Please Convince my Work Colleague to Wear a Helmet

cougie

If I had a quid for every 'helmet saved my life' story I'd be a rich man.
A doctor can't tell - He's shit hot at medicine but not at studying bike crashes.
None of my pals had helmets when we joined our bike club as school kids. I don't recall anyone dying.

Wear a helmet if you want but best of all don't get into situations where you need to rely on it. Because you can't.

Blue Meanie

I use my brain to save my skull, not my skull to save my brain.

I've been commuting for 20years by bike sans helmet, not dead yet. Interestingly, I was wearing a helmet (falshing lights, hi-viz jacket) when a car 'T-Boned' me and broke my wrist in the subsequent fall.

bails87

I'm sure one of the MTBers was riding with someone who came off and hit his head, and was told at the hospital that his helmet had saved his life. Which is funny because he'd left it at home. If they work from that far away then I think we're underestimating their powers!

El Gordo

GSVBagpuss wrote:

A good of friend of mine - tall, blond, gorgeous, female!, PhD in Mech Eng, lovely person.

She doesn't remember what happened before she was airlifted to hospital WI massive head injuries. Was only going down a muddy path. It took her 6 months to get right, get her brain back up to speed and to get our friend back but doctors say the helmet saved her life.

Guy in my office crashed his car 15 years ago on the way to work. Still can't walk quite right and has never quite been the same mentally. Why anyone drives without wearing a full face helmet is beyond me.

Wife's uncle fell down the stairs 5 years ago and is now quadriplegic. Why don't we all have mattresses installed in our hallways?

There are anecdotal stories which would stop you doing anything if you listened to them. Let the grown-ups make their own minds up though.

crankycrank

Deako wrote:

The work commute for him is around 20 minutes in the Solihull/Birmingham area. Some of the worst drivers in the Midlands are on the roads here, and i nearly get hit every time i go out in my car, let alone on a cycle.

You should be wearing a helment while driving then as it is clearly stupid given the risks you're taking. Can we start a thread to convince Deako to wear a helmet in his car? Sorry if that comes across as harsh but that is what your efforts probably sound like to your co-worker. I'm 53yo been riding since I was 5yo and don't wear a helmet because I find them very uncomfortable. I am fully aware of the risks of cycling without a helmet and have read all the data on helmet construction, injury statistics, etc. and have yet to be further educated by anyone who feels they need to tell me to wear a helmet. I find it highly annoying that on many rides some yahoo has to ask me "where's your helmet" or "I have a friend who would be dead if he/she wasn't wearing their helmet when they crashed". Ironically these self appointed nannies are usually the cyclists that seem to have the worst riding skills and least amount of common sense among us. I can't tell you how many times a random cyclist will pull up along side me giving me a lecture on helmets all the while drifting out of the bike lane and into traffic and completely unaware of their surroundings not only endangering themselves but myself and others as well. If your co-worker has good skills and uses some common sense while riding leave him alone so he can concentrate on his riding and staying safe.

bails87

crankycrank wrote:

Deako wrote:

The work commute for him is around 20 minutes in the Solihull/Birmingham area. Some of the worst drivers in the Midlands are on the roads here, and i nearly get hit every time i go out in my car, let alone on a cycle.

You should be wearing a helment while driving then as it is clearly stupid given the risks you're taking. Can we start a thread to convince Deako to wear a helmet in his car?

Or possibly convince him not to drive!

bompington

cougie wrote:

None of my pals had seat belts when we started driving. I don't recall anyone dying.

FTFY

Actually I wear a helmet because, after weighing up all the evidence, I think that overall it will probably reduce the severity of injury in any crash involving a head impact, while I consider any potential downside from wearing one to be insignificantly small. The two occasions when I have split helmets without suffering any noticeable head injury are included in my personal assessment, anecdotal though they may be.

We could do with a few less straw men in this argument - I don't think there are actually that many people who believe that wearing a helmet should be made compulsory because it will save your life in any crash.

And as for the "I don't need a helmet because I rely on my smart thinking / ninja reflexes / super-keen eyesight and hearing / whatever, and I'm not dead yet" - I should point out that the rabbit's foot that I carry everywhere* to ward off maneating lions has so far proved to be 100% effective.




