Helmet use post Richardson death

General cycling advice ( NOT technical ! )
ian
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Joined: 26 Feb 2007, 11:14am

Re: Helmet use post Richardson death

Post by ian »

EdinburghFixed wrote:
Ian, unfortunately the reason that the debate seems to 'veer' aside is because it's impossible to look at the wearing of helmets in isolation to all other effects.

Suppose I was to tell you that your helmet might prevent serious injury in 1% of all crashes - but that you are 1.5% more likely to be involved in a crash. What would you choose?

...

One thing we can say for sure, is that if every cyclist in the UK binned their helmet today, the head injury rate would not increase tomorrow. This is supported by data from across the world, from all road types and cultures (in fact, everywhere that such a study has been done).



I agree with you, and a lot of other posters on this. Imagine I am purely selfish about this though, like I don't care what helmet wearing or not does for cycling in general or any other cyclist in particular. Just me. Assume I am in control of my cycling behaviour, and this won't change whether I wear a helmet or not (whether you think is is a false assumption or not). Again - what actual physical protection does a helmet give? It seems even the manufacturers cannot make a stab at answering this, in fact the level of physical protection is almost entirely missing from any manufacturer information - hard enough to find out even what standard it adheres to.

With regard to your hypthetical question, I would ask what contributes to the 1.5% effect of being more likely to have an injury, and could I change personally that (if driver behaviour then maybe not). However, more importantly, crucially for me even, and seemingly impossible to measure, is the first value (more than 1%??) - just what physical protection does wearing a helmet give (whether or not I am more likely to crash). If we cannot start from that then it seems most other debate has much less to judge anything on?
DougieB
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Re: Helmet use post Richardson death

Post by DougieB »

all of the debate seems to be around the roadie/mtb style helmet. but what's the deal with the round skater style (?) helmets, which more resemble open-face motorbike helmets? if they primary anti argument revolves around rotational injury, surely these smooth and full covering helmets don't suffer from that.
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Cunobelin
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Re: Helmet use post Richardson death

Post by Cunobelin »

This is a valid point.... in the US there is a "Smoother, Rounder Safer" campaign for this reason.
drossall
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Re: Helmet use post Richardson death

Post by drossall »

DougieB wrote:if they primary anti argument revolves around rotational injury, surely these smooth and full covering helmets don't suffer from that.


That's putting the cart before the horse. The argument revolves around the rather unexpected result that (when adjusted for varying levels of cycling) casualty rates don't, on a national scale, seem to change when widespread helmets are introduced, and in some cases they seem to increase. Rotational injury is one possible explanation. Until we are sure what the real explanation is, we can't really say whether the issue is simply one of design.

However, many of the statistics apply to older designs anyway - so again, no, it's not clear whether it's an issue of modern helmet style.

Either way, the anti argument revolves around the statistics, not around the individual possible explanations for them.
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Cunobelin
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Re: Helmet use post Richardson death

Post by Cunobelin »

The sad fact is that with less absorbent material, the remaining material being harder (and less able to absorb) to maintain the structure and the design faults of "snag points", most helmets on the ,arket today offer far less protection than those of a few years ago.

The standard used to be the Snell B95, and there are only a handful of helmets available today that would pass a test so stringent.The European EN1078 is a watered down and inferior test that was written to meet modern helmets, not the way it should be in my opinion with helets designed to meet a standard.
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EdinburghFixed
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Re: Helmet use post Richardson death

Post by EdinburghFixed »

ian wrote:However, more importantly, crucially for me even, and seemingly impossible to measure, is the first value (more than 1%??) - just what physical protection does wearing a helmet give (whether or not I am more likely to crash). If we cannot start from that then it seems most other debate has much less to judge anything on?


Well, the nice thing about population-level studies is that they don't *need* to start with the level of protection a helmet provides.

Even if there was a simple scientific test showing helmets provide 95% physical protection - the fact is that when the wearing rate increases, the head injury rate does not go down.

Risk compensation, closer and more careless driving around 'armoured' cyclists, rotational injury, all of these are hypotheses which *might* explain why helmets do not prevent head injuries. Another possibility is that the majority of serious head injuries occur in high-energy impacts which swamp the protective capacity of the foam anyway.

Some research on crash simulations showed that helmeted heads received 60% more impacts, so that although a 20mph impact might be reduced to the equivalent of 17mph, it still meant there would be 16x 17mph head injuries compared with 10x 20mph ones.

But it is not necessary to prove any one of these theories in order to validate the observation of real world injuries. The injury rate, is the actual injury rate.

Unless you are able to do something that all other cyclists cannot, to affect the driver behaviour around you, or rotational impact, or subconscious risk compensation, and all the rest, you can't "beat" the injury stats by wearing a helmet but "not suffering" whatever the downside(s) may be.

At the same time, you are personally depressing the numbers of cyclists on the road (in a small but significant way) by exaggerating the perceived dangers. The reduced number of riders on the road has a serious effect on driving standards, causing far more injuries than helmets would ever save, even in the manufacturers' wildest dreams.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not "anti helmet" and I own about half a dozen for various different sports where the risk of head injury is significant and the consequences severe. But jumping on the bike, is not one of those things. It's safer to ride bareheaded than walk, even! :)
ian
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Re: Helmet use post Richardson death

Post by ian »

EdinburghFixed wrote:
But it is not necessary to prove any one of these theories in order to validate the observation of real world injuries. The injury rate, is the actual injury rate.



Don't want to prolong this, from a very simple viewpoint that is for a population, not for me - as you yourself said there is too many 'mights' to determine what it means for me. However statistics and study analysis is a whole different debate in the debate. However....

I lived in NZ for most of my youth and have always worn a helmet (for decades), as mentioned, for the 'in case it helps' argument rather than anything else. Not evangelical or anything. Prompted by this thread (and indeed verbalising my own thoughts in it) I think I am no longer going to wear one. I can find no evidence - anywhere - that it will prevent the sort of brain injury I think I am wearing it to protect me from.

I read this article when it came out but didn't really take it in (I think because Brian, to his great credit, eschews an opinion on wearing or not) - http://www.cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2023.pdf however, it is the closest I can come to anything answering the basic question of physical effectiveness.

I also found this interesting (if more slanted) http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1019.html as a recent friend's serious accident on her bike, and looking at her helmet, had me think again. However a broken (rather than compressed) helmet may well indicate the helmets ineffectiveness in preventing the same happening to one's head, rather than it's effectiveness.

I'm out of here.
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