why we shouldn't cycle with helmets

[energyman]

I carry 67 years of memories in a container which is easily damaged so I protect it as best I can.
Like all insurance policies you just hope & pray that when you need it - it works !
QED

[leftpoole]

I carry 67 years of memories in a container which is easily damaged so I protect it as best I can.
QED

2 Years behind you Im doing the same. After a couple of falls in my life I know Helmets make sense.
Regards,
John

[jags]

I'm on my 4th  ;)most if not all clubs wont allow u to ride with them if u don't ware a helmit proper order.

[honesty]

Your logic is flawed. You are using a form of false logic that takes two coincidental items and states one is because of the other. Statistically your are not very likely to have a head injury on a bike. Even examples given here show that. For example Andre says hes broken fingers in 2 crashes, logic would dictate then that he should be wearing armoured gloves... We attribute an affect to helmets that we cannot realistically prove. The helmet saved my life, well maybe, maybe not. We do not know what would have happened without the helmet as you didn't crash without one. We can go on stats though and these show that helmets make very little difference at a population level.

Statistically there are as many head injuries to pedestrians than to cyclists. Do you wear pedestrian helmets? What about car passenger helmets? Bathroom helmets? To insist on helmets on one of these activities and not on the other shows a disconnect between statistics and "common sense".

Saying all that, it's all a red herring.the highest cause of bicycle accidents are motor vehicles. If you want to reduce bicycle accidents segregate traffic not force a 200g lump of polystyrene on the innocent victim.

[in4]

Hawthorn thorn through my baseball cap circa 1995. Cycle helmet worn since then. Period.

[honesty]

And if it went through your shoulder would you be wearing American football shoulder armour?

[Danneaux]

[Admin. Note:]

Hi All!

Although there's been nothing untoward to this point, I'll be watching this topic carefully for civility.

At present (in this thread and others), both sides have already made well-reasoned arguments for and against both personal and legislated helmet use. There isn't much to add on the costs and benefits at a personal and societal level and with regard to the healthcare and legal systems. Everyone can relate compelling personal evidence on each side, and numbers can be scaled and analyzed to do the same on a larger level.

Probably no topic in all cycling raises a more visceral response than the Helmet Issue. It reaches so deep and so divisively, it is increasingly banned on other Fora because it takes so much Administrator time and effort to monitor, to the exclusion of all other topics. Those are lessons worth noting, and I don't mind being proactive to preserve the supportive atmosphere that marks this Forum.

So please, avoid "the helmet issue" if possible unless you can add something truly new. Going forward, if you do feel compelled to add or respond, do so with utmost civility. If things go Bad, it will become a topic beyond bounds here as on other Fora.

Best,

Dan.
Thorn Cycling Forums Administrator

[John Saxby]

Thanks, Dan. Oil on troubled waters, everyone take a deep breath, now exhale, and think nice thoughts about our fellow cyclists. I find the intensity of feeling about helmet-wearing hard to fathom, but that's probably my problem. No matter.

To me, it's simply a question of risk management.  I'll be delighted when Ontario/Ottawa makes a serious investment in cycling infrastructure, and will applaud when car/SUV/etc drivers do not regularly (that is, daily) try to kill me when I'm on one of my two-wheelers -- but I doubt I'll live to see either of these happy conditions.  In the meantime, wot to do--particularly, what can I control?--to limit risk while I ride my beloved 2-wheelers?  There's the usual counsel--stay off arterial roads, use a mirror, learn to anticipate dodgy situations, assume that car drivers (especially young guys in high-end German cars) really are out to get you and/or do not see you and/or do not care about what they hit/brush/etc., wear hi-viz gear just in case they are looking for cyclists.  Me, I add "wear a helmet" to this list. (I also wear a skullcap under mine, being follicly challenged and having Scots/irish/RodLaveresque colouring.) The reason I do is hard experience: nearly 50 years ago, I came off my motorcycle at low speed, maybe 25-30 kmh, when my front wheel slid out as I dodged a kid on a bike on a gravel country road. I did a three-point landing over the bars, head-shoulder-elbow, sorta-tucked-roll. I wasn't badly hurt, just a bit of skin off my bare elbow (how dumb can you be??) but my helmet was a writeoff, with a deep gouge just above my temple.  I was glad at the time, and since, 'cos I've been mostly happy in my life and I think my family (all post-helmeted-spill) share my retrospective view of that day.

My daughter, returning to Canada and resettling in Toronto after five years in Berlin, surrounded by Real Cycling Infrastructure and an advanced cycling culture, now faces the helmet question. With a low-key nudge/plea from me, she's decided to wear one: she doesn't like it, and she knows that it won't help her if a GMC Suburban clouts her at an intersection, but it does offer a measure of protection to her head if she comes off her bike in an urban setting which lacks the supports of Berlin's cycling ecology. I said to her, "Why even take the risk?" and she had already figured it out. (She's usually a step or two ahead of her dad on most matters...)

[JimK]

This hooks into the vast subject of how to make cycling safer, more enjoyable, and more practical. And the even vaster subject of how to build infrastructure and legal systems and cultural systems that promote the health of the human population and the ecological systems to which that population is inextricably intertwined.

