See above
I fell off a scooter - right, a little kids Razor style scooter when I was seven. Head first. Out cold for quite a while, in hospital for three days. Scab covering almost all of one side of my face. Ouch.
Damn right I wear my helmet.
The problem with that argument is that it’s not addressing the real issue of a helmet’s usefulness.
It’s not about what you are doing when you are hit that matters, it’s about if you are hit what part of you requires protection.
If you get hit by a car when walking, your whole body is damaged instantly by the impact of the vehicle. You’d need full body protection, and that’s impractical.
But if you get hit by a car when cycling, you’re most likely to be catapulted off the bike, or tip forward over the front wheel, and land head first.
Helmets don’t protect you from accidents, they protect you from head injury.
I’ve been riding a road bike for about 16 months - in that time 2 members of our road cycling group have been hit by cars, and one (a world masters cycle champ) did a bunny hop over over a curb with a loose front wheel and fell face first. All would have been much more seriously injured without a helmet. I’d never ride without, the same as I’d never drive without a seatbelt. Sure, the best defence is riding/driving defensively, but it’s insurance in case of a ‘what if’.
Amen! Most non-motorcyclists are unaware of the Hurt Report; a study commissioned by the HTSA and done by Dr. Harry Hurt. The most surprising fact determined by the report was that there is NO evidence to link speed and head injury. NONE! The HTSA wanted Dr. Hurt to skew his findings as they wanted a report blaming speed. He told them to stick it.
There is a DIRECT correlation between head injury and height-to-fall. In fact, as the height-to-fall increases, the severity of a possible head injury increases. A bicycle traveling at 20 mph is much more likely to produce a head injury than a motorcycle traveling at 50 mph as the cyclist rides much higher than the motorcyclist. And riding a horse? forget about it!
Aside: Do they make a bicycle helmet that doesn’t keep in all the bloody heat? Every single one I’ve tried that hasn’t been ridiculously expensive has been extremely hot to wear.
Wearing a helmet makes sense, but if you are constantly uncomfortable and fiddling with the straps and sweating I should think that your distraction is more likely to cause you injury than a poor fall.
The other part that jumped out at me is the mile-to-mile comparison. While walking may be as dangerous on a per-mile basis, I’ll cover five to ten times the distance on my bicycle.
It’ll be interesting to see how the use of helmets develops in skiing. It seems to mirror bikes in that most young kids wear them, a high proportion of boarders but relatively few adult skiers…
Race car drivers all wear helmets. Many people get severe head injuries in car crashes. All drivers and passengers should be forced to wear helmets.
My mother and my grandfather fell down the stairs when they were in their seventies. Stairs are very dangerous. Everyone should be forced to wear a helmet when going down stairs.
I got knocked out in a junior high school gym class wrestling match. All wrestlers should be forced to wear helmets.
I have a scar on my forehead from a fall while ice skating when I was 12 years old. All ice skaters should be forced to wear helmets.
I got knocked out while playing croquet when a kid tossed a ball into the air. All croquet players should be forced to wear helmets.
How far do you want to take this?
What is the HTSA?
What kind of helmets are you wearing? “Road” helmets are designed with a multitude of ventilation holes and air channels to keep the air blowing across your head under the helmet. In the summer I often ride in 90+ degrees (F), and haven’t had any problem with my helmet keeping the heat in. And my helmet wasn’t expensive - it’s a $30 Schwinn helmet.
Are you wearing a bandanna under your helmet? If so, that could be the problem. I used to wear a bandanna under mine to keep sweat from running into my eyes (and also to make the helmet more comfortable on my shaved head), and my head would sometimes get uncomfortably hot. It turned out that the bandanna was “insulating” my head and keeping the air currents from cooling it. I switched to a headband I found at the bicycle shop, and the difference was dramatic and immediate.
What do you consider ridiculously expensive? My personal favorite (after trying many brands at a store) is the LAS Astrom; the list price is rather high, but the sale price on this site ($52.22) is close to the typical street price. It’s quite well ventilated.
Unfortunately the helmets with large vent holes do cost more. Better engineering and materials are needed so they can have big holes in it and still have the remaing material do the job.
I know I’ve wanted to ask this before, but I’m kind of with Turble on this one.
If helmets on bikes are such a good idea, why not in cars?
