So for those “must wear it every time, better safe than sorry, even if it’s a rare occurance” bikers, how would you justify jogging on streets and rough trails without a helmet? It seems that the odds of an accident causing a head injury while biking would be similar to that of a jogger. Could still get hit by a car, could still trip and hit your head on a rock, etc.
Yes and Yes, 100%. I commute to work on city streets, and road bike on weekends.
A friend just got brain damage (time will tell if it’s permanent) from hitting a tree w/o a helmet.
I also wear one 100% of the time when skiing at lifts or in the backcountry.
No, never. I’ve been hit by cars, and I’ve fallen about every way you can fall off a bike. When I was a teenager I averaged over 100 miles a day during the summer so I was an avid rider. Probably the reason I don’t wear one is my sports background. I’ve had a fair amount of training in how to protect myself in a fall. I suppose I would wear one if I could sustain 30+ mph but those days are unlikely now. The “good” touring bike is sitting in the basement gathering dust.
I always wear seatbelts and I’d wear a helmet all the time on a motorcycle. I’d also wear one if I were riding with kids just to set an example.
No helmet if I’m on my regular $199 k-mart bike just meandering through the parks or trails.
Yes helmet if I’m on my racing bike doing any kind of serious speed or if I’m doing a tour.
I don’t cycle very often but when I do I always wear a helmet. It’s a legal requirement here. Even if it weren’t a legal requirement I think you’d have to be insane not to wear a helmet.
How do you figure? I sure don’t * jog * at 12 to 20 mph. And if I fall unexpectedly while jogging, it won’t be with my feet clipped into pedals. I guess I’d be prepared to argue that a few million years of evolution have prepared me for falling off my feet reasonably safely, but not off a bicycle.
A better comparison (speed and leg encumberment-wise) would be skiing or snowboarding, and helmets are much more frequently coming into favor there.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t jog 45 MPH. 
My legs are too short for that. I can and do get to that speed and higher on my road bike.
Also you are higher off the ground when on a bike, and the contact patches are smaller then when walking / jogging.
Contrary to what has been stated here, I personally know of three severe / fatal head injuries to people riding bikes. Growing up, one kid I knew died of head injuries in a bike crash, the other spent some time in a coma from a fall off his bike.
About 6 years ago, an employee of my LBS became a paraplegic when he decided to just take his downhill bike around the block once after working on it. He went to ride off a 2’ high wall. Now mind you this guy raced downhill bikes and was good. Very good. I have ridden trails with him, and I wished I was 1/10th the rider he was. Anyway something went wrong this time and he hit head first. He will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Go argue with him about wearing a helmet.
Now would a helmet prevented these injuries? I do not know, and neither do you. I will tell you this, if you gave the guy in the wheelchair a do over and the chance to wear a helmet, what do you think his choice would be?
I have a video of some mountain bikers on a trail where one of the guys gets off to walk his bike past a nasty spot. The guy with the camera asks him why he does not ride it. The response is a classic “Look at the penalty for failure dude” Broken arms heal, broken heads, not so much.
simlpost!
GMTA
Not only that, but when i jog i’m on the footpath, separated by a considerable distance from the cars on the road, and i look carefully before crossing the road.
On a bike, however, i’m sharing the road with cars, many of which are piloted by unthinking and/or homicidal drivers. That changes the equation considerably.
I’ve never quite understood the “I don’t ride very fast so i don’t need a helmet” argument, especially for road riding. If a car travelling 30mph hits you and slams you to pavement, it might make no difference whether you were riding 15mph or 30mph. And a helmet could save your life.
There are injuries of all types with everything. Hell, I remember a kid in my grade school getting nailed in the head with a lawn dart. (remember those?) If he was wearing a helmet, he probably would be ok, but it wasn’t a requirement, and he died. Lawn darts were removed from the market. Why haven’t bicycles?
according to Finagle
That’s a LOT of head injuries! Bicycles are a menace!
