Should you wear a bike helmet?

darrenleroy wrote:

Purely anecdotal but I am the only member of my cycling club not to wear a helmet on club rides. I am always last down the hill. Others whizz past. 
I’m not sure if this is because I’m a genuine scaredy cat or because not wearing a helmet makes me more aware of the dangers inherent in hurtling down a rutted country road with blind bends at 30+mph. 

Probability is that you will crash/get hurt less often, these are basic facts, stick to what you know. I wouldn’t ride around a blind bend at 30mph, that’s just ludicrous,. Yes some bends are tighter than others but you just can’t predict what might be there, fallen tree, broken down vehicle, big pothole, persons walking, whatever. Okay if you think you can stop from 30 in the space you can see to be clear fair enough but that’s not invariably possible because most people forget about thinking time and the actual braking time/distance too. Disc brakes will also give a false sense of security because people think they can brake later and yet it’s your reactions (or lack thereof) and tyres/road conditions that have by far the biggest impact in braking distance.

My friend crashes a few years ago, he was reasonably new to cycling, it was a fast downhill somewhere in Spain with his cycling mates from around his way. He stuffed his knee and I think hit his head a bit, I asked if he’d have taken it steadier if he’d not been wearing a helmet, ” well of course but” stopped him there, “so you would have likely avoided the crash altogether if taking a bit more caution/not going so fast” , “well er probably”. it’s a bingo! still wears it though and he managed to crash again a year later … sigh.

This is the problem, it’s shown in all the stats, helmet wearers crash more, a lot more and take more risks and oout themselves into situations they wouldn’t without a lid. The riskier the activity the worse the outcome and because of the futility of the helmet the outcomes are worse, much worse even without a lid.

UK, Canada, US, Australia, NZ, France, Spain even Denmark is showing increases in injuries with no increase in cycling because of the helmet wearing increases.

And yet even despite all of that the parts of our society where they might work if based on the spurious Bullshit studies it’s not only totally ignored but would be scoffed at and brushed aside as pure nonsense. That doesn’t even get us to the fact it’s a massive distraction from the real issues and removes human rights from people and causes victim blaming/divisions/exclusions of taking part etc etc.

As I’ll always say, helmets are  the most damaging and insidious thing to happen to cycling since the motorvehicle could go over 10mph

devoid99 wrote:

Same league as a seatbelt, just do it by habit as you don’t know when you’ll need it.  

See above for an explanation of why your approach doesn’t appear to be working.

I wear a helmet for racing and will also pop it on when mountain biking. Generally I mountain bike alone a lot and as there is a real risk of hitting a tree or rock, I do make the effort to wear a lid. 

I digress.

The other day when racing, I had the misfortune to have a crash. This was very annoying. What was more annoying was that having initially believing I hadn’t hit my helmet when crashing, on closer inspection I could see the slightest, most tiny scuff on the right hand temple of the helmet.

What grated even more is that on even closer inspection, I could see that the helmet had cracked in multiple places. 

so… do I believe that a helment just saved my life? Not at all. I believe that the helmet did exactly what it was supposed to do on impact, and that is fail, but the level of impact upon which it did fail (so small I did not feel it), makes me skeptical how efective these devices can ever be. 

As an aside, in 25 years riding I have never fallen off a bike whilst wearing a helmet without bangin my head. Conversely I have only ever hit my head once whilst falling off without a helmet on. Take of that what you will. 

But as you said previously,

But as you said previously, you recognised that when you wore one for those activities which you had a crash with it in fact made you take more risk, and was probably a factor in why you crashed so a greater chance of getting an injury by wearing. As I said upthread there is no logic to wearing a helmet in so called riskier activities when you significantly increase the risk of an incident especially at higher speeds/higher forces involved and thus a higher chance of an injury (of any sort) by wearing the helmet.

This is why in pro racing and I have no doubts at all amateur racing and the weeekend run there are more crashes, more injuries and more deaths by helmet wearers. Three times the number of deaths in the pro ranks from head injuries since 2003 compared to non compulsion era, despite improvements in tyre grip, better brakes, more crash barriers, more on course H&S protocols, doctors on course faster than pre helmet rules, and yet still more crashes, more injuries and more deaths, how can that be possible when helmets have to be worn 100% of the time?

Cycling head and all injury rates have gone up not down (in the UK), gone up by more than increases in cycling since the 2005-2009 average and have kept on going up, helmet wearing has also gone up sinificantly too.

In the meantime cycling safety has also dropped significantly comparative to pedestrians, this despite all the interventions including better medical treatment, more warnings to cyclists not to undertake at certain points, more advice to motorists, police ‘operations’, more segregated infra in that there london and other cycling cities … and of course a huge jump in helmet wearing.