*This is actually fiction, I should point out. Perhaps like some of the other anecdotes in this thread?

bails87

Bompington: as said above, this isn't about an individual choice, but about one adult bullying another into doing something he doesn't want to do.

Initialised

Last winter I lost control on ice, the front wheel went and I landed on my head. I had a helmet on, I was fine, my knee and shoulder took some damage but noting major. Without a helmet I'd have been looking at concussion at the least and permanent brain damage at worst. Another time it meant I scratched my cheek rather than cracked my skull. That said there is a body of evidence that if you don't wear a helmet cars give you more room and consideration. So 6=2x3. It's personal choice, let Darwin have the final say.

Underscore

bompington wrote:

cougie wrote:

None of my pals had seat belts when we started driving. I don't recall anyone dying.

FTFY

• A guy in the year above me at sixth form did die not wearing a seatbelt when he hit a wall and was thrown through the windscreen. Of course, hitting a wall wearing a seatbelt would not necessarily have been any better...
• There is a fundamental difference between helmets and seatbelts: the statistics indicate that seatbelts reduce KSIs; for helmets, this is only true of children

bompington wrote:

Actually I wear a helmet because, after weighing up all the evidence, I think that overall it will probably reduce the severity of injury in any crash involving a head impact, while I consider any potential downside from wearing one to be insignificantly small. The two occasions when I have split helmets without suffering any noticeable head injury are included in my personal assessment, anecdotal though they may be.

I also wear a helmet most of the time - though for slightly different reasons - but are you aware that , when a helmet splits in two, it actually does very little to protect you? Helmets work by absorbing energy as the polystyrene crushes. If it splits, very little energy is absorbed so your head takes almost as much force as it would have done without a helmet. Since this has happened to you twice, might I suggest that you check that your helmet is the appropriate shape for your head and that you have it correctly adjusted?

_

wyadvd

DrLex wrote:

nadir wrote:

[...]which would confer no benefit and could actually make the situation worse if he were to have an accident

Without a credible citation, this remains an opinion. Sure, it's of no benefit in certain types of accident (lorry effectively bisects you, but thankfully these are rare. It's not impossible to conceive of a helmet exacerbating or causing an injury, (e.g. snags on something) but the chances of such must be incredibly small.

Whilst I sympathize with the OP, attempting to tell adults what to do contrary to their own decision is almost always a futile exercise, the usual sole benefit being a salved conscience. If you must persist, just ask him what flowers he'd like in the ICU or at the crematorium and leave it at that.

http://www.cyclecraft.co.uk/digest/effectiveness.pdf

wyadvd

read this and think, just think about risk if you actually understand the concept at all!!:

http://www.cyclecraft.co.uk/digest/effectiveness.pdf

(I wear a helmet BTW, but only cos I can strap lights to it that I can shine in the eyes of people at side junctions)

meanredspider

wyadvd wrote:

read this and think, just think about risk if you actually understand the concept at all!!:

http://www.cyclecraft.co.uk/digest/effectiveness.pdf

(I wear a helmet BTW, but only cos I can strap lights to it that I can shine in the eyes of people at side junctions)

That just made me cross because of all of the flaws in the arguments he makes (as well as it being nearly 12 years out of date)

DrLex

meanredspider wrote:

That just made me cross because of all of the flaws in the arguments he makes (as well as it being nearly 12 years out of date)

Ditto; light-weight ramble through a few papers/articles from around the world- only slightly better than a piece in the opinion section of the Broadsheets.

OP- have you (in a Clarkson-like manner) threatened to shoot your colleague's pet in front of him & his family unless he dons a lid?

(there- we're in danger of not making four pages, let alone 34!)

AmmacoDresden

So, it looks like my virgin post is going to be on this old chestnut Having ridden a motorcycle all my life and been off it more than couple of times, my helmet has very rarely been scratched, and NEVER dented! Consequently I eschew misshapen polystyrene lumps on a bicycle in favour of taking care and having bright lights. Just don't get me started on hi-viz!!!!

mmuk

surely this can't stop at 3 pages?

Underscore

DrLex wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

That just made me cross because of all of the flaws in the arguments he makes (as well as it being nearly 12 years out of date)

Ditto; light-weight ramble through a few papers/articles from around the world- only slightly better than a piece in the opinion section of the Broadsheets.

