Is there a stigma to only wear a cap?

[classic33]

Yebbut helmets MUST help in a crash. It's common sense. That's why skydivers wear them.

Can you prove otherwise?

Worn for protection on exiting the aircraft, and for protection during free fall. In a group jump, built in microphones/ear pieces allow communication between jumpers.

 

[Drago]

Yebbut helmets MUST help in a crash. It's common sense. That's why skydivers wear them.

Can you prove otherwise?

Absolutely. When they hit the ground at 150mph it makes the head easier for the farmer to identify.

 

[icowden]

Prove it.

Really? Why would helmet designers spend large amounts of cash to develop a system that didn't have some sort of provable benefit? Surely they would be better off just saying "buy our new magic helmet - guaranteed to reduce head injury" and then wait for the lawsuits.

Depending on what type of helmet is tested, the helmet is dropped from 2,2–3,1 meters onto a 45-degree impact angle covered with grinding paper. Three different types of impact points are tested, and all helmets are tested in all sizes.

Data is gathered using nine accelerometers inside a Hybrid III crash test dummy head and analyzed using a computer model known as the Finite Element Model. The same helmet model is compared with and without the MIPS BPS to make sure that the helmet passes the strain reduction criteria MIPS have on all approved helmets.

More than 27.000 tests have been conducted at the global test center in Stockholm, Sweden. In addition to that, a number of third-party tests have also been made supporting MIPS safety claims, for example:

• Consumer Reports, US
• Folksam, Sweden, 2015-2019. Snow, bike and equestrian helmets
• Länsförsäkringar, Sweden, 2018
• Testfakta, Sweden

MIPS helmets also took top ratings at a Virginia Tech helmet ratings, US. Top 13 helmets in the ranking were MIPS BPS equipped and received top ratings for helmet safety.

Why would they bother if it didn't improve protection?

 

[Fab Foodie]

I'm washing my cycle cap collection today....

 

[mjr]

Really? Why would helmet designers spend large amounts of cash to develop a system that didn't have some sort of provable benefit?

Because enough mugs will buy stuff labelled MIPS or similar to increase profits by more than the spending? Helmet design is ruled more by economics than biology.

Surely they would be better off just saying "buy our new magic helmet - guaranteed to reduce head injury" and then wait for the lawsuits.

The Advertising Standards Agency forces such adverts to be withdrawn as unjustifiable, so it would probably hurt sales and thereby profits more than they would gain. Other territories probably have similar truth-based advertising controls.

It's much more profitable to leave making false claims about helmet effectiveness to fools on the internet and in government or its agencies, and that's generally what helmet manufacturers seem to do.

[Test protocol]
Why would they bother if it didn't improve protection?

Because it's easy to test and it helps sell helmets (or licences for helmet-branding trademarks).

 

[roubaixtuesday]

Why would they bother if it didn't improve protection?

Same reason Gillette develop more and more expensive razors would be an obvious suggestion...

(I suspect reality is somewhere between these extremes ie both a need to provide a gimmick for marketing and some element of real desire to improve safety)

 

[matticus]

Advertisers using spurious health claims?

Spoiler: That would never happen

 

[faster]

Or rather, it's a review not a study and it finds that correlation WHEN crashed. The "reduced odds" is a comparison against crashing the same without a helmet. It does not seem to even consider correlations between crashing or severity of crash and using a cycle helmet, so its later claim "These results support the use of strategies to increase the uptake of bicycle helmets" are unsupported by its evidence.

Why on earth would this review consider correlations between crashing or severity of crash and using a cycle helmet? Quite simply, that isn't what it is about. That's a completely different question out of the scope of this review.

It's set out quite clearly in the abstract, which is difficult to miss with it being the first few lines.

"The research literature was systematically reviewed and results were summarized from studies assessing bicycle helmet effectiveness to mitigate head, serious head, face, neck and fatal head injury in a crash or fall."

It's beyond the pale to discredit someones work and even claim it shouldn't have been published because it didn't include something which is quite clearly out of scope. It's about what it is about as defined in the abstract. It's not about what you think it's about, what you'd like it to be about, or what you think it should be about.

Your argument is akin to settling down to watch Match of the Day then at the end throwing a massive tantrum because you thought it should've had more badgers in it.

I understand that you believe there is a correlation between crashing or severity of crash when using a cycle helmet. Instinctively, the effect of this being significant with respect to the other benefits of wearing a helmet sounds far fetched to me, but I'm open to be convinced otherwise.

And there still remains the elephant in the room of why helmet users crash more often. I'm certainly not rushing to use helmets again and start crashing more again. But it's your head.

It seems you have your own experiences to back this up.

So you're saying you used to wear a helmet and crashed more, then stopped wearing a helmet and started to crash less? Intriguing. How often were you crashing when you wore a helmet? It would be interesting to have your first hand perspective on how the helmet was causing you to crash more often.

It would be nice to see some studies/reviews/papers on this too.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Yebbut helmets MUST help in a crash. It's common sense. That's why skydivers wear them.

Can you prove otherwise?

Do they?

 

[matticus]

I'm shocked - are they mad??

 

[matticus]

...then [mjr] stopped wearing a helmet and started to crash less ...

It would be nice to see some studies/reviews/papers on this too.

Well, it's funny you should say that.

There is in fact a lot* of research on how taking away PPE (or other safety measures) does in fact make people take less risks. That may sound utterly bonkers to you (it doesn't to me) but the science does seem to support it.

*By which I really mean utterly shitloads ...

 

[mjr]

Why on earth would this review consider correlations between crashing or severity of crash and using a cycle helmet? Quite simply, that isn't what it is about. That's a completely different question out of the scope of this review.

It's set out quite clearly in the abstract, which is difficult to miss with it being the first few lines.

"The research literature was systematically reviewed and results were summarized from studies assessing bicycle helmet effectiveness to mitigate head, serious head, face, neck and fatal head injury in a crash or fall."

The authors simply cannot have it both ways. One cannot declare a narrow scope for a review and then make conclusions beyond that scope and expect not to be called out for it - that is underhand.

It's beyond the pale to discredit someones work and even claim it shouldn't have been published because it didn't include something which is quite clearly out of scope. It's about what it is about as defined in the abstract. It's not about what you think it's about, what you'd like it to be about, or what you think it should be about.

I'm claiming it should not have been published in that form because it did include something which is quite clearly out of scope, as well as including earlier discredited studies. If it was edited to stick to its scope and the included studies checked for later rejection, it might be publishable.

Your argument is akin to settling down to watch Match of the Day then at the end throwing a massive tantrum because you thought it should've had more badgers in it.

No, it's akin to me pointing out that it would be bull shoot for Gary Lineker's closing statement to include something like "and as we've seen, we must cull all badgers because they damage pitches" when nothing about badgers had been shown. Does anyone really think that such badger-bashing would be fair?

 

[classic33]

I'm washing my cycle cap collection today....

If you do them all at the same time, will the colours run?
And will one be dry when needed?

 

[Fab Foodie]

Be clean cappy happy y’all....

 

[icowden]

Because it's easy to test and it helps sell helmets (or licences for helmet-branding trademarks).

So you are seriously suggesting that the company spent a massive amount of investment on testing including purchase of a hybrid III crash test dummy, modelling and submitted for multiple third party tests all of whom are independent, and magically passed all of those tests, without actually improving safety, the whole exercise being solely to sell more helmets, even though the helmets are considerably more expensive?

Seems a long way round to make a small amount of money to me.