This video of a mountain biker going over his handlebars, landing on his head and being knocked unconscious in the Surrey Hills was sent to Eagle Radio to highlight the effectiveness of cycle helmets. The uploader says the helmet took the main impact of the fall and without it the cyclist would have sustained far more severe injuries.
As it was, the man involved, Andy, was taken to hospital, where he was given the all clear. He was back in work two days’ later.
Be warned that the video does contain some images which may be upsetting for some people.
Tim Rowsell, who recorded the video on his GoPro, said:
“It doesn’t take much to get quite a severe head injury and that’s why I want people to see it. If you wear a helmet it can save your life and I genuinely believe that he would have been in a lot worse a state if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet at the time.
“He was incredibly lucky and you can see at the end of the video that the helmet took the main impact and really was quite badly damaged. It was an old helmet, which he hadn’t used for a couple of years, but it did the job.”
Organisations such as CTC, the national cycling charity, are against making cycle helmets mandatory, arguing that cycling should be promoted as a safe, normal and enjoyable transport and leisure activity which anyone can do, with or without a helmet.
CTC points out that whether or not it is a good idea to wear a helmet may depend on both the rider and the type of cycling they are doing.
55 thoughts on “Video: Headcam user films cyclist crashing headfirst, urges riders to wear helmets”
Here we go.
Here we go.
harragan wrote:
Beat me to it, let the deluge start
Fair enough about them not
Fair enough about them not being mandatory, just advised. However, you’re pretty special if you don’t wear one mountain biking. The argument is more poignant on the road where cyclists can be at the mercy of all kinds of external factors which decent infrastructure and training for motorists and the like can negate over the mandatory use of a helmet which might put some people off cycling.
C.Gregs wrote:
Why? You can see from the video that they don’t work at preventing concussions.
Poignant?! Mercy?! Cue the throbbing cinematic score and cut to the scene of children starving in some “foreign” country (preferably with flies and maybe some sort of black-and-white footage of a WW2 atrocity).
Meanwhile, if you think that a helmet is going to save you in the relatively rare even that a car slams into you then I have a bridge, a life-insurance policy and some snake-oil which you may be interested in.
Also, I hope you are wearing spine-protector during your death-defying commute, and that your helmet is at least a full-face downhill model?
Ush wrote:
So you believe:
2 is wrong. This doesn’t need any more discussion.
1 is your personal belief. Most people that cycle in an urban environment would disagree with you.
Your spine-protector quip is also wrong. Risk profile of hedge VS stronger hedge is completely different to no hedge Vs Hedge.
Superbly calm handling by the
Superbly calm handling by the guy with the camera, taking control of the situation, don’t move the body, 999, grid reference, and giving the guy a word to remember. All basic items that can completely change the outcome of situations like this.
MrWigster wrote:
I think everyone agrees that he did a great job. And seeing him handle the situation like that is very useful and educational. (Reminds me that I should go and do the first aid course I keep meaning to do).
I was interested in one side item as I watched it: what is the point of not letting him lose consciousness? Is it that his body will be less able to cope with the trauma, or is it to keep him in a state where he can report where he experiences pain to aid the paramedics in determining how to proceed?
Ush wrote:
Ush, this used to be standard practice as it was believed that the injured individual would lapse into a coma. This is usually more of a concern 6/7 hours later if the person starts to feel drowsy. CAT scans have made the necessity of wakening a patient pretty much pointless, unless there is great concern for their well being. In fact neurosurgeons recommend rest and sleep as the best means of recovery for the body and brain. That said, I was well impressed with how calm the first aider was throughout.
Ush wrote:
Blast – double post
hTere is no evidence the
hTere is no evidence the helmet payed any kind of role here, anyway this is an isloated incident and says nothing about the effectivness of helmets.
I wear one, but I don’t think helmet use should be promoted as this is exactly what enemies of cycling want – to reinforce the notion that cycling is dangerous.
