Like said; most accidents I have seen with near fatal results (mostly in Amsterdam where that happen(s)(ed) quite a bit), the helmet would've helped nothing at all. It's usually someone falling and then getting driven over/into. But yeah, I have no stats; not sure if anyone has, about if they do any good.
I also said for good or bad; like smoking or drinking or processed meat eating; you collect the info you can and believe, interpret it and make your choice; it's your life. I'm just saying that most people I know wouldn't be caught dead (...) with one of those things on even if it would mean they are less safe.
Here in the Netherlands, nearly nobody wears a helmet. If the horror stories in this thread are to be believed, half the population of the country should be clinically brain dead at this point. They're not, so perhaps not wearing a helmet is not as dangerous as some people believe.
Regarding statistics: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1012.html has some useful pointers. Conclusion: "Despite the considerable effort that has been put into research about cycle helmets, there is no real-world evidence that helmets have ever resulted in the net saving of even a single life. However, if helmets were actually effective, then many more pedestrian and motor vehicle occupant lives could be expected to be saved if these groups wore helmets."
I think those statistics are very very very heavily skewed and should be ignored. If you have a car accident, 99% of the time, it gets recorded. If you have a bike accident, if the police is not involved, where are you going to report it? To whom? Therefore, the only cases that do get reported are collisions with vehicles, or cases severe enough that cyclist gets taken to hospital - and in those cases, the situation is already bad, even if they wore a helmet.
My point is - situations where a helmet has saved a life are rarely recorded, so they don't show up in any sort of statistic(even I had an accident where I flew across the handlebars, hit my head directly on the edge of a curb, helmet split in half, and I was fine - yet this wasn't recorded anywhere. It does not exist in any sort of statistic, despite - very clearly - saving my life).
I would assume there is quite a lot of evidence for the efficacy of helmets in the event of a crash, no? I think in general it makes more sense to give credence to studies that give intuitive results that are explainable by sound first principles modeling, rather than one study that gives an unintuitive result based on human behavior.
I’d like to see the evidence of this. I can imagine that maybe wearing a helmet gives a false sense of security, and therefore leads to a bit more recklessness. Still, I’d bet that even if you have more accidents when wearing a helmet, you have fewer deaths.
What I'm trying to say is that: If your head hits the ground (or anything hard) in an accident Then the helmet is likely to help. But I agree that most small accidents will not include your head hitting anything. Humans are pretty good at protecting their head per reflex. However I disagree that it is not dangerous when it happens. Just imagine even from standing completely still if you would jump into the air and then hit the ground head first. You would be pretty wrecked, doing it a 10 or 20 km/h wouldn't help.
>It's generally not hitting the ground that is the dangerous part in traffic accidents. Helmets don't do anything useful is the vast majority of accidents.
Citation needed. Just like in the original comment. It would be great if there was a comprehensive study, but it seems for now people will have to make their own estimates of the risks and benefits. I always wear a helmet, and encourage others to do the same. Others don't and that's their own choice.
> Helmet proponents are right about one thing: If you're in a serious accident, then wearing a helmet makes the odds of a head injury significantly lower — by somewhere between 15 and 40 percent. (This is why ER doctors and brain surgeons are so pro-helmet — they've seen firsthand what happens in helmet-less accidents.)
So this is why most of us wear a helmet. The logic is not "so few people get in accidents that if I wear a helmet it is likely to be overkill!". The logic is "if I get in an accident I will be very glad I am wearing this."
Generally, you prepare for the worst, not hope that you are on (typo) the right side of statistics.
Accidents may be less probable, but if you happen to be one of the unlucky ones who does have one you could still die or suffer severe brain damage, so why not just wear the helmet? Sure it makes you look a bit goofier, but that's a small price to pay to protect your melon.
I do a lot of downhill mountain biking, snowboarding, etc, so I'm not one of these people that tends to be overly worried about safety, but whenever I get on wheels or something that can easily slide out of control I wear a helmet, period. I'm (pun intended) painfully aware of the amount of impact force a rotational component can add to an otherwise relatively low-speed, low-altitude fall.