So could you provide a link to a more thorough evaluation of the statistics and which supports the proposition that helmet use (even of the non-mandatory form) reduces KSIs amongst adult cyclists?

meanredspider

Underscore wrote:

DrLex wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

That just made me cross because of all of the flaws in the arguments he makes (as well as it being nearly 12 years out of date)

Ditto; light-weight ramble through a few papers/articles from around the world- only slightly better than a piece in the opinion section of the Broadsheets.

So could you provide a link to a more thorough evaluation of the statistics and which supports the proposition that helmet use (even of the non-mandatory form) reduces KSIs amongst adult cyclists?

Absolutely not. They don't exist in either direction and to try to prove the pro or anti argument through statistics is folly.

There's not enough controlled data collected because bike riding accidents leading to injury need not be reported under law nor are insurance companies involved. The number of bikes on the road is unknown likewise is their mileage (unlike motor vehicles). There's also no data on the age or experience of their riders (unlike motor vehicles). There are huge numbers of confounding factors too. Take these (just as examples, please):

- Cars are now specifically designed AND tested to mitigate the risk of head and other injuries to PEDESTRIANS but not cyclists. To compare, therefore, the head injury stats for the two groups using only helmet use as the driver is a mistake.

- Take the Australian example. Bike use MIGHT be driven by the heightened awareness of skin cancer risk over a similar timeframe.

...and so on (please don't just pick holes in these points, they are just illustrative)

The point is that WE DON'T KNOW. Hence the endless debates. I'm sure if the debate was around seatbelt use or airbags, there would be mountains of top quality data. In cycling, there isn't. Fortunately for us (except maybe for the OP), it's down to personal choice and judgement.

CiB

Where did OP Deako get to then? Apart from a couple of contributions on p1 after his opening, not a dicky bird from him. I know it must be disappointing to start a thread and expect a million replies giving hearty encouragement to his stance and end up with something quite the opposite, but it'd be interesting to discover if:

a) his own opinion has changed
b) whether his colleague saw this thread, and what his reaction was
c) whether I can think of another thing to want to know from it
4) d surely?

Anyway.

Underscore

meanredspider wrote:

Underscore wrote:

DrLex wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

That just made me cross because of all of the flaws in the arguments he makes (as well as it being nearly 12 years out of date)

Ditto; light-weight ramble through a few papers/articles from around the world- only slightly better than a piece in the opinion section of the Broadsheets.

So could you provide a link to a more thorough evaluation of the statistics and which supports the proposition that helmet use (even of the non-mandatory form) reduces KSIs amongst adult cyclists?

Absolutely not. They don't exist in either direction and to try to prove the pro or anti argument through statistics is folly.

So why are some people so keen to portray those who chose not to wear a helmet as having a death wish? There is a lot of data (even if of questionable quality) that has been collected around helmet use and, as you point out, for every (flawed) analysis showing helmet use to be positive, there seems to be an (equally flawed) analysis showing the opposite. The only conclusion that I can see can be drawn from this is that, whether there is a positive or negative effect overall from wearing a helmet, it must be pretty small or the meta-studies would have unanimously started to show a net positive.

Hence, when it was stated that persuading this work colleague to wear a helmet was trying to do something "which would confer no benefit and could actually make the situation worse if he were to have an accident", this was opinion (and stated in a confrontational way - but this is a helmet thread after all, so what do you expect!) but is an opinion which appears to be the most reasonable one to hold given the evidence available.

_

P.S. Please note that I say this as a helmet user (most of the time...)

DrLex

Wait- are you saying that there are studies that show the wearing of helmets to be detrimental? I'd like to see those.

Kieran_Burns

DrLex wrote:

Wait- are you saying that there are studies that show the wearing of helmets to be detrimental? I'd like to see those.

A hundred people were surveyed and asked if that guy wearing a helmet looked like a knob.

89 said yes.

DrLex

Hmmm, with the Lycra as well, I've got no chance!

Underscore

DrLex wrote:

Wait- are you saying that there are studies that show the wearing of helmets to be detrimental? I'd like to see those.