Irrespective of what camp you
Irrespective of what camp you sit in with regards to wearing helmets on the roads I think you’d have to be pretty stubborn to suggest they don’t help in off-road environments.
danthomascyclist wrote:
When I was young, quite a long time ago I must admit, the main off-road cycling activities were either “Rough stuff” riding off road on bikes that were not adapted for such and Cyclo Cross. For neither of those activities did we consider wearing helmets of any type but would sometimes wear a cotton cap to keep mud, rain or snow out of our eyes. Head injuries were pretty rare and I never came across such an injury in over 10 years of racing and training.
The point of my post is just to point out that off road environments are not in themselves dangerous and as such wearing a helmet is not really a simple matter of common sense. It is, just like it is on the road, a matter of personal choice that tends to be made dependant on personal belief in whether or not they are either (a) necessary and (b) effective.
1. If I’m going to hit my
1. If I’m going to hit my head on something, I’d rather do it wearing something that has been designed to reduce the impact. Yes I realise there possible downsides to wearing a helmet (neck injuries etc) but I’d still prefer it if my head on it’s own wasn’t the thing making direct contact with a hard object.
2. I know that I could hit my head at any time from tripping over or a car accident, but I feel that cycling puts me in scenarios where I am more likely to hit my head if I were to fall/crash/be crashed into compared with walking etc, as the fact that I’m on a bike makes it harder to ‘catch’ yourself in a fall as the bike will get in the way. That’s why I wear a helmet on the bike and no-where else.
3. Speed is not necesarrily a deciding factor for wearing a helmet or not – the biggest injury I had falling off a bike was in a car park at 5 mph, and was lucky not to fall onto a bollard, and I don’t want to know what brain/skull injuries I would have had if my head had smashed into the top of it (I wasn’t wearing a helmet at the time).
4. Whats the difference between on-road and off-road? More things to hit off-road? Not really. More likely to fall off MTBing? Maybe, but my experience of falls when off road is that you tend to know it’s about to happen and have more time to react and ‘control’ the landing (over the bar crashes perhaps the exception regarding ‘control’), where-as on road I find crashes tend to be much more sudden and far less predictable. I guess this is likely to depend on your riding style though, but maybe we could all do with learning how to crash, or rather, how to land?
5. Helmets MUST NOT be compulsary – the increase in head injuries from more people cycling will be offset massively by the improved overall health due to lower obesity levels and improved mental health.
That should be enough bait for the moment.
!! Shots Fired !!
!! Shots Fired !!
I’d have been more worried
I’d have been more worried about spinal injuries given the nature of the crash.
I see that Eagle are running with the “helmet saves life” headline……
Total respect to the guy with
Total respect to the guy with camera. Did a fantastic job. Very calm.
The question is not whether
The question is not whether you need a helmet for cycling but what sort of cycling. I live in Surrey and I go mountain biking occasionally. It’s likely that I will have an off because that’s the nature of MTBing. So I wear a helmet.
I also ride to work where I am not likely to have an off by sliding on some wett exposed roots. The helmet that might have helped me in a low speed bump with a tree (because that’s what they are designed for) is of no use in the kind of collision that people forsee on the road.
This is also true for car drivers though. If you go an do motorsport you wear a helmet. If you are just driving to work you don’t.
Most cyclist are doing less then 10mph when just travelling. I am older but an ex racer so even I am only tickling along at 14mph. Just enough to beat a marathon runner over 26 miles. For almost all cyclists on the road a helmet is an irrelevance and you might as well ask joggers to wear one as well.
Not all cycling is the same.
There’s a big difference in
There’s a big difference in risk of head injury between serious mountain biking and cycling Amsterdam style.
Going from one to say that helmets should be compulsory for the other is plain stupid.
The helmet well may have avoided serious injury in this case (I’d guess it probably did), but there isn’t really any proof of this.
I still don’t think helmets should be compulsory for mountain biking as there is a such a wide range of things put under this label, and with a wide range of head injury risk. Sure, advise it, but banning a safe activity unless you wear safety gear is counter productive.
