Update on helmets

I don't know how many of you know that I published a paper on the ineffectiveness of helmets. While the numbers of deaths did not change from before to after the event of helmets a rough approximation also made it appear that they also didn't change the numbers of non-fatal bicycle head injuries.

Since the numbers are so coarse there is the possibility that helmets can reduce minor head injuries and because of that I wear a helmet myself. Though I think that it is extremely unwise to demand that children wear a helmet when cycling because it reduces the numbers of children riding bicycles to little, or no, effect.

Lately I wondered if the much larger numbers of riders on the road would smooth the figures out so that more could be discerned about helmet safety.

Unfortunately it appears to be pretty much the same; more riders means more deaths but in the same percentage ratios as pedestrians meaning that increases in fatalities are because of increasing speed limits.

The non-lethal head injury records are so difficult to be found that what I did find made it appear the same - if there is any safety to be gained by wearing a helmet it is pretty difficult to see.

Bell has lately invented a newer technology that from my guess might be a real improvement that could decrease minor head injuries from falls. It is contained in the Bell Zephyr helmet. It is composed of two Styrofoam shells. The inner shell is significantly softer than the previous grade so that initially the impact resistance on the brain is causing less deceleration forces and hence less tearing of the meniscus layer of the skull/brain interface. The second outer layer has a higher impact absorption layer. Since the head has been decelerated to a larger degree this can be harder. It continues to pass the helmet tests that were originally developed by Bell and then picked up by the Bicycler Helmet Safety Institute. Also they have developed a new cage system for holding the helmet on the head so that air can pass between the head and the helmet, aiding cooling. It also is designed in a manner to try and drain the sweat away from the eyes. All of this seems very encouraging to me until you see the price is $240. This pretty much limits its use and perhaps may even doom the technology.

But what is more important is speed and fatalities on a bicycle. If you are struck at 15 mph you have only a 10% chance of dying from the accident. If the collision speed increases to 25 mph the chances are 50-50. And at 35 mph you have a 90% chance of dying.

So if we want to save more bicyclists and pedestrian we need to force governments to lower speed limits to the safe limits of the road which is different to the usual method of trying to ease traffic as much as possible by setting the speed limits as high as possible without extraordinary amounts of collisions.

This in turn would force more and more industries to place themselves closer to their workers rather than worker having to commute any distance to work. If companies are closer to where people live, bicycling to work becomes a far more viable option. The more bicyclists there are, the fewer drivers and the safer the roads become.

You should think about this and if you can afford it perhaps the newest Bell top-of-the-line may save your life for real.

 

Cycletom I like you, but I think the paper you wrote was flawed...THOUGH I haven't read it so I could be entirely wrong, but going by what you said in your introduction to this thread it's flawed.

First off any emergency room doctor in the US will tell you that helmets do save lives, 100% of the time? of course not don't be silly, but the evidence is strong enough that they recommend all cyclists to wear helmets.

Secondly; the reason statistics show that deaths are on the rise involving cyclists is not because helmets, it's due to many factors. First there are more riders now then there was 20 years ago; and second the majority of riders now are senior citizens, this is evident by what is currently pushing the sales in bicycles, where a strike to a head of 20 year old may give them a concussion or major headache will kill a senior citizen.

So yes deaths have risen but it's not because helmets are failing its because its the older population is riding more than ever...A LOT more than ever! It's one thing to say that being 65 years old is the new 45 but problems associated with age don't go away because of that, it just means they are more active than the generation before, which is good, but issues arise when injuries occur that are worsened by age.

Now does that mean that the helmet industry can't make better helmets? or shouldn't? NO, in fact they are doing that as we speak, there is always room for improvement, but no matter how far technology advances you will never eliminate major head injuries or death as a result. Even if you put a motorcycle helmet on a cyclist and they hit a car with their head, or a tree they could still die, and motorcycles helmets are about as safe as it can get for a cyclists though the brains may fry from heat!

I know you're going to dispute what I said which is ok, it's your opinion, and this was my opinion.

