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There is a lot of controversy on whether helmets save lives. First, "it is impossible to build a cycle helmet that will offer significant impact protection" [1]

by tajen 11y ago

There is a lot of controversy on whether helmets save lives. First, "it is impossible to build a cycle helmet that will offer significant impact protection" [1]. In Australia, 80% of cyclist death happen with a helmet. Second, countries which have made the helmet mandatory have seen a decrease of cyclism and an increase of obesity and heart diseases, to the point that it increases the global mortality [2]. This may sound very disturbing if you come from a country where helmets are mandatory. In France, they are not. In case you wonder, there are also stories (albeit probably less than unanimous) that cycling at the red light is safer. It is my personal belief that I'd never go ahead when it's green for the cars in my city (Lyon), but it's much more controversial. Some cities (like Paris[3] allow jumping the red light). Finally, many European countries, including London and Paris, have developed bike stations (take a bike, 1.50€ for a 24hrs card, with deposit). Making helmets mandatory would be a problem. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/1999/jun/15/healthandwellbeing.health1 http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/1999/jun/15/healthan... [2] http://www.cycle-helmets.com/helmet_statistics.html http://www.cycle-helmets.com/helmet_statistics.html [3] http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33773868 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33773868

yitchelle 11y ago
> There is a lot of controversy on whether helmets save lives. First, "it is impossible to build a cycle helmet that will offer significant impact protection" [1]. In Australia, 80% of cyclist death happen with a helmet. The problem is that most people think helmet is there to safe lives. It is not. It is there to protect you from head injuries. If you are in a bike accident, you are more likely to be seriously injured from other damaged such a broken leg or serious bruising to the torso. I wear a helmet when commuting to work, but I have my doubts if it will save my life if have a big accident with a car.
batiudrami 11y ago
>In Australia, 80% of cyclist death happen with a helmet. Do more or less than 80% of cyclists wear a helmet? That stat is worthless without qualification (in my experience the vast majority of people in Australia wear helmets, especially when cycling on the road). Not that I disagree with your general point; for the moment I am undecided.
- tajen 11y ago
  It mostly means cyclists also die from other causes than head injury. I just wanted to point out that there is controversy, I don't however have the definitive answer about red lights and helmets.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    It mostly means cyclists also die from other causes than head injury. Yes, being humans, they would.
  - mehwoot 11y ago
    It mostly means cyclists also die from other causes than head injury Because it's compulsory to wear helmets.
  - batiudrami 11y ago
    If 95% of cyclists wear helmets (that would be my guess, at least when cycling on the road) and only 80% of fatalities happen with a helmet then it would seem to me that helmets are very effective - which is why you need to qualify the statistic.
fla 11y ago
> Second, countries which have made the helmet mandatory have seen a decrease of cyclism and an increase of obesity and heart diseases, to the point that it increases the global mortality. Sorry, but I have a hard time beleiving this. Please note that this article from The Guardian is 14 years old, and doesn't link to any source.
- awjr 11y ago
  That's ok, scientific analysis of the impact of mandatory helmets has been done demonstrating that it would increase mortality rates. http://www.cycle-helmets.com/england_helmets.html http://www.cycle-helmets.com/england_helmets.html
  - lsc 11y ago
    so... I just scanned that, and apparently the thesis is that most people would rather not ride a bike at all if it involves, you know, looking like the sort of person who wears a helmet. Wow. uh, that plays into all my negative stereotypes about "normal people." I mean, it's your head, and I think you should be able to decide for yourself what an acceptable level of risk is, but don't pretend that a good helmet won't help make injuries in a crash less severe.
    - awjr 11y ago
      That's a personal choice and you are mixing the sport of cycling with the activity of biking from A to B. In the Netherlands (massive biking culture) 96% of people do not wear helmets yet they have the least head trauma in the world. For biking, you create segregated space.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        Quite a lot of the Netherlands doesn't have segregated space. What they do have is reduced space for cars and absolute priority for cyclists when cyclists and cars share road space. It's not possible to remove cyclists from all roads, so it's probably more important to change car driving culture.
hueving 11y ago
That's an idiotic stat. I bet 100% of the cyclist die in wrecks that occurred while they were breathing as well. Does that mean that they shouldn't breath?
