Can you Justify wearing a Helmet

Dannyboy95

I wear a helmet all the time its second nature to always put it on and if I didn't wear it I would feel naked. But heres the thing truthfully yes head Injuries I suppose out of all common cycling injuries are the biggest killers. But I sometimes wonder would a helmet really save you from a collision with a car the damage suffered to you body let alone your head would be possibly devastating. But the question is if we only protect our head why not the rest of our bodies. Can you justify wearing them and hoping they are going to save you if you come into contact with a car :?: :idea:

The Northern Monkey

So today I wore...

Full face helmet.
Goggles.
Gloves.
Full upper body armour.
Padded shorts.
Knee/shin guards.

Not many cars on DH trails though.

Tomorrow I will wear...

Piss pot.
Gloves.
Padded shorts.
Knee pads.

Again, not sure how many car's i'll encounter on an xc route.

TheNorthernTrain

Dannyboy95 wrote:

I wear a helmet all the time its second nature to always put it on and if I didn't wear it I would feel naked. But heres the thing truthfully yes head Injuries I suppose out of all common cycling injuries are the biggest killers. But I sometimes wonder would a helmet really save you from a collision with a car the damage suffered to you body let alone your head would be possibly devastating. But the question is if we only protect our head why not the rest of our bodies. Can you justify wearing them and hoping they are going to save you if you come into contact with a car :?: :idea:

I wear a helmet, and pad my knee and shins. The only reason I don't go with pressure suits and arm guards is because of how hot I get, if I had the ability to ride the techy downhills I would consider wearing them.

As for colliding with a car... this is the mountain bike forum... not the commuter or roadie

The Rookie

Almost anything you break will heal, your brain won't, and even full armour won't prevent spinal injuries as they are not caused by impact alone, therefor the Helmet is the first thing to wear.

Simon

Dannyboy95

yes fair point hahaha should have thought twice before putting it on the mountain bike forum. Time to copy and paste lol. :roll:

chez_m356

Dannyboy95 wrote:

yes fair point hahaha should have thought twice before putting it on the mountain bike forum. Time to copy and paste lol. :roll:

even better if you had put it in the relevant section, the heading'' MTB Workshop & Tech'' should have given you a clue, or even reading some of the posts in this section

cooldad

So you're planning on trolling all the forums? Been asked plenty of times before. In all the forums.

Muttly1981

Lets just say i was glad of my full face lid today after a (fantastic) off and the backwheel hitting me on the back of the head

ilm_zero7

always wore a helmet - and after an off that trashed my shoulder, and cracked my helmet about 5 weeks ago , I would not think twice about £150 for a UCI helmet

felix.london

No cars where I ride. More worried about the trees & rocks!

Helmet, subgear, knee pads, shades/goggles & gloves on every ride. And now have flats on the DH bike so shin pads might be in order but will see how I get on without

twowheelthrill

Just strap a cushion on yer head! :roll:

chazkayak

I dont understand those people that wear full face helmets, neck braces maybe shin protectors but no body armour.

Makes no sense to me

stubs

My helmet paid for itself yesterday. Chasing my mate who is shorter than me he skimmed underneath a branch which I got full on the front of my lid knocked my visor off but didnt hurt. Would have been a good scalp injury to show down the pub.

cooldad

That happens to me a lot. Might not save my life, but saves some pain.

peter413

chazkayak wrote:

I dont understand those people that wear full face helmets, neck braces maybe shin protectors but no body armour.

Makes no sense to me

Why doesn't it make sense? I wear just a full face, neck brake and knee pads when riding downhill most of the time. Does riding in a full face and knee pads also make no sense to you?

Full face helmets are known to increase rotational risk so if a neck brace can help prevent this surely it is a good thing. Some people find body armour uncomfortable. I don't like wearing arm protection most of the time because it just isn't as comfortable and spine plates with kidney belts restrict my breathing so they tend to be for uplifts only. I know I could just undo the belt for pushing up but that's extra hassle and I'm not just pushing up and coming down a lot of the time.

Not to mention the fact that you quite often have to modify body armour to get it to work with a neck brace properly.

Rankles

It's pretty silly not to wear a helmet, but they aren't meant to protect you from being hit by cars, they're for stopping you cracking your skull onto floors and trees when you come off.

Believe it or not, they won't protect you from bullets or fire either.

cooldad

Rankles wrote:

It's pretty silly not to wear a helmet, but they aren't meant to protect you from being hit by cars, they're for stopping you cracking your skull onto floors and trees when you come off.

