does a helmet make you feel safe

attica

By the very nature of this forum we're all passioinate about cycling, therefore we're also more likely to have more than your average Joe's level of bike control.

It truly is great to see such passion.

IMHO it's not cycling that's really dangerous but cycling amongst traffic, in any one commute you're almost bound to encounter at least on person behind the wheel who's not fully focused on the job at hand, that's just human nature.

With regard to the neck injury issue, if it's a given that you're going to get a neck injury, can it be proved or disproved that your head would be perfectly safe if you'd not had a helmet on? Perhaps your head was travelling, albeit obliquely, toward a stationary object at speed ergo...

I think that's a play off between the two risks, also I think I'm far more likely to benefit from the helmet in a low speed impact than suffer a high speed impact... Then again I'm passionate about cycling and have an above average level of road savvy (I hope!).

BentMikey

Always Tyred wrote:

Isn't this a bit like blaming the police when your bike gets stolen, rather than blaming the bloke who nicked it? Lets not look sight of the fact that the culprit here is the average (British) driver, not a.n. other cyclist trying to look after their head.

No, I don't see that.

Cunobelin

cjw wrote:

Cunobelin wrote:

snooks wrote:

I don't wear it to feel safe, my riding makes me feel safe.

I wear it cos I don't want to look like they guy in the office with a 3 inch x 2 inch scab on his forehead, where he came off a few weeks ago.

Which, now thanx to a bit of sun, is now a different colour than the rest of his head...He's sick of answering questions about he did it and now always wears his helmet.

I spent money and got the best I could, it's light, cooling and comfortable, and no hardship to wear it.

I don't wear it to save me from the wheels of a truck, or head butting a tree at full pelt, I wear it so that if I do come off, my head has the best protection I could buy it...And I'm not left wondering what if?

One really has to ask if the same fuss would be made if he had fallen on the stairs to the office?

No... much worse fuss. Especially if he had hast a lost time accident or reportable to HSE under RIDDOR (for example by fracturing a finger. Then there are all sorts of invistagtions as to root causes, prevention, training - are the stiars well enough lit, was he using the handrail (if not why not) goes on and on. Big issue (especailly in my industry - and I'm sure everyone elses) if anyone is injured at work.

Not quite...

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, 1995 No. 3163, HEALTH AND SAFETY, The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 Schedule 1,REgulation 2(1) Paragraph 1:

Any fracture, other than to the fingers, thumbs or toes.

HSE also confuses the matter further as...

Furthermore cycle helmets used on the public highway are specifically excluded from the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) at work regulations.

Jon Windeatt, Health & Safety Executive, Safety Policy Directorate, Workplace Transport & Special Hazards Section. (Corrspondence) 30 Sept 2002

I was referring to the attitude of the co-workers... not the duties of the employer which are irrelevant in this case.

But even f it was the case it illustrates the point nicely, why the fuss in the Office and the question about helmet use?

It simply shows that we have now reached the stage where the perception of these workers is that cycling is dangerous enough to require PPE!

always_tyred

BentMikey wrote:

Always Tyred wrote:

Isn't this a bit like blaming the police when your bike gets stolen, rather than blaming the bloke who nicked it? Lets not look sight of the fact that the culprit here is the average (British) driver, not a.n. other cyclist trying to look after their head.

No, I don't see that.

I didn't think you would.

I spotted the following post on another thread:

"Driver turning right cut the corner and we collided at relatively low speed. My injuries are a gashed shin and aches and pains. Last I saw of the bike, front wheel was a mess (which doesn't bode well for the frame) and helmet is wrecked. Coppers were on scene v quick and I was carted off in an ambulance. Driver said it was his fault (it was), but we'll see what he says later. Any tips on procedure from here etc, as is the first time it's happened in 7 years of cycling commuting. Will also be off a week or so, as a contractor I therefore don't get paid.

Thanks in advance"

I note that you sent him your condolences. I wonder, did his now smashed helmet do him any good? I note that you refrained from commenting. Leave it out of the population statistics though, eh?

That's not a cheap shot. I know this guy was unlucky and that this might never happen to him again, but it just IS NOT unreasonable for an experience like this to inform the decision to wear a helmet, in case of a repeat.

always_tyred

BentMikey wrote:

Always Tyred wrote:

Isn't this a bit like blaming the police when your bike gets stolen, rather than blaming the bloke who nicked it? Lets not look sight of the fact that the culprit here is the average (British) driver, not a.n. other cyclist trying to look after their head.