If anyone can articulate a real difference I’d really like to hear it. It is an honest question.
I suspect that it’s a matter of proportion.
Yes, requiring helmets in cars would probably prevent a few injuries. But, how many? If the other safety systems in a car (seat belts, air bags) are functioning properly, I would imagine that most auto accidents don’t result in serious head injuries to the occupants…and those that do are probably catastrophic enough that the occupants are suffering other serious injuries.
On a bike, what are the safety systems? Hmm. The brakes, maybe. There’s nothing preventing you from taking a spill onto the street, or flying over the car that just hit you. I can’t picture what the automotive equivalent would be of the bicyclist landing on his head / face, but I don’t think it’d be very common. It seems to me that a helmet is the single most important piece of equipment that can protect a bicyclist from serious injury.
They are a good idea in cars; most people have made the decision that the risk does not outweigh the PITA factor. Risk reduction is already present in cars – the mere fact that you’re inside, not outside, is one; airbags and seatbelts matter a lot; bumpers, crumple zones, anti-lock brakes, etc. are on most new models. Some of these are mandatory on cars, but they aren’t even conceivable on bicycles or motorcycles.
Well this makes me feel better about not wearing a helmet. I ride a low slung trike, almost impossible to tip over at any speed, and my head is a scant 18 inches or so above the pavement, and I ride with my feet out in front of me.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.flyingfurniture.com.au/images/catrike%2520speed%25202005a.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.flyingfurniture.com.au/catrike.html&usg=__UN6wgZ0ECVhp663j6KkiCgNBMzQ=&h=393&w=826&sz=45&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=7gyb0R7V9TmfMM:&tbnh=69&tbnw=144&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcatrike%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den
Assuming the car rider is wearing a standard seat belt, there is a large margin for body movement in a car before injury occurs. Hit a brick wall with the car at 20MPH and you may be thrown forward, but won’t hit anything substantual. The car will absorb most of the impact and you are next to soft, cushiony stuff for a large part of your body.
In contrast, hit a brick wall at 20MPH on a bike and your body will leave the bike and be propelled directly into the brick wall at near full speed, probably head first, and only your hair (if you have any) will cushion the impact. BIG difference.
That said, I don’t wear a helmet either.
As someone who spends a decent amount of time in cars with helmets on, I recommend keeping in mind that the helmet required to protect your head in a car crash is much more substantial than one required while riding a bike (although, amusingly, my recently purchased bike helmet cost more than my SA2005 auto racing helmet!).
With that bulk comes the accompanied loss of some peripheral vision and not being able to turn your head as much. If you add a HANS device, which is much safer, it is even worse, along with requiring a new seat. On a closed course, only being able to see straight ahead or via your mirrors is not a big deal. On the open road, though, it would be huge.
In addition, the completely different belts in a passenger car (3 point vs. 6 point) means much more body movement, which can have catastrophic effects on the human head, specifically where it connects to the neck. Adding a helmet gives you that much more weight to snap around. I would wager that driving a car with 3 point belts and a helmet is much more dangerous in a minor crash than wearing no helmets, even if it would provide more protection in a major accident.
So, the move to helmets in cars would require significantly revamped mirrors for passenger cars, along with more prevalent lane departure warning systems. All belts would need to be 6 points, cars would be equipped with better cages, and halmts with HANS devices would be mandatory. In addition, I normally wear arm restraints to keep my appendages inside in the event of a crash. Also, we would need some sort of built-in fire suppression system.
The difference is that I use my car my for activities with a significantly increased level of danger compared to the average driver, which means I need all these things.You average cyclist is facing the exact same risk of injury as a top Tour rider, though. The bike helmet is a basic element of safety, unlike the situation for cars. Car have safety cages and airbags whereas bikes do not.
Cars have a large amount of safety built in already, whereas ALL you have on a bike is a helmet. Maybe if we all drove motorized bar stools to work, helmets in cars would be mandatory.
Sorry, thread hijack…
What’s the 6th point in a racing harness? I’d always heard racing belts referred to as “5 point”, which I’d understood as: two shoulders, two hips, and one between the legs. Is there now a 6th point, am I misremembering, or has the terminology changed?
Obviously some people should pretty much wear a helmet 24/7:rolleyes: The rest of us can weigh the costs and benefits of using protective gear and decide accordingly.