The Helmet Debate

[HonestMan1910]

I doubt very much it saved your life. From the statistics of helmet wearing and fatal accidents in the UK and the fact that very very few people have their "grey matter spread all over the road", even if helmets were 100% effective there is no more than one such case in the UK a year if that out of a billion or more bicycle journeys. And if the accident had been serious enough that you were at risk of a fatal head injury you would almost certainly have suffered several other fatal non-head injuries as well.

Rubbish is all i will say to this preposeterous statement.

There are many incidences of people suffering just the one fatal injury and no other injuries at all.

My head would have been the first point of impact with the road had I not been wearing the helmet.

I appreciate the overall arguement but in my case i can say that the helmet saved me from an extremely dangerous accident that could have been life altering, but with luck i was able to stand up and stagger away from it.

 

[HonestMan1910]

They do usually say this.

Maybe they do, but i can confirm that hitting the road at 20mph with your head uncase would have had a more serious outcome than that of wearing one, to any doubters try it and then see

 

[Dan_h]

Maybe they do, but i can confirm that hitting the road at 20mph with your head uncase would have had a more serious outcome than that of wearing one, to any doubters try it and then see

This is the problem with the whole helmet debate thing. There are a lot of stories and anecdotes about how someone's life was saved by a helmet, but this is not evidence. The helmet can be broken into pieces and still not have saved anyone's life, unfortunately people always look at a bust helmet and go, wow that would have been my head!

Thing is they are wrong.Their first mistake is underestimating the strength of the human skull. Your head would have to take an almighty smash in order to actually break apart and "spread your grey matter all over the road" far more of an impact that a helmet would protect you from (even motorcycle helmets are not built to keep your brain inside your skull).

What helmets ARE designed to do is slow the rapid acceleration of your brain inside your skull by slowing the deceleration of your head when it impacts something. It does this by the foam part crushing. Due to the way a cycle helmet is designed this will only happen at a very specific speed (this depends on the density of the foam) and angle of impact (depends on the shape of the helmet).

Problem is that that unless you impact an object at this precise speed and angle the helmet likely did very little, and even if you did most helmets work best at around 12 miles per hour which gives you a force that your head can cope with generally anyway. If your helmet was broken into pieces then it did nothing really to help you as the foam overcompressed and transferred the impact to your skull anyway.

Unfortunately all of this is somehow counter intuitive and even the emergency services get it wrong and often say "That helmet saved your life". I even saw an episode of Highland Rescue where it was claimed that a mountain biker who had broken his collarbone had his life saved by a helmet... oddly there was no indication that he had hit his head at all.

When a helmet is designed that it can be PROVEN will reduce my chances of a head injury in an accident I will consider buying one. Until then I will remain one of the helmet sceptics.

 

[Little yellow Brompton]

In my opinion and also that of the paramedics, police and witnesses without a helmet my injuries could have been fatal as my head was the first thing to hit the road.

Rubbish is all i will say to this preposeterous statement.

 

[Fish on a bike]

Ok, so we're all agreed helmet wearing should be down to the individual...

 

[400bhp]

This is the problem with the whole helmet debate thing. There are a lot of stories and anecdotes about how someone's life was saved by a helmet, but this is not evidence. The helmet can be broken into pieces and still not have saved anyone's life, unfortunately people always look at a bust helmet and go, wow that would have been my head!....

is that that unless you impact an object at this precise speed and angle the helmet likely did very little, and even if you did most helmets work best at around 12 miles per hour which gives you a force that your head can cope with generally anyway. If your helmet was broken into pieces then it did nothing really to help you as the foam overcompressed and transferred the impact to your skull anyway.

It's a while since I did physics, but should that be some of the impact?

These "debates" are great on internet forums. They are political and are not factual. None of us have the time or the specialist knowledge to analyse.

I agree with your initial paragraph Dan, and it would be nice to see some proper scientific analysis, but that is only going to happen if the "anecdotal" evidence suggests that the likelihood of a helmet saving lives is substantial (as such studies need to be funded by a stakeholder who has an interest in the outcome (e.g the Government). The fact that any real science hasn't been done may suggest in itself that helmets don't have the substantial effect on saving human lives. Then again, the frequency of road deaths involving cyclists is relatively low and therefore not material (in the bigger picture)?

