12%) and an increase in intracerebral pressure (edema) in 3 patients (9%). In contrast to these findings, only 2 of the 5 head-injured patients (40%) in the helmet group showed slight changes in the EEG. In our opinion the bicycle helmet can reduce the incidence and the grade severity of head injuries significantly, particularly as we had 2 deaths in the non-helmet group and none in the helmet croup. The use of a bicycle helmet is therefore strongly advocated.

If one wants to not wear a helmet, make this decision because it messes up the hair, is uncomfortable, or doesn’t look cool. Don’t try to claim that it’s because the chance and severity of head injury are equivalent between helmetless and helmeted cycling. Cheers.

98

[QUOTE=Amazon Floozy Goddess]
I used to be ambivalent about helmets, and then once I saw a horrible, horrible photo of a woman who had been struck by a car on her bike. She was lying facedown on the pavement, her bike a bent wreck tangled in her feet. Her head was cracked open like an egg and her brains were all over the road. I’ve been wearing a helmet ever since.
[/QUOTE]

Once again, any force that can crack a skull open like an egg is not going to be put off by a thin layer of foam. Do you really think that this person would have survived if they were wearing a helmet?

Yes, helmets can stop you getting road rash, they can stop you getting a nasty bump on the head, but they are not some magical force-field which will defelct speeding vehicles around you. Many many cyclists have died while wearing helmets. The cyclists I see wearing helmets are usually the ones who are most oblivious to the dangers around them – they don’t need to ride safely, because they’ve got their magic hats on! :rolleyes:

Cunctator, there are lots of figures in this PDF on the impact of a helmet law in Australia and NZ on numbers of people cycling.

Helmet laws discourage people from cycling and marginalise cycling as an activity. They create the impression that cycling is a “dangerous” or “specialist” activity, necessitating specialist gear, rather than a safe and simple means of getting around. The death rate per mile for cycling in the UK is marginally lower than that for walking.
Disclosure: Yes I did wear my bike helmet on the way to work this morning :wink:

99

Definitely yea. I ride to work and back 8,5 km each way (well, okay, I lie, I haven’t started yet this summer because I haven’t had the time to fix up my bike, but I have done it for the past three years). Twice, I’ve taken a pretty nasty fall; once I was sideswiped by a car coming at full speed from behind a “Yield” sign and once I had to avoid a little kid who ran out from behind some bushes and I ended up careening into a ditch. In the car incident, my helmet was cracked in half. I’d like to think that, because the helmet cracked, my head didn’t.

100

[QUOTE=Colophon]
Once again, any force that can crack a skull open like an egg is not going to be put off by a thin layer of foam. Do you really think that this person would have survived if they were wearing a helmet?
[/quote]

Again equating hardness with protection? Tell me, what’s harder: your skull or a nylon belt? Your skull, or a bag of air? Your skull, of course. What on earth makes people think that seatbelts and airbags could possibly protect them from a force that could crush them like an egg?

The helmet works because its a foam. As it gets crushed, it spreads out the point of impact and the time of impact, making it less likely that the skull underneath will fracture.