No, I don't see that.

I've got another one for you, one of your own posts:

"Yeah, LOL on the legs! Funnily enough the "Bollo" incident was on a fixed wheel upright bike, not the 'bent. Lots of people seem to think riding a very low 'bent like mine is dangerous, but I think it's actually safer than riding the upright:

* They see you more often. Weird this one, but it's true. I get more SMIDSYs on uprights than on the 'bent. It's not as though drivers don't see potholes or paint on the road.
* Any accident is met feet first rather than headfirst.
* Available braking power on the 'bent is easily twice that of any upright bicycle in the dry. Maybe this is not quite such a plus, because with risk compensation I tend to go a little faster and brake a little later."

I suppose that you don't see the irony in the second of your three bullet points, either.

BentMikey

Another cheap shot, or two actually.

If all the "helmet saved my life" examples were true, don't you think they would show up on the population level? They don't, because increased helmet wearing doesn't lead to reduced deaths and serious head injuries.

What irony in my point two? Since I don't believe a helmet is going to help me in a crash, I don't see the difference between avoiding hitting my head, with or without a helmet. You, on the other hand, imply you'd quite happily take a headfirst flight over your handlebars, as long as you could wear a helmet.

Cunobelin

Always Tyred wrote:

BentMikey wrote:

Always Tyred wrote:

Isn't this a bit like blaming the police when your bike gets stolen, rather than blaming the bloke who nicked it? Lets not look sight of the fact that the culprit here is the average (British) driver, not a.n. other cyclist trying to look after their head.

No, I don't see that.

I didn't think you would.

I spotted the following post on another thread:

"Driver turning right cut the corner and we collided at relatively low speed. My injuries are a gashed shin and aches and pains. Last I saw of the bike, front wheel was a mess (which doesn't bode well for the frame) and helmet is wrecked. Coppers were on scene v quick and I was carted off in an ambulance. Driver said it was his fault (it was), but we'll see what he says later. Any tips on procedure from here etc, as is the first time it's happened in 7 years of cycling commuting. Will also be off a week or so, as a contractor I therefore don't get paid.

Thanks in advance"

I note that you sent him your condolences. I wonder, did his now smashed helmet do him any good? I note that you refrained from commenting. Leave it out of the population statistics though, eh?

That's not a cheap shot. I know this guy was unlucky and that this might never happen to him again, but it just IS NOT unreasonable for an experience like this to inform the decision to wear a helmet, in case of a repeat.

In this case perhaps, but if we now put up two accidents without head injuries, would that prove helmets are not needed?

Anecdote is exactly that a personal experience and applicable to thet incident only..... it is not transferrable, assumptions are made, but that is all they are - assumptions.

This is however a classic example of where the problem lies.... we are blaming the victim if they have not protected themselves against the inadequacies, poor judgement and failure to act in aresponsible manner of the driver.

Lets be honest here we should be discussing how we can stop drivers driving inthis way.

always_tyred

Lets be honest here we should be discussing how we can stop drivers driving inthis way.

Yes.

Would be nice to make dealing with cyclistst part of the driving test and something other than an afterthought in the highway code.

But please god, don't bring back the cycling proficiency test. As I recall, they encouraged you to stop at the left and wait for a break in traffic to turn right, and not to accidentally obstruct the guy holding the flag running in front of the car.

always_tyred

BentMikey wrote:

Another cheap shot, or two actually.

If all the "helmet saved my life" examples were true, don't you think they would show up on the population level? They don't, because increased helmet wearing doesn't lead to reduced deaths and serious head injuries.

Well, maybe not. There is a counter argument which makes sense to me.

Bear with me - I'll try to keep this short - but its close to the basis of our philosphical difference.

- Due to its mass, there are good odds that your head is going to hit the ground in a fall.
- In a big accident, i.e. one that gets you into hospital and onto the statistics, you are also likely to have banged your head.
- Either the bang on your head will be a major aspect of the injury, or it will be just another injury, along with road rash and other bruising.
- If the former, theres a good chance it will be "out of range" of your helmet's protection (we agree that they are limited)
- If this case you get an over emphasis on "helmet wouldn't / didn't save life" type stats
- If the latter, what you get is a recording that some non serious head injury ocurred. And, since there's a high probablility that the head will have been listed as one of the other body parts injured, this will be a comparatively large number.

