Helmet debate

All anecdotes aside. Jump on to YouTube and compare cycling in any UK/US city to any European city and you will see a huge difference. Take note of the types of bike, style of cycling, motorists attitude towards cyclists. All this contributes to a safer environment for cyclists. And guess what, hardly a helmet!

Here's a clip http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a_8dGodhGtI&api_format=3&vndel=watch

Rather than advocate helmet use we should be lobbying for better laws and infrastructure for cyclists.

Again, I really hope the nurses and EMTs here who are so sure about the wisdom of cycle helmets also advocate just as strongly for car-occupant helmets and pedestrian helmets.

Hippy69, I DO NOT want to try to discount the pain you must feel seeing the hunan results of road accidents, I would find your job very difficult. As Paul J says, surely the victims who were in cars or on foot need consideration, or, if helmets are the answer, should wear helmets.
With all due respect for your compassion and skill, I would no more take the advice of a nurse or a doctor on how to avoid an accident than the advice of a mechanic or panel beater.

Paul J & Felixcat, Guys, I was merely using anecdotes to show why "I" wear a helmet and how I believe it saved ME from more significant injury. I feel helmets should be purely optional and have no interest in making them compulsory, and yes dangerous roads probably do exacerbate the use of helmets. Helmets are not the answer to increasing cyclists safety, merely an added precaution I and others wish to take. Woulter Weylandt wasn't saved by his helmet! RIP182, but I'll still wear mine thanks.

Improving road layouts etc as they have in europe, and educating car drivers are far more effective ways of increasing safety. I've been lucky enough to ride lots of dutch streets and am constantly amazed at how safe it feels. Driver attitudes are far better in most of europe compared to the UK, I ride in france every summer and rarely experience the hostility I encounter on every ride back home. incidentally, I am a member of several campaigns to develop the 'Go dutch' systems to improve safety for me and others in London.

Cyclists are no blameless angels , we need to educate cyclists as well. Dangerous cyclists injure pedestrians by jumping lights etc. Would I ever tell a pedestrian to wear a helmet? Certainly advise them to look both ways before they step into the road! And remember, cars drivers have a big metal box and airbags around them, not fresh air and lycra, and most serious injuries to drivers are caused in high speed RTC's.

And guys, I'm the last person to ask about crash avoidance technique, my wife's getting a little fed up picking me up from hospital. Just can't resist those fast descents! the best thing about going uphill is coming down the other side. Does wearing a helmet make me take more risks, I doubt it, dude I'm dressed in Lycra, more concerned about tearing my skin off. BUT, I believe it may help me avoid a worse head injury if I wear one.

I asked this once before but can anyone who does not wear a helmet explain why without rambling on about it.

For instance i wear one because i feel safer at the speeds i travel and roads i travel upon.

So if you dont feel safer please tell us or is it just down to looks

I don't wear one because they're hot.

I actually don't *want* to feel safe from wearing one. That's because I know, from previous experience, just how much the *other* parts of your body get injured in a crash. A helmet will not protect my limbs, my torso, my face. To the extent a helmet makes me feel safer, it may make the *rest* of my body less safe by making me accept more risk. I don't want any sense of false security a helmet might give.

My approach to safety is to slow down when I see hazards (e.g. cars waiting to come out of, or turn into a side road). To avoid the risk in the first place. I've been with helmeted riders in group rides who've asked me how I can be so reckless with safety. Then I see the same riders speed into turns¹, with very little margin for error. I've seen helmeted riders take daft risks on descents, then seen them on the floor after a corner. With bad cuts on their body, they've praised their helmet for saving them - but to me it looked like they risked their life speeding into blind corners on a 1-vehicle-wide, narrow country lane. Did the helmet protect, or did it suck them into terrible risks through a false sense of security?

I don't want to *feel* safer, I want to *be* safer.

1. This doesn't even always get them any further than me, because it's speed on corner exit that's the important bit - faster speed on entry needn't mean faster speed on exit.

I have a helmet, there are only two reason's I wear it, if I got to an event where you HAVE to wear it or if i'm off the roads and doing the local paths on my cross bike. Because they are shared use paths, I am never at high speeds and I can see the dangers of tree stumps and things if I was to come off.

On the road, I simply don't see ANY benefit to wearing one. Apart from the steepest of hills, I am never travelling in the 12-15mph range that helmets are designed for.

