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).
There's one problem with all reports like this - people who have a crash in a helmet and are fine usually don't report anywhere. I flew over the handlebars and hit the edge of a curb with my head - the helmet split in two but I was fine. If I didn't have a helmet on, I would be dead, I am very certain of that. Yet, my accident - like I am sure thousands of other similar - was not reported anywhere. There is no statistic that measures this. And I think it's absolutely vital for producing reports like this.
Bicycle helmet safety is one of those things that will never be accurately covered by statistics, because most cases where the helmet did its job don't end up in the stats as there are no significant injuries.
In the only serious bike accident I have been involved in, the victim would have walked home on their own feet had they worn a helmet. Instead, a fall from the bike on low speed and hitting their head on tarmac ended up in serious head injury and 6 months in the hospital.
Had they walked home, it would have not ended in the stats.
Its the old observers paradox. "I haven't had a bike accident, so bike helmets aren't necessary". Nothing works but resorting to the statistics. What statistics have you to offer?
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.
I'm sorry but this post mentions there isn't any good data and then dives into anecdotes.
"But helmets are not supposed to shatter." Yes, they are. After any crash with a helmet you're support to discard it and purchase a new one. It absorbed, hopefully, the vast majority of the energy of the impact, not your skull.
"Cyclists don’t die from just falling off their bikes, they die because they are hit by cars."
Doubtless, but this is one of the few cases in which there are statistics available because it involves motor vehicles... and death.
"Learning safe riding skills, being visible, and being attentive are the things we all can do to prevent an accident."
Yes, absolutely. Ride defensively and assume NO ONE can see you and knows where you are at ALL times even and sometimes especially in a bike lane.
"I replaced my road bike’s drop handlebars with swept back bars, for a more upright riding position"
The observation of mountain/flat bars being a better city / casual riding position is true. But you don't need to ditch your drops if you ride on the tops when appropriate. Many people have a second pair of brake levers accessible from the tops as well as their integrated levers at the hoods.
What I'm most surprised about is that the author doesn't mention a study where drivers on average, apparently, drive 3 inches closer to cyclists WITH helmets on because they perceive them to be protected.
All this said: WEAR A HELMET. I'll provide an anecdote: the wheel coming off of a front fork after someone tried to steal their wheel earlier in the day (unlocking the quick release). I found the man with his face smashed on the ground, his left eye caved in on the Manhattan Bridge.
Route 9W, bottom of the first major hill, debris collected from over winter. Many cyclists repairing flats, another one who got taken away in an ambulance, helmet shattered and knee "destroyed". He would have certainly died if he had not been wearing a helmet.
The point is saying that helmets don't protect you from crashes is like saying seatbelts don't protect you from crashes. Yes! It's true, but they protect you from hurting yourself too badly if and when you DO crash.
What a stupid argument. This is a great example of how statistics can appear to support any random premise, no matter how obviously wrong it is.
So why don't we take basic protective measures to mitigate safety risks? Um, we do. Drivers wear seat belts, pedestrians cross at crosswalks, and cyclists wear helmets.
Of course if OP had phrased the question this way, it would be clear that he has no point. Instead, just to be pedantic he phrases it: "why don't we wear helmets all the time"? Such bullshit is what you're taught to look out for in your freshman rhetoric class.
Please, please wear a helmet when you ride a bike. OP himself admits that if you're in a serious accident a helmet will save your life. That's where the argument should have ended.
That's not the answer to the question. That's "government statistics". It's meaningless to refer to a safety statistic like "45 to 88 percent of brain injury can be prevented by a helmet" without understanding how frequent brain injury is in the overall population of bicycle riders.
According to that site, having everyone wear a helmet could prevent 250 to 500 deaths each year out of 80 million bicycle riders (700 deaths, two-thirds with brain injury, 45 to 88 percent prevention with helmets, 80 million riders). So if you wear a helmet, there is a half of a thousandth of a percent chance that you will benefit from it.
When you look at it THAT way, the safety improvement sounds trivial, nowhere near the size of the benefit from wearing a seatbelt. It gives a whole different perspective than "45 to 88 percent of brain injury can be prevented by a helmet".
