I also am glad to hear that you are OK. Like PartisanRanger, I have had a couple of spills while commuting in a location not far from where he is. It has been my habit that if I have an accident where my helmet hits the pavement hard I replace the helmet. The theory is that the blow may have undermined the integrity of the helmet and weakened it. In November of 2005 I was commuting into work and I was in an accident. I cannot tell you exactly what happened because I have no memory of the accident. I was wearing a good quality $100 helmet. The back of the helmet has a large number of cracks in the styrofoam and a blood stain. That means that the blow to the back of my head was so forceful that it pressed the styrofoam against the back of my head hard enough to cut the skin. I had a cut on the back of my head, but no fracture in the back of my skull.
I did have two orbital fractures in the front of my skull and I may have had another fracture on the side of my skull. I also had seven broken ribs and a punctured lung. The Norfolk city police failled to do an investigation into the accident, so I will never know what actually happened, but I do know that if I had not been wearing a good helmet I would not have lived.
I say that with some certainty because I am a sailor in the U. S. Navy. I spent a couple of weeks in the ICU of a local hospital and then about a month in military hospitals. The people treating me kept anticipating problems from the bleeding in my brain and the nature of the injury and then I would recover faster than expected. I am convinced that my injury should have been worse, but that my helmet protected me. The people treating me had some experience treating people with injuries from IEDs. I have had several people who were impressed with how quickly and completely I recovered from my injury. I spent eight months convincing my Neurosurgeon that I had, in fact, fully recovered and was not hiding some problem. Nobody has actually said to me that my helmet protected my head more that battle armor protects our troops, but the implication was pretty clear.
I understand the comment about a $30 helmet for a $30 head, but I think that you should use the value of you entire body and your entire life. I bought a replacement helmet before I rode my bicycle again and I did not skimp on the cost.
