[PizzImperfect]

Hi all,

Well, after a few years of messing around on a mountain bike, i’ve taken the plunge and shelled out a nice £800 on my first serious bike, the Genesys Croix De Fer 20, which i’ll commute and play on each day.
I get this on Monday, so i’ve been doing a lot of research on staying safe on the road. The articles i’ve found are fantastic, and there’s a wealth of information which I feel will help me stay safe and keep others safe out on the road.

HAANNGG OONN…

http://bicyclesafe.com/helmets.html

Then I found this article, which has thrown me. Don’t wear a helmet? Really?
As a previous motorcyclist, this is sacrilege to me.
The writer makes excellent points… I’m just, not sure…

What do you more seasoned riders think of this?

Topic

[Anonymous]

FluffyKittenofTindalos

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

vonhelmet wrote:

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

I’m now off to a computer/tech forum to establish the prevailing view on whether a Mac or PC is better, and whether Android is better than iPhone.

Are you working your way up to arguing about the existence of God?

A just God would have locked this thread by now. So clearly he doesn’t exist!

Read your Bible! God gave man free will.
Wear a helmet; don’t wear a helmet, God is happy (or not) either way.

[FluffyKittenofTindalos]

vonhelmet

vonhelmet wrote:

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

I’m now off to a computer/tech forum to establish the prevailing view on whether a Mac or PC is better, and whether Android is better than iPhone.

Are you working your way up to arguing about the existence of God?

A just God would have locked this thread by now. So clearly he doesn’t exist!

[brooksby]

Dear road.cc sysadmins –
Dear road.cc sysadmins – please lock this thread off, now, thanks

[Simon E]

There’s a hell of a lot you
There’s a hell of a lot you can do to be safe while riding on the road before worrying about whether you should wear a cycle helmet (which is not comparable with a motorcycle helmet so please put aside any assumptions).

If you feel happier wearing one then go ahead.

If you prefer not to have one on your head then that’s fine too.

Anyone who chastises you or lectures you for choosing either of the above options is a complete fool. You’d be better off ignoring them.

[Mungecrundle]

You think that’s bad, just
You think that’s bad, just wait until he sees the thread on hi viz!

[Kapelmuur]

Godwin’s Law is all very
Godwin’s Law is all very well, but, re helmets, I propose a new law to predict how many posts there have to be before the contents become hysterical.

[hylozoist]

vonhelmet

vonhelmet wrote:

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

I’m now off to a computer/tech forum to establish the prevailing view on whether a Mac or PC is better, and whether Android is better than iPhone.

Are you working your way up to arguing about the existence of God?

Don’t be silly. We know that Android vs iPhone is way more controversial than the existence or otherwise of God.

In other news, I can certify that the tyres on a Genesis Croix de Fer are made of cheese. My CdA had the same ones. I used Panaracer Flataway kevlar liners for a while which improved the situation a lot, but eventually changed to some more commuting-friendly tyres anyway.

Oops. Posting after Godwin invocation. Sorry.

[WiznaeMe]

I don’t think that people
I don’t think that people should be made to wear helmets I just want to know if the helmet haters are sponsored by Vidal Sassoon. 😐

[rggfddne]

The obvious test would be to
The obvious test would be to ride similar routes twice, once with and once without.

If you felt noticeably safer with a helmet… lean towards NOT wearing one. At least until you’ve given a brutally honest appraisal of your own behaviour when exposed to different perceived levels of risk. And I mean honest, not “I’ve given it ten second’s thought and decided to be a smug twat online about it”.

What I find helped is reading up on “safety engineering”. That’s a big subject, but to sum up the relevant bit to here:

[b]PPE is ALWAYS a last resort.[/b]

That doesn’t mean it isn’t a resort, or that it won’t help. It means that something has gone very, very wrong with your decision making if you’ve considered it before [i]literally any other measure[/i], including, in this case, staying at home.

If there’s a reason for anti-helmet bile, it’s that. I’d like some of the evagelists to take a fucking look at the bodies crushed beneath a talk who believed them when they said “safety is wearing a plastic hat”. Please, just get some perspective on what PPE can achieve before you make the decision.

[vonhelmet]

FluffyKittenofTindalos

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

I’m now off to a computer/tech forum to establish the prevailing view on whether a Mac or PC is better, and whether Android is better than iPhone.

Are you working your way up to arguing about the existence of God?

[FluffyKittenofTindalos]

I’m now off to a
I’m now off to a computer/tech forum to establish the prevailing view on whether a Mac or PC is better, and whether Android is better than iPhone.

[FluffyKittenofTindalos]

Scoob_84 wrote:
Since you

Scoob_84 wrote:

Since you mentioned trips and falls whilst walking is more likely to happen than whilst cycling, does this stat take into account that way more people walk than cycle. I’d be surprised if the %age of head injuries for total miles walked by everyone is higher than the %age of total miles cycled by everyone.

Should it be ‘by total miles’ rather than ‘by time spent in activity’? And surely you’d have to distinguish between things like walking on a flat surface and walking up and down stairs, walking in the snow and in good weather, etc?

Come to that, if just reducing total injuries is the aim, why does it have to be a ratio at all?

Anyway, just wear a helmet for everything, all the time. Better safe than sorry…if it saves one life…etc.

[Wookie]

I’m just wondering if it
I’m just wondering if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck is it a troll?

[Bikebikebike]

The main reason to wear one
The main reason to wear one is to make sure you get a full payout awarded in court if someone runs you over.

Wear one if you’re pushing your cycling skills, it’s icy or you’re riding home pissed from the pub. If you fall off then a helmet might help.

People who think it will help if they’re hit by a car or a lorry are a bit daft.

[Scoob_84]

pjclinch wrote:What’s wrong

pjclinch wrote:

What’s wrong with them? intrinsically there is nothing wrong with a bike lid, but the problems are all the perceived baggage that come along with them, notably failure to realise that:
– cycling as transport is not particularly productive of crashes or head injuries
– cycle helmets can only be expected to mitigate *minor* injuries in low injury collisions
So if you’re, for example, in a peloton where crashing is very common, and you’d be expected to get back on if you possibly could with a minimum of delay, they’re probably a pretty fair idea. But actually not many of us are doing that.
Given that the biggest cause of brain/head injury is trips and falls, if you’re wearing one on a bike “just in case”/”it’s only common sense”/”you can’t be too careful”/”safety first!”/”it might save my life” etc. etc. then you really ought to be wearing one to walk places. Especially if you ever use stairs or bathrooms with hard, occasionally wet floors.

If someone falls down the stairs or slips in the bath and brains themselves (as they frequently do) then that’s a shame, and shit happens, but if you fall off a bike and brain yourself (not especially more likely for those not particularly pushing the boundaries) then it’s madness not wearing a helmet and you’ve only yourself to blame etc.. Yes, you might fall off a bike and hit your head and it would hurt less with a lid on, but the same goes for trips and falls when on foot. It doesn’t make any sense to use completely different trains of logic for similarly risky situations.

Since you mentioned trips and falls whilst walking is more likely to happen than whilst cycling, does this stat take into account that way more people walk than cycle. I’d be surprised if the %age of head injuries for total miles walked by everyone is higher than the %age of total miles cycled by everyone.

[Author]

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