And, that site pulls data from "multiple sources", not all of which may be legitimate, and appears to be a pro-helmet propaganda site.
They also report on people who die in accidents who weren’t wearing seat belts or when kids aren’t secured in car seats, or when people hop barriers and try to walk across 10 lane highways at night and then get smeared by a semi.
This isn’t some pro-car blame shifting conspiracy to report on how someone died unnecessarily when easy safety measures are available or were bypassed. The car driver can still be at fault for the accident, but the pedestrian/cyclist/one-wheeler/whatever can still assume risk exists when near traffic and take easy and reasonable precautions. I wear a helmet when riding on bike paths away from cars because you can still get bumped or make a mistake or have mechanical failures and fall and die if you hit your head wrong.
Must be a luck-signularity around where I live. I know several people saved by bike helmets, from small crashes of 2 bikes or bike vs immovable object. One happened last Saturday on an asphalt bike trail with no obstruction - the young man just went down and landed on his head. Busted his helmet all to hell. Got up and got back on his bike.
Lots of statistics thrown around here, and my anecdotes are not statistics, but they are a heck of a lot closer to actionable information that hot air. As for me, I don't regard a helmet as making bicycling seem dangerous, any more than wearing a raincoat makes walking outside seem dangerous. Its just part of my equipment, like the water bottle.
There's real data out there that while a helmet has better survival rates than not; but cars give more room to bicycles without helmets, so the incident rate is lower.
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)
If 95% of cyclists wear helmets (that would be my guess, at least when cycling on the road) and only 80% of fatalities happen with a helmet then it would seem to me that helmets are very effective - which is why you need to qualify the statistic.
You shouldn't follow up a source request with another unsourced fact, but let me follow up with yet another: the statistic are entirely different for motorcycles because motorcyclists are far more likely to have the type of accidents that helmets protect from.
Comparing the fatality rate of bicycling to the one for riding a motorcycle is not good.
edit: That's not only a claim that bicycle helmets vastly reduce the fatality of bicycle accidents (rather than just significantly reduce them), but a claim that so many unhelmeted riders die from bicycle accidents that it distorts safety figures. All of this without any safety figures.
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.
Your first link has zero information to support that wearing a bicycle helmet would do any good, it only suggests it. Personally I doubt a bicycle helmet would do much good because they aren't designed to protect your head in such an energetic collusion. Your second link only says that motor vehicle wrecks are the cause of 20% of TBI related hospitalization. The word helmet doesn't appear in it at all.
So no, based off of your links I wouldn't say the data disagrees with me.
Do you have any information that shows the effectiveness of helmet use in crashes that don't involve cars? I've read that approximately half of all bike crashes do not involve cars. [ looking for a citation ]
Statistically that is unlikely to be true. I have seen many people with injuries from falling of a bike and none of them were on anyone's head where a helmet would make a difference.
So on most accidents a helmet is not going to make a difference.
No, it rightfully illicits that response. Wearing a safety device shouldn't make an activity less safe.
Your "simple equation" relies on your variables being solid. And they aren't.
It's important to stress that the behavioural studies from Bath (that show helmeted riders take more risks in simulations, that cars give them less space) are not data about whether helmeted users are at greater risk. Or that comparisons between US and NZ riders and outcomes are comparable because of vastly different road and rider profiles.
It's also hard to show how much helmets are helping because zero-harm accidents are rarely reported, so if we assume that they function correctly, and do reduce harm in impacts, we simply don't know how many near-misses there are.
You can look at hospital admission data two studies show 75 and 78% of cyclists admitted with serious-enough head/neck injuries hadn't worn a helmet. That still needs adjusting for total accidents, and proportion of helmeted riders on the road in the first place. Again, poor reporting makes this tough.
You also have to be aware that some studies and stats are polished up by people fervently for and against mandatory helmet laws. Biased reporting doesn't help anyone. There's a good selection here: https://www.helmets.org/stats.htm (domain suggests a strong bias, but I'm not sure).
Pedal Me doesn't provide a good argument here. It seems more like they're worried what their customers will think (do they need helmets too?) and nothing to do with actual safety outcomes.
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).
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