saiya-jin 11y ago
What a loads of bollocks. I've been personally in the incident where not having a helmet would have a high probability of me dying on spot, or at least have a massive frontal fracture of my skull in forehead, with god knows what consequences. I've flown head-first over the bike, fallen head-first too, have a 5-10 second memory loss of the details from the head impact, but when coming back together, big spiky rock was sticking out of the ground in front of my eyes, touching my helmet on my forehead. Had a bruise in my forehead for a long time (from inside of helmet), some sort of sun shield on helmet went off, but if I didn't buy my first ever bike helmet couple of weeks before that accident, I am damn sure my life wouldn't be the same, and probably not at all anymore. I was shellshock-like for quite a while after that. You don't want to wear helmet? Sure, just in case of incident and head trauma, you'll pay all the medical bills for your head treatment, if you actually survive. And if you don't buy a helmet for your kids, social services on you (how the heck did I survive my childhood without it is still a mystery to me)
- dijit 11y ago
  Your case is literally the only case helmets are tested for. Helmets are tested, from a standing height, falling forwards at no higher speeds than 7mp/h (this is the UK safety requirement). to me, that sounds like a pedestrian helmet. I'm glad that your helmet saved your life, but there is a very simple fact that it's not anywhere close to the safety people expect from helmets- and additionally, people who are forced to use protective gear are likely to give up cycling in the first place. I know personally, if I'm cycling for 40 minutes with a helmet (on a hot summers day)- or I can take the car.. I'd take the car. without a helmet, the trip would be enjoyable on a bike.
- bkor 11y ago
  Almost nobody in The Netherlands cycles with a helmet. There's been various studies that cars are not as careful with cyclists when cyclists wear a helmet. You're talking about one example where this helmet would've saved you. However, requiring helmets would mean a massive decrease in cycling. Further, the studies that a cyclist seems safer with a helmet, so more risk is taken by others in traffic. > You don't want to wear helmet? Sure, just in case of incident and head trauma, Why be all dramatic about this? Millions of people cycle without a helmet, including kids. It's nice to be over protective but society is actually worse off. Helmets are more common on racing bikes of course. It's better to have separate clearly marked cycling paths, make cars responsible (basically: car responsible for anything more fragile than them, same for a cyclist), etc. Again, you hardly see anyone with a helmet in The Netherlands. Though strangely, in Denmark everyone seems to use it. Number of cyclist related injuries is pretty small.
simonbyrne 11y ago
The 80% figure is useless without knowing the proportion of people cycling without a helmet: if 99% of cyclists use a helmet then that would be a an odds-ratio of 24.75, which would be huge (by comparison, most "big" public health effects which aren't smoking-related are around 5-10). My own personal experience would suggest that it is quite a bit higher than 80%.
awjr 11y ago
Hat tip to this link http://road.cc/content/forum/165819-whats-wrong-bicycle-helmets http://road.cc/content/forum/165819-whats-wrong-bicycle-helm... but let me quote a comment from there: Just to save everyone else the time and effort as well as repetitive strain injury I am going to summarise the entire crux of how these responses will go: Someone will kick off with an anecdote about how they or a friend's life was supposedly saved by wearing a helmet. This will be followed by a post saying it isn't much use wearing one when getting driven over by a HGV. Someone else will then link to the University of Bath research. Following again with another anecdote where a helmet was ineffective or lead to more injury. Now someone is going to come and call everyone else morons and telling the other posters to stop pressing for mandatory helmet wearing- despite the fact no one has done so. Someone else will now make an observation about why car drivers or pedestrians don't have to wear them. Mr "Stop-making -me-wear-a-helmet-despite-no one -actually-calling-for-it-to-be-law" will then quote the Australian experience before again insulting those imaginary posters no one else can see who want to make it illegal to ride without a helmet. Someone who hasn't read the previous comments will again post a link to the University of Bath research. A sensible post will then mention Chris Boardman but this will be ignored as the pro and anti-helmet debate hots up. Someone makes a reference to "noddy hats". Someone makes another sensible statement about not forcing anyone to wear one, that it should be personal choice and they choose to wear one. That will then be ignored as the rest of the posters get nasty and call into question each others moral and intellectual standing, again despite NO ONE ARGUING IT SHOULD BE COMPULSORY. Another person again posts about making pedestrians wear helmets. These same comments will then be repeated ad nasueum until suddenly there are hundred of posts all saying the same thing and mirroring the exact same helmet threads that seemingly appear every few days which no one then reads because once you have read one, you have read them all.