With the mindset applied to “make cycling without a helmet illegal”, I fear that one day it will be a legal requirement to wear special safety gear whenever you walk outside, or perhaps all the time.
IME helmets work. I’ve
IME helmets work. I’ve crashed pedal bikes (many times) & a motorbike (once), & in every case I’m sure the helmet prevented more serious injury (evidenced in several cases by deep gouges on the helmet). So I wear a helmet anywhere I’m likely to come off — fast road, off-road & most shopping trips (really — think kids running out of side paths). I don’t see much point in a helmet when the main danger is from cars & lorries. If a ton of metal going at 35mph hits you, there is no tomorrow, helmet or no. Just my 2 penn’orth.
Anecdotal evidence is almost
Anecdotal evidence is almost the very worst kind. You’ll still find people convinced that smoking does them no harm on account of someone they know has an uncle who’s 95 and smokes like a chimney and never had a days illness in their life.
My anecdotes relate to a smashed helmet when I went over the handlebars whilst failing to negotiate my mountain bike down a set of concrete steps, a very dented helmet where I hit a curbstone having come off my road bike at high speed on leaves and being first aider to someone who got hit from behind by a car. Her injuries were multiple and severe but the depressed skull fracture was the one that killed her and it was right where a helmet would have covered, had she been wearing one and had it stayed on during the impact.
I get the arguments over helmet use transferring the obligation on drivers to drive carefully into an obligation on the cyclist to protect themselves from injury, and the incorrect perception that cycling must be dangerous if you have to wear a helmet. But:
1. Not all accidents are caused by a car being driven into you
2. I’d rather take some precautions and not rely totally on the skill of other road users to avoid running me over however much they are not allowed to.
3. A fall from a bicycle is not like tripping over a shoelace, you’ll probably be going faster than walking pace and the entanglement of a bicycle is more likely to cause you to fall awkwardly.
If anecdotal evidence is almost the worst kind of evidence, then accepted wisdom, aka common sense, is the very worst. My common sense tells me that the set of circumstances where a helmet is likely to mitigate injury is far larger than the set of circumstances where a helmet will cause harm. In fact I know many people with damaged helmets (fnarr) and no-one who has come to harm due to wearing one. Your anecdotal evidence, perception of risk, attitude to responsibility for personal safety, set of friends and understanding of what is common sense may be different.
Having said all that I’m more than happy not to wear a helmet for pootling around the park or if I happen to just not feel like wearing it and I’d be pissed to see a mandatory requirement to wear one as I do believe that would significantly reduce the attractiveness of riding a bike to very many people.
I regret posting my original
I regret posting my original comment now — I had no idea so many people were anti-helmet.
Please kindly do not put your seatbelt on when you next get in your car either.
(I’m a cyclist myself) And I can confirm that you’re always going to look like a pleb to the vast majority, not wearing a helmet doesn’t make you look any better; just nonsensical. Stick a lid on your bonce.
Having had plenty of slips/falls and bails on my bike, I can confirm they will happen when you least suspect them — you can be going 10mph down a flat road, suddenly your chain will slip off whilst changing gear and the next thing you know you’re leg over tit faceplanting the floor.
MrWigster wrote:
I see you are a new(ish?) contributor and have not experienced the expected tirade until now. You could be forgiven for thinking you are in the minority but I suspect you are not. The anti-helmet brigade come out in force when a story like this hits these pages and you get the same old stories. The only explanation is they must have tested the theory, survived to tell the tale but failed to realise their reasoning became impaired due to a bang on the head…
Leave them to it.
hectorhtaylor wrote:
I’m NOT anti-helmet, I’m against it being mandatory to wear one…
hectorhtaylor wrote:
Wigster and Hector.
