The reason some of us are sceptical on the value of helmets is that we have looked at some of the so-called "research" and found it wanting, in some cases to the extent it seems actually dishonest and intented to justify a position
I personally was an early adopter of helmets long before they were really a thing for leisure cyclists, and thought it "commons sense" and "obviously" a considerable safety benefit. Reading stuff on a similar forum I started to look into it. Here are some examples
The now notorious Rivera Thompson Rivera study which, from memory, indicated a huge reduction in head injuries. The trouble was they'd done something along the lines of comparing nice middle class helmeted kids riding in parks and leafy suburbs with unhelmetted inner city kids riding unsupervised on busy roads. Helmet wearing was also associated with a significant reduction in leg injuries. The result was therefore no surprise once you spot the error. In fairness at least one of the authors has acknowledged the flaws and distanced himself from the conclusion. Less honourably organisations like RoSPA used the result in their campaigns long after it had been discredited, arguably they were outright lying "think of the children" after all.
Another example was an Australian study which compared the proportion of head injuries vs other injuries pre and post helmet compulsion, which, fair enough seemed to show a reduction in head injuries indicating a benefit. I was half convinced until I saw the dates chosen did not correspond to introduction of compulsion (wearing rates went from 10% to 95% or whatever) but some different set of dates which looked to me like they'd been cherry picked to get the desired answer
Another recent study, I think in the UK did something similar then rather glibly happened to mention there was a correlation between drunk cyclists and not wearing helmets and also surprise surprise a correlation between drunken cycling (and for that matter drinking i. general) and head injury. The conclusions ignored this rather significant question which looked to me just as bad as the Rivera Thompson Rivera flaw. Also there does not seem to be a campaign for beer drinking helmets which might actually do some good. I half seriously argued this with a doctor friend who angrily shouted down my skepticism of cycle helmets.
Another study on the opposite side showed little to no benefit (maybe a small worsening) pre and post compulsory helmets in Australia and Ontario, but did indicate a reduction in people cycling. You'd have thought this would be considered relevant by the advocates but seemingly not
Another thought: it is worth remembering that an awful lot of doctors are not really all that numerate. I'm not saying this as an insult, but remember most doctors, unless they specialise in statistical analysis will not have studied maths beyond O level (or whatever it is). Typically doctors will have A levels in physics chemistry and biology and won't have time to do maths as well, and arguably maths is less important for their future study. This doesn't mean docs aren't clever people by and large but there is a tendency for genuine experts in one field to thing they know more than they do in another, especially if "common sense" is involved
I'm not a statistician and have studied very little stats but the flaws above seem blatant to suggest very poor grasp indeed by some of the authors
Another fairly simple fag packet calculations suggests a helmet makes your head into a 50 to 100% bigger target (cross sectional area not diameter remember). This too will obviously (and I think "obviously" is really justified here) have an impact (pub intended). You only have to turn a proportion of near misses or glancing blows into actual hits and you could potentially cancel out the benefit of a helmet for "legit" hits. I had such an incident where my head missed the ground by maybe the width of a helmet ! If I'd been wearing one I might well have been arguing on here it had "saved my life"
I agree with you concept of doctors commenting on things they are not experts in
it does happen and only doctors that know that subject properly should comment
I do get really annoyed about "research" that aims at a target conclusion because such things do tend to undermine what may (or may not) be a good thing over all
I can also state a situation when a helmet can cause an actual accident
I often ride around on local canal tow paths and cycle paths
as a result I often go under low and tightly curved bridges
as a cyclist on a biek with flat bars my head it a bit higher than for a walker
there have been several times when I have ridden slightly further to the lower part of the curve and my helmet has caught on the roof in some way
there are one or two bridges where I have to ride right on the side fo the canal to get under without hitting the roof
this has caused me to react - and on the edge of the canal - and on concrete that generally slope alarmingly water -wards then this could easily make me fall off due to over correction or worse
so they are not the general preventer of all accidents that some people seem to claim
which is just stupid anyway - it is really not that difficult to work out ways in which they can make things worse
the point is that they will almost certainly stop a lot of potential head injuries
if they cause a few other then that's life
after all - people have died due to being unable to get out of a burning car due to a seat belt but no-one is calling for people to stop wearing them
TLDR - people should do proper research and people quoting it should check it lakes sense
If I had not been wearing a helmet