- awjr 11y ago
  Rats didn't get this in fast enough. Look at the explosion of helmet debate comments below :O
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Comment of the year. It's astounding how similarly we humans think alike, or how readily we seek an unspoken opinion to state for the sake of imaginary Internet points.
andys627 11y ago
There's some data that says cars give people without helmets more space than those with them.
hvidgaard 11y ago
The 80% number is useless. The first thing to do is to remove deaths where there was no trauma to the head or damage to the helmet, then you have a more fair comparison. I am certain that helmet do save lives, question is how many of the deaths would have been preventable by wearing a helmet. I don't think all the ER nurses and doctors are biased to such an extend that they are 100% wrong, when saying they see plenty of examples where a supposedly "No protection helmet" actually made a difference. I have yet to see anything other than broad statements and useless repetition of statistics the author fails to understand properly. Btw, from you second link > The Committee is appreciative of the fact that bicycle helmets, that meet national standards and are correctly fitted, provide some protection against head, brain, and facial injuries and is therefore of the view that the use of helmets should be encouraged.
- ownagefool 11y ago
  Removing non-helmet related deaths fails to take account for any changes in attitude from helmet wearing. Could it be that little hunk of plastic makes people feel safer and thus helps lead to a small increase in the number of accidents? It's entirly possible that's bullcrap but it's the kind of thing that's missed if you're only compare head related injuries.
gambiting 11y ago
This doesn't make any sense, mostly because no one reports crashes that did not result in cyclist death because they wore a helmet. I fell of my bike going 30mph and hit the curb head first - the helmet split in half(which is exactly what it's supposed to do) and I was absolutely fine. If I wasn't wearing it, I wouldn't be writing it - I would be dead. But I never reported my "life saving accident" anywhere,and I'm sure millions of people never report theirs either. While I wouldn't want to make helmets mandatory, I would certainly like to ban headphones while riding bicycles - it's so dangerous not knowing what's behind you based on sound that I literally can't understand how people can be so careless.
- amit_m 11y ago
  No, the helmet is not supposed to split in half. It is supposed to crush, absorbing the impact's energy. And you would most likely not suffer serious question injury from such a fall. The horizontal speed is not so important if you hit your head on a flat surface. The vertical speed is essentially the same as if you've fainted standing still.
  - Lewton 11y ago
    by curb he probably meant the edge of the curb in which case the helmet splitting in half makes sense, and also that probably would have done quite a bit of damage without a helmet
steelaz 11y ago
Image of my helmet after the crash [1]. Hospital cleared me the same day, with couple stitches. Surgeon said if not for helmet I would be gone. [1] http://i.imgur.com/QBg0b0V.jpg http://i.imgur.com/QBg0b0V.jpg
- amit_m 11y ago
  There is a lot of this post-hoc analysis, the main line of thought being that if the helmet broke then maybe your head would've been the one to break instead had it not been for the helmet. This is completely false and not based on any science. Bicycle helmets are meant to crush, not to break. When they break, they absorb very little of the impact's energy.
- upofadown 11y ago
  The helmet shattered. In other words it failed. No significant amount of energy was absorbed. There was blood so it didn't even protect you from abrasions. A construction type hard hat would of provided more protection.
  - jschwartzi 11y ago
    If the helmet shattered, then a significant amount of energy was absorbed. Otherwise it wouldn't have shattered.
    - upofadown 11y ago
      The propagation of cracks results in a very minimal amount of energy absorption.
upofadown 11y ago
>First, "it is impossible to build a cycle helmet that will offer significant impact protection" [1]. At this point I am not sure. The problem seems to be that current designs are based on ancient studies of how much acceleration it takes to cause skull fracture. It turns out that it is extremely unlikely that you will get a skull fracture while riding a bike. The energy justisn't there. Hence, current bike helmets are pretty much useless for preventing brain injury. The energy absorbing foam is too stiff to crush in actual accidents so no energy is absorbed. Concussion on the other hand does happen a lot in bike accidents and is now known to be a fairly dangerous injury. That has caused a current idea that it might be worthwhile to design a helmet that works against the lower acceleration that causes concussion and doesn't work against skull fracture. Unfortunately such a helmet would not meet current safety standards and as a result could not be a commercial success.