Believe it or not, they won't protect you from bullets or fire either.

Seriously, if they're that rubbish I might dump mine. Just can't justify wearing it anymore to protect me from heavily armed badgers.

angry_bird

Always wear a helmet. Definitely grateful for them. Bust a few over the past couple of years, hate to think what would have happened if I weren't wearing them.

For XC I'll wear some knee pads too, can't be doing with much more as it just becomes a pain.

When DHing I always wear FF, knee pads, body armour, gloves, goggles.

chazkayak wrote:

I dont understand those people that wear full face helmets, neck braces maybe shin protectors but no body armour.

Makes no sense to me

Last crash the helmet did a nice job, the body armour did it's work as I ended up bouncing and rolling down the trail, as I'm guessing did my knee pads seeing as the only injuries I suffered were whiplash and a slightly bruised posterior. But that's the first time in 8 months of using it that I think the body armour has actually done anything other than make me hot and sweaty... I wear it but can totally see why other people don't bother

Have to say the next purchase will be a neck brace. Makes a lot of sense to wear one when DHing.

IBISMojoHDamon

I know you are not saying NOT to wear a helmet.... But the guy at Swinley would I'm sure be eating and drinking through a straw if he wasn't wearing his today..... Although it was a Road bike helmet....

chazkayak

The point I was trying to make was.......You pay out lots of money for a Helmet (Which I always wear!!) and some people pay out the same amount for a neck brace which can save your .....neck...... but then not to wear body armour,

I dont understand those people who dont wear body armour.

kenan

chazkayak wrote:

I dont understand those people who dont wear body armour.

I don't wear it, but wear a full face and neck brace. If I brake my neck/head I'm fucked, but can live with an arm/shoulder injury (I don't however go fast enough to get hurt)

I dabble with XC-slow DH and its strange how much or little protection people wear for different disciplines. End of the days it’s what you feel you need. A friend broke his nose and his full face riding the normal Thursday XC loop.......

peter413

chazkayak wrote:

The point I was trying to make was.......You pay out lots of money for a Helmet (Which I always wear!!) and some people pay out the same amount for a neck brace which can save your .....neck...... but then not to wear body armour,

I dont understand those people who dont wear body armour.

As I said above, some people just don't find it comfortable.

angry_bird

Bones repair themselves quite well generally, your brain and spinal cord, that's a different matter...

It's very noticeable wearing body armour, it gets very warm, can get quite uncomfortable after a while and at the end of the day has isn't necessarily going to stop anything other than a few cuts and bruises.

If you hit something with enough momentum to break your ribs, or your collarbone you're going to break them, and only if you're very unlucky is such an injury going to have severe consequences. If you're lucky it might stop you smashing your arm to bits on a rock assuming it has ample arm protection... then again it might not.

When it comes down to spine protection in body armour... not really sure what my opinion is on it, nice to have but not sure how at risk my back really is when I'm crashing, I've yet to really come close to hurting it *touch wood* (apart from my bum if that counts). It doesn't stop the spine bending/overextending, might stop stuff cutting the skin and penetrating it but if you're going to damage it you're going to damage it.

Giraffoto

I can justify it - it's my head, I'll put what I like on it. Not saying it's a deeply intellectual justification though. . .

Anonymous

Can we just make this a Frequently Pointless Argument topic?

This will just drag on for pages with the pros and cons and the usual non-facts trotted out. Only fact is there are no facts as the only way to prove it is to do the accident for real with the same real person, replicating it exactly, once with a helmet and once without, see if he survives both.

Ultimately, the helmet may save your life, it may not. Take your pick. What usually is ignored is whether it saves you from a non-fatal but serious injury.

Does it cause other injuries - possibly. I'll chuck in the anecdotal evidence so no proof here and just opinions from one set of doctors. My crash, yes they strongly said the helmet saved my head from more serious injury, if not a fatality. It was also suggested that it may have been a factor in my back break however. That's all just opinion, I trust it though and personally I'm very happy to have worn a helmet as I think the injury I got was better than if I hadn't. But that's just me.

Up to you to assess the risk. If you want to wear one go ahead. If you don't, well you take that risk too. Just don't ride with me as I do not want to be the one dealing with the consequences.

Oh, and if this is about car crashes (as the OP was talking about, and also all helmet tests are only road related), then why post this in the MTB forum?

cycle monster

Ha, someone from the dark side posts something in entirely the wrong place and then two pages of the usual ensues wthin hours. Perhaps we should have separate sections for lights, helmets and other issues worth invading other countries over?