 

Yup. Tom can review the post I made in the Road Cycling Forum regarding my old coach being killed after slamming on his brakes (thinking a vehicle was going to enter the intersection from a stop sign at a side street...it did not enter the intersection) and took a header. A younger man might have survived the impact. A younger man 'probably' would have survived the impact, based on details of the accident I was told. Anecdotal, at best...but, there it is.

IIRC my old coach was 72 or 73 when he died. Pronounced dead at the hospital.

Four years ago a mutt took me down. The Giro Atmos was cracked through the Styrofoam in two places. No head injury, thankfully. I many falls and crashes that is the first helmet I even put so much as a scuff mark on. None the less, I wear a helmet 99.9% of the time I'm riding.

Sorry. He was 75 years old at the time of his death. A great guy.
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/edward-schenck-obituary?pid=187230840&view=guestbook

 

No clue if it actually the majority of riders that are seniors, but it is a Hellova lot of them. I refer to the local club as The Retirement Cycling Club and one area club is actually called The Silver Wheels after Silver Hairs.

The U.S.A. cycle population is definitely trending towards 'older'.

I don't know if overall numbers of cyclists is increasing or decreasing, but just going by my area and seat of the pants guesstimation based on what I observe, I would have to say numbers are shrinking. I see far fewer riders on the roads than I did in the 1980's when Lemond and Lance gave road cycling a revival.

To put it in perspective, I rode my first TOSRV tour in 1972. Just under 2000 riders participated. By the late 1970's there were 10,000 riders. 13,000 counting 'outlaw' riders. Today, in 2018, the event drew about 875 riders.

 

Even if you don't believe a helmet is as advertised, what is to lose by wearing one? Their is no reason to crunch numbers when you aren't losing anything by wearing one.

 

It's the older population that's driving the sales of bicycles, if it wasn't for the older population doing that bicycle sales would have tanked. And here's the proof of it:
https://peopleforbikes.org/blog/bik...e-young-but-it-is-skyrocketing-among-the-old/

I drove my helmeted head straight through a car's side window busting out the glass, then the side of my helmeted head then ricochet off the car's center pillar, then I was tossed onto the street hitting the side of my helmeted head again and dislocating my brain...err I mean shoulder. Not sure how my head would have felt if I hadn't been wearing a helmet, but I do know because I was wearing a helmet I was fine head wise, brain wise I've never been fine. When the paramedics came they said had I not been wearing my helmet they could have had a major situation on their hands. Needless to say the helmet was destroyed by the three impacts, I was surprised it protected me on those last two impacts.

 

No, I do not agree with this article. Helmet saves much lives and they have many features. During Journey they have protect you.

 

What you are losing could be a great deal of money that you don't have for purchasing a helmet. I don't know about you but I've been living on a fixed income since Obama first took office and now paying $5 for a bag of grapes or $20 for a steak doesn't exactly leave me room for an over $200 helmet. I took my wife out to dinner at a restaurant and I have to scrape by for the next week until the Social Security Check hits the bank. Plus I have another $1,000 for dental work. Being hit by a car actually turned out to work to my advantage since the settlement paid off a whole lot of bills. If there isn't some complications.

 

You never read the paper but you disagree with it. Well isn't that professional. I also said that I just added another 20 years of data onto it and my figures remained the same. From before helmets to now the ratio of pedestrians killed to cyclist have remained the same from before helmets were used to after. Dutch studies have shown the same lack of effectiveness.

Emergency room doctors seldom know a thing. Do you know what a they are? The majority of the time they are an Intern. A first year doctor fresh out of school. No experience and pretty often even less sense. When I fell on my head and got a very serious concussion and was knocked out for more than 5 minutes the ER "doctor" saw me wake up as I arrived by ambulance and immediately let me go after a single X-ray to "make sure" that my skull wasn't fractured. I was in the same hospital taking another person there 5 years later and asked the ER doctor why they didn't hold me overnight for observation the new ER doctor asked me "Why"?