by tajen 11y ago

yitchelle 11y ago

> There is a lot of controversy on whether helmets save lives. First, "it is impossible to build a cycle helmet that will offer significant impact protection" [1]. In Australia, 80% of cyclist death happen with a helmet. The problem is that most people think helmet is there to safe lives. It is not. It is there to protect you from head injuries. If you are in a bike accident, you are more likely to be seriously injured from other damaged such a broken leg or serious bruising to the torso. I wear a helmet when commuting to work, but I have my doubts if it will save my life if have a big accident with a car.

batiudrami 11y ago

>In Australia, 80% of cyclist death happen with a helmet. Do more or less than 80% of cyclists wear a helmet? That stat is worthless without qualification (in my experience the vast majority of people in Australia wear helmets, especially when cycling on the road). Not that I disagree with your general point; for the moment I am undecided.

tajen 11y ago
It mostly means cyclists also die from other causes than head injury. I just wanted to point out that there is controversy, I don't however have the definitive answer about red lights and helmets.
- icebraining 11y ago
  It mostly means cyclists also die from other causes than head injury. Yes, being humans, they would.
- mehwoot 11y ago
  It mostly means cyclists also die from other causes than head injury Because it's compulsory to wear helmets.
- batiudrami 11y ago
  If 95% of cyclists wear helmets (that would be my guess, at least when cycling on the road) and only 80% of fatalities happen with a helmet then it would seem to me that helmets are very effective - which is why you need to qualify the statistic.

fla 11y ago

> Second, countries which have made the helmet mandatory have seen a decrease of cyclism and an increase of obesity and heart diseases, to the point that it increases the global mortality. Sorry, but I have a hard time beleiving this. Please note that this article from The Guardian is 14 years old, and doesn't link to any source.

awjr 11y ago
That's ok, scientific analysis of the impact of mandatory helmets has been done demonstrating that it would increase mortality rates. http://www.cycle-helmets.com/england_helmets.html http://www.cycle-helmets.com/england_helmets.html
- lsc 11y ago
  so... I just scanned that, and apparently the thesis is that most people would rather not ride a bike at all if it involves, you know, looking like the sort of person who wears a helmet. Wow. uh, that plays into all my negative stereotypes about "normal people." I mean, it's your head, and I think you should be able to decide for yourself what an acceptable level of risk is, but don't pretend that a good helmet won't help make injuries in a crash less severe.
  - awjr 11y ago
    That's a personal choice and you are mixing the sport of cycling with the activity of biking from A to B. In the Netherlands (massive biking culture) 96% of people do not wear helmets yet they have the least head trauma in the world. For biking, you create segregated space.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      Quite a lot of the Netherlands doesn't have segregated space. What they do have is reduced space for cars and absolute priority for cyclists when cyclists and cars share road space. It's not possible to remove cyclists from all roads, so it's probably more important to change car driving culture.

hueving 11y ago

That's an idiotic stat. I bet 100% of the cyclist die in wrecks that occurred while they were breathing as well. Does that mean that they shouldn't breath?