Maybe the drivers are more cognizant of bikers in the Netherlands vs the US, but I still wouldn't trust them, they are not infallible and it only takes one of them one fuckup to mess me up. A helmet is a very effective (though non-perfect) fail-safe for this that costs virtually nothing (amortized over time of use before it is needed, hopefully never) and has no real downside other than pure cosmetics.
I don't think I'm necessarily disagreeing that in the worst-case scenario that helmets do the job of reducing brain and skull trauma. Doing something is the alternative to doing nothing, you'd expect some difference here.
My problem is that helmet use isn't exactly "well-studied." All these studies look at existing reports from medical centres on injuries & deaths. This doesn't actually account for the broader behavioural changes in the system, or look at causes outside of "injured while wearing a helmet vs. not."
In any other industry this kind of reporting (while factual) is absolutely ignoring everything else. A short list of what isn't being considered:
- Which road and behaviour led to incident?
- Which kinds of road conflicts can be addressed by helmets?
- How did road design lead to the incident?
- Were environmental factors a concern (winter, ice, rain, etc.)?
- How does behaviour for the cyclist change as a result of not wearing a helmet?
- How does behaviour for other road users change as a result of a cyclist not wearing a helmet?
- What kinds of helmets are more viable for protection in the case of the most extreme (and most common) conflict scenarios? How do we then test these helmets to ensure compliance in manufacturing?
These are all questions you'd expect to be answered here, and then you'd do the cost-benefit analysis on whether a mandate is necessary or not. A "well-studied" field would have discussed these effects in broader detail, not just short-cut to "fewer people who already had huge injuries while cycling died when using a helmet." That is not the entire problem, because it leaves out a huge sampling of people who do not wear helmets and do not make it to the hospital in the first place.
I have taken the view that helmets don't usually help much, but that people often perceive wearing a helmet as being the definition of safety, rather than obeying the rules of the road and paying attention to the road and what is going on around you. In my view, those are far more important than what you have on your head.
Personally, I haven't seen anyone saved thanks to a bike helmet, but I have seen people get into minor accidents because they were ignoring traffic rules and not paying attention to the road. Lots of people in the US seem to treat bikes as more of a kid's toy, to be cruised around the local neighborhood without a care in the world. They don't have the damage potential or expense of cars, but they are still vehicles that are many times faster and less maneuverable then you are on your feet, and so deserve your respect and attention.
Yeah see, you're the kind of person I'm talking about. Why do you suppose the Dutch and Danish never wear bike helmets? Do you think it's because Dutch streets are that much safer than the little park across the street from me?
I might need you to actually read my comments and do a modicum of research before I take you seriously. This is about evaluation of risk and reward. There is no black and white here.
Regarding specifics like helmets and comparative rates of head injuries, I'm sure you're capable of googling for the data. It's interesting stuff. Assuming you're actually interested.
I categorically deny that I am spreading FUD. You are very unlikely to die in a bike accident. However, if you do, you are vastly more likely to not be wearing a helmet. Even if you have negative anecdata (absence of observed collisions/falls) that doesn't mean it doesn't happen: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2013/11/fewer_road_dea...
As far as minor falls leading to death... hopefully an EMT/medical professional can jump in or someone else can offer statistics. I wish I had time to find links/data to show you how sadly and tragically incorrect that is (cycling or not).
I will repeat: I favor bike lanes and do not strongly favor helmet laws (even though I strongly favor their use).
edit: also, if anyone can find a way to quantify how many injuries helmets have prevented, it would be awesome. Everything I found involved autopsies/hospital reports/police reports... nothing where someone crashed and the helmet prevented further injury. Also hard to tell non-fatal effects from reported data (where a fall would have been a concussion otherwise, but was not because of a helment)
That depends entirely on how you fall off your bike, which depends on your speed and numerous other factors. The problem here is that it's pretty hard to tell after the fact whether a death would have been prevented by a helmet. We can guess, speculate but it's hard to measure the exact forces exerted - and also how someone's biological material will react to that (the brain).
