Are cheaper cycling helmets better than expensive ones? New test and rating system from Imperial College London ranks £45 Specialized lid as safest

mdavidford wrote:

It's still not measuring the helmet's primary protective effect, though, which is, how well does it protect you from people complaining about you not wearing a helmet?

Cheaper and easier simply to tell them to do one, surely? Or just to ignore them? It would never have occurred to me to wear a lid for any reason other than to protect my head in the event of a crash or because the rules said I had to.

john_smith wrote:

Cheaper and easier simply to tell them to do one, surely? Or just to ignore them?

Both tend to be somewhat damaging to future relationships.

anke2 wrote:

It's great to have this simple, useful research on helmets.

But we shouldn't forget that helmets are also bought for comfort, for cooling (or sometimes, warming), for insect protection, for aerodynamics (hard to assess!), for visibility, for low weight, for storing goggles and, often enough, style. For a product, that is probably (and hopefully) never needed, these criteria are also important and may well compensate a slightly lower safety rating.

Especially when you consider that most of the time, helmets aren't doing their protection job (unless you're falling off a LOT).

Edit: I wrote the following text after I had misread the message of hawkinspeter (who points out that most of the time, the helmet is not in a crash - which I read as "most of the time, helmets fail to protect"). My mistake - sorry, hawkinspeter.

Are they not? 

There's a strong observer bias: In most cases, where a helmet has protected from worse injury or major harm, only the wearer will ever know. The successful "work" by the helmet will not show in any statistics. You fall but you don't bost about your clumsiness or close call. You don't go to the police, you don't inform the insurance companies, you don't post on (anti-)social media. You just go on with your life - and the poor little helmet will never get much credit. 

Obviously, a bicycle helmet cannot protect from a fast car on the opposite lane - but even a car cannot.

No, they are not. Because most of the time you are out on your ride, your head is not constantly smacking off large solid objects.
They are, what is known in the safety industry as, a low demand protection system. Therefore they spend nearly all of their time doing nothing, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible.
The more comfortable, cooler, less draggy, the more likely they are going to be present when required.

You also seem to have misinterpreted people's comments in other parts of this discussion on the hierarchy of protections. Being PPE, it should be the last thought when it comes to improving safety, therefore removing the most common hazards that make people crash before mitigating the severity of those collisions.
I can't tell if you're actively trolling, playing devil's advocate, or just misguided in the logic of your arguments.

I think they've missed a side of the "observer bias" - which is it is far from a given that "where a helmet has protected from worse injury or major harm, only the wearer will ever know".

I'd say mostly the wearer cannot know if a helmet has protected from very much at all - unless one is riding around with accellerometers on one's bonce and can go back and model the dynamics of the collision etc.  However I think it's very likely the wearer emerges with the impression that the helmet deserves a lot of credit.  That is apparently sometimes even reinforced by the medical profession ("the doctor said I'd be dead if not for...").  Medics will likely be experts at knowing what could have happened injury-wise, but not the chance of it having happened in a particular case with vs. without helmet (again without those accellerometers).

I think it's the salience of the catastrophic potential of head injuries which skews things here.  Given the terrible things which - while very unlikely - could happen, surely we should do almost anything that might guard against that?  Particularly if it isn't particularly onerous.

OTOH the more you examine that the more conflicts appear.  In fact few people have researched exactly what's best to protect us - nor do most "do our utmost" in this regard.  People provide cycle helmets, we see cyclists wearing them, ergo we put one on.  We don't wear mostly full-face MTB helmets on the roads, never mind motorcycle helmets (obviously they come with down sides but the level of protection is much higher).  Most people are happy riding upright bikes whereas a recumbent potentially offers benefits in terms of lower head height and having your legs to absorb impacts in front.  Or - given that quite a lot of injury is just "falling off" - especially as we age - perhaps a step-through design or even a tricycle would be safer etc.

However I think it's fair to point out that while they do nothing to reduce the chance of a crash *, once you've put one on (assuming correct fitting etc) it should do at least what it is rated to do.  That's with no further thought or effort (barring sweat-removal) from the wearer - like safety footwear.

