3 ms·

Also, I recall some study(sorry, don't have source) looking at how a helmet interacts with the road during a fall, vs how the scalp does. It found that the helm

Also, I recall some study(sorry, don't have source) looking at how a helmet interacts with the road during a fall, vs how the scalp does. It found that the helmet grips and causes more rotation of the head and neck, whereas the scalp slips (and has several levels of slippage). This suggests that helmets might cause more neck injuries as well as internal brain injuries due to the sudden momentum shift when the skull starts rotating but the brain lags behind. This is complicated stuff, and simple messages, anecdotes or one-dimension studies don't help work out the best solutions.

dahart 9y ago
This is the third argument in this thread that attempts to claim that the mechanisms of crashing might mean that the outcomes are worse, in response to actual data that the outcomes are, in fact, better. This argument seems unscientific. The experiment already ran, and the data shows reduced injuries for helmets. Explaining why something "suggests" it might not work makes no sense, when it did already work on a large scale. I also don't buy that helmets grip more on average. Most are coated in plastic and my scalp is coated in skin and hair. One of those grips gravel & concrete more easily, and it's not plastic. I gave a source for the quote above, and it comes from a meta analysis of multiple studies. The simple message is simple because the science showed a large and compelling result. When the statistical significance is enormous, and the results are a clear and unmistakable positive across numerous studies and a lot of scrutiny, the message gets less and less complicated. Suggesting that there's anything complicated about wildly improved outcomes seems like FUD to me.