NJG01

Dannyboy95 wrote:

I wear a helmet all the time its second nature to always put it on and if I didn't wear it I would feel naked. But heres the thing truthfully yes head Injuries I suppose out of all common cycling injuries are the biggest killers. But I sometimes wonder would a helmet really save you from a collision with a car the damage suffered to you body let alone your head would be possibly devastating. But the question is if we only protect our head why not the rest of our bodies. Can you justify wearing them and hoping they are going to save you if you come into contact with a car :?: :idea:

I, as per several replies, don't encounter many cars while out mountain biking. Besides, I thought helmets were only designed to absorb fairly slow impacts? Like falls but not getting run into by a car.

Its blind luck if you survive getting hit directly by a car unless they are only doing a little above a walking pace.

stanarchist

20 years ago this summer I was riding home from work on a saturday morning. Usual route about 10 miles 60/40% off and on road, a ride I did most days - nothing sepctacular, bit of singletrack through some woods, bridleway and quite roads.
About 3/4 of the way home i came off the trail and on to a quiet country lane - next thing I know I'm about an inch from the back of a VW camper- then bang - then sirens. Don't really know what happend (no witnesses and driver denied all knowledge, paramedics reckon he reversed out of a field into my path) .
I was found by a dog walker unconcious etc. She managed to raise the alarm and when the paramedics arrived they thought I'd broken my neck and/or back. Got to the hospital and after x-rays etc it was found I hadn't actually broken anything more than my nose, but I had recieved a fairly serious injury to my spine that resulted in me been paralysed from the waist down for a couple of days. I still get back pain now and suffer from the odd episode of numbness in my legs - but I still ride a bike almost everyday

Getting back to the actual accident it would appear that the damage to the camper van was mainly caused by the impact from my helmeted head - one of the classic Etto helmets from back in the day. At the hospital the neuro surgeon came to see me with the helmet in a bag - it was in pieces, having done exacly what it was supposed to do. - he made it quite clear that for the impact to cause as much damage to the van (I broke the interior frame just under the rear window ) if I hadn't been wearing a helmet we wouldn't have been having the conversation.

Since then I think theres only really been one crash where I think the helmet stopped me from an injury. Most crashes result in bruising and skin abrasions - but I never have (and never will) wear body armour.

So it's up to you wether you wear one or not but if I hadn't on that day I wouldn't have been writing this , I wouldn't have seen my sons grow up to be men and I wouldn' have bought my first grandson his first balance bike and cycle helmet at christmas.

No helmet - no ride

ilovedirt

chazkayak wrote:

The point I was trying to make was.......You pay out lots of money for a Helmet (Which I always wear!!) and some people pay out the same amount for a neck brace which can save your .....neck...... but then not to wear body armour,

I dont understand those people who dont wear body armour.

A broken neck/brain damage is potentially life threatening. A broken leg/arm etc, however painful, isn't life threatening. Besides, if you're going to break a bone, body armour isn't going to do anything. All it does is prevent cuts and bruises. I wear gloves, knee pads and a full face, to protect the regions that I frequently go down on if I am to crash whilst riding downhill. If I happen to injure something else, it's bad luck, and it's a pain in the arse to completely cover myself in body armour to protect every inch of myself in case of every possible type of injury. Not to mention on a warm day, you're probably putting yourself more at risk by doing so because of dehydration etc.

McWulf

Yes, every time. Won't save me from a head-on collision (with a car or the bottom of a rock face, to get back on to mtb stuff) but I don't otherwise see the down side. Saved me from a nasty fall last year. Broke my arm but my head was in one piece.

uk_mr_brownstone

Not read all the replies so similar comments may already... I really do not get any anti-helmet argument. Seems like every couple of weeks I read about some drunk nobs fighting in towns, one gets lamped, falls down, smacks head on the kerb and dies or gets serious injuries.

Of course a car hitting you in the face at 60mph isn't going to be mediated much by a helmet. A car clipping you (or any other reason why you're going to fall from the bike) and you smack your head on the floor, a kerb, a rock, whatever, a helmet would mediate the damage if it came between your head and the hard object.

Personally, it's my head and knees I look after as first priority. I'd add neck to that if I did real DH. Body armour would be last on my list (not saying I wouldn't use it if ever doing serious DH) because head and joints need less impact to cause real injuries (barring a rouge branch spearing you in the chest or eye).