Thank god i wore my specialized helmet

chris_phillips

Today i ventured out on a regular cycling route with my partner along the cheshire lanes.
We had a tailwind and we were probably travelling in excess of 30 mph where upon i encountered a huge pothole which was not visible due to the dark bleak conditions, i attempted to avoid the hole at the last minute but in doing so lost control and tumbled to the ground head first. The end result was that my helmet had taken a considereable impact with the road and ended up cracking. The quality and safety aspect of this specialized helmet is just phenominal and i cant praise it enough. As for the roads i shall be sending pictures off to the authorities for my injuries. The compulsive hemet law is hopefully soon to be introduced and i hope well regulated . I find it hard to believe that there are people out there who have total disregard for their own personal wellbeing by not wearing a helmet.

teulk

Can you post some pictures of the damaged helmet so we can see just how much damage it saved your head from ?
When i did Lands end to John O'groats last year we stopped at a bike shop and the owner very kindly showed us a smashed helemt of a previous rider - it was totally mashed and it really brings home just how important and life saving they can be.
I recently read a post by a someone asking if helmets were compulsory for the Northern Rock Cyclone, when he found out they weren't he replied " Ive managed for 40 years without one and still in one piece." Thats like saying i never wear a seat belt and im ok..............it only takes one accident and you may not be.

chris_phillips

teulk
Will post some pics when i have some batteries for my digital camera. the iphone pics don't do the damage justice. It goes without saying if i wasn't wearing the helmet i would have suffered brain damage at the very least. The great bonus of using specialized helmets/equipment is for eg; with the helmet they have in place a crash replacement policy whereby you can claim 50% of the cost price of the helmet back if you send off the helmet along with the receipt of purchase, how goods that?

teulk

Look foward to seeingt he pics, thats a great replacement offer - i have a specialized helmet that i use when out on my mountain bike, i hope i dont have to call on the warranty though...........shame giro dont offer the same as i ride my road bike more, then again i wouldnt want to be making good on the warranty if they offered one either :-)

fizz

Sorry to hijack, But I got knocked off by a car on Wednesday. I landed on my head. This is what my MET helmet looks like now.

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e344/fizzwheel/DSC_0196-1.jpg

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e344/fizzwheel/DSC_0197.jpg

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e344/fizzwheel/DSC_0198.jpg

I'm glad I was wearing it. I shall not claim that it saved my life. But I have had it confirmed to me by the medical staff that looked after me when I got carted off to A & E that it prevented a more serious head injury.

meanredspider

Well done both of you for wearing lids. I don't believe in compulsion but I do wear a helmet every time I get on a bike as I have absolutely no doubt it's the right thing to do.

Omar Little

I dont agree in compulsion either but also wear a helmet everytime

Had a big off last week, landed on my head, cracked ribs, fractured elbow, f*cked knee and road rash all down the left side of my body - my head is the only bit not sore or stiff!

Lemond75

teulk wrote:

Look foward to seeingt he pics, thats a great replacement offer - i have a specialized helmet that i use when out on my mountain bike, i hope i dont have to call on the warranty though...........shame giro dont offer the same as i ride my road bike more, then again i wouldnt want to be making good on the warranty if they offered one either :-)

Giro do offer the same crash replacement deal.

teulk

Lemond75 wrote:

teulk wrote:

Look foward to seeingt he pics, thats a great replacement offer - i have a specialized helmet that i use when out on my mountain bike, i hope i dont have to call on the warranty though...........shame giro dont offer the same as i ride my road bike more, then again i wouldnt want to be making good on the warranty if they offered one either :-)

Giro do offer the same crash replacement deal.

Lets hope i never have to use it then

chris_phillips

lemond is spot on giro offer the same or similar policy. wearing a helmet is a no brainer pardon the pun.

Tom Butcher

Chris Phillips wrote:

I find it hard to believe that there are people out there who have total disregard for their own personal wellbeing by not wearing a helmet.

I find it hard to believe that someone could miss a pothole so large it made them fall off their bike !

Looking forwards to the pictures - the ones in the post below look like the poster would have had a minor bump on the head at worst.

Of course a helmet has the potential to preven injury but the amount of people who claim it has saved them from death of brain damage is silly - if even half of them were correct then the population of non - helmeted cyclists would be dying out faster than middle eastern monarchies.

jonwildeuk

Mr Butcher - do I presume that in the past you have come off your bike without wearing a helmet as you sound to me like you may possibly have brain damage.
Hitting your head on the tarmac at 30 mph is potentially life threatening in my eyes, otherwise the safety campaigners would not be pushing the "if you hit me at 30 there is an 80% chance I die, hit me at 20, 80% chance I live"
These campaigns arent made for the sake of something to do and I cant imagine the human brain being able to diiferentiate between how hitting the tarmac at 30 differs to being bounced off a car and hitting the tarmac at 30
I challenge you to leap head first out of a car doing 30 mph and see what heppens.
Let me know the results when we meet at the pearly gates

Tom Butcher

So what part of my post do you disagree with - if any ? You are just talking loud and saying nothing.