You our will find that the “antihelmetbrigade” is actually more anti compulsion of the wearing of helmets. Many of them race or mountain bike and wear a helmet as regulations for those disciplines demand that this is so. When it comes to getting around. There is no need to get knitted up. After all. Motorists are not expected to don fire-retardant suits, neck braces helmets to go to the local shops or restaurant even with more motorist being injured per mile travelled than cyclists.
I’m amazed that so many on this forum are prone to coming off their bikes and would suggest that they learn not to fall. Though if they insist that this is a requirement. I suggest that you all learn how to fall.
MrWigster wrote:
I think you may need to educate yourself a bit about helmets. How they are made, how they work, what they do and what they don’t do. No one is anti-helmet. They are just irrelvant to road safety and even counterproductive.
The reason is that they frame the argument in terms of making cycling appear far more dangerous than it is. It is statistically very safe. There is lots we can do to improve it further but helmets aren’t one of them. Most cyclists just travelling on the road gain no benefit whatsoever from wearing a helmet. But wear one if you like. Wear a St Christopher medal if you like, splash yourself with holy water or keep a rabbits foot in saddlebag. They’ll all have about exactly the same usefulness to the average cyclist going to the shops or riding to work.
What they do do however is signal that cycling is a dangerous activity in need of special protective equipment. That image (which bears no relation to the actuality) keeps cyclists off the road. The key element that keeps cyclists safe on the road is their ubiquity. That there are lots of us. That as a driver you know that it is likely that cyclists will be travelling on the road. That as a driver perhaps you also cycle.
So people don’t object to helmets they object to people equating road safety with helmet use and when it arguably has the opposite effect. You may want to look at cycling in the Netherlands or in Denmark and contrast it with cycling in Australia which has compulsory helmet laws. How many people are cycling, how safe are they, how likely is a newbie to take up cycling to work.
You may be new but this is far more complicated and issue than whether you think some polystyrene will keep the roads safe.
For example how many cyclists have been killed or seriously injured on the road where a helmet would even have mitigated any injury. They are rated to 50 joules of impact protection when brand new and properly fitted.
So just to get this straight. There are around 100 or so cyclists killed on the road each year. It has come down massively over the years as have all road deaths. Of those 100 or so, only some are going to involve any head injury. For example the 8 people killed in London so far this year 7 were crushed by lorries over their legs and lower torso. There were no head injuries. Even when there are head injuries you need to discern whether a helmet would have been of any use. So if you are whacked at high speed your head will be injured no doubt but your back will be broken and you will have your vital organs ripped apart. The head injury would be fatal as would any of the other injuries. A helmet would make no difference to the outcome. So you then narrow further to find head injuries that were at low enough speed for the helmet to have any mitigating effect. In that category the effect of mitigation is found to be 10 – 16%. So in a sub set of a sub set where helmets might work they are 10% – 16% effective at mitigation.
You mentioned seatbelts. In a number of road accidents had the driver been wearing race standard 5 point seat belts and a helmet they would have survived a fatal accident. A life is a life right? So it’s worth saving anyone. But if you then started saying that all drivers and passengers should have 5 point safety belts anchored to the chassis of their vehicle and wear a helmet because if they all did so you could save 3 lives a year you would get short shrift.
That’s the same shrift you are getting here and for the same reason.
oozaveared wrote:
Hidden graveyard problem. Those saved from death/injury by helmets do not show up in your survey.
The risk profiles of a seatbelt vs 5 point seatbelt are completely different to the risk profiles of helmet vs no helmet.
JohnnyW wrote:
Surely you have that back-to-front?
The hidden graveyard is full of all those who died due to physical-inactivity-related conditions due to the suppressive effect that fixation on helmets and high-viz and so on have on people’s willingness to cycle and to the distraction they cause from the real sources of road danger.
(I don’t really care much about what poeple do on off-road mountain-biking type activities – its a different argument, that I don’t have any opinion on ).
oozaveared wrote:
What bollox. I wear a helmet because on the several occasions I have been knocked down it has protected my head. Of course a cycling helmet has limitations but you are far better off with one than without. I don’t believe they should be mandatory. If they did become mandatory it would be because of people like you who refuse to wear them.