 

[Dan_h]

Ok, so we're all agreed helmet wearing should be down to the individual...

How on earth do you propose to keep the argument going with statements like that

 

[mickle]

I have had more than one incident after which, had I been wearing a helmet, the health-care professionals who treated me would have said 'Your helmet saved your life'.

 

[Little yellow Brompton]

Whew. 11 pages of this is enough to make me want to cycle the wrong way down the Euston road at night without lights, helmet or hi-viz. In the outside lane. During a power cut. In heavy rain.

For the record, I wear a helmet and hi-viz, but couldn't really care what anyone else wants to do. It's not like the debate when seatbelts in cars were made compulsory, after all - that really did save a lot of lives.

Did it? Are you sure?

 

[400bhp]

Didn't road deaths half in the couple of years after compulsion? It was a bit before my time so might be making this up?

I have some vague recollection that road deaths went down in the states too (by a material margin) after compulsion?

I would expect it to have anyway.

 

[Dan B]

Maybe they do, but i can confirm that hitting the road at 20mph with your head uncase would have had a more serious outcome than that of wearing one, to any doubters try it and then see

I have tried it. Still here.

 

[Dan_h]

It's a while since I did physics, but should that be some of the impact?

It does not make as much difference as you might think, the point is to decelerate the head in a controlled manner to the point where the squidgy stuff inside does not suffer a traumatic event. The fact that the foam over compressed means that your head still came to an abrupt stop and your brain still bounced around.

For all of this I am in agreement that it should be down to an individual to make the choice of helmet or no helmet, as long as they feel happy with their choice then that is all that matters.

 

[Fish on a bike]

Letting the individual decide won't be a problem until someone starts campaigning for compulsory insurance for cyclists then insurance companies will insist on helmet wearing. Luckily enforcing such a scheme would be a impossible by the police :-)

 

[Dan_h]

Letting the individual decide won't be a problem until someone starts campaigning for compulsory insurance for cyclists then insurance companies will insist on helmet wearing. Luckily enforcing such a scheme would be a impossible by the police :-)

I don't think the problem is cyclists being made to have insurance, more likely driver's insurance companies trying to use the fact that a cyclist was not wearing a helmet to reduce / avoid a payout in the event of a collision.

 

[StuartG]

In my opinion and also that of the paramedics, police and witnesses without a helmet my injuries could have been fatal as my head was the first thing to hit the road.

And all, almost certainly, gloriously unqualified to come to that opinion. Worse still - not realising it! Which is why the helmet debate is in such a pickle.

Last year I took a tumble with a fellow club member. He got up, took his helmet off and exclaimed - thank god it saved me from serious injury- for it had a crack. I did point out that I had fallen in exactly the same way, was not wearing a helmet and had a very minor graze to my cheek - and didn't need to replace a helmet.

It may be that he fell more awkwardly than me or whatever. It is certainly no justification for me to claim a helmet might not have mitigated his fall. But it does show the danger of having a collision, seeing a helmet damaged and jumping to conclusions about grey matter across the road.

First helmets will, in favourable circumstances, mitigate an injury. In a very severe cases that may be the difference between life and death, but not from very serious injury. If you walk away uninjured it is likely that, at worst, you would have otherwise suffered a very minor head injury and so on up the scale.

So it is clear these people were talking rubbish. But is it still worthwhile wearing a helmet for the injury mitigation it can offer? For that you need to look far beyond anecdote to the statistics covering a wide range of incidents. Trouble is - nobody has yet produced a clear set to prove it one way or the other. And people (on both sides) who claim to have statistical evidence are not good statisticians, or worse still, have cherry picked some figures that are compatible with their agenda.

So wear a helmet or not. Your choice. But claims it did any good, or bad, in a particular incident without a careful forensic investigation is not worth a fig. And its a waste of space repeating them here.