That person I was taking in was my brother who was complaining about extreme pain in his back and over his right shoulder. They found nothing wrong with him and suggest a pulled muscle. The next morning he was even worse. I took him to a second ER and they found the same thing - nothing. The following day even worse and a third ER found the SAME THING - nothing. The fourth day he had an appointment with his podiatrist. My sister-in-law had obtained copies of the X-rays and begged the podiatrist to look at them. He said that this was not his specialty and that he wouldn't feel comfortable doing so. She almost started crying and he relented and as the X-ray picture came up on the screen he turned IMMEDIATELY around and picked up the phone and called to a fourth hospital and told them to prep immediately for surgery and he was sending in a emergency case. I was taking my brother out to the car so didn't hear much of the conversation but as I pulled up in front of the ER entrance there were four people there with a gurney and they eased my brother out of the car and RUSHED him to the fourth floor surgery. He was in there for 10 hours of surgery, another 10 days in the ICU with a continuous antibiotic drip and another 7 days in the recovery ward.

He had pneumonia with half of his right lung collapsed and the entire lower part of his thorax filled with pus.

As for the opinions of your ER doctors - the largest cause of death in senior citizens isn't heart disease but pneumonia. So how is it that THREE ER's filled with these experts of yours couldn't diagnose what took a podiatrist less than one second to see? How is it that these "experts" didn't know that concussions are typified by long periods of unconsciousness and that they HAVE to be observed for seizures caused by those concussions?

Really I suggest you do not put your faith in the opinions of people that do not know what they're talking about.

As for your personal experience? I can punch my hand through a side window in a car. They do not require that much energy to break. I said that if you are going 15 mph that you have a 1 in 10 chance of being killed but apparently that didn't make any impression on you.

The helmet industry has been around for over 60 years and you think that they can be improved? The Bell Zephyr and their co-company Giro have these new helmets which do not appear to be an improved collision protection but the new frame and two stage liner are designed to allow the head to turn inside the helmet and PERHAPS provide more protection against neck injuries. Since the Bell is $240 and the Giro is $100 more than that it is unlikely to get enough testing to be able to really tell.

The crashes in professional racing far exceed the normal crashes of sports riders and they do not even think for one second that the helmet is going to protect them and they train for special techniques of falling so that they do not hit their heads. Long term fast sports riders usually develop these same techniques.

Before criticizing a paper you really ought to read it. It is still out there on the Internet.

 

Whether you agree with it or not, the numbers are the facts. As I said, there MAY be some area between fatal head injuries and non-fatal head injuries in which a helmet can be a positive protection but if there is this area is so narrow that the statistics do not demonstrate it.

Bicycling is the safest form of transportation in the world and hence the numbers of bicyclist deaths compared to pedestrians and motorists are so small that the statistics are very coarse. So since there MAY be a help from a helmet (such as crashing on an MTB on a downhill) I myself wear them and recommend that others wear them.

But in California and many other locations children are forbidden to ride a bike without a helmet. This greatly reduces children's participation in the safest transportation they can have. And since small children in particular do not have far to fall it is rather discriminating.

I took a ride across the Golden Gate bridge a month or so ago. They had groups of tourists on bicycles. Most Americans are real stupid and ride like clumsy amateurs. But the Indian tour groups were there in force and even very small children could ride bicycles so expertly that there was no fear of them riding out into traffic unexpectedly or making any other stupid moves. These are children that were brought up on a bicycle that they may not have been able to do had helmets been mandatory. Now it is important to note that the parents of these Indian children were on small bikes and yet followed their parents down into Sausalito which contains a 30+ mph descent. The only danger was American drivers.

 

You don't need a $200 helmet, Specialized Chamonix MIPS (can't recall the spelling of Chamonix but it's close) is only $80 and is only 1 of 5 helmets that got a 5 star rating. But if you have an accident and your brains are fried do to not wearing a helmet you won't be able to pay any of your bills then what?

 

Cycletom you drank the kool aid, I told you to do this, now I dare you to do this, go to any emergency room and talk to an ER doctor at you local hospital and ask them if helmets are useless in accidents.

Then you quote this numbers is fact but you didn't bother to show us the proof, you would never win a case in court by just yakking! So I'm going to help you lose you case because I'm going to show you evidence contrary to what you said.

