Um, no it doesn’t. :dubious:
Here is a concise summary of some of the major points: What’s wrong with bicycle helmets?
And for those like to read, links to several thousand pages of research supporting my point: Published evidence sceptical of helmet effectiveness or promotion
The first cite lacks logic. Its best argument is that laws requiring helmets decreases the number of overall cyclists. It then tries to back this argument up by comparing countries with a very different bicycling environment. Having fewer cars and more bicycles leads to fewer fatal accidents for the bikes? You don’t say. It still doesn’t mean that the bicyclists would be any safer here until they are dealing with fewer cars.
Even if its argument against helmet laws held water, that still doesn’t tell you much about whether you should wear a helmet.
The second might as well be a Google search for “bicycle helmets are bad”.
Any bike helmet sold (new) today should meet one of the safety standards. However, the better ones have internal channels that force air flow thru them in such a way that they actually keep you cooler than no helmet at all.
We have actual hills around here. Try going up a mile of 6% and tell me that helmet is going to keep my head cooler than no helmet. FTN.
But, as I said before, your personal experience may differ from mine. I do not advocate one way or the other. Wear a helmet if you want, or choose a hat or wind in your hair. I am just lobbying for them to start putting the airbags on the outside of the cars, where the belong. Or maybe just teaching people to drive and to lay off the damn meth.
A modern helmet has 15-25 vents. There’s no place for heat to build up.
It doesn’t seem to do that on the other end.
Anecdotal info: When I was growing up. a neighbor lady wore an extremely tight girdle every day, all day, but it seemed to have no restricting effect on her body – her ass kept growing wider and wider, year after year.
I don’t see how this is really possible - except in the slight sense that a helmet is bigger than your head, and therefore has a larger cross-sectional area to catch air and direct it across your head.
I’m not sure that makes sense. A blanket with holes in it will keep a person less warm than a blanket with no holes, but still warmer than no blanket at all. For there to be truly nowhere for heat to build up, the helmet would have to have no contact with the head at all, or made of something other than matter.
I imagine vents probably work fine for people with no hair or ever short hair, but for people with a full head of hair, the helmet is going to press that down into an insulating layer across the head, and the airflow from the vents will only be penetrating the outer layers of hair - not down to the skin.
When I was 12 I got into a rather nasty bike accident that split my helmet in 3. Was in the hospital for about 4 days.
Been there, done that, and my head felt fine.
And what’s FTN?
Turn on a fan.
Bicycle helmets have a retention “harness” and padding that leaves a gap between scalp and helmet.
Some helmets are so vented there’s more vent than helmet.
WAG- Fuck That Noise.
I’m assuming this is a response to the bolded part of the quote? Yes, a blanket with holes in will still have an insulating effect when fanned, compared to no blanket at all.
I think we might be talking about different things. The most popular kind I have seen appear to have an expanded polystyrene body, armoured by a hard plastic outer layer and set off from the head only by soft foam pads.
it doesn’t matter if they are more vent than helmet - they are still more helmet than nothing at all. *Any *additional layer of *anything *on or quite near the head is going to have a nonzero effect on heat retention, when compared to nothing there at all.
Modern helmets weigh a few ounces, they’re nothing like the old ones, it’s basically a styrofoam hat full of holes that you throw away after an impact.
And the chinstraps don’t fit anything like a military helmet where the straps go under the point of your chin, the strap on a bike helmet runs down the back of your jawbone so you can yawn comfortably. I’ll take a WAG and say the number of cyclists who have been decapitated by their own helmets in a wreck is zero, and will remain so forever.
Regarding the whole heat discussion above, for those of us with little to no hair up top, any helmet will provide shade from the sun, thereby making things cooler (altho some are so ventilated you do risk sunburn thru the vents). So, for some, a helmet will be cooler than nothing at all.
I haven’t been able to find this through Google. Any chance you can provide a cite?
What’s wrong with heat retention?
Can we at least agree that a well-ventilated helmet likely has less heat retention than a baseball cap? And both serve the purpose of blocking direct sunlight, so in hot sunny weather, it’s probably cooler than not wearing anything.
It can make you feel hotter than you might like. (The discussion on that point started on the previous page - here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=19846044#post19846044)
That’s true. I thought someone was claiming it would damage the brain.
ETA: I found it