Airzound wrote:
Yep that’s right all those crazy Dutch and Danish cyclists what are they thinking ? And did you know that the A&E departments of Dutch hospitals are overwhelmed by cyclists with head injuries. ? No! Just kidding. So are ours by the way! Just kidding again.
Like a lot of the folk on here you fail to distinguish between cycling as a normal means of transport and cycling as a sport.
BTW I have 3 helmets and as a I said wear them when when it is appropriate and useful. Sportives and mountainbiking. The first where there’s lots of inexperienced cyclists all grouped together or when the MTB terrain can easily have you off and out of control. ie where the 50 joules of impact protection will stop a nasty cut or graze and where that is more likely to happen.
But I don’t wear one to cycle to work or for that matter when I am out jogging either. Could get a nasty bump on the head if you tripped on a pavement at 7mph. As for that Mo Farah tanking along at 13mph what a loon. He should have a helmet on if he’s going that fast – Surely>? It’s faster than most commuters are going on their bikes.
If wearing your helmet makes you feel better and safer then fill your boots. No-one objects. Lots of people have lucky charms.
MrWigster wrote:
What car?
On the whole I’d rather drivers didn’t put seatbelts on, then they might drive more carefully.
Brilliantly handled by the
Brilliantly handled by the cameraman… The people in this video did really well to keep the chap in one position, rather than letting him get up. Having experienced a similar situation two years ago, where I was both the cameraman and the ‘crasher’, my mantra is “you only realise that you need a helmet when it’s too late”. In my case the situation was excellently handled by two mates, who managed the immediate aftermath of going over the handlebars, before getting me firstly to a Minor Injuries Unit and then onto Gloucester A&E to be stitched back together by their MaxFac team.
I’ve also editted some of my video, but it shows how a great day can change in a matter of seconds… https://vimeo.com/81799411
seeing kayaker on Dart Loop
seeing kayaker on Dart Loop last weekend pissed everyone off, as it is stupid and dangerous. Doing MTB without a helmet is also stupid and dangerous. The problem is that someone else has to pick up the pieces, as we cant just leave you to die, unfortunately.
The man is clearly a trauma
The man is clearly a trauma doctor, how else would he be qualified to make such a sweeping statement? Seems to me the helmet didnt do much, he came off his bike and was concussed despite wearing one.
QED
QED
popcorn…
popcorn…
popcorn…
popcorn…
Casting aside the helmet
Casting aside the helmet debate instigated by the author and not wanting to start another about pro’s and con’s of trauma managment please lets watch and learn from Tim’s actions, he did a fantastic job. Its really difficult in stressful situations.
Quote:
Ah, an anecdote illustrated by a video.
Did the uploader happen to provide his expert assessment of the energy involved in the fall and the amount absorbed by the helmet?
Only in helmet-land can people see someone get a concussion from falling on their head and conclude that the helmet worked.
Perhaps someone would be interested in seeing a video of the horribly squashed bag of marshmallows I was wearing on my head after I bungie jumped onto my head without a cord? They were completely flattened and I feel certain that my injuries would have been worse without them.
(Good job at looking after the injured man by the camera-wearer though).
Ush wrote:
Ah, an anecdote illustrated by a video.
Did the uploader happen to provide his expert assessment of the energy involved in the fall and the amount absorbed by the helmet?
Only in helmet-land can people see someone get a concussion from falling on their head and conclude that the helmet worked.
Perhaps someone would be interested in seeing a video of the horribly squashed bag of marshmallows I was wearing on my head after I bungie jumped onto my head without a cord? They were completely flattened and I feel certain that my injuries..
Ok, you realise how obtuse you’re being equating marshmallows to a hard plastic-covered polystyrene shell. .
No wait… Perhaps you don’t? !
Only in anti-helmet land could such rubbish be accepted as a valid argument..
