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I've had hundreds of crashes on a bike and hundreds of others crashes and wipeouts doing other activities. A helmet has never once come in handy. So I've come t

I've had hundreds of crashes on a bike and hundreds of others crashes and wipeouts doing other activities. A helmet has never once come in handy. So I've come to believe that knowing how to wipe out, as a reflexive skill, is far more critical to safety than strapping some styrofoam to your head. Unfortunately you can't glance at a cyclist and decide affirmatively that they're an idiot for riding without wipeout skills.

malfist 4y ago
It only takes one crash where the helmet was needed for you to never need one again...if you didn't wear one. We went through this same nonsense with motorcycles. Stop acting like it's the end of the world to put a piece of foam and plastic on your head for a little bit.
- quicklime 4y ago
  I’m surprised at all the comments comparing this to motorcycle helmets. To me, the big difference with a bicycle and a motorcycle is that I can run as fast or faster than I ride by bicycle around my local neighbourhood. If someone asked me to wear a helmet while running, I would find that ridiculous. Same thing when riding my (non-road) bike.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    How often do you sprint over uneven terrain? Or do you just ride your bike very slowly? Bike speeds > 20km/h are normal and easily achievable for the untrained on flat ground. Downhill, you'll quickly go past 30km/h. This isn't something that you're doing while running for longer periods of time while you're still half-asleep. Helmets annoy me too, but "the fastest runners can peak at speeds higher than what I reach every other day on my bike and they don't wear helmets" is a weird argument.
    - quicklime 4y ago
      I ride my bike slowly around my local neighbourhood, often on shared paths with pedestrians. This is usually under 20 km/h, probably under 15, or even less when it’s busy. For rides where I go faster, I will take my road bike and wear a helmet. For rides where I go slower, I would prefer not to wear a helmet, but mandatory helmet laws don’t make that distinction.
  - alwa 4y ago
    I agree- it does feel like “biking” encompasses an awfully wide range of riskiness. As you alluded, even between bike trips, I weigh the risks differently when I think about a casual spin down a protected lane or a recreational trail as compared to an aggressive commute inches apart from vehicle traffic. My local bike share program has started blurring things even more for me lately as they introduce progressively zippier e-bikes. Any more, it’s trivial for me to move with traffic on these huge heavy clunkers of bikes, while to my impulses it still feels like the low-effort casual kind of ride I’d instinctively rate as not warranting a helmet. Still, I’m glad to be judging for myself how to mitigate the specific risks of a specific ride.
frob 4y ago
You're very lucky. The worst wipeout I ever had was on the side of a small town street. I was accelerating, the chain popped of my gears, and I basically flipped the bike over and ground to a stop on my helmet. My reactions and training absolutely helped me; I knew how to roll into it and how to not break my wrists. But without that helmet, I would have ground a hole into my skull. You don't need that helmet until you do.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mdorazio 4y ago
This is survivorship fallacy. You don’t hear from the thousands of people who weren’t so lucky because they’re dead.
- Fricken 4y ago
  I hear from 1000s of internet people who are totally triggered by my occasional lack of a helmet. My ability to avoid hitting my head using reflexive skill cultivated over many years of practice never gets the credit it deserves. It has come in handy on so many occasions. Let me assure you, if you've decided cycling safety is a binary contingent on whether or not you're wearing a helmet, you're doing it wrong. It's no better than superstition. There are so many other variables.
eCa 4y ago
Safety in depth: * Avoiding the crash in the first place * Knowing how to fall if you crash * Helmet, and potentially other protection, when unable to execute crashing properly. (Edit: Changed ’security’ to ’safety’)
denton-scratch 4y ago
My wipeout: I heard a chink behind me, and thought I had dropped my keys, so I looked over my shoulder. I lost control, and my face hit the road. Not my head, my chin. I got three stiches in my chin. I lost two teeth; one was driven through my lip, and I had 13 stiches in that lip (there are three layers in a lip: outer skin, muscle, inner skin). I needed two root-canals. I fractured my mandible, which is now joined to the maxilla on only one side. I was concussed, and wound up sleeping about 15 hours a day for the next 3 months. I couldn't chew for ages. A motorbike helmet might have helped; but not a bicycle helmet.
vehemenz 4y ago
This is as naive as drivers refusing to wear seatbelts. In serious crashes, you cannot control your body in the first place. Of course, the helmet is only 10% of cycling safety. But it's for that important 10% when your head crashes into the ground. Suggesting that it would never come in handy is naive. Since you seem to believe in the power of personal anecdote, I am an experienced cyclist and have crashed directly on to my head before. It was just once, but it prevented a serious head injury.
- Fricken 4y ago
  If I had been in hundreds of car crashes without ever needing a seatbelt then they would be roughly equivalent, I suppose.

