The cycle helmet debate continues

Why the debate? Make up your

Why the debate? Make up your own mind, based on personal experience or whatever.

I do object to cyclists who stop and chat – and try to persuade me that my helmet is unnecessary and won’t work. My experience is different.

I do object to those who rant on the I must wear a helmet – its my decision.

The “arguments” on both sides are in may cases flimsy, to say the least.

In my view the only time to get het up about this is with those who propose compulsion.

Simple!

Griff500 wrote:

Griff500 wrote:

Daveyraveygravey wrote:

I always wear a helmet, but I don’t want it to be made compulsory, and I argue with non-cyclists who get arsey about people on bikes without them.  I say there’s as much chance of you falling over in your bath and hurting your head than of you doing the same whilst riding your bike.

However, I have had 5 crashes on my bike in 4 years, and every one of them included banging my head on the deck. None of them involved any other vehicle or any other person.   I broke a shoulder in one, a wrist in another, scraped most of my leg off in the third, and had lesser injuries in the remaining two.  Maybe if I hadn’t been wearing a helmet I would have performed some astonishing manoeuvre to stop my head hitting the road, maybe not, but it saved me having hideous headaches to add to the list of injuries.

It’s good to see a voice of reason on here, and I suspect your views are typical of most cyclists. The accidents you describe, all low speed incidents (though I appreciate that lying in A&E with broken bones they might not have felt like low speed incidents), fall in the range where physics supports the view that a helmet can reduce damage. On the other hand those who believe that 2cm compression of foam will have a sufficient impact on g reduction when in contact with a vehicle travelling at say, 30mph, don’t understand the problem. (The problem being perfectly illustrated by the 4th equation of motion, for anyone with a physics O level, and that v squared term is the killer – quite literally. ) I too wear a helmet, but am under no illusions that it is unlikely to do any more than protect my handsome good looks when in contact at low, probably non life threatening, speed.

I used to justify the helmet by saying you can never allow for the other idiots…but my accidents have only involved one idiot, me!  The first one was very high speed, some hill in Devon with a corner at the bottom and climb out, think I got to 50 mph before the corner, nothing coming either way, max usage of the road, just missed the apex, right out on to the grass on the right on the exit, got it back on the road, maybe down to 30 mph by now, then not sure what happened, maybe over-corrected, tank slapper, sliding along the tarmac…

Quote:

…One day reality is going to hit them, or a Ford Fiesta.

I’ll keep wearing my helmet because no amount of skill or luck can compensate for the risk. Besides helmets are cool, wasn’t Neil Armstrong seen wearing one?

Dude.. I love it.. Neil Armstrong would have a huge helmet though; less gravity to compress bodies pressure with.. (Or know gravity, often referred to as no gravity. Little bits of pull from the ship here and there yet none planetary of volume mass).
I like wearing my helmet too. 🙂

brooksby wrote:

Organon wrote:

…One day reality is going to hit them, or a Ford Fiesta.

Whilst I agree with you that the most vocal people on the ‘Helmet Debate’ (TM) threads are the same small group (on both sides), I’m honestly not sure that a bike helmet will protect you from being hit by a Ford Fiesta.  Isn’t that sort of the whole point of these debates?

What I was trying to say, is quite often you are not in control of an accident, a car could knock you off no matter your skill level. But if I was Daveyraveygravey I would be taking it a bit easier. I’ve only hit my head once, scraped the side of my helmet rather, when I slide off on some pigeon shit on a damp underpass on smooth concrete of a National cycle route path, but I was glad it was there. [Have also been left hooked twice and t-boned twice with various consequences, but no head strikes.] I’ll keep wearing my helmet because no amount of skill or luck can compensate for the risk. Besides helmets are cool, wasn’t Neil Armstrong seen wearing one?

Daveyraveygravey wrote:

Daveyraveygravey wrote:

I always wear a helmet, but I don’t want it to be made compulsory, and I argue with non-cyclists who get arsey about people on bikes without them.  I say there’s as much chance of you falling over in your bath and hurting your head than of you doing the same whilst riding your bike.

However, I have had 5 crashes on my bike in 4 years, and every one of them included banging my head on the deck. None of them involved any other vehicle or any other person.   I broke a shoulder in one, a wrist in another, scraped most of my leg off in the third, and had lesser injuries in the remaining two.  Maybe if I hadn’t been wearing a helmet I would have performed some astonishing manoeuvre to stop my head hitting the road, maybe not, but it saved me having hideous headaches to add to the list of injuries.

It’s good to see a voice of reason on here, and I suspect your views are typical of most cyclists. The accidents you describe, all low speed incidents (though I appreciate that lying in A&E with broken bones they might not have felt like low speed incidents), fall in the range where physics supports the view that a helmet can reduce damage. On the other hand those who believe that 2cm compression of foam will have a sufficient impact on g reduction when in contact with a vehicle travelling at say, 30mph, don’t understand the problem. (The problem being perfectly illustrated by the 4th equation of motion, for anyone with a physics O level, and that v squared term is the killer – quite literally. ) I too wear a helmet, but am under no illusions that it is unlikely to do any more than protect my handsome good looks when in contact at low, probably non life threatening, speed.

joeegg wrote:

Looking at the question”do helmets save lives”,is it a question that really has an answer.You’ll never be able to prove conclusively that a seatbelt or airbag actually saved someone’s life.

 

So you get into the realms of possibility,and that is generally down to peoples personal interpretations.

If the question was “can helmets prevent non life threatening injuries” then I’d say yes.

It would be great to live in a utopia of safe and careful vehicle drivers,but we don’t,and it won’t be happening soon. In view of that I will continue to wear a helmet but won’t denegrate people who decide not to.

I always wear a helmet, but I don’t want it to be made compulsory, and I argue with non-cyclists who get arsey about people on bikes without them.  I say there’s as much chance of you falling over in your bath and hurting your head than of you doing the same whilst riding your bike.

However, I have had 5 crashes on my bike in 4 years, and every one of them included banging my head on the deck. None of them involved any other vehicle or any other person.   I broke a shoulder in one, a wrist in another, scraped most of my leg off in the third, and had lesser injuries in the remaining two.  Maybe if I hadn’t been wearing a helmet I would have performed some astonishing manoeuvre to stop my head hitting the road, maybe not, but it saved me having hideous headaches to add to the list of injuries.

Organon wrote:

It does seem that when ever this debate comes up again, the same few people are shouting down others, comparing helmet advocacy with compulsion, dismissing any personal experience as acecdotal. How many people need to tell you that a helmet saved them from injury or reduced their injury in a situation that was not of their own making to suggest there might be a link? Strange we do not hear from those that went without helmet and hit their heads. The stats quoted always seem to be a bit ‘off’ and aimed at proving points not related to hitting you head off metal or concrete. To me they sound like conspiracy nuts who think they have cornered to the board. One day reality is going to hit them, or a Ford Fiesta.

Whilst I agree with you that the most vocal people on the ‘Helmet Debate’ (TM) threads are the same small group (on both sides), I’m honestly not sure that a bike helmet will protect you from being hit by a Ford Fiesta.  Isn’t that sort of the whole point of these debates?

hawkinspeter wrote:

What bugs me about helmet advocacy is that it seems to concentrate on cyclists as being the only at risk group for accidental head injury.

Cyclists are already an out-group and demonised by the media and the focus on helmet use just seems an awful lot like victim blaming to me. It seems that rather than focus on what actually would make the roads safer, instead there’s far too much blaming ‘idiot’ cyclists that choose to not wear a helmet.

it’s almost as if people were deliberately using a dead cat strategy to distract our attention from something else. But surely nobody could be that cynical…