To consider, for a moment, that you’re making a serious point and not just trolling, let me address a couple of points:
Firstly the mountain biker ‘genuinely believed he would have been in a much worse state had he not been wearing a helmet. .’ That’s not the same as asserting it definately saved his life or definately took all the impact. Its a perfectly reasonable belief but cannot be proved because the cyclist is not about to recreate his off without a helmet now is he?
Nor is he providing expert analysts on how much energy was absorbed. Why should be have to, to convince you a helmet might have helped?
We know from manufacturer tests, safety standards etc how much these should absorb. Enough to potentially make a difference. That’s uncontroversial to all but the most vehement of the anti helmet brigade.
Where did common sense go in this discussion?
If we’re to require absolute proof before stating helmets may reduce impact and therefore injury, how about I take a baseball bat to your head, and you choose whether it is marshmallow-covered or helmeted?!
(That was a facetious joke as opposed to a threat, by the way! )
700c]
Anyone can have an opinion. In order for it to be useful to other people it helps to ground it in some sort of fact. So, as is always the case with these anecdotes people claim that they can look at a helmet and tell how much energy it helped manage in the collision and what the medical outcome would have been without it. That is very expert opinion. In at least two specialized, expert fields. So expert, that I imagine actual experts would be loathe to venture such a statement (Dunning-Kruger Effect etc).
As for all the rest, yes, we know for a very specific type of fall how much energy a helmet in mint condition will absorb. And expert testimony before the courts in the UK (by Brian Walker, one of those experts whom you cite) suggests that unfortunately they do little, even at their best, to alleviate concussions.
Common sense is, sadly, often nonsense.
These helmet related stories
These helmet related stories must be great for the ad revenues of road.cc :-/
I’m not anti-helmet.
I’m not anti-helmet.
I’m not pro-helmet.
I’m pro-cycling.
If he wasn’t wearing a helmet
If he wasn’t wearing a helmet he would probably have been cycling a bit more appropriately for his skill level, and not crashed. So he would have had no head injury at all.
If he wasn’t wearing a helmet
.
Not relevant to the MTB
Good work by the camera guy.
Not relevant to the MTB incident:
Conclusion from DoT focus on pedal cyclists report 2013.
‘Pedal cyclists have a higher rate of being killed in comparison to car occupants, however it is still far less risky than being a motorcyclist. The rate also appears to be the same for a pedestrian as it is for a cyclist.’
I don’t wear a helmet for
I don’t wear a helmet for riding on the road and am very strongly against compulsory use of helmets for cycle commuting.
I do wear a helmet for riding off road or racing. As I’m a BMX racer, I wear a full face and have done so for downhill MTB riding too.
I don’t see why that should be hard to understand. Riding on road is a lot less dangerous than off-road riding or racing, where you are close to the limit (if you’re not, you’re doing it wrong).
I do wonder if this guy had been wearing a BMX/MTB downhill type full face whether he’d have been knocked unconscious. The lid he was wearing was pretty crappy.
@Ush
@Ush
That’s fine, opinions are just that – opinion and not absolute fact. Don’t forget this guy isn’t standing up in a court of law testifying to the efficacy of helmets. He’s not suggesting that x joules of energy of impact were absorbed by the helmet and xyz medical injuries would definately have resulted had he not been wearing it.
By characterising your proponent’s argument/position in this way you set him up to fail. Because of course you will never disprove this negative hypothesis (ie that helmets won’t have any effect in reducing injury when a wearer is subjected to a collision with an object whilst mountain biking) because he will not repeat the accident under controlled conditions without said helmet!
Thus most of us rely on some common sense and some reasonable assumptions in the decisions we take and opinions we state. Clearly however you need empirical proof of helmet efficacy to be convinced they might be of some concievable benefit. But I ask you again, would you rather be hit on the head wearing those marshmallows for protection or a bicycle helmet?
PS I’m not saying certain people don’t wrongly overstate helmet efficacy – they often do, especially non-cyclist drivers who read the Daily Mail.
700c wrote:
Right, because contrary to your outraged declaration of “common sense” there is actually very little proof that helmets reduce serious brain injuries. That’s why the experts are pretty careful not to state that. So, what we have here, is a story, illustrated by a video which suggests that we should all wear helmets in order to prevent exactly the sort of injury which they can do little to prevent.
Sure he is. He’s stating that without the helmet things “would have been worse”, in a situation where the helmet (yet again) has manifestly failed to protect against concussion.
It’s not my “characterising” that sets up the fail. It’s the over-confident, unmeasured _assertion_ that sets itself up for failure.
Sure you can. And if helmets have a large prophylactic effect then it will be easy to do so. All you have to do is measure populations of helmeted and non-helmeted wearers injury rates and control for differences between those populations. If it’s a large effect, i.e. the sort of one that would justify me going around telling you that you should wear one, then it will be easily measurable.
That’s right. So, where is your study showing that being hit hard enough on the head to cause TBI is significantly improved by wearing a bicycle helmet?
Ush wrote:
Right, because contrary to your outraged declaration of “common sense” there is actually very little proof that helmets reduce serious brain injuries. That’s why the experts are pretty careful not to state that. So, what we have here, is a story, illustrated by a video which suggests that we should all wear helmets in order to prevent exactly the sort of injury which they can do little to prevent.
Sure he is. He’s stating that without the helmet things “would have been worse”, in a situation where the helmet (yet again) has manifestly failed to protect against concussion.
It’s not my “characterising” that sets up the fail. It’s the over-confident, unmeasured _assertion_ that sets itself up for failure.
Sure you can. And if helmets have a large prophylactic effect then it will be easy to do so. All you have to do is measure populations of helmeted and non-helmeted wearers injury rates and control for differences between those populations. If it’s a large effect, i.e. the sort of one that would justify me going around telling you that you should wear one, then it will be easily measurable.
That’s right. So, where is your study showing that being hit hard enough on the head to cause TBI is significantly improved by wearing a bicycle helmet?— 700c
I take no issue with your decision not to wear a helmet and your rationale for this choice (that there is no clear proof of their efficacy in preventing serious injury). That is entirely valid.
Where I disagree is that you can reliably measure the efficacy of helmets in their real-world context, since, I believe, by looking just at poopulation statistics you’ll be confusing cause and effect and not sufficiently controlling environmental and individual variables.
I believe we need probably need live human crash test dummies to get reliable proof, to the standard that you will need, to sway your decision or views. This will never happen, hence you will never wear a helmet but that’s fine – individuals judge risk differently and have require different standards of proof.
Thus a decision based on ‘common sense’ or even anecdotal evidence/ experience is not invalid and is to be expected in light of the above.
The fact I wear a helmet in the absence of absolute proof they will save my life or reduce injury is my decision – I will not wait for a ‘study’ to prove beyond any doubt that a helmet will save me and I am not prepare to test this theory for myself.
Yet you state in your earlier comments that as the helmet did not prevent concussion it was not helpful in preventing injury. This is an invalid conclusion, as you know.
The logic and decision making process you apply with regards to wearing a helmet will be subject to ‘human factors’- beliefs, prejudices, experiences, risk perception etc. Mine will be too. This is entirely reasonable, but means you should not rubbish another person’s decision-making simply because they’ve not acted like a computer in evaluating available data. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll realise that you don’t apply this decision making equally and consistently to other matters potentially affecting your health and safety, about which you may have less strong views.
Just like being selective with quotes when debating a topic, or with the evidence you chose to accept or deny, ‘Characterising’ a proponent’s argument or incorrectly extrapolating to lead to a false conclusion, is evidence of these human factors at work.
that is all.
700c wrote:
I have not actually said whether or not I do. But thank you for your courtesy. In return I will take no issue with your decision to whatever it is you do. In addition I would like to state that I am in no way calling for, nor have I ever supported legislation which would force you to remove your helmet for your own good.