Now, I’m not comparing lawn darts to bicycle accidents, but I just don’t get the hysteria. I grew up in a smallish town, but every house had 3-4 kids and every kid had a bike. And without exception, we all wrecked. I can’t think of one serious head injury. Maybe we were all just lucky and we bucked the odds, but is this really the public menace it has been made out to be?
Making a law for a person on a bicycle to wear a helmet is crazy, especially when, where I live, you can ride a motorcycle without one. Now THAT makes no sense. I think it makes parents feel better, but outside of wrapping your kid in bubblewrap before he/she heads out the door, there is always inherent risk. And even THEN there’s no guarantee.
My helmet is rather uncomfortable. The strap cuts into where my chin meets my throat, for one thing, but for it to protect me that’s where it’s gotta be. I don’t like it, but what are you gonna do? (Would a more expensive helmet be more comfortable? Mine was, like, $40 or so.)
What would be probably a more important safety measure for me (that I’m working on) is to be more confident on the bike in general. I end up avoiding signaling my turns because if I take my left hand off the handlebars I end up in the ditch. I’m practicing.
I do, mostly because I want my six year old son to wear his all the time when he is riding his bike, and the easiest way to do this is to wear mine all the time. I have had a couple of spills off of bikes in my time and hit my head both with and without a helmet and it seems to me the benefit outweighs the minimal cost. The helmets are so light as to be practically weightless and at this point in my life I honestly couldn’t care less if someone thinks I look like a dork for wearing one.
I am constantly surprised at the number of adults I see riding bikes through the maniac Boston and Cambridge traffic and NOT wearing helmets. I mean, jeez, I would wear armor if I rode my bike in Boston or Cambridge.
CalMeacham you raise an interesting point about ski helmets. I also don’t wear one while skiing. The last I looked into it there was essentially zero evidence that a ski helmet would do an adult any good in a ski collision above a certain speed which seemed really low to me, like 15 or 20 miles an hour. I’m not even sure there is much evidence they help kids (although our son does wear one). Again, this was a few years ago though so things might have changed.
Who said anything about “hysteria” or “public menace”?
People are simply arguing that, while the odds of getting a head injury riding a bike might be slim, they are certainly not zero, and that the minor inconvenience of wearing a helmet would be outweighed considerably if that helmet is ever actually called into service to prevent your head splitting open on the pavement.
Neither have people, for the most part, been talking about laws. They’ve been talking about something they consider prudent and reasonable.
Also, your comparison between bicycles and motorcycle isn’t completely appropriate. An important argument made by some folks against manadatory helmets for motorcycles is that the design of most motorcycle helmets—the way they cover the ears and head completely—reduces the rider’s peripheral vision, reduces head mobility, and reduces the rider’s ability to hear what is going on around him or her. Those who oppose motorcycle helmets argue that, because of these factors, wearing a full helmet might actually protect your head if you get in an accident, but the helmet itself actually increases the chance of having an acident in the first place.
The same could hardly be said of a typical bicycle helmet, which sits atop the riders skull and does not interfere with perception or mobility in the same way that a motorcycle helmet can.
Well some of us don’t bike off the edge of a cliff. 45 mph is a tad faster than most people peddle their bicycle. And I can’t remember any car/bike fatalities in my area but joggers seem to take quite a pasting. No, I don’t have any statistics.
When I bicycle, I wear my helmet all the time, every time. I’ve been hit by cars twice and have thanked whatever powers may be or not be that it hasn’t been severe, but each time I thought about how it could have been much worse and how I was glad I wore a helmet.
My husband wears his helmet about 95%+ of the time, but one time he wasn’t wearing it, he got into an accident. He (admittedly not wisely) was waving at someone he knew, when he had to brake suddenly - and with only one hand on the bars, he braked the front wheel. Yes, he went over the handlebars. Fortunately he has amazing reflexes and martial arts training, and instinctively tucked into a shoulder roll to avoid hitting his head. His shoulder took the main hit, and he was out of work for a couple months from the break that happened. He knows how insanely lucky he was - what if he’d failed in his tuck and roll? What if he rammed his head into a parking meter, parked car, etc. before even getting near the ground?