* As far as I'm aware - there could be other effects (risk compensation, or certain drivers aiming for the racers etc.) so we should always check...

If you mean by "most of the time, helmets aren't doing their protection job" that "most of the time, the helmet is not involved in a crash", I certainly agree. If, however, you mean that "during most crashes, helmets aren't doing their protection job", then I do object.

Regarding helmets compared to other PPE: I would certainly assume that most people have good breaks, reliable handlebars, cranks, forks and frames, that they use a light at night (or with poor light, e.g. riding into the sunset), are capable of turning to see behind, don't wear dark (low viz) clothing (unless compensated by good lights) and have learned to predict dangerous behaviour by other road (and bike-lane) users. And then, a helmet seems to be the next good thing to add. Not necessarily for the 300m to the bakery, but for the daily commute (2x25km a day in my case) between cities, for leisure, for racing, for exercise, ... (or when starting to use clipless pedals

If you think that's actively trolling, feel free to.

EDIT: i (ROOTminus1), I'm sorry - I had misread hawkinspeters message - my response must have made you think I was trolling. No, I was not - but it might have seemed that way after I had misunderstood his message.

anke2 wrote:

There's a strong observer bias: In most cases, where a helmet has protected from worse injury or major harm, only the wearer will ever know.

If anyone is subject to observer bias, it's the wearer, and confirmation bias too, so they know very little, if anything.

anke2 wrote:

The successful "work" by the helmet will not show in any statistics.

Absurd.  If helmets were effective it would definitely show up in death statistics.  In Australia, where the wearing rate more than doubled overnight, there was no corresponding death rate reduction, if anything, it went up.

I appreciate your very polite, well informed and case-specific responses.

Would you really expect helmets to be effective in the scenarios where a cyclist is killed? Being run over by a truck? When hitting oncoming traffic head first? When breaking the neck? Bicycle helmets are great for avoiding (serious) injury - but death or paraplegia?

I'm personally fine with protecting my head and brain from (non-lethal) damage - feel free to expose yours to the elements, roads, tree-branches, roots, curbs - you're well within your rights.

anke2 wrote:

Would you really expect helmets to be effective in the scenarios where a cyclist is killed?

Yes, because for thirty years helmet zealots told us they did save lives, but since it has irrefutably been shown that they don't, they've shifted to claiming that they prevent serious brain injury, which, entirely coincidentally, is very difficult to prove.

If cycle helmets did prevent serious head injuries, then it would show up in the death statistics, because some cyclists, a small proportion, die solely from a head injury, so it seems unlikely that they do prevent serious head injury.

eburtthebike wrote:

anke2 wrote:

Would you really expect helmets to be effective in the scenarios where a cyclist is killed?

Yes, because for thirty years helmet zealots told us they did save lives, but since it has irrefutably been shown that they don't, they've shifted to claiming that they prevent serious brain injury, which, entirely coincidentally, is very difficult to prove.

If cycle helmets did prevent serious head injuries, then it would show up in the death statistics, because some cyclists, a small proportion, die solely from a head injury, so it seems unlikely that they do prevent serious head injury.

I don't think that thirty year old, too positive expectations about saving lives should imply that todays expectations on avoiding serious injury must also be wrong. 

Indeed, its impossible to prove that helmets prevent brain injury (unless you have twins, doing the same crash with and without helmets), but there is evidence, there are confirmations by models - and there is plain old common sense. There certainly are few arguments against wearing a helmet.

Would the effect of cycle helmets show up in death statistics? Only if you had very good statistics (i.e. a huge number of deaths by brain damage in a country with a huge population) combined with a sudden change (like the introduction of a helmet law). Such statistics would have to show an almost constant number of fatalities before the law and again after the law. As far as I know, fatality numbers are relatively small (fortunately!) and fluctuate heavily from year to year - so, no, a helmet effect is unlikely to be visible in death statistics.

Here again, people can choose if they like to wear a helmet (outside sports events). Advising to wear one won't cause any damage (apart from the money spent), advising against wearing one, however, may well do.

Sorry, I had completely misunderstood your reply - my mistake.

(I had thought you meant that they were not protecting in a crash - but you meant that most of the time, there is no crash.)