Read:
From Finland: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-22/cycling-helmets-save-lives-researchers-say/7867904

From Australia:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...-serious-head-injury-by-nearly-70-study-finds

From Canada:
https://www.medicineshoppe.com/news...reduces-risk-death-cycling-accident-threefold

From NHTSA: https://safety.lovetoknow.com/personal-safety-protection/bicycle-helmet-safety-statistics

From US DOT:
https://www.helmets.org/stats.htm

Statistics from several countries: https://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-bicycle-helmets-work.html

Just plain facts: https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/docs/b_helmetlaws.pdf

A scientific analysis:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0001457587900029

From ER doctors:
http://www.ehstoday.com/safety/news/doctors-importance-helmets-save-lives-brain-injury-8838

Health news:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/bike-helmets-help-prevent-fatal-head-injuries-1.1194859

Now I know I asked you to read a lot of stuff, and I also know you won't read any of it because you made up your mind to believe lies instead of statistics, but my hope is that others that stumble across this thread will read the sites that I posted so they can see the truth and base their decision to wear a helmet on the facts and not on bunch of yakking.

Personally I don't think there should be helmet laws forcing adults (does not apply to children) to wear helmets, but I also don't believe that adults should have the freedom not to wear a seatbelt if they choose without risk of getting a violation, we're all adults we can make up our own minds as to what degree of safety to take for our own safety. I happen to wear seat belts when I drive and a helmet when I ride because I believe the stuff works, what you want to do Cycletom is entirely up to you, BUT you have no RIGHT to go and write a false white paper based on NO actual true facts, you are spreading a dangerous lie to those that believe in that rubbish of yours. Maybe, with the lawsuit happy country we have, if someone reads your paper and decided "you're right so I'm not wearing a helmet any more", has a serious or fatal accident and the next of kin finds out you wrote a paper about not wearing a helmet , and they have a doctor who says had they been wearing a helmet they would have survived, they just might sue the crap out of you. While sure the doctor that said that could be called questionable since he can't rewind the movie put a helmet on the person and replay the accident, but there is enough statistics like I showed that will side with the doctor, while the people filing the lawsuit may not win the entire amount they could win 70% of what they asked for because that's the percentage of people who die that don't wear helmets. Then maybe if a lawsuit like that ever gets to you and to those people who wrote such gibberish have to pay BIG money out of their pockets they'll, and you, will change their minds.

 

Just so we're on the same page - I worked on the first practical heart/lung machine. I totally designed the electronics and programmed the machine to detect HIV to clear the world's blood banking systems (this literally saved millions of lives), I expanded that machine into the world's first DNA analyzer. I've worked on many cancer detection and treatment devices. I programmed the military's poison gas detectors to protect the health of our American military people. The machines I worked on won a Nobel Prize in one case and four or five Emmy Awards in another. Devices I've designed and programmed are on every TV and movie production set in the world. I even have boards I designed and programmed on the International Space Station. I know chromatography and spectrometry. I have had to study human physiology to achieve many of my successes.

You quote an article about ER doctors talking about traumatic brain injury when I had the most violent form of traumatic brain injury and the ER doctors never even knew how to diagnose it, let alone treat it? And as I pointed out - 5 years later another doctor in the same hospital had precisely the same superior training on diagnosing traumatic brain injuries. They couldn't even diagnose the largest cause of senior citizen deaths in the USA at THREE ERs.

A five year old falling off of a bicycle and scratching the side of his head and ear and then crying the he MUST WEAR A HELMET in order to SAVE HIS LIFE is pretty stupid. California is trying to pass a Soda Tax law because "it's for the children" they are getting fat and taxing soda will prevent mommy and daddy from purchasing soda for the kids. You appear to be in the same boat.

Now can you explain to me exactly what qualification you have to say something as stupid as "you drank the kool aid"? What professional credentials do you have? I mean other than sticking your head through the closed window of a passing car? I particularly liked the "I didn't read the paper but you're wrong" part.

I should also note that the largest sources of bicycle falls is not being able to get your foot out of a clip-in pedal. Maybe you should not just ride flat pedals yourself but insist that everyone else in the world outlaw clip-ons in order to sooth your ego that you are doing the right thing.

 

A great deal of money ........If you can afford a road bike, you can afford a helmet. higher cost isn't better protection, they all have to pass certifications. Only benefit of higher cost helmets is more ventilation, better looks and possible aero benefits(if using a time trial one).

https://www.bikenashbar.com/cycling/accessories/bike-helmets/cavalo-rapide-road-helmet-cv-rapd

20 bucks for a helmet...