malfist 4y ago

It only takes one crash where the helmet was needed for you to never need one again...if you didn't wear one. We went through this same nonsense with motorcycles. Stop acting like it's the end of the world to put a piece of foam and plastic on your head for a little bit.

quicklime 4y ago
I’m surprised at all the comments comparing this to motorcycle helmets. To me, the big difference with a bicycle and a motorcycle is that I can run as fast or faster than I ride by bicycle around my local neighbourhood. If someone asked me to wear a helmet while running, I would find that ridiculous. Same thing when riding my (non-road) bike.
- luckylion 4y ago
  How often do you sprint over uneven terrain? Or do you just ride your bike very slowly? Bike speeds > 20km/h are normal and easily achievable for the untrained on flat ground. Downhill, you'll quickly go past 30km/h. This isn't something that you're doing while running for longer periods of time while you're still half-asleep. Helmets annoy me too, but "the fastest runners can peak at speeds higher than what I reach every other day on my bike and they don't wear helmets" is a weird argument.
  - quicklime 4y ago
    I ride my bike slowly around my local neighbourhood, often on shared paths with pedestrians. This is usually under 20 km/h, probably under 15, or even less when it’s busy. For rides where I go faster, I will take my road bike and wear a helmet. For rides where I go slower, I would prefer not to wear a helmet, but mandatory helmet laws don’t make that distinction.
- alwa 4y ago
  I agree- it does feel like “biking” encompasses an awfully wide range of riskiness. As you alluded, even between bike trips, I weigh the risks differently when I think about a casual spin down a protected lane or a recreational trail as compared to an aggressive commute inches apart from vehicle traffic. My local bike share program has started blurring things even more for me lately as they introduce progressively zippier e-bikes. Any more, it’s trivial for me to move with traffic on these huge heavy clunkers of bikes, while to my impulses it still feels like the low-effort casual kind of ride I’d instinctively rate as not warranting a helmet. Still, I’m glad to be judging for myself how to mitigate the specific risks of a specific ride.

frob 4y ago

You're very lucky. The worst wipeout I ever had was on the side of a small town street. I was accelerating, the chain popped of my gears, and I basically flipped the bike over and ground to a stop on my helmet. My reactions and training absolutely helped me; I knew how to roll into it and how to not break my wrists. But without that helmet, I would have ground a hole into my skull. You don't need that helmet until you do.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

mdorazio 4y ago

This is survivorship fallacy. You don’t hear from the thousands of people who weren’t so lucky because they’re dead.

Fricken 4y ago
I hear from 1000s of internet people who are totally triggered by my occasional lack of a helmet. My ability to avoid hitting my head using reflexive skill cultivated over many years of practice never gets the credit it deserves. It has come in handy on so many occasions. Let me assure you, if you've decided cycling safety is a binary contingent on whether or not you're wearing a helmet, you're doing it wrong. It's no better than superstition. There are so many other variables.

eCa 4y ago

Safety in depth: * Avoiding the crash in the first place * Knowing how to fall if you crash * Helmet, and potentially other protection, when unable to execute crashing properly. (Edit: Changed ’security’ to ’safety’)

denton-scratch 4y ago

My wipeout: I heard a chink behind me, and thought I had dropped my keys, so I looked over my shoulder. I lost control, and my face hit the road. Not my head, my chin. I got three stiches in my chin. I lost two teeth; one was driven through my lip, and I had 13 stiches in that lip (there are three layers in a lip: outer skin, muscle, inner skin). I needed two root-canals. I fractured my mandible, which is now joined to the maxilla on only one side. I was concussed, and wound up sleeping about 15 hours a day for the next 3 months. I couldn't chew for ages. A motorbike helmet might have helped; but not a bicycle helmet.

vehemenz 4y ago

This is as naive as drivers refusing to wear seatbelts. In serious crashes, you cannot control your body in the first place. Of course, the helmet is only 10% of cycling safety. But it's for that important 10% when your head crashes into the ground. Suggesting that it would never come in handy is naive. Since you seem to believe in the power of personal anecdote, I am an experienced cyclist and have crashed directly on to my head before. It was just once, but it prevented a serious head injury.

Fricken 4y ago
If I had been in hundreds of car crashes without ever needing a seatbelt then they would be roughly equivalent, I suppose.