This is the experinental "noise" that people have been referring to.

- If its a small accident, it doesn't get onto the stats at all (by "small" I mean small enough not to result in hospital admission, which can be pretty big)

So this type of data is only going to flag where helmets prevent a head injury that would have been a serious head injury without it being worn, which would require them to operate in a regime that we know they don't operate in.

So I believe that you are looking to measure a modest effect using data that is particularly insensitive to it. Its like looking for the ripples from a pi55 in a fountain.

What you have to realise is that data that shows that helmets do nothing looks exactly the same as data that doesn't measure the effect at all. For example, you have 5 studies, 3 are crap, 2 are good, one shows benefits of helmet use. It would appear that of the 5 studies, 4 show the same thing, whereas 3 show nothing and the other two contradict.

I think the BMA pointed this out.
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BentMikey

That's an admission that helmets don't do anything for our safety!!! I'll say it again, if it's hidden in the "noise", the helmet effect is meaningless over the general population. This is quite unlike, for example, the effect of large numbers of cyclists on overall cyclist safety.

Gr.uB

Yep. I tried it without but didn't feel as safe. I don't care if it is all in my head, I feel better for wearing one so I will. I don't care what anyone else does or think. I also support choice. I do not support compulsory helmet wearing.

always_tyred

BentMikey wrote:

That's an admission that helmets don't do anything for our safety!!! I'll say it again, if it's hidden in the "noise", the helmet effect is meaningless over the general population. This is quite unlike, for example, the effect of large numbers of cyclists on overall cyclist safety.

You haven't understood.

The argument is that the measurement is insentitive to the thing being measured. Its like trying to distinguish differences in volumes of sounds at the limit of audible frequencies, compared to in the middle of the audible range. The amplidude differences can be the same in both cases, but you could be unable to tell in the former.

Cheys03

Wearing a helmet just makes my head too hot. So I don't.

BentMikey

I've understood perfectly well. You want helmets to show a big safety effect, but the real effect is so small it's not visible over the general population, bummer for your side of the debate. You've failed to explain why other factors, such as good cycle craft and the safety in numbers effect are so easily visible in stats, which makes your case even less credible.

always_tyred

BentMikey wrote:

I've understood perfectly well. You want helmets to show a big safety effect, but the real effect is so small it's not visible over the general population, bummer for your side of the debate. You've failed to explain why other factors, such as good cycle craft and the safety in numbers effect are so easily visible in stats, which makes your case even less credible.

What I'm trying to explain is the difference between a "null" and a "negative" result.

Besides, helmet safety does show up in some stats, not in others.

We might be at crossed purposes to some degree, because I fully agree that cycle craft and more cyclists are big effects. Helmet use is, for me, a means of mitigating a residual risk and I do whatever I can to render my helmet ornamental.

On the offchance that I have an accident, my position is that a helmet is likely enough to be useful so as to make its use all the time worthwhile. That's why I wear full fingered gloves year round, that's why I wear glasses at night.

These choices are all borne of painful experience, after each of which I felt rather silly once I realised how avoidable my particular injury was.

Its been about 4 years since I came off in a big way and during the course of my cycling life, going back to when I was a kid, I've hit the deck hard maybe 10 times in a big way, something of that order. Of those, I hit my head 3 times and was unconscious twice. Of the others, I've scratched my helmet a couple more times, meaning at the very least I'd have a scalp abraison.

So you could take this one of two ways - either you would think that falling off every couple of years is pretty rare and banging your head twice in 30 odd years is very very rare, so why bother.

On the other hand, you could take the view that although I'm probably not going to fall, if I do I've got a roughly 50:50 chance of either a concussion or a cut/abraison on my head. Forfor the sake of a trivial piece of kit that I hardly notice, I can almost totally eliminate this possibility.

But if I get totally mullered by a vehicle, I don't expect my leather palmed gloves, or my helmet, to be all that much use. Just like you.

So the difference appears to me to be a confidence thing. I think I'm a good cyclist, but I'm not confident I can indefinitely avoid trouble. If I don't, I'm confident that I've taken measures to prevent what injuries I can.

You, on the other hand, seem confident that you can avoid all serious incidents and that the ones you can't will either be trivial or will be so bad that you won't care.

