Wear that helmet!

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Discussion

S10GTA

12,645 posts

166 months

Monday 22nd September 2014
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ohHello said:
S10GTA said:
Indeed there is still a chance, but you don't need to be that clever to realise the chances of hitting your head at speed are far higher when cycling.
And yet the evidence does not show any such thing.
And this is why I try and avoid these topics. Evidence yada yada. Its pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that there is more chance of crashing at 10-25mph whilst riding a bike than walking seeing as you cannot attain that speed on foot.

ohHello

313 posts

114 months

Monday 22nd September 2014
quotequote all
S10GTA said:
And this is why I try and avoid these topics. Evidence yada yada. Its pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that there is more chance of crashing at 10-25mph whilst riding a bike than walking seeing as you cannot attain that speed on foot.
There may well be more chance of crashing, but is there more chance of hitting your head?
And if so, is there more chance of the a head injury within the parameters that a helmet could mitigate?

The fact that we cannot detect any statistically significant protective effect of helmets in the data, suggests not.

I'll reiterate: There are many activities we do where the risk of a head injury is similar to that when cycling, but no one suggests helmets for these activities. Why not?

Fugazi

564 posts

120 months

Monday 22nd September 2014
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The argument I've seen from some who say 'a bit of polystyrene won't help if you crash' is nonsense. Sure It won't help if several tonnes of metal roll over your head, but on the scale of crashes from clipless moments to high speed slides then I'm sure any form of material betwixt thy bonce and the asphalt will help. Saw this video posted on another forum, I bet the skater was glad of the bit of polystyrene he was wearing, probably saved him several minutes of unconsciousness and a trip to A&E.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9yL5usLFgY

So yes, a bit of polystyrene helps. It's also why your new TV comes covered in the stuff otherwise the nice people at Yodel would be swamped with damage claims. Also not all polystyrene is the same, there are different grades and densities available and you will find it used in all manner of places in the form of a sandwich structure (foam with a skin, like a helmet). A lot of light aircraft parts are made from nothing more than polystyrene with a thin plastic skin, a lot of car bumpers are nothing more than foam cores with a flimsy plastic shell, surf boards etc.... Objects like helmets are designed to be light and have specific densities and thicknesses of foam/plastic to provide a certain level of protection, they won't help in every scenario you can think of, but in a large majority of the cases they probably save the wearer a few cuts and bruises at least.

Everytime the subject comes up it descends into a war of statistics and anecdotes, if you don't want to wear one then that's fine. If you do, that's fine too. But these accusations of it making cycling look more dangerous, 'they don't wear them on the continent', a bit of foam does nothing, they don't like it up'em...' does no favours for anybody and nothing useful is solved, nobodies opinions are changed and can't we all just get along.... Have a ride, share a coffee, have a hug... hippy

walm

10,609 posts

201 months

Monday 22nd September 2014
quotequote all
ohHello said:
I'll reiterate: There are many activities we do where the risk of a head injury is similar to that when cycling, but no one suggests helmets for these activities. Why not?
Convenience and peer pressure.
There, I said it.

I am not wearing a helmet on my way to work because it will RUIN my carefully coiffed 'do.[/flounce]

OTBC

289 posts

121 months

Monday 22nd September 2014
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Vipers said:
Each to their own, but here is my 2p worth.

Couple of years ago, riding in the winter, the sun hadn't thawed the wet road on a corner, as I made a right turn, front wheel slid away to the left, couldn't disengage the pedals and fell straight over hitting my right side of my helmet on the road.

Bearing in mind I am just 6 ft tall, that is a fall for just over 6 ft.

Helmet broke in a number of places around the rim, damage to head, zilch.

No it won't save me if I am run over by a truck, but it certainly saved me from injury that day.




smile
Your helmet failed, catastrophically. Cycle helmets fail catastrophically, not gradually, in high impact crashes- the forces are so great that a helmet will compress and break in around 1/1000th of a second. The absorption of the initial forces during this very short period of time is unlikely to make a significant difference to the likelihood of serious injury or death.

A helmet that worked properly in an accident would have a permanent depression at the point of impact, but would still be in one piece.

Your helmet failed.

Fugazi

564 posts

120 months

Monday 22nd September 2014
quotequote all
OTBC said:
Your helmet failed, catastrophically. Cycle helmets fail catastrophically, not gradually, in high impact crashes- the forces are so great that a helmet will compress and break in around 1/1000th of a second. The absorption of the initial forces during this very short period of time is unlikely to make a significant difference to the likelihood of serious injury or death.

A helmet that worked properly in an accident would have a permanent depression at the point of impact, but would still be in one piece.