It hasn’t done anything except increase the danger and put yet again more onus on us to keep safe yet again pushing the safety aspect away from those most doing the harm and validating a load of made up bullshit regarding helmet efficacy/effectiveness.

But you still think despite your earlier acknowledgement that wearing a helmet for your riskier activities which will increase your risk taking is a good thing, sorry but as I said, that makes no logical sense whatsoever and the facts back up that it makes no sense, it is more likely you will end up being another stat (again) because you are wearing.

How many of those non

How many of those non seatbelted were victims of seatbelted criminality?

According to one paramedic who was chatting on a cycling thread on FB recently he reckoned around 90% of serious motorvehicle crashes involved internal bleeding/internal damage for seatbelt wearers. Could be bollocks but despite all the numerous safety features IN motors there are a hell of a lot of head injuries for seatbelt wearers.

The last figures I saw were 185,000 reported road injuries, ICBB to find out how many are just motorist injuries but it will be a massive chunk.

The whole direction of pushing the onus of safety on to people on bikes is insidious and a complete blanket of lies and disinformation that never for one second considers the other groups who present by far the greater number (try finding motorists/pedestrian head injury numbers!) It also ignores that the vast majority of cycling injuries/head injuries are caused by criminals driving motorvehicles.

One of the ‘blame’ factors is named as cyclist entering road from a footway/side on, just like the person Charlie Alliston was in collision with, it seems only for people on bikes that this is not a mitigating circumstance when a motorist crushes their head!

There was an incident in 2015 when a cyclist had serious brain injuries due to a car driver colliding with him, he was wearing a helmet and then stated that a helmet saved his life so is campaigning for compulsary helmets …oh for fucks sakes, it didn’t save you from life changing injuries and it most certainly did not save your life.

When will people wake the fuck up, it’s actually hurting all cyclists and helmet wearers more than non wearers!

again 160,000 head injuries

again 160,000 head injuries admitted to hospital every single year (162,544 in 2013/14 according to Headway), this is not the total number of ‘serious’ head injuries as not all serious are admitted from the 1.3 million reported head injuries.

2016 saw 3400 serious injuries of people on bikes from all types, one study suggests approximately 28% of those are serious head injuries, so less than a 1000. So 162,000+ (again the actual SI figure is massively higher than this) v 1000, and which group gets plauged by the bullshit surrounding helmets, is the only group forced to wear them in some places around the world and is the only group to be victimised, excluded from participation and victim blamed by police, insurers, governments, head injury groups, busbodies and indeed the general public as well as morons within the same group …

Zeesy wrote:

if you’re going to come on here and claim that some things are so self-evident that they don’t need evidence, then you’ll have to provide some evidence to support that claim rather than say you just feel it. Otherwise nobody’s going to respect anything you have to say about anything. Just common sense, innit?

For a full round-up of evidence relevant to the cycle helmet debate, please see Cycling UK’s evidence briefing, downloadable from

http://www.cyclinguk.org/campaigning/views-and-briefings/cycle-helmets

I always wear a helmet. Why?

I always wear a helmet. Why? Two events. The first was the son of a friend who was trail riding and crashed head first into a tree. The helmet broke but his head didn’t. He lived. The second was a neighbour who was being photographed riding an unusual bike for the local newspaper. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. Due to mechanical failure he went over his handlebars and fell on the road on his head. His brain matter had to be washed off the road. Dead of course. Both are anecdotes but are true. There is of course no proof that the outcomes would have been different but I reckon it pays to be cautious.

bikeman01 wrote:

Mungecrundle wrote:

This last crash was the one that convinced me to NOT wear a helmet for my daily commute. Not because it failed to protect my head, not because I got a neck strain, but because it happened while I was taking risks. After the crash I got checked out by the paramedics and continued. I slowed right down partly because my chance of qualifying was out the window, partly because I had lost a fair bit of skin elsewhere but mostly because I did not want to risk crashing again with a damaged lid. I realised that wearing a helmet causes me to ride in a more aggressive manner, however sub-conscious that may be. Each of my helmet destroying crashes have been self inflicted whilst partaking in risky behaviour.

For many years I rode a motorbike and I too shared your view that that when I felt ‘safe’ in my leathers and boots I rode more wrecklessly that when I felt vulnerable in Jeans & trainers. 

However I eventually realised that my safety wasn’t one directional and I couldn’t control others behavour. As such I realised that I could just as easily have an accident even when I drove less wrecklessly.

As such it was preferable to wear safety gear.

Seeing that helmets obviously reduce head injuries on impact I’d say it is foolish not to wear one.

I’m assuming you didn’t bother watching the video about helmets (maybe you watched it and were too stupid to understand it).