In all my reading around this issue, those that don't want to wear helmets don't tend to wear them for fashion reasons, and interpret the stats they read to insinuate that helmets don't save lives. They don't like how it looks, feels, or that they will be teased for wearing one. I'd rather live to see the next day than care about what a helmet looks like.
And one other point to end on, it's not just deaths we're talking about here. Many people have suffered brain injuries from the impact of falling off their bike. Imagine there was something you could put on your head that would prevent that impact.
I know you're just elaborating the parent comment's point, so this isn't really directed at you, but the only study I've ever heard of which said anything like that was one academic riding a bike with and without a helmet, and measuring how close cars came to him. IIRC the difference was a matter of one or two centimetres and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the p-value was just under 0.05. That study was regularly thrown around by friends who were looking for a rationale for their dislike of wearing helmets.
We really need some high-quality studies with a much better experimental design that look at overall risk. Perhaps riders are marginally more likely to get into accidents if they wear a helmet, but I know from personal experience that when you do get into an accident you really want to be wearing a helmet - if I wasn't wearing one when I had a big accident about ten years ago, I'm pretty certain I'd have serious neurological problems now.
Often cited, sure, but I don't see cyclists (myself included) put a helmet on and start taking on 18-wheelers. What I'm trying to say is it matters how true these studies are. Say we accept there's an increased risk of having an accident, the data also shows that if you have an accident you're much more likely to die without a helmet.
I think a lot of people —including experienced cyclists— would be surprised how easily a silly little fall, a knock against a car, can just kill you.
So even if a helmet makes you marginally more likely to be involved in an accident, being a professional vulnerable road user, all day is no joke. I'd like to have safety equipment when my number comes up.
Let me rephrase that - if I, somehow, had to be in that accident again and fall head-first to the pavement, I would once again choose to be wearing a helmet, and I don't need a scientific research to make that choice. If you don't like that it's anecdotal - well, I can't help that.
And I think that hitting the pavement with the helmet instead of my head is indeed how the helmet should work, so it most certainly "works to some extent".
Unless you want to argue that I would have been just as fine hitting the ground at 25km/h without a helmet?
Or is your entire(and only) point that no one should ever mention anything they have ever experienced unless they can back it up by research by an approved institution?
I live in the Netherlands, bike everywhere I go (almost). 99.9999% of the people on the street don't wear helmets, not when commuting, not when on a recreational drive.
The most serious bicycle accident I ever saw did involve someone's head, but not a way where any helmet would have helped (his steering tube broke and sliced off half his face). I've fallen a few times, at high speeds too (rounding a corner that hasn't been de-iced ended with my hip getting closely aquatinted to the asphalt), reflexes seem to have taken care of protecting my head. I think they might offer some protecting in high speed accidents where even your body does not have time to turn your head away from the ground, but I think in those cases the chances of breaking your neck are just as high.
Technically you are correct that wearing a helmet does reduce risk of head injury somewhat. However -when infrastructure for cycling is already very safe- you start seeing all sorts of strange statistical effects; and it is not immediately obvious that helmets are a net benefit.
I looked around a bit to see if I could find a paper that takes a balanced view. This particular paper seems to be a bit more from your perspective where wearing helmets might be of some utility. However it does leave the impression that it is would actually be somewhat hard to break even on wearing helmets in the Netherlands. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...
Anecdotally speaking, I've know people who have been spared tremendous trauma by wearing a helmet, and one girl in particular who's life was certainly saved by wearing one (she still ended up in the emergency room with a head injury because of the force).
Maybe me wearing a helmet increases the perception of danger, but hell, it's dangerous out there. Decreasing my immediate odds for safety is not worth some perceived future gains that I'm not even sure exist.
I also said for good or bad; like smoking or drinking or processed meat eating; you collect the info you can and believe, interpret it and make your choice; it's your life. I'm just saying that most people I know wouldn't be caught dead (...) with one of those things on even if it would mean they are less safe.
reply