A big controversy around here is the fate of the Catskill Mountain Railroad. The tracks run about a mile from our apartment, so it is a topic of great interest to me! Between our apartment and the City of Kingston, there is a dreadful mash-up of highway intersections, car dealerships, etc. Horrible for cyclists and pedestrians alike. Across the road from us is a basic motel where folks down on their luck are housed, by the county I presume. So actually there are a remarkable number of pedestrians struggling to get through the traffic tangle, to get to the grocery store or whatever other services. The path of the railroad would be a wonderful alternative. It already has a tunnel under the interstate highway and a bridge over the Esopus Creek. I don't hear too much talk about turning that section into a rail trail, unfortunately. Too practical! The focus of the debate is on the more scenic section to the west.

It's tricky, though. That railroad could actually be practical some day, if/when fuel gets expensive enough that the present arrangement becomes impractical. There are already lots of nice hiking trails and back roads for delightful cycling. Why pull up those rails that might in say twenty years be exactly the infrastructure that saves us... if only we don't hurry to destroy it? Certainly the railroad is an absurd toy in the present. But things can change so quickly!

http://catskillmountainrailtrail.org/

http://catskillmtrailroad.com/

[John Saxby]

Thanks, Jim.  Interesting information.  As you probably know, there's a N-S rail trail which runs from Croton into NYC, just east of where our friends live in Ossining across the Hudson from you.  There was an interesting thread on crazyguy on the subject earlier this year, from Australia:  https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/forum/board/message/?o=Sh&thread_id=623464&page=1&nested=0&v=N#623743

What strikes me is how often these initiatives (build a rail trail/preserve or rehab a railway) are posed as alternatives. Travelling in SW Sweden last September, I was delighted to see that the Swedes, clever folk that they are, had torn up the old rails closest to the sea on the main Gotebörg-Malmø line and replaced the railbed with a nice paved bike path; and then you know what they did? They built a new rail line as well!

(Can't recall what proportion of cyclists I saw on that trip with/without helmets -- think I was too gobsmacked by the evidence of Unbridled Lateral Thinking on the question of railtrails & such.)

[JimK]

Thanks for that CrazyGuy link, John!

I don't know the routes down around Ossining much, though I see references occasionally. Westchester County is a bit of a mad house - little twisty roads with far too much traffic. Riding on the roads down there is a whole other thing that up here, where on lots of roads it's more like a car every ten or twenty minutes!

Between here and there, one notable rail trail starts near New Paltz, crosses the Hudson via the new Walkway park, and runs all the way to Hopewell Junction in southern Dutchess County. I have ridden only a little bit of that. One of the rides I am dreaming about is a simple three day ride, camping at Fahnestock Park after riding that rail trail route, then back over the Hudson across the Newburgh-Beacon bridge for night 2 at Berentsen's campground, which is on the ACA Atlantic Coast route so I bet it is a fun place, then back up along that Atlantic Coast route to New Paltz and home. Ought to be like 50 miles on each side of the triangle. Now, to find three days!

[Pavel]

in Toronto in the late 80's there was a bill introduced by a council member to make it mandatory to have bike helmets and also shin guards for both motorcycles and bicycles. Later for spine protectors on motorcycles.  it did not come close to passing, if I remember right, but it's a slippery road. Mandatory insurance for sports and skiers have also been though of, but thankfully still not close to a reality.

if one supports the idea of mandatory helmets, I suspect that they like the idea of making sure others toe their line of what is their idea of safety. I can sort of see that, since it is so in line with the last 50 or so years of cultural direction, but what I am truly puzzled by is that I never hear the cry to make Helmets themselves more safe.  It surely should be full face, and a bit heavier in the plastic casing, because todays headgear protects in only a very limited way - substandard completely for the purpose, if safety is the goal, I would argue.

For the record, I wear a helmet about 70 percent of the time, but will not be mandated to.  I slipped while goofing off the first time I was on a wooden surface velodrome.  I hit the track really hard. I landed on my shoulder, hitting the ground sideways, and the force of the fall did not have me strike the ground, but gave me kind of a whiplash.  Funny thing is that it only started to bother me many years later and now if I am too stretched out my muscles on the left side of my spine go cold and then after a while my whole arm looses feeling in it.  It makes it pretty much impossible to cycle on "normal" race bikes set up the "normal"way and actually Thorn and its giant forks steerers make it fun on a cycle - again after a long time.  But every so often, when I have that beer cooler on my head, I get a terrible headache from it and I give the helmet a break in that case. 

[John Saxby]

Thanks, Pavel. Motorcyclists deal with far greater speeds than cyclists, most of the time, to be sure, but the comparison between my Shoei full-face motorcycle helmet, and the Bell helmet which I wear on my bike--well, there's not much comparison at all. (I generate a bit more heat & sweat when I'm cycling than I do when I'm riding Hans, my airhead, so there's some serious venting required if I'm cycling with anything approaching the protection that the Shoei offers...)

There are some interesting experiments going on just now at Univ of Ottawa's bio-mechanics department, on greater impact absorption for both hockey and gridiron football helmets. They look a bit weird--puffy--but the Uni guys say they offer much greater protection against the risk of concussion. (I believe them--our son did his M.Sc. in that dep't before leaving for his doctoral work in the warmer climes of Oz, and it's a good school.) Given the incidence of concussion in both of those sports, any advance will be welcome, and might have wider application as well. 

[Andre Jute]

...but what I am truly puzzled by is that I never hear the cry to make Helmets themselves more safe ... because todays headgear protects in only a very limited way - substandard completely for the purpose, if safety is the goal, I would argue.

I'm crying in the wilderness. It is the fate of prophets.

[Pavel]

Suffering and prophets is the peanut butter and jelly of life; meant to go together. The ecstasy of the agony, for the chosen. A bit like the hills of the Swiss Alps, don't ya think Andre? You know you love it!