saiya-jin 11y ago

What a loads of bollocks. I've been personally in the incident where not having a helmet would have a high probability of me dying on spot, or at least have a massive frontal fracture of my skull in forehead, with god knows what consequences. I've flown head-first over the bike, fallen head-first too, have a 5-10 second memory loss of the details from the head impact, but when coming back together, big spiky rock was sticking out of the ground in front of my eyes, touching my helmet on my forehead. Had a bruise in my forehead for a long time (from inside of helmet), some sort of sun shield on helmet went off, but if I didn't buy my first ever bike helmet couple of weeks before that accident, I am damn sure my life wouldn't be the same, and probably not at all anymore. I was shellshock-like for quite a while after that. You don't want to wear helmet? Sure, just in case of incident and head trauma, you'll pay all the medical bills for your head treatment, if you actually survive. And if you don't buy a helmet for your kids, social services on you (how the heck did I survive my childhood without it is still a mystery to me)

dijit 11y ago
Your case is literally the only case helmets are tested for. Helmets are tested, from a standing height, falling forwards at no higher speeds than 7mp/h (this is the UK safety requirement). to me, that sounds like a pedestrian helmet. I'm glad that your helmet saved your life, but there is a very simple fact that it's not anywhere close to the safety people expect from helmets- and additionally, people who are forced to use protective gear are likely to give up cycling in the first place. I know personally, if I'm cycling for 40 minutes with a helmet (on a hot summers day)- or I can take the car.. I'd take the car. without a helmet, the trip would be enjoyable on a bike.
bkor 11y ago
Almost nobody in The Netherlands cycles with a helmet. There's been various studies that cars are not as careful with cyclists when cyclists wear a helmet. You're talking about one example where this helmet would've saved you. However, requiring helmets would mean a massive decrease in cycling. Further, the studies that a cyclist seems safer with a helmet, so more risk is taken by others in traffic. > You don't want to wear helmet? Sure, just in case of incident and head trauma, Why be all dramatic about this? Millions of people cycle without a helmet, including kids. It's nice to be over protective but society is actually worse off. Helmets are more common on racing bikes of course. It's better to have separate clearly marked cycling paths, make cars responsible (basically: car responsible for anything more fragile than them, same for a cyclist), etc. Again, you hardly see anyone with a helmet in The Netherlands. Though strangely, in Denmark everyone seems to use it. Number of cyclist related injuries is pretty small.

simonbyrne 11y ago

The 80% figure is useless without knowing the proportion of people cycling without a helmet: if 99% of cyclists use a helmet then that would be a an odds-ratio of 24.75, which would be huge (by comparison, most "big" public health effects which aren't smoking-related are around 5-10). My own personal experience would suggest that it is quite a bit higher than 80%.

awjr 11y ago

Hat tip to this link http://road.cc/content/forum/165819-whats-wrong-bicycle-helmets http://road.cc/content/forum/165819-whats-wrong-bicycle-helm... but let me quote a comment from there: Just to save everyone else the time and effort as well as repetitive strain injury I am going to summarise the entire crux of how these responses will go: Someone will kick off with an anecdote about how they or a friend's life was supposedly saved by wearing a helmet. This will be followed by a post saying it isn't much use wearing one when getting driven over by a HGV. Someone else will then link to the University of Bath research. Following again with another anecdote where a helmet was ineffective or lead to more injury. Now someone is going to come and call everyone else morons and telling the other posters to stop pressing for mandatory helmet wearing- despite the fact no one has done so. Someone else will now make an observation about why car drivers or pedestrians don't have to wear them. Mr "Stop-making -me-wear-a-helmet-despite-no one -actually-calling-for-it-to-be-law" will then quote the Australian experience before again insulting those imaginary posters no one else can see who want to make it illegal to ride without a helmet. Someone who hasn't read the previous comments will again post a link to the University of Bath research. A sensible post will then mention Chris Boardman but this will be ignored as the pro and anti-helmet debate hots up. Someone makes a reference to "noddy hats". Someone makes another sensible statement about not forcing anyone to wear one, that it should be personal choice and they choose to wear one. That will then be ignored as the rest of the posters get nasty and call into question each others moral and intellectual standing, again despite NO ONE ARGUING IT SHOULD BE COMPULSORY. Another person again posts about making pedestrians wear helmets. These same comments will then be repeated ad nasueum until suddenly there are hundred of posts all saying the same thing and mirroring the exact same helmet threads that seemingly appear every few days which no one then reads because once you have read one, you have read them all.