Also, aside from head protection, a helmet will give you more credibility if an accident does happen.

 

A $50 helmet will protect you BETTER, in most instances, than the uber-lightweight pro level 'latest fashion statement' helmet that sell for $250 and weighs 230 grams.

The cheaper helmet has more Styrofoam, adhesive, polymer shell and the retention system is heavier. All helmets have to pass the same test standards.

Even MIP's helmets have dropped in price.

$250 saves you about 30-70 grams and little else.

Regardless of the price tag, I'll strap that helmet on every time.

One more anecdote...

I have a 'cool' friend. Too cool for school and too cool to wear a helmet.

One day, he hit some loose gravel while rocketing through a turn. He 'thinks'. He doesn't really know because he hit his 'cool' cycling cap on the road and has no memory of the crash or the first few days in the hospital. Kinda got his eggs scrambled, if you know what I mean.

It took a while, as in a year or so, before he was close to right.

He now wears a helmet everywhere he rides.

 

So somehow because you had a head injury that no one could diagnose give credentials for you to say helmets are useless?

And the five year old thing was horrendously ignorant in regards to whether or not one should wear a helmet.

Flat pedals? LOL, AGAIN that has nothing to do with whether or not helmets work, in fact if anything it proves they do work because those that wear helmets and can't clip out before falling are being protected to some degree when they smack the pavement with their head.

In addition to that NONE of your supposedly credentials you listed qualifies you to make any statement about helmets being effective or not, you didn't mention one thing in that glorious resume that would even remotely point to anything you've done to qualify you to make such statements about helmets. It would be like me saying that I owned and operated a business for 25 years where I designed NASCAR engines so that qualifies me to post comments about rocket engines even though I've never worked or even studied them! yet somehow my NASCAR experience qualifies me to go off about how much I know about rocket engines, because after all they're both engines so that must qualify me as an expert on rocket engines right?

You can go on and on about you abilities but as you yourself pointed out in your tirade...YOU HAVE NO EXPERIENCE IN REGARDS TO HELMET SAFETY OR LACK THEREOF!!!! There was nothing in all that stuff you said qualifies you to write a white paper the way you have done. Hell you didn't even know that there were more older riders riding and that those people are more subject to head injuries which is why head injuries have been increasing, I had to show you the data on that because you didn't know the data, not alone the other data I showed you didn't know anything about. Which with all of your supposedly background you would have done all this research and showed evidence after evidence to make my case weak, you didn't, you just went off about your credentials that had nothing to do with helmet safety. In a court of law you would have lost your case due to lack of credentials for the case at hand.

And as far as my credentials go, it isn't any of your Fkn business nor anyone elses on this forum or anywhere else I go on the internet. Besides I find most people who brag about their backgrounds are mostly liars, so to avoid such thoughts from others I just refrain.

You can be pissed off all you want but you came up short on this one due to not having the facts, plain and simple. Now do you want to act like an adult and move on or do you still want to crawl around in the mud like a child?

 

Well, I agree with you to a certain extent and said so. But I'm wearing a $50 Bell manufactured to the BHSI standards and not the newer and possibly better Bell or Giro. My research doesn't show any benefits but there could possibly be some small benefit. I did fall down a couple of years ago and strike the back of the helmet which cost me another $50 to replace since the back of the aero sections are made to collapse easily so that you don't get your head jerked around from some minor fall which is what it was. I didn't even get road rash from that fall.

 

My head injury occurred when I was bending over to adjust a rubbing speedo pickup. My head couldn't have been more than three feet off of the road and I was only traveling about 5 mph.
the prototype carbon fork exploded. The impact knocked me out for over 5 minutes and I was probably goofy for a lot longer. This wasn't "misdiagnosed" - it wasn't diagnosed at all. When I returned 5 years later and asked why I wasn't kept for observation do you know what the doctor said? "Why should we? The worst that could happen is that maybe a nurse would see you having a seizure." Were that the case I would have been treated for having seizures.