If I am hit by a car AGAIN, then a helmet is not going to do anything apart from save me going bald with scars.

If you think being knocked down by a car from your bike is going to cause any less damage to your brain by wearing a helmet, then good on you. But the fact is, there is no proof to this, just anecdotal evidence.

I feel that if I am stuck again, some foam around my skull is going to do nothing, I might aswell wear some bubble wrap, it works protecting things in the post.....

I spent years doing martial arts. Much of the training involves conditioning the body in particular ways, so that (gradually-increasing) impacts can be sustained without incapacitation. Toughening up of the torso and limbs, basically, combined with the mental focus to continue to operate under such duress.

However, you can't toughen the brain or skull, so instead learn to keep your guard up, protecting the 'knockout zone'. The idea is that, providing you retain full mental capacity and focus, the other injuries can be either withstood (since taking punches etc during combat is inevitable), or hopefully recovered from. If not, then hopefully you at least got away with your life. You wouldn't believe how easy it is for a person to be knocked out by a well-placed, but not particularly forceful, impact.

Cyclists don't routinely crash, so we don't practice dealing with it. We don't fall off dozens of times a day, learning to adopt the correct posture, muscle tension, and rolling with the impact. When it happens, it's all aarggh-crunch-f*ck-hitthefloor. Some form of protection that doesn't depend on you thinking and acting rapidly is a rather good idea.

Sure, helmets aren't perfect, but if a boxer's headgear (just foam, after all) can absorb some of the impacts from head shots, I see no reason to doubt at least SOME effectiveness from helmets.

Actually, bones needn't fully heal. Even if they heal well, they're often never quite the same as before. Particularly if you get fractures or chips in or around joints. Further, sometimes they can't heal back to the way they were, particularly if bones were displaced. I have chipped bits of bone inside finger joints, and a 2-piece collarbone.

Your brain is actually very well protected, and it does have quite an ability to heal. No more, no less than other part of your body. Your mistake is to think that injuries to rest of your body are trivial compared to head injuries. They are not. They can be easily have long-term consequences, they can be life-changing.

The best way to keep yourself safe is to *use* your head, and think about the risks you are taking before actually taking them.

@Paulj
Please don't twist my words - I think we both know what I'm getting at. Being knocked out incapacitates you completely, whereas a broken leg, for example, doesn't. There's a drastic difference in how much you could then react to secondary dangers.

@felixcat
Frank Bruno's punches were measured and found to be comparable to being hit by an elephant at 30mph. How many orders of magnitude do you want?

@everyone
I provided my thoughts, but I've just realised that I can't be arsed getting into an argument where no participants, or any persuasion, are going to be swayed to an alternative view. You will note that I haven't suggested anyone else should (or should be made to) wear one. It's your skull.

notfastenough: Broken bones don't incapacitate you? I literally could not move after I broke and pulled apart my collarbone. The smallest movements (including breathing) were difficult for the next *2* days. That's a longer incapacitation than a *severe* concussion. And that was with a bone that isn't even that important! (One option for really badly broken collar bones is to simply remove them completely).

Are you really arguing that the head is the only part of your body that matters?

Paul J just so you are fully appraised of the technicalities of head injuries I suggest you do some research on subdural/extradural haemorrages, which can be caused by simply falling in the street.

And no the brain is not the only part of your body that matters, however it does control how the rest of the body works! A fractured clavicle /leg etc although debilitating and extremely painful with heal either with or without fixation, screw your brain and guess what, moving at all again may prove difficult.

The pro's and con's of helmets always stirs some debate.

I was firmly convinced of thier merits both off and on road. The on road one didn't happen to me, but I was behind a guy on the way to work minding our own business cycling along the A370 to Bristol. Then a skip type vehicle came tearing around the corner in the opposite direction and a half house brick came off/out of his skip and hit the guy in front - right on the helmet - and then the brick bounced onto the bonnet of the car just behind him and in front of me. Both I and the car driver stopped to see if the other cyclist was OK - though shook up he was fine but the helmet damage was huge, smashed the front and top of his helmet ribs to bits, in fact it just fell to bits. He was fine though.
I thought from then that a helmet was for me. Though never to be proved I honestly think it would have caused quite a gash on his head at least - for sure, the bonnet of the car was also badly damaged and I don't think any of us were going over 15 MPH - but I bet the brick part/rubble was travelling at 30 MPH+.
Food for thought - stay safe.

Trikeman.