The cycle helmet debate continues

joeegg wrote:

Looking at the question"do helmets save lives",is it a question that really has an answer.You'll never be able to prove conclusively that a seatbelt or airbag actually saved someone's life.

 

So you get into the realms of possibility,and that is generally down to peoples personal interpretations.

If the question was "can helmets prevent non life threatening injuries" then I'd say yes.

It would be great to live in a utopia of safe and careful vehicle drivers,but we don't,and it won't be happening soon. In view of that I will continue to wear a helmet but won't denegrate people who decide not to.

I always wear a helmet, but I don't want it to be made compulsory, and I argue with non-cyclists who get arsey about people on bikes without them.  I say there's as much chance of you falling over in your bath and hurting your head than of you doing the same whilst riding your bike.

However, I have had 5 crashes on my bike in 4 years, and every one of them included banging my head on the deck. None of them involved any other vehicle or any other person.   I broke a shoulder in one, a wrist in another, scraped most of my leg off in the third, and had lesser injuries in the remaining two.  Maybe if I hadn't been wearing a helmet I would have performed some astonishing manoeuvre to stop my head hitting the road, maybe not, but it saved me having hideous headaches to add to the list of injuries.

Daveyraveygravey wrote:

I always wear a helmet, but I don't want it to be made compulsory, and I argue with non-cyclists who get arsey about people on bikes without them.  I say there's as much chance of you falling over in your bath and hurting your head than of you doing the same whilst riding your bike.

However, I have had 5 crashes on my bike in 4 years, and every one of them included banging my head on the deck. None of them involved any other vehicle or any other person.   I broke a shoulder in one, a wrist in another, scraped most of my leg off in the third, and had lesser injuries in the remaining two.  Maybe if I hadn't been wearing a helmet I would have performed some astonishing manoeuvre to stop my head hitting the road, maybe not, but it saved me having hideous headaches to add to the list of injuries.

It's good to see a voice of reason on here, and I suspect your views are typical of most cyclists. The accidents you describe, all low speed incidents (though I appreciate that lying in A&E with broken bones they might not have felt like low speed incidents), fall in the range where physics supports the view that a helmet can reduce damage. On the other hand those who believe that 2cm compression of foam will have a sufficient impact on g reduction when in contact with a vehicle travelling at say, 30mph, don't understand the problem. (The problem being perfectly illustrated by the 4th equation of motion, for anyone with a physics O level, and that v squared term is the killer - quite literally. ) I too wear a helmet, but am under no illusions that it is unlikely to do any more than protect my handsome good looks when in contact at low, probably non life threatening, speed.

Griff500 wrote:

Daveyraveygravey wrote:

I always wear a helmet, but I don't want it to be made compulsory, and I argue with non-cyclists who get arsey about people on bikes without them.  I say there's as much chance of you falling over in your bath and hurting your head than of you doing the same whilst riding your bike.

However, I have had 5 crashes on my bike in 4 years, and every one of them included banging my head on the deck. None of them involved any other vehicle or any other person.   I broke a shoulder in one, a wrist in another, scraped most of my leg off in the third, and had lesser injuries in the remaining two.  Maybe if I hadn't been wearing a helmet I would have performed some astonishing manoeuvre to stop my head hitting the road, maybe not, but it saved me having hideous headaches to add to the list of injuries.

It's good to see a voice of reason on here, and I suspect your views are typical of most cyclists. The accidents you describe, all low speed incidents (though I appreciate that lying in A&E with broken bones they might not have felt like low speed incidents), fall in the range where physics supports the view that a helmet can reduce damage. On the other hand those who believe that 2cm compression of foam will have a sufficient impact on g reduction when in contact with a vehicle travelling at say, 30mph, don't understand the problem. (The problem being perfectly illustrated by the 4th equation of motion, for anyone with a physics O level, and that v squared term is the killer - quite literally. ) I too wear a helmet, but am under no illusions that it is unlikely to do any more than protect my handsome good looks when in contact at low, probably non life threatening, speed.

I used to justify the helmet by saying you can never allow for the other idiots...but my accidents have only involved one idiot, me!  The first one was very high speed, some hill in Devon with a corner at the bottom and climb out, think I got to 50 mph before the corner, nothing coming either way, max usage of the road, just missed the apex, right out on to the grass on the right on the exit, got it back on the road, maybe down to 30 mph by now, then not sure what happened, maybe over-corrected, tank slapper, sliding along the tarmac...