What's wrong with bicycle helmets?

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.

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.

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.

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:

PPE is ALWAYS a last resort.

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 literally any other measure, 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Haven't read the thread yet but I'm an ex-motorcyclist too and very concerned how poor the EC standard is for cycle helmets. This Swedish company appears to put in a bit more effort:

http://www.pocsports.com/en/14/wheels-helmets

Happy and safe riding!

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

It's a comfort to learn that drivers are vigilant enough to check whether we are wearing a helmet before deciding how close to pass us.

I've nothing to add to this helmet debate, except to congratulate PizzImperfect on an excellent choice of bike

i always wear a helmet whilst riding wether that be on or off road for the simple reasoning that id rather be wearing one and not need it than need one and not be wearing it

"What's wrong with bicycle helmets?" - - who would seriously post that question on any cycling website/forum???

After banging my head into the back of a lorry, i'll be sticking to wearing a helmet. There's no proof to suggest i would not have survived the accident had i not been wearing a helmet, but circumstantial evidence from the golf ball swelling to my head and the decompression on my lid suggests that i could have been worse off had i not been wearing the lid at the time. There's also a case that riding skills and decision making was not on par at that moment in time prior to the collision. I can blame the lorry driver for close over take and then sudden breaking all i want, but it was my decision to try and get behind the back of him for a free ride.

"To helmet, or not to helmet - the choice is yours."

I moved to Australia (a choice) but the law says I have to wear a helmet - even for a 5 minute ride to the nearby shops or for an amble on a car free shared path - last week was in New Zealand and rode for a few hours on traffic free trails with some road sections - averaged less than one meeting per hour with a vehicle - the possibility of me falling off through operator error existed but to be honest on the type of terrain it was pretty near zero - walking back to the hotel room from the bar had a higher chance of injury.

I often choose to wear a helmet when I believe it will mitigate some injury - when mountain biking I can be prone to misjudging stuff.
On the road I choose to wear one not because it "will make me safer" I can't recall when last fell off a road bike.
I wear a helmet because the actions of other road users potentially endanger me and there is a possibility that wearing a helmet will mitigate some injury.
There is a big distinction between mitigating injury and making an activity safe - I know what would make road cycling safer for me and others and it isn't wearing a helmet. The only reason to have a helmet debate in the UK is to push the topic where it belongs and that is way down the cycling safety agenda.

I recall discussing allowing children to ride to school with parents in the UK and nobody told me they thought it would be safe if the kids wore helmets. They talked about fast traffic, narrow roads, poor junctions, lack of segregated cycleways, bad driver attitudes.
Can't think of a single survey that has shown that not having access to helmets is a barrier to more people cycling.

To helmet, or not to helmet - the choice is yours.

I would suggest thinking about where and how you are intending to ride your bike, and work from there.

Personally I choose to wear one, but then I tend to zip up and down country lanes at high speed (will zip down at any rate). To me, wearing a helmet doesn't bother me at all, and feels natural. I try not to take to much risk, and hope never to test out the helmets protection - but you never know when a pothole might have your name on it, or get caught out by an unseen oil slick, or suffer a mechanical failure etc, etc.

is not wearing a helmet a deliberate act of self harm?

Regardless of what this that or the other Uni paper says i'll always wear one as i've seen the mess a road makes to your head when you slide along it.