Your helmet failed.
Do you have a source for this information or are these just assumptions and guesses? What levels of impulse were considered to be the limiting factor for the design of the helmet? Off the top of my head I can't see in any way how the impact of a human head with an object would be around a millisecond, (1/1000th sec, I think a golf ball hit by a club is on the order of a millisecond) for your average crash. The fact that the foam compresses and deforms, even breaking shows that the energy of the impact was dissipated and not absorbed by the skull, in all likelihood preventing serious injury. A similar analogy would be the impact of a bullet in bullet-proof glass. The glass may shatter but it did the job, absorbing energy and slowing down the bullet. The foam may crack and split, but that is absorption of energy which otherwise would be taken by the skull where you rely on the flexibility of the collagen within the bone to deform and absorb the energy of the impact, which hurts.

Again, people posting spurious nonsense without backing it up with evidence.


Edited by Fugazi on Monday 22 September 22:23

TKF

6,232 posts

234 months

Monday 22nd September 2014
quotequote all
ohHello said:
There may well be more chance of crashing, but is there more chance of hitting your head?
And if so, is there more chance of the a head injury within the parameters that a helmet could mitigate?

The fact that we cannot detect any statistically significant protective effect of helmets in the data, suggests not.

I'll reiterate: There are many activities we do where the risk of a head injury is similar to that when cycling, but no one suggests helmets for these activities. Why not?
You really can't stay away from these threads can you, heebeegeetee?

jimbop1

2,441 posts

203 months

Monday 22nd September 2014
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Do all you helmet haters think motorcyclists should not have to wear helmets?

Fugazi

564 posts

120 months

Monday 22nd September 2014
quotequote all
Being a curious engineer who is trying to find every excuse possible to not start writing a paper, thought I'd have a quick trawl through journals and find some papers. There are some studies that undertake experiments to further develop computational models to aid the design of helmets, so there appears to be a lot of research in this field. One study, 'Oblique impact testing of bicycle helmets' by Mills and Gilchrist showed that not only are rotational accelerations too low to cause injury which is one of the oft quoted problems of wearing helmets by non-wearers. Anyway here are the conclusions in full, (bit lacking in my opinion having skim read the paper, if I handed that to my Prof, he'd chuck it back at me full of red ink, but I digress).

Paper said:
Oblique impact tests were performed that are representative of bicycle crashes. The headform instrumentation assessed the peak linear and rotational head accelerations, while the measured forces on the ‘road’ were useful for development of FEA models, allowing a better understanding of slip at the road/shell and helmet/head interfaces.

Current helmet designs provide adequate protection for typical oblique impacts onto a road surface, in terms of the peak linear and rotational head accelerations. Most criticisms of current bicycle helmet designs are not valid: although test headforms lack a deformable scalp, and so have a high contact stiffness, this does not lead to inappropriate designs; there is a linear increase in the peak impact force with impact velocity, not a just sub-lethal level for minor impacts.
Again, I'm not stating that I think helmets must be worn, just that trying to back up an opinion with false evidence is one of my bugbears and this is one of those topics where crap gets spouted, along with chemtrails, moon landing et al. But evidence does seem to show you'll be better off. At the end of the day it's your head and your choice, I wear one but wouldn't criticise anybody not wearing one.


Edited by Fugazi on Monday 22 September 23:05

jimbop1

2,441 posts

203 months

Monday 22nd September 2014
quotequote all
Has this been posted yet?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nu4QzAIayTU

To be honest, it's just common sense really.

ohHello

313 posts

114 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
quotequote all
TKF said:
You really can't stay away from these threads can you, heebeegeetee?
That's the second time I've been accused of being another previous poster.
Please stop it, it's nonsense.

ohHello

313 posts

114 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
quotequote all
Fugazi said:
Again, people posting spurious nonsense without backing it up with evidence.
What, like "My helmet definitely saved my life"

ohHello

313 posts

114 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
quotequote all
jimbop1 said:
Do all you helmet haters think motorcyclists should not have to wear helmets?
The difference is that there is actual good evidence that motorcycle helmets do prevent injuries, whereas the evidence for the efficacy of cycle helmets is lacking.

jodypress

1,927 posts

273 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
quotequote all
OTBC said:
Vipers said:
Each to their own, but here is my 2p worth.

Couple of years ago, riding in the winter, the sun hadn't thawed the wet road on a corner, as I made a right turn, front wheel slid away to the left, couldn't disengage the pedals and fell straight over hitting my right side of my helmet on the road.

Bearing in mind I am just 6 ft tall, that is a fall for just over 6 ft.

Helmet broke in a number of places around the rim, damage to head, zilch.

No it won't save me if I am run over by a truck, but it certainly saved me from injury that day.




smile
Your helmet failed, catastrophically. Cycle helmets fail catastrophically, not gradually, in high impact crashes- the forces are so great that a helmet will compress and break in around 1/1000th of a second. The absorption of the initial forces during this very short period of time is unlikely to make a significant difference to the likelihood of serious injury or death.

A helmet that worked properly in an accident would have a permanent depression at the point of impact, but would still be in one piece.

Your helmet failed.
But his helmet didn't fail as he didn't injure his head. It provided enough protection for him when he came off his bike. Exactly what it's supposed to do.