I've not reviewed the reports but, according to the Wikipedia article (with my emphasis):

Wikipedia wrote:

There are many other studies. The largest, covering eight million cyclist injuries over 15 years, showed no effect on serious injuries and a small but significant increase in risk of fatality. Although the head injury rate in the US rose in this study by 40 % as helmet use rose from 18 % to 50 %, this is a time-trend analysis with the potential weaknesses mentioned above; the correlation may not be causal. Association with increased risk has been reported in other studies.

_

MrChuck

DrLex wrote:

Wait- are you saying that there are studies that show the wearing of helmets to be detrimental? I'd like to see those.

The detrimental stuff is looking at the bigger picture, rather than at the point of an isolated accident. So it's not saying that if you have a crash you'd be better off without a helmet, but more along the lines of:

- helmets puts people off cycling (either 'cos it's too much percieved hassle, or it makes it seem really dangerous)
- less people cycling -> more accidents/people getting knocked off

So one position is that making helmets mandatory* is worse for cyclists in general.

*That's not quite the same as saying it's bad if people choose to wear them though.

Daz555

DrLex wrote:

Wait- are you saying that there are studies that show the wearing of helmets to be detrimental? I'd like to see those.

As above.

There is some sketchy stuff about rotational injuries and the like but generally no, the wearing of helmets is not detrimental in itself. What is detrimental to cyclists is ANYTHING which discourages others from cycling. Fewer cyclists = more drivers and more busses = more cyclists killed. It is very simple in that regard.

The best way to reduce cycling related fatalities and serious injuries is to get more people walking and cycling every day. Suggestions of compulsory helmet law as well as the constant banging on from the pro helmet mafia do NOTHING to encourage people onto two wheels - in fact they do the opposite.

It is a sad fact but so many people will not cycle because they think it is too dangerous - what a bizarre state of affairs to find ourselves in. Those of us with an open attitude to cycle helmets have not contributed to this problem - the pro helmet mafia cannot say the same.

CiB

I suspect that this is irrelevant now as OP's colleague has presumably met the fate confidently predicted to befall him by Deako, having been cycling amongst the murderous W Mids drivers for another couple of weeks sans hat. Poor chap.

meanredspider

Daz555 wrote:

. What is detrimental to cyclists is ANYTHING which discourages others from cycling. Fewer cyclists = more drivers and more busses = more cyclists killed. It is very simple in that regard.
.

Interesting logic going on here though. Anything that discourages people is bad - followed by a message about more traffic leads to more dead cyclists. Apart from the not even being sure that the statement is true,

http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/b ... ies-31271/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ju ... record-low

So just reading these two articles - traffic fell in 2010 but cycling deaths increased.

And cycling deaths have halved since the '90s yet the number of vehicles on the roads has increased.

I can't see how you can substantiate your more vehicles = more cycling deaths theory.

I also don't think that there's a "pro helmet mafia". Figures suggest that 80% of cyclists wear a lid - I'm not sure that a "vast majority" can be described as a "mafia" (assuming that most people wear a lid because they believe it is beneficial in some way).

So much of this whole helmet debate is misinformed and based upon supposition and conjecture.

Kieran_Burns

meanredspider wrote:

Daz555 wrote:

. What is detrimental to cyclists is ANYTHING which discourages others from cycling. Fewer cyclists = more drivers and more busses = more cyclists killed. It is very simple in that regard.
.

Interesting logic going on here though. Anything that discourages people is bad - followed by a message about more traffic leads to more dead cyclists. Apart from the not even being sure that the statement is true,

http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/b ... ies-31271/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ju ... record-low

So just reading these two articles - traffic fell in 2010 but cycling deaths increased.

And cycling deaths have halved since the '90s yet the number of vehicles on the roads has increased.

I can't see how you can substantiate your more vehicles = more cycling deaths theory.

I also don't think that there's a "pro helmet mafia". Figures suggest that 80% of cyclists wear a lid - I'm not sure that a "vast majority" can be described as a "mafia" (assuming that most people wear a lid because they believe it is beneficial in some way).

So much of this whole helmet debate is misinformed and based upon supposition and conjecture.

that's just what people will have you believe....

DrLex

Kieran_Burns wrote:

that's just what people will have you believe....

I can see that your helmet is lined with tin-foil...