Kaise

I find it hard to believe that someone could miss a pothole so large it made them fall off their bike !

i must admit that is my exact thoughts when i read the original post. Helmets do save lives and i wear mine all the time, bar the occassion i dont like trundling down the tow path to the pub at 10mph max with the mrs-to-be in tow (pardon the pun)

but i dont agree with compulsion, i think the issue he is councils and there lack of effort in fixing the roads.

glad you're alright though

dilemna

I should point out other brands of helmet are available which would equally protect the head .

jonwildeuk

Its your suggestive comments that I really responded to

"but the amount of people who claim it has saved them from death of brain damage is silly - if even half of them were correct then the population of non - helmeted cyclists would be dying out faster than middle eastern monarchies"

Only the riders in question know just how big an impact they had and these people probably have a fair appreciation and understanding of the tolerances their bodies have in the impacts - to the call there claims silly is a little over judgemental. It only takes a minor knock on the temple to cause a blackout and anything major, which a 30 mph impact would proved is potentially life threatening.

Should it be compulsory, who really can say?
If a rider chooses to ride without a helmet, this would suggest to me that they don’t have as much to risk damaging between the ears. Not many people on here admit to riding without a helmet, so what difference would it make to us "sensible" riders if the law forced us to do so.

Tom Butcher

Is it really being too judgemental ? I read so many people claiming to have had their lives saved by their helmet that it seems legitimate to point out that if they were all correct then either :
a) helmeted cyclists must crash and hit their head a lot more
or b) non-helmeted cyclists must be getting killed at an alarming rate.

As the former seems unlikely and the latter is not true the only conclusion to be drawn is that in the vast majority of cases people are over estimating the severity of injury they would have sustained without a helmet.

That's not to say helmets don't protect you to some degree, I'm sure they do.

What I take exception to are the comments along the lines of anyone who doesn't wear a helmet must be an idiot with no regard for their own safety - we've seen a few such in this thread - which is then backed up with anecdotes which in the main are almost certainly grossly exaggerated.

Tom Butcher

Is it really being too judgemental ? I read so many people claiming to have had their lives saved by their helmet that it seems legitimate to point out that if they were all correct then either :
a) helmeted cyclists must crash and hit their head a lot more
or b) non-helmeted cyclists must be getting killed at an alarming rate.

As the former seems unlikely and the latter is not true the only conclusion to be drawn is that in the vast majority of cases people are over estimating the severity of injury they would have sustained without a helmet.

That's not to say helmets don't protect you to some degree, I'm sure they do.

What I take exception to are the comments along the lines of anyone who doesn't wear a helmet must be an idiot with no regard for their own safety - we've seen a few such in this thread - which is then backed up with anecdotes which in the main are almost certainly grossly exaggerated.

rick_chasey

jonwildeuk wrote:

Only the riders in question know just how big an impact they had and these people probably have a fair appreciation and understanding of the tolerances their bodies have in the impacts - to the call there claims silly is a little over judgemental. It only takes a minor knock on the temple to cause a blackout and anything major, which a 30 mph impact would proved is potentially life threatening.

But if you just 'fall off' your head isn't remotely hitting the pavement at 30mph.

that 30mph is going in a direct paralell to the road.

You'd only hit your head at that speed if you hit INTO something at that speed.

I'm not arguing either way but the 30mph impact comment is misleading.

EdinburghFixed

Ah, "last night a helmet saved my life"

Tom is right. If you take two identical groups of cyclists and give one group helmets, the number of injuries in the bareheaded group is *far* less than the number of broken helmets which prevented certain death, in the helmeted group.

What are we to make of this? Did the people wearing helmets fall off their bike more? Or did the helmet not actually save their lives? Take your pick

The helmet law in Northern Ireland failed, incidentally. So sorry to disappoint - you'll have to put up with choosing to wear one instead. It'll be tough, but hang in there.

chris_phillips

Most permanent and fatal injuries that befall cyclists are head injuries. But according to research by Robert S. Thompson, MD, director emeritus of the Department of Preventive Care at Group Health, wearing a properly fitted bicycle helmet reduces the risk of serious head injury by 85 percent and brain injury by 88 percent .
Does this not answer all of the doubters amongst you?
A little research goes a long way into putting the record straight.

tonyf34

Chris Phillips wrote:

Most permanent and fatal injuries that befall cyclists are head injuries. .

Define permanent? I grazed my knee as a 7 year old when I fell off my bike and have a scar to prove it, that is permanaent but we didn't have bicycle helmets back in 1976 to prevent it!
Where is your proof that MOST fatal injuries are caused by head trauma?
your quote is from the US only and you copied and pasted from another website!

