Hit my head at the weekend..

Tumbleweed:

Quoted message said:

...I would have not sustained an injury had I been wearing a helmet.
Though as I wasn't riding a bike it didnt occur to me to put one on :-)

I banged my head the other day while locking my bike to the railings outside
Tesco - they have these daft sticking out bay windows to their cafe area.
Does this count as a cycling injury? Should I have been wearing a helmet?
Hmm?

d.

davek said:

I banged my head the other day while locking my bike to the railings
outside Tesco - they have these daft sticking out bay windows to their
cafe area. Does this count as a cycling injury? Should I have been wearing
a helmet? Hmm?

I'd taken off my horse riding helmet just moments before walking into an
overhead obstruction. The horse helmet therefore did not save my life - in
fact everything seems fine wibble wibble weeble feep, quite fine.

Now where did I leave that sheep?

- Richard ;-)

(I remember a couple of falls as a kid, before helmets were popular. One was
quite dramatic when a friend's bike I was riding suffered a steering
failure on a nice long downhill. Another was how I learned that front brake
hard going down steep mounds on playing fields is a bad idea. In both cases
I managed to roll keeping my head out of harm.

I can't even blame it on doing Judo as a kid and learning to fall properly,
as that came afterwards. Attempting forward breakfall in a helmet could
perhaps demonstrate why you're more likely in an accident to hit your head
in one. I don't fancy trying it.)

--
_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ Richard dot Corfield at ntlworld dot com
_/ _/ _/ _/
_/_/ _/ _/ Time is a one way street,
_/ _/ _/_/ _/_/_/ Except in the Twilight Zone.

In article <[email hidden]>,

Richard Corfield said:

(I remember a couple of falls as a kid, before helmets were popular.
[ ... ] . Another was how I learned that front brake
hard going down steep mounds on playing fields is a bad idea.

Now that you remind me ...

I learned to ride in Sweden, on a type of bike popular there with no
brake levers but a back-pedal rear brake (no front brake).

When I first rode a bike in England, first time I braked on the downhill.
No thought about it (after all, it was trivial on the swedish bike).
I pulled on the brakes, and turned a full sumersault over the bars and
on the road. Got up, more annoyed at 'stupid brakes' than anything,
retrieved the bike, went home. Typical child's accident.

Quoted message said:

In both cases
I managed to roll keeping my head out of harm.

Indeedie.

None of these experiences invalidate the protection that a helmet might
offer in some exceptional circumstances. But they do help explain the
*perception* of cycling putting us at a much higher risk of head injury.
Any of these stories could have become a "helmet saved my life" story
if we'd been wearing one at the time. Meanwhile noone pointed out that
absence-of-helmet saved me by *not* twisting/breaking my neck ...

--
Nick Kew

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 10:50:16 +0100, [email hidden] (Nick Kew)
wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

In article <[email hidden]>,

Richard Corfield said:

(I remember a couple of falls as a kid, before helmets were popular.
[ ... ] . Another was how I learned that front brake
hard going down steep mounds on playing fields is a bad idea.

Now that you remind me ...

I learned to ride in Sweden, on a type of bike popular there with no
brake levers but a back-pedal rear brake (no front brake).

When I first rode a bike in England, first time I braked on the downhill.
No thought about it (after all, it was trivial on the swedish bike).
I pulled on the brakes, and turned a full sumersault over the bars and
on the road. Got up, more annoyed at 'stupid brakes' than anything,
retrieved the bike, went home. Typical child's accident.

Quoted message said:

In both cases
I managed to roll keeping my head out of harm.

Indeedie.

None of these experiences invalidate the protection that a helmet might
offer in some exceptional circumstances.

Actually, it's much harder to tuck your head out of the way as you
fall when it's been near-doubled in size by the helmet.

Quoted message said:

But they do help explain the
*perception* of cycling putting us at a much higher risk of head injury.
Any of these stories could have become a "helmet saved my life" story
if we'd been wearing one at the time. Meanwhile noone pointed out that
absence-of-helmet saved me by *not* twisting/breaking my neck ...

--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki: http://html.dnsalias.net:1122
Smalltalk links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk) http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk

"Gawnsoft" <[email hidden]> wrote in
message news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Actually, it's much harder to tuck your head out of the way as you
fall when it's been near-doubled in size by the helmet.

I'm not trying to stage a re-run of the helmet _compulsion_ debate here, but
you make this statement on helmet _efficacy_ with such confidence that it
must have some study behind it?

IMHO (no evidence offered either) if you're not a trained gymnast/circus
athlete then natural instincts lead you to put your hands out in front of
you (hence the number of wrist and collar bone breaks occurring) to try and
avoid any head impact, and additionally shy away from the impact, which
tends to straighten rather than tuck the body.

Which, I would respectfully submit, means that those people who would
benefit most from the small amount of protection a helmet affords are likely
to be those who haven't thought much about falling off. And if, as seems
likely, those are precisely the people who think a helmet will protect them,
then The Helmet Debate Is Closed. If you think it will help, it will, and
vice versa.

This afternoon I'll be doing World Peace ;-)

I'll get me coat....

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 08:32:14 +0000 (UTC), "Richard Pattle"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

"Gawnsoft" <[email hidden]> wrote in
message news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Actually, it's much harder to tuck your head out of the way as you
fall when it's been near-doubled in size by the helmet.

I'm not trying to stage a re-run of the helmet _compulsion_ debate here, but
you make this statement on helmet _efficacy_ with such confidence that it
must have some study behind it?

Yes - the study of geometry.

Although the last numerically-based study I performed was to quantify
the additional torque placed on a neck by a helmet, I'm happy to again
measure the increase in angle the neck must move to clear a
head+helmet out the way of a solid object, versus a head alone - if
you /really/ believe that a helmet makes no difference...

....Okay, a helmet[1] requires an additional 3" of movement[2], and the
moving part of the neck, in my case is 7" long.

So, instead of having to the neck by arctan(1/7), the neck needs to
move it by arctan(4/7)

Or instead of 8deg, the neck needs to swing through an arc of 30deg.

[1] the one I measured was a Specialized one, no model name marked.

[2] In the case of hitting the back of a head

Quoted message said:

IMHO (no evidence offered either) if you're not a trained gymnast/circus
athlete then natural instincts lead you to put your hands out in front of
you (hence the number of wrist and collar bone breaks occurring) to try and
avoid any head impact, and additionally shy away from the impact, which
tends to straighten rather than tuck the body.

Which, I would respectfully submit, means that those people who would
benefit most from the small amount of protection a helmet affords are likely
to be those who haven't thought much about falling off. And if, as seems
likely, those are precisely the people who think a helmet will protect them,
then The Helmet Debate Is Closed. If you think it will help, it will, and
vice versa.

This afternoon I'll be doing World Peace ;-)

I'll get me coat....

--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki: http://html.dnsalias.net:1122
Smalltalk links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk) http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk