Bicycle helmets: Unnecessary?

[Russky]

basically not in the city if you're doing downhills, offroad, or dirt jumps its probably a good idea to wear one...

[Incomplete]

They should be necessary, if a car hits you at speed you're likely to hit your head against the car or the sidewalk. A helmet can take much of the impact.

 

Hit a hammer on a helmet while wearing it, then hit it on your head just as hard as you did on the helmet, what hurts most?

[Dav]

basically not in the city if you're doing downhills, offroad, or dirt jumps its probably a good idea to wear one...

depends what you are doing in the city, I frequently ride a 5.5 mile route to work where I reach speeds of up to 40mph and have to deal with high levels of congestion in others. In that case i think it would be stupid not to wear a helmet.

 

If on the other hand you ride a short distance on a cycle lane at low speed you can probably get away with it.

 

I think what the law is getting at is people to save money wont buy a helmet, have an accident and wind up injured.

 

Here in the UK it is not compulsory but people seem to have the common sense to know when they should be wearing one.

 

If you are doing MTB downhill you would also be an idiot not to be wearing full body armour and a full face helmet but thats a whole doffernt ball park to where this discussion is going.

[NBVegita]

Besides, there are other things to prevent high cholesterol like exercising. People these days are getting lazier and they should be the ones who pay for that.

 

Until we get universal health care, then we pay for that. Although I do agree, I was stating in reference to:

 

And Veg, don't be stupid - we know from experience that thousands of car accidents happen a year, and seat belts have a major impact on reducing injuries / deaths. Compare this to a bicycle, where if you're careful, accidents are unlikely in the first place, and helmets are only useful in a grey area between shattered skulls and bruised fingers. If something happens on either side of the "helmet zone," then it's useless to you. Seat belts are always effective in cars, though, since they protect your entire upper body, and there's far less room for error when you're going 65 MPH in a 3,000 pound vehicle.

 

That if simply being able to save more lives is a prerequisite for the government being able to control an aspect of our personal lives, why don't they limit cholesterol production in the U.S.?

 

I personally agree with your last statement suicide, I say let people do what they will, especially if the only person they're effecting is themselves.

 

Which ties into the fact that I don't believe the government should be able to tell us we have to wear a helmet when biking.

 

Now if we had social health care where we're all paying for each others medical expenses all of this would be a different story.

[Samapico]

If you found a regulation that cut the automobile deaths by 50% you would save 21,000 lives. If you could reduce heart disease deaths by 1% you would save 4 times as many people.

Not to disagree or anything, but that calculation is wrong

 

[...]reduce heart disease deaths by 10%[...]

 

One of the differences between accidents and heart disease is that no one forces you to eat cholesterol. However, if some drunk moron decides to run his car in you at 100 mph, you don't have much to say about it.

[X`terrania]

Oh, brother.

 

The other night I went out for a bike ride, I was going down this really dark parking lot when suddenly this huge chain fence ripped me off my bike and threw me to the ground, sent my bike flying, ripped some of the flesh from my neck and really knocked the wind out of me. Wish they made neck helmets or some !@#$%^&* instead, god !@#$%^&*.

[NBVegita]

thanks for the correction, 10 is what I meant

 

No one is forcing you to drive either. On the other side of the argument, you don't see a heart attack coming and a heart attack is at least as dangerous as an accident. Similar as to with a seat belt in an accident, low cholesterol won't guarantee survival but it will greatly increase your chances. Whats worse with a heart attack is that unlike a car accident where you have to actually be in a car, a heart attack can happen any where at any time.

[PaRa$iTe]

Indeed. But using a car doesn't much increase your chances of dying, if you drive carefully - you could just as well be ran over on the sidewalk. However, you can very much EXPECT something to happen if you constantly eat high cholesterol food for decades. Not only that - eating high cholesterol foods has no benefits (except, possibly, that it tastes good) while a car increases mobility, and may be required in some lines of work. That's why these are completely different issues. Same thing with a bike - there are times when it's by far the best transportation device. Not counting experience-related advantages ("using a bike is fun" or "unhealthy food is tasty"), there are many situations in which using a bike is to be preferred over other options, while there aren't any I can think of where that would be true for cholesterol.

[»CypherJF]

For what it's worth... while rollerblading some debris caught up in one of the wheels causing me to fall backwards such that my skull would have hit hard against cement flooring - but luckily I had a helmet on which I believe protected me from a serious injury.

[Bak]

how did you manage to fall backwards when your momentum was moving you forwards?

 

also true story: as a kid I was sitting in a chair that was turned sideways. I leaned back expecting a backrest and proceeded to fall back and hit my head right on the edge of the steam radiator and my head proceeded to bleed for like a half hour (I look back and wonder why my parents didn't take me to the hospital?). Now I doubt this is going to convince you to have your children wear helmets indoors.

 

!@#$%^&* just yesterday I came home sorta drunk, went to pee, and while walking down the (dark) hallway from the bathroom to my bedroom hit my head square on the edge on an open door (why they made it open into the hallway I have no idea). There's lots of ways to hurt yourself, of course cycling is one of them. We need to gauge the relative risks rather than compare anecdotes.

[»CypherJF]

It's been a while ago so don't recall the specifics (body motion, velocity, etc. etc.); but it happened when I was doing a turn, it jammed, I leaned forward/backward to offset the balance and fell back.

[Dav]

you can fall off a bike in any direstion. I have some off sideways before after hitting a slippy root in a turn, bounced up and got dumped off the side of my bike.

[Aileron]

1. 90% of people who died while riding a bike weren't wearing helmets. This argument proves the effectiveness of wearing helmets, but doesn't prove that bicycling is a dangerous enough activity to warrant wearing one. This point would be true for walking helmets too, but people don't wear helmets for walking because it's not dangerous. People don't wear helmets while riding in cars, even though it would save some lives.

 

That's a classic logical fallacy. You didn't prove a cause and effect relationship.

 

100% of people who died while riding a bike were doing so on a bike with a front wheel attached. Conclusion: Front wheels are dangerous and they should be removed from the bicycle before you ride it.

 

 

To be serious, another possibility explaining that statistic is that the helmet does nothing to prevent the kind of crash needed to kill someone, and that 90% of bike riders happen to not wear helmets.

[PaRa$iTe]

True. Would like to see how many percent of the helmet-wearing people suffer serious head injuries compared to a similar percentage for people who don't use helmets. I doubt it would be as extreme as 10 % versus 90 % - but I'm sure that those wearing helmets would still be at an advantage.

[Bak]

I think you missed the point I was making, Aileron. I was willing to forgo the point to the helmet supporters that helmets protect the head from injury, as it's not worth debate imo. However, given that it is true, it's still not a justification to wear them while cycling as the relative risk needs to be gauged.

[Aileron]

I wasn't responding to any point in particular. I don't even disagree with the conclusion. All I was doing was pointing out a flawed argument.

[Dav]

I would like to see the number of cyclists involved in an accident whilst wearing a helmet and the rates of head injury compared to non-helmet wearers. Only with these stats and proper statistical tests can we say that they are 100% unneccecary IMO.

[darkhosis]

Edited July 16, 2008 by darkhosis

[Aileron]

That actually does have enough data to conclude that riding a bike without a helmet is more dangerous, though not by that much.

[Dav]

is that for bicycles? you say motorcycles alot in that post.

[darkhosis]

is that for bicycles? you say motorcycles alot in that post.

yah, it was for motorcycles. when someone says bicycle i automatically assume motorcycle, hah. you just dont see ppl riding bicycles aroudn here =p

 

but, by utilizing the elite bicycle helmet -motorcycle, the very top site contains a lot of data:

 

http://www.helmets.org/stats.htm (go to research & statistics and pull up the stats page)

 

didnt go through it all, but it has all sorts of stuff about helmets. since it's called 'helmets.org' i guess it's spin is gonna be obvious, but from what it presents it's pretty conclusive that on bicycles at least helmets help.

 

motorcycles are prob a bit diff, in that if you get in a crash you're moving at such a high rate of speed that in many cases a helmet wouldnt really matter regardless.

 

did see something a little bizarre near the bottom

 

Product Number of Injuries

 

 

Motor Vehicles 1,744,903

Stairs, Steps, Ramps and Landings 854,500

Bicycles and accessories 514,700

Beds 299,200

Household Chemicals and Cleaning Products 65,900

Doors (Not Gl!@#$%^&*) 46,200

Pens and Pencils 29,900

Money 28,700

First Aid Equipment 27,300

Toothpicks 5,500

Combs or Hairbrushes 3,700

fear injuring yerself with money

[Dav]

Bicycles and accessories 514,700

 

I wonder how many of these are from failed 10ft dropoffs, jumps etc offroad. Road race pile ups and other strictly sport related cycling activity though.

 

 

 

oh and LMFAO at this one: First Aid Equipment 27,300

 

How the !@#$%^&* does that happen?

 

Hmm I need a plaster, OH $@ i just cut my finger off when making the bandage the right length!