Instead I went 2 1/2 years having daily seizures and no one of my family knew what to do. Finally when I was near death because I couldn't even remember to eat, my best friend, a retired NCIS agent, took me to Stanford Medical Center and they recommended a doctor with a small practice at the Palo Alto Medical Center who is a Professor of Neurology. It took some time for him to find the correct balance of anti-seizure medications and the side effects are nearly as bad as the problem was. Yesterday I took a very hard ride in the hills. Because of the medication I don't have any sense of balance. I stopped to let my heart rate come down a bit and have a drink. When remounting I missed the second pedal and fell over directly in the road as some jackass play racer in a Porche came around the turn at 60. He managed to go around me but if another of his kind were coming the other way at the same time I wouldn't be here now.

Helmets are NOT designed to prevent concussion. The original idea was to protect you from skull fracture. But, unfortunately, mother nature knows a great deal more about your head than those designers did. Your skull will fracture generally BEFORE you get a concussion of the sort I received under the best possible conditions for a helmet. Concussions cause traumatic brain injuries of the worst possible kind. So protecting the skull actually can make traumatic brain injury worse.

So this is what some article about what ER doctors think is worth. The other ones were equally wanting.

I suggest that you find that people that "brag" about their background are liars because you have no way of checking on it and so simply relieve your ego by thinking so. I was not bragging. I was simply giving you my credentials since you used the most insulting term "drinking the kool aid" and quoting the most preposterous articles that you plainly couldn't understand yourself beyond "helmets good".

I am not trying to insult you. I'm trying to inform you that your singular experience is not unusual and doesn't point to helmets being effective. Why would you be more willing to accept some really stupid article about helmets rather than a statistical analysis of helmets and their effectiveness from before they were invented to some time after? It isn't as if my analysis was a singular negative since several European studies turned up the same results. Furthermore I just recently looked at the ratio of cyclists to pedestrian deaths and serious injuries and it hasn't change at all.

I'm not trying to prevent you from wearing a helmet, I'm trying to warn you that you shouldn't rely on them and to be more careful. Unfortunately people who believe in helmets also ride more recklessly and you should know better before doing so yourself.

 

Seriously, you can't figure out why? It couldn't be more simple!

When someone crashes and they don't have an injury that requires a trip to a hospital, IT NEVER GETS REPORTED. This is so obvious that if you can't see this, it calls into questions all of your "research" and conclusions.

Even if someone wanted to report a non-injury, where could they do that? It's not as if you can call a hospital or police station and tell them "I crashed my bike but I'm OK" and ask them to file a report. They've got much more important things to do and they'll probably just think you're insane for calling.

Helmets are excellent at preventing lacerations, abrasions and contusions that would otherwise require medical treatment. It doesn't take research or data to understand this, it just takes common sense.

 

How did the various states which mandate helmet use for children (and recommend them for adults), arrive at their conclusion that helmets save lives? And whose 'paper' should we trust more, theirs or yours?

One thing I find lacking in helmets is a better visor to keep the sun out of our eyes particularly during sunrise and sunset. That could go a long way to increasing safety while wearing a helmet. I had to improvise with a chunk of rubber from an inner tube, hot glued to the tip of my visor. It doesn't take much, only about 3/4" but it does a heck of a job. It's not pretty but it's practical, and could save me from crashing. Riding with one hand to shade my eyes isn't a good thing.

I think a chunk of that cash is due to the manufacturer's cost of liability insurance. According to a motorcycle magazine article from years ago, half the cost of a helmet is the maker's liability insurance. That was when a decent helmet cost around $500.

Miracles do happen but they are extremely rare. It's not the government you have to convince, it's the drivers.

I'm trying to figure that one out. Let's say a business has employees within a ten-mile radius. It moves closer to one side of that circle. What about the people who are now twenty miles away? And it's not cheap to move a business for the sake of a few cyclists.

A cyclist utopia!

Although the head may be the most vulnerable part of the body, people die from other bodily injuries. A rider may have the best helmet in the world, yet die from an injury to another part of the body. I know motorcycles go faster than bicycles, but so many riders who were wearing helmets when they crashed, died from other causes.

As for me, if I have to choose between helmet and a baseball cap, I'll take the helmet even if is a medium priced one.