It is not a matter of “proof” clear or otherwise. Little or nothing can ever be proven clearly. It is a matter of reasonableness in the face of evidence. In this case, despite a well-financed attempt to discern a link between helmet usage and the reduction of TBI the evidence remains highly ambiguous.
Anecdotes like the one posted here, which explicitly argue that we should wear a helmet because someone got a concussion while wearing one are frankly lies. They lie baldly in asserting that the outcome would be worse without a helmet, and they lie subtly by ignoring all the other anecdotes which result in the worst outcomes: namely that helmeted riders die at indistinguishable rates from non-helmeted riders.
That is always a problem in epidemiology, but it is not completely intractable. Where there are specific confounders identified attempts can be made to control for them. I do agree that it is an imprecise and difficult area though. However, if there were a very strong effect it would probably be identifiable by now.
Given that the main causes of TBI (rotation injuries) are identified by now I do not see why cadavers could not be used. Similary dummies can be fitted with accelerometers. Such things have been done for seatbelt testing — the effects can be measured. IIRC some unfortunate spider monkeys were used as live subjects in the early seventies in helmet testing. I suspect that the ballpark outcomes are known and they suggest that an effective helmet… that is, one which prevents the concussions which we saw demonstrated in this video, would be very large, would enclose the head more and would be reasonably unpleasant to wear.
I reject that. For someone that has been talking about “characterising” you have repeatedly put words in my mouth. I don’t rubbish another person’s decision making simply because they don’t act like computers. I rubbish their decision making when they claim that their decision making is anything more than a random emotional choice and that it ought to apply to anyone other than themselves.
Again: only in Helmet Land can a video which shows a piece of personal protective equipment _failing_ be interpreted as an argument to use that equipment!
I am a road cyclist and
I am a road cyclist and helmets are compulsory in NZ. Last year (early last year) I was involved in a cycle vs truck (read VERY LARGE truck) accident whikst going out to meet my training squad. I probably hit him at about 40kph but I don’t know as my Garmin didn’t survive (neither did my bike).
Injuries were extensive and my helmet ended up with a large crack almost end to end. I did not suffer any head injury. I for one am very pleased tohave been wearing a helmet and wouldn’t consider riding without one.
Accidents happen, anytime, anywhere, any place. You may be the one at fault or not. I still have a small amount of recovery to look forward to but I also have permanent damage to the nerve that supplies my bicep. Your bicep is responsible for many movements in your arm, wrist, imagine not having one. That said, I am (lucky to be) alive and my brain is as good as it ever was (no rude comments here 🙂 ).
Came off on diesel on
Personal choice is fine but pretending helmets make no difference at all isn’t. As Sen Pat Moynahan once said ‘You’re entitled to your own opinion – but not your own facts.’
I came off on diesel only last Saturday. Hit head on kerb. Helmet broken in 4 places. Skull perfectly fine. Not the first time I had this result. I’ve had a couple of ice crashes too that would have been far more serious if my bare head had hit the deck rather than that inch of polystyrene. I started wearing a helmet in 1992 after breaking my shoulder and getting concussion.
There are two sorts of people who don’t think helmets can often make a difference:
-those that haven’t landed on their head yet.
– and those that must have landed on their head too many times to be thinking clearly.
I am shocked and surprised at
I am shocked and surprised at Road CC for leaving the comments open on a story like this.
I’ve heard there is a pro helmet camp and a freedom of choice camp and neither will agree with the other but is convinced that multiple quotes will finally beat the opposition into submission. I’ve heard that the longer the post, the more quotes that are used and links to blogs of dubious authority then the more authoritative the poster believes themselves to be.
If the pressure to wear a
If the pressure to wear a helmet “keeps cyclists off the roads”, how do we account for the increasing number of cyclists?
Kapelmuur wrote:
Simple – they aren’t increasing very much, the proportion of journeys cycled is still very, very low.
Plus they aren’t compulsory, outside of that ghastly sounding place on the other side of the world.