You might want to check out further that most head injuries are caused by angular or rotational forces, something that helmets actually do not protect the wearer from and can possibly increase the chances of such.
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1039.html

Poacher

@Chris Phillips
Yes "A little research goes a long way". If you'd done some more, you'd have found that Thompson's 85% and 88% statistics have been totally discredited, and were retracted by the author.

If you genuinely want to find out what research has been done, I suggest you start with ChapmanCentral and http://www.cyclehelmets.org/

chris_phillips

Viewed both your links, still not 100% sure. So are you both suggesting that helmets are simply not needed and are therfore just another money making exercise to extract money fronm consumers. would be interested in knowing if you both wear helmets.

Poacher

Chris, I'm not telling you not to wear a helmet; if you feel happier/safer wearing one, go ahead. Just examine the evidence. I'd wear one if I did a lot of off-road riding with danger of hitting rocks/branches. However, most of my 150,000 miles or so in 50 years of cycling have been on-road, without a helmet.
I've had mishaps; the latest serious one was on a cyclepath alongside a road (Daleside Road, aka Colwick Loop Road in Nottingham) last September, when a pedestrian who'd been standing beside a segregated track, staring to his left (away from me), suddenly lurched forward into my path (it turned out he'd just spotted his bus in the distance and wanted to cross the road - why he couldn't just have crossed the road safely and waited for it like a sensible person, he was unable to explain!) . Despite my shouted warning, he took another step forward, which made a collision inevitable - I'd braked (from about 17mph to maybe 14 mph) and tried to swerve round him, but couldn't avoid him. He got spun around and dumped on the floor, and was shaken and suffered minor abrasion to the knuckles of his right hand, while I had abrasions to the knuckles of both hands (clutching the brakes), and a spectacular bruise to my right forearm - I still have no surface sensation around my right elbow. Despite apparently a near somersault my head didn't hit any hard object - if I'd been wearing a helmet it probably would have, and obviously it would have saved my life, but I wasn't, and it didn't. I could describe many other such incidents, but probably fewer than helmet compulsionists seem to have experienced.

I was just intrigued that you'd come up with the classic 85%/88% stats routinely quoted by BHIT, without apparently looking any further. I'll continue not wearing a helmet, you continue wearing one, OK?

EdinburghFixed

Chris Phillips wrote:

Viewed both your links, still not 100% sure. So are you both suggesting that helmets are simply not needed and are therfore just another money making exercise to extract money fronm consumers. would be interested in knowing if you both wear helmets.

I have seven helmets, none of which I wear while riding push bikes (except off-road, where I also wear body armour). I'm quite comfortable with the idea that jumping between trees at full speed presents different risks and warrants different equipment, for example, to going to the corner shop for milk, or to the office, or for a spin on the road.

In the specific case of trying to get everybody who rides a bike round town to wear a helmet, yes - I do think they are simply not needed (even if they prevented 100% of all bodily injury, which they don't) and I do think they are both commercial exploitation and a victim-blaming exercise by cyclists and non-cyclists alike.

Pross

Bike helmets are made of materials that are designed to disintegrate on impact, never assume that a smashed up helmet is proof that it has saved your life or that your head would have been in a similar state to the helmet. It very possibly left you with a slightly less sore head and possibly prevented serious injury but you'll never know. I've had two high speed racing crashes, one in a TT without a helmet and one in a road race with a helmet. I hit a concrete road in the first case and the base of a tree in the second (both head first). In both cases I had mild concussion and a bit of a sore head. On another day my head my have hit slightly differently and either / or may have left me with severe head injury, who knows? I always wear a helmet these days other than the occassional hill climb but I don't expect a huge amount from it other than it may make my head slightly less sore and could possibly stop some insurance company wriggling out of full compensation for my family if the worst happens.

shouldbeinbed

dilemna wrote:

I should point out other brands of helmet are available which would equally protect the head .

+lots. My first thought reading the title and OP's posts is what job has he got with Specialized? It reads as an advertising piece.

For a bit of balance, Spesh helmets are an odd shape internally for me, wearing one is like being placed into an instrument of torture. Bell, Met & Giro are infinitely more adjustable and head friendly and I could tell a similar destroyed helmet, saved head story for a Met.

You can't beat Spesh shoes tho.

vs

Bike helmets are made of materials that are designed to disintegrate on impact, never assume that a smashed up helmet is proof that it has saved your life or that your head would have been in a similar state to the helmet.

Yep. Worried? Get a motorbike helmet.

And you should probably consider wearing it for driving and walking across the road as well; activities that are equally, if not more, dangerous than cycling.

9jan11

I had a bang on the head as a 9 year old cyclist. I wasn't wearing a helmet and had a couple of stitches.

Had I been wearing a helmet I would no doubt be thankful to be here today.

freddiegrubb

:oops: On a personal note, I knew 2 riders who died of head injuries long before helmets were readily available. If you want to wear one fine, if not it's your choice, you pays your money!!!!!!!!!!