awjr 11y ago
Rats didn't get this in fast enough. Look at the explosion of helmet debate comments below :O
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Comment of the year. It's astounding how similarly we humans think alike, or how readily we seek an unspoken opinion to state for the sake of imaginary Internet points.

andys627 11y ago

There's some data that says cars give people without helmets more space than those with them.

hvidgaard 11y ago

The 80% number is useless. The first thing to do is to remove deaths where there was no trauma to the head or damage to the helmet, then you have a more fair comparison. I am certain that helmet do save lives, question is how many of the deaths would have been preventable by wearing a helmet. I don't think all the ER nurses and doctors are biased to such an extend that they are 100% wrong, when saying they see plenty of examples where a supposedly "No protection helmet" actually made a difference. I have yet to see anything other than broad statements and useless repetition of statistics the author fails to understand properly. Btw, from you second link > The Committee is appreciative of the fact that bicycle helmets, that meet national standards and are correctly fitted, provide some protection against head, brain, and facial injuries and is therefore of the view that the use of helmets should be encouraged.

ownagefool 11y ago
Removing non-helmet related deaths fails to take account for any changes in attitude from helmet wearing. Could it be that little hunk of plastic makes people feel safer and thus helps lead to a small increase in the number of accidents? It's entirly possible that's bullcrap but it's the kind of thing that's missed if you're only compare head related injuries.

gambiting 11y ago

This doesn't make any sense, mostly because no one reports crashes that did not result in cyclist death because they wore a helmet. I fell of my bike going 30mph and hit the curb head first - the helmet split in half(which is exactly what it's supposed to do) and I was absolutely fine. If I wasn't wearing it, I wouldn't be writing it - I would be dead. But I never reported my "life saving accident" anywhere,and I'm sure millions of people never report theirs either. While I wouldn't want to make helmets mandatory, I would certainly like to ban headphones while riding bicycles - it's so dangerous not knowing what's behind you based on sound that I literally can't understand how people can be so careless.

amit_m 11y ago
No, the helmet is not supposed to split in half. It is supposed to crush, absorbing the impact's energy. And you would most likely not suffer serious question injury from such a fall. The horizontal speed is not so important if you hit your head on a flat surface. The vertical speed is essentially the same as if you've fainted standing still.
- Lewton 11y ago
  by curb he probably meant the edge of the curb in which case the helmet splitting in half makes sense, and also that probably would have done quite a bit of damage without a helmet

steelaz 11y ago

Image of my helmet after the crash [1]. Hospital cleared me the same day, with couple stitches. Surgeon said if not for helmet I would be gone. [1] http://i.imgur.com/QBg0b0V.jpg http://i.imgur.com/QBg0b0V.jpg

amit_m 11y ago
There is a lot of this post-hoc analysis, the main line of thought being that if the helmet broke then maybe your head would've been the one to break instead had it not been for the helmet. This is completely false and not based on any science. Bicycle helmets are meant to crush, not to break. When they break, they absorb very little of the impact's energy.
upofadown 11y ago
The helmet shattered. In other words it failed. No significant amount of energy was absorbed. There was blood so it didn't even protect you from abrasions. A construction type hard hat would of provided more protection.
- jschwartzi 11y ago
  If the helmet shattered, then a significant amount of energy was absorbed. Otherwise it wouldn't have shattered.
  - upofadown 11y ago
    The propagation of cracks results in a very minimal amount of energy absorption.

upofadown 11y ago

>First, "it is impossible to build a cycle helmet that will offer significant impact protection" [1]. At this point I am not sure. The problem seems to be that current designs are based on ancient studies of how much acceleration it takes to cause skull fracture. It turns out that it is extremely unlikely that you will get a skull fracture while riding a bike. The energy justisn't there. Hence, current bike helmets are pretty much useless for preventing brain injury. The energy absorbing foam is too stiff to crush in actual accidents so no energy is absorbed. Concussion on the other hand does happen a lot in bike accidents and is now known to be a fairly dangerous injury. That has caused a current idea that it might be worthwhile to design a helmet that works against the lower acceleration that causes concussion and doesn't work against skull fracture. Unfortunately such a helmet would not meet current safety standards and as a result could not be a commercial success.