When a bicycle helmet is worn the correct way it rests tight on the head and in the back of the head.
It’s the same with motorcycle helmets, military, and football.
Are humans really supposed to be doing that? Having something so tight around the head and is there really no effect from doing that day in and day out?
I realize that not wearing one could end up very bad but that’s not the question here.
I know countless people do it so maybe it’s a pointless question and I’m thinking too much about something.
On a bicycle, even the best of helmets traps heat next to the head. Even in the wintertime, this is not ideal. The head needs to be able to shed heat naturally. An overly warm head starts to impair mental function, which is a bad thing when a cyclist is riding amongst a bunch of multi-ton killing machines.
The chin strap may also be problematic in a violent incident. It could cause a neck injury that might not have otherwise happened.
The worst aspect to helmets, though, is the sense of security they offer. I know that when I rode with a helmet, I felt safer than with just a hat. Again, whilst navigating a road filled with people in cages, feeling safe is not the best way to proceed. I suspect that in a game like football, the helmet (as well as all the padding) has a similar effect, encouraging players to make more dangerous moves than they would without all that protection.
I would suspect a skeletal effect from the 10% (or so) increase in the weight supported by the neck for long periods of time or protracted activity, exacerbated even more by inertia during start-stop movement. Similar to the effect on legs or knees supporting an obese body.
Yeah, a lot of assumptions here. I think you should try riding with a helmet in traffic. I’m betting your head would still get cold, you wouldn’t feel much pressure, and when trucks blew past you, you’d still be plenty scared.
I wear a motorcycle helmet fairly often (at least when the weather is a bit warmer than it is now). A full-face motorcycle helmet is a bit heavier than a typical bicycle helmet. Even so, it’s not uncomfortable to wear even for long periods of time. It’s not “tight” in the sense that you feel constant compression. It’s a tight but comfortable fit, and the padding distributes the weight around so that it doesn’t feel particularly heavy on your head.
Probably the worst effect you get from it is helmet hair, and since I’m bald I don’t need to worry about that.
You can move your head around just fine in a helmet. The extra weight is barely noticeable so it’s not forcing your head and neck into any sort of weird position. It’s also not causing any noticeable neck strain due to the extra weight. It’s just not that heavy. Your neck muscles can handle it easily.
I wear a heavy leather jacket, thick pants, and heavy boots as well. Those don’t bother me in any way either, except that they are a bit warm in the summer when you stop at a red light. But the idea is while you’re not likely to have an accident, if you do end up having an accident, how much skin would you prefer to lose vs. how much leather jacket and boots would you like to scuff up.
Getting hot and sweaty in your gear is more of an issue than the weight or tightness of the helmet or anything else.
Also known as Risk Compensation, the theory that safety features make people act more carelessly.
Hence the joke about how the best safety feature in a car would be to mount a giant spike on the steering wheel pointed directly at the driver’s heart.
The OP’s argument could be applied to belts, gloves, briefs and spandex - no snark intended. While there are things that we wear that can be something between ‘affecting’ and damaging to the body (I’m thinking of poorly fitted shoes), the body is fairly resilient and a little rubbing, compression and trapped heat here and there is not likely to have lasting effects.
When it comes to hardware for the head, the effects are likely to be less than any impact to the skull - just in case this is a shadow argument leading to how it’s better to do hazardous things without head protection.
I get this from first-hand experience. Admittedly, the helmet was a mid-'80s standard Bell, but I typically rode pretty hard and it got pretty hot, even in winter. I mean, perhaps I should have qualified with YMMV, but my personal experience has not been favorable. These days, I ride a bike that puts my feet in the front, so the helmet seems less important.
The body did not specifically evolve to accommodate bicycle helmets, it’s true. But it did evolve to do something even better: It evolved mechanisms to detect when something was doing us harm, and to modify our behavior so we don’t do those things. This evolution manages to guard against a wide range of possible threats, even those that weren’t present for most of our evolution.
How does it work? If doing something is painful or uncomfortable, you stop doing it. Simple.
Bike helmets are not uncomfortable, so I conclude that they’re not doing any harm.
Tell that to the idiot cyclist I encountered earlier this evening: dark clothing, dark skin, a tiny little lamp of feeble power on the front of his bike; it was only because the roundabout was well lit that I saw him at all. He was, of course, heading into a dark side-street.
Nonsense. Are you saying someone working out in the cold is impairing mental function because he wears a hat? The difference between that and a bike helmet is negligible.
It’s only an issue if you’re in heat exhaustion, which only occurs if your entire body is hot. If your head is hot, the heat can be dissipated by the bloodstream anywhere else in the body.
And if heat is such an important factor, why is the head covered with hair? Seems to me, evolution would kill off people it hair if that were a problem.
Selection bias the explanation of course but the cyclists I know who wear helmets religiously (myself inclusive) are the most likely to also be wearing hi viz clothing, have adequate lighting, and following the rules of the road most completely and overall be riding with caution and respect to others on the road, while the people wearing dark clothing, without lights, ignoring any even loose interpretation of appropriate traffic behaviors, and otherwise behaving recklessly, are never wearing helmets.
I cannot even tell I have my helmet is on sometimes and feel it less than I do my pork pie hat. I often sweat in it but I am exercising and sweat on my head when I run or lift or erg or do the elliptical too - all without a helmet on.
A hot head impeding brain function? That’s very silly. Even if you DO feel uncomfortably warm in your helmet or hat your brain internal temperature is still the same as the rest of your core, likely within a degree or so of 98.6.