All this antagonism as to whether you should or should wear a helmet is ridiculous. The current law in the UK is helmets are optional.
Any cyclist that rides regularly and has any common sense wears a helmet. Those that don't who've had a fall and knocked their head wish they did (I've got a friend who's one of them and one night forgot his helmet, had an off and ended up needing his skull glued)

ohHello

313 posts

114 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
quotequote all
jodypress said:
But his helmet didn't fail as he didn't injure his head. It provided enough protection for him when he came off his bike. Exactly what it's supposed to do.

All this antagonism as to whether you should or should wear a helmet is ridiculous. The current law in the UK is helmets are optional.
Any cyclist that rides regularly and has any common sense wears a helmet. Those that don't who've had a fall and knocked their head wish they did (I've got a friend who's one of them and one night forgot his helmet, had an off and ended up needing his skull glued)
You can't possibly know whether he would have injured his head if he had not been wearing a helmet.

I know a lot of regular cyclists who are not lacking in common sense who don't wear a helmet. I'm one of them.

I notice no one has been able to satisfactorily answer my question:
There are plenty of activities we do with a similar risk of head injury as cycling, yet no one suggests wearing helmets for them. Why not?

Justin Cyder

12,624 posts

148 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
quotequote all
ohHello said:
You can't possibly know whether he would have injured his head if he had not been wearing a helmet.

I know a lot of regular cyclists who are not lacking in common sense who don't wear a helmet. I'm one of them.
I notice you don't think you lack common sense. Had you asked this kid whether he possessed the same attributes, what do you suppose he would have said?

No one ever actually thinks they're stupid do they? Really?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-...

ohHello

313 posts

114 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
quotequote all
Justin Cyder said:
I notice you don't think you lack common sense. Had you asked this kid whether he possessed the same attributes, what do you suppose he would have said?

No one ever actually thinks they're stupid do they? Really?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-...
No one has any idea whether a helmet would have made the slightest bit of difference to his injuries.

What we do know, is that we cannot detect any statistically significant evidence of helmets making any difference to head injury rates.

So if we're talking common sense, I'd ask you whether you wear a helmet when walking? If not, why not? After all, if it saves even one life ...

TwistingMyMelon

6,385 posts

204 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
quotequote all
ohHello said:
jodypress said:
But his helmet didn't fail as he didn't injure his head. It provided enough protection for him when he came off his bike. Exactly what it's supposed to do.

All this antagonism as to whether you should or should wear a helmet is ridiculous. The current law in the UK is helmets are optional.
Any cyclist that rides regularly and has any common sense wears a helmet. Those that don't who've had a fall and knocked their head wish they did (I've got a friend who's one of them and one night forgot his helmet, had an off and ended up needing his skull glued)
You can't possibly know whether he would have injured his head if he had not been wearing a helmet.

I know a lot of regular cyclists who are not lacking in common sense who don't wear a helmet. I'm one of them.

I notice no one has been able to satisfactorily answer my question:
There are plenty of activities we do with a similar risk of head injury as cycling, yet no one suggests wearing helmets for them. Why not?
You being fking serious mate??

What like skiing, canoeing , climbing??? Those spring to mind, all recommend helmets or are starting to promote them heavily

Most sports that there is head injury risk encourage helmets?? Please dont say walking.....

I replaced mine last night and looked at my old one, there is huge chunk of it missing above my right eye! Even if it didn't stop a bad injury the superficial wounds would be horrendous.



Edited by TwistingMyMelon on Tuesday 23 September 09:41

Justin Cyder

12,624 posts

148 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
quotequote all
This business of trying to argue whether a helmet would or wouldn't have helped is spurious to the point of irrelevance. In effect it's trying to prove a negative.

The link I supplied to the teenager who ended up with life changing injuries because he was concerned about his hair do is pretty cut & dried, as is Vipers' tale. As for the evidence argument, I don't believe any well designed peer reviewed study exists, but feel free to use that line to shore up a patently obstinate position. I don't mind in the slightest if you don't want to wear a helmet, it's really neither here nor there to me, but you are going to have to marshal a better line of argument than you've managed so far if you're going to convince me.

ohHello

313 posts

114 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
quotequote all
TwistingMyMelon said:
You being fking serious mate??

What like skiing, canoeing , climbing??? Those spring to mind, all recommend helmets or are starting to promote them heavily

Most sports that there is head injury risk encourage helmets?? Please dont say walking.....

I replaced mine last night and looked at my old one, there is huge chunk of it missing above my right eye! Even if it didn't stop a bad injury the superficial wounds would be horrendous.



Edited by TwistingMyMelon on Tuesday 23 September 09:41
Those sports have a much greater risk of head injury than cycling. Cycling is a low-risk activity.

The risk of head injury when walking is broadly similar to that when cycling - a bit less, but in the same ball park. And because many many more people walk than cycle, pedestrian helmets would undoubtedly save many many more lives than cycling helmets. Yet no one promotes them.

The evidence is clear: cycling helmets do not offer a significant protective effect against head injuries.