Honest question, from someone who's never cycled feet first - it seems to me that many of my fears and experiences relate to falls from a about 6 feet to the ground. My guess would be that you have a whole other set of injuries to worry about when you start near to the ground in the first place.

Not withstanding the foregoing antagonism, if a great deal of your cycling is on a recumbent, could this possibly colour your perspective?

BentMikey

Always Tyred wrote:

You, on the other hand, seem confident that you can avoid all serious incidents and that the ones you can't will either be trivial or will be so bad that you won't care.

No, this is not true. Good post, btw, it now seems we're much closer in our viewpoints than before.

I do expect the risk of a crash and related KSI possibility. However, that risk is about the same as for walking. If none of us bother to wear a helmet for walking, why bother for something else with similar risk? Secondly, I'm not so sure that helmet efficacy or lack thereof is "hidden in the noise", or that they are effective at all. I also think there's just as much chance that the helmet will cause me an injury as prevent one, such as a neck injury, or the very serious rotational brain injury.

Lastly, I don't just ride a recumbent, I also have a fixed wheel upright, and skate a lot. I would think that each bike gets an equal split of around 40% of my miles, and the skates perhaps 10%. I would guess I've fallen a great deal more than you have, although that's mostly off my skates. All skaters fall regularly, no matter how good they are.

I guess the main difference between us is that we both believe in the possibility of cut/abrasion injuries, and you wear a helmet against them, whilst I'm not very bothered. I've found that nearly all my road rash won't be prevented by a helmet. You also believe that a helmet might prevent a concussion or worse, whilst I don't believe that it will. A concussion or worse brain injury definitely does worry me.

btw. I meant to post this at the weekend, but had internet troubles.

alfablue

Mikey, can I just ask about this statistic, cycling as risky as walking, is that per mile travelled or duration (time on foot / on bike)? And is the risk for head injury, falls (with or without head injury), or collisions?

BentMikey

alfablue wrote:

Mikey, can I just ask about this statistic, cycling as risky as walking, is that per mile travelled or duration (time on foot / on bike)? And is the risk for head injury, falls (with or without head injury), or collisions?

It's based on PACT 2001 - where per mile cycling is less risky than walking. If you take it per hour, then it swaps around, which is why a fair comparison is to say that they are roughly equivalent. I think that sometimes per mile is a good comparison when doing short-medium utility journeys, and sometimes per hour is a better comparison when you're talking about longer distances. This is across the UK, for all cyclists and all walkers.

The risks are for KSIs, or killed and seriously injured.

always_tyred

Don't get me wrong; I do think that if something more serious than a "spill" occurs, a helmet gives my head a slightly better chance, but I'm happy to concede that this may not be supported - it would, after all, fall into the categories that ought to show more often in stats.

The rotational issues seem to me to be just the sort of thing that, in highsight in a few years time, we will look back at and say "God, do you remember those old polystyrene helmets? They stuck out so far...." Lets face it, polystyrene is used because it is cheap. I'm sure NASA have something better.

Elsewhere, and at the risk of starting a new thread, I spotted a reference to recumbents being "safer".

Personally, I've never ridden one. Would be intrigued to know why they might be safer - honestly, to the uninitiated it looks terrifying.

BentMikey

Always Tyred wrote:

Elsewhere, and at the risk of starting a new thread, I spotted a reference to recumbents being "safer".

Personally, I've never ridden one. Would be intrigued to know why they might be safer - honestly, to the uninitiated it looks terrifying.

I think that's a very understandable viewpoint, and shared by lots of people. Here's my take, which is largely only my opinion, but it seems to be shared by many other recumbent riders.

I get seen far more often than when I'm on the upright, particularly at junctions. I think it's something to do with being very unusual looking, having a strange leg motion, and looking a little like a predator in being low and fast. Being low doesn't prevent drivers from seeing potholes or paint on the road, and I'm a lot higher than those.

Drivers give you the time and space you'd love to have on an upright, I suspect because the scary thing puts the fear of God into them.

Any accident is met feet first, rather than headfirst over the handlebars.

Being so low means a fall doesn't involve much vertical speed.

In the dry, I have perhaps twice the stopping power of most upright bikes just because my centre of gravity is so low relative to the front wheel contact patch. This particular factor isn't as good as it sounds initially, because I know I risk compensate and ride a little faster and brake later because of this.