Your head is so precious to you, I just don’t get it when people don’t wear them. Head injuries may be rare but I prefer to protect myself and make it even more unlikely.
I did. I’ll take credit for that. I was referring to the wave of local legislation that mandates things like helmets, car seats until age 7 (or whatever), and on and on. I didn’t mean to hijack the poll. But many people have not just answered the poll. They’ve said things like
See, what is prudent and reasonable for you isn’t for everyone. So, I shouldn’t have to wear a helmet if I so choose. If I clunk my head, tough luck for me. But don’t make me wear one by passing a law. In many areas of the country, helmets for bicycles are manditory. I feel the same way about seat belts. I wear one every time I get in a car, but I don’t get into a twist if someone drives by me without one. Their life. Their risk.
That may be true. But I would think that your chances of coming out of a street motorcycle accident without a head injury without wearing a helmet are close to zero. So, I don’t know. I’ve driven motorcycles, always with a helmet, for this reason. Many of the reasons you give are, well, excuses. The biggest gripe is the helmet is damn hot and uncomfortable. Trust me, you want a visor when you are zipping down the highway at 65 and a bug smacks you in the face.
Like I said, I have no problem with the helmet-wearing folks. And their children. That’s their right and it certainly doesn’t detract from the experience.
Now, where’s my old set of lawn darts? 
I don’t bike, but I always wear my helmet when I ride my horse. Once it saved me from a serious injury when he kicked me in the head. Once he threw me and I fell on a concrete parking area. According to the people on the ground, I hit about 10’ up before I started my descent. I came down on my back and on my head, and he was still bucking like crazy right next to me after I landed. Either of those incidents and I could be sitting in a corner somewhere, drooling into my oatmeal.
Troxel, my helmet manufacturer, has a free replacement guarantee if you fall and damage your helmet. Even if you can’t see any damage, they want you to send it in to be replaced, because there might be structural damage you can’t see.
StG
I wear my bike helmet all the time. And I’d never even dream of getting on my motorcycle without my full-face helmet (and anyone whose head mobility is restricted by wearing a full-face motorcycle helmet needs physiotherapy ).
Like a lot of people, I never wore a bike helmet as a kid – but I did very different riding then. As a kid, we had the whole block to ourselves during the day. Cars rarely went down the street during the day, but if they did, it was at a crawl.
The older I got the more commuting I did, and for that a helmet started to make more sense. Because it doesn’t matter how skilled a rider I am. As a commuter, I am on the road, going through intersections, and dealing with cars. And if a car runs a red light and hits me, I’m going to lose. (Ride on the sidewalk? Are you nuts? Have you seen how many people are trying to walk on the sidewalk? And I’d be even more invisible to the cars!)
That’s why I wear a helmet. Not in case I take a spill (I’ve had one the past decade, and all I did was skin my arm). It’s because when I’m on two wheels, I’m transformed into an invisible moving target with a surprising amount of momentum. I just can’t guarantee that I will be able to stop fast enough if a car is going to hit me.
Which is definitely not the case if I’m going for a run :rolleyes:
You pretty much said what I wanted to say. With all the side streets with no sidewalks and buildings that come as far out to the street as possible, almost every intersection is a blind one coming from the sidewalk. If anything, you’re more likely to get hit by a car there than riding on the street (most of my close calls have been from cars nosing out of blind driveways where they can’t see any side traffic. On the sidewalk there’d be even less time for either of us to react). Add to that the fact that the only thing you can predict a pedestrian (especially a child) to do is move unpredictably, there’s no way I’ll ever go back to riding on the sidewalk.
- Yes
- Yes, all the time.