Remember kids... always wear a helmet. (The almighty bikeradar helmet thread)

Good for you Ed and it is a shame indeed that your shop does not offer training anymore. I recommend cycle training to absolutely everyone. Cycle training will help people avoid a lot of accidents (riding to close to parked cars, undertaking, positioning, not looking over your shoulder etc..).

At the start of the session, you also learn how to fit your helmet correctly....

makes obligatory

"Scobles not getting anywhere near my helmet" comment

At the start of the session, you also learn how to fit your helmet correctly....

Yup, two finger gap between chin and helmet strap and all that bell & whistle.

Don't worry Wayne, I just need to insert two finger in, wiggle it about and you'll be right as rain.

Hell I'll write you a prescription for a good helmet if you like.

Don't worry Wayne, I just need to insert two finger in, wiggle it about and you'll be right as rain.

Hell I'll write you a prescription for a good helmet if you like.

Just about the best double entendre on here for a while.

Just another shoddy 'retti build.
You should've bought some Taiwanese carbon. Lighter and faster too.

yes he should have got a dolan/ribble/planet-x resin and fibre clone bike.
there's a certain comfort to be found in having the same thing as everyone else.

I would recommend that you read this:
http://waronthemotorist.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/would-a-helmet-help-if-hit-by-a-car/

It's like, a review, of like scientific studies and shit, and may actually be useful.

Good rational piece / summary. Thanks for the link.

If it was my forum this thread would be locked and any mention of h_lm_t that wasn't purely technical would be deleted without question. Lucky it's not my forum.

I buy you coffee for that comment.

jeez - bikeradar>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

He's not doing what you're railing against (doing nothing is more beneficial than a helmet) - He's suggesting that training may be more beneficial than a helmet

ironically if you get training with Merton council (where ed works) they tell you, you should have a helmet to do the training.

haha. quality.

jeez - bikeradar>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Shut up, James. This is getting interesting at last.

I'm going to put it this way:
If there's even a chance that a helmet will prevent you from brain injury- it is worth taking that chance, 'cos frankly, for all the Cycle Training in the world, a small fall off your bike onto you're head by a random unavoidable incident, or freak mis-clip, etc, MAY change your world irrevocably.

TO advise someone to NOT buy a helmet for me is inexcusable.

As has been pointed out, Ed did not say that.
What if there is "even a chance" that wearing a helmet will increase your chance of a serious injury in a fall? Would that convince you not to wear one? I am surprised you are being so shoddy with your talk of probability.
A friend of mine died of a head injury. He was at home, leaning back in his chair and he went too far and banged his head on the wall behind him. Had he been wearing a helmet at home to avoid this kind of injury he would probably still be alive. After all we can say there is "even a chance" of suffering a serious head injury in a freak accident in the home, it is foreseeable. Better advice would be not to lean back in your chair.
It's a crap analogy and so quite fitting for this thread.

One of the few benefits of dipping in and out of the helmet debates over the years is that I have learnt a great deal about the quality of 'research' from reading most of the articles and detailed commentaries on them. I was educated in the sciences and have worked as researcher.
Jeez notes the Cochrane Collaboration, a research review from 2000. Even then the 'best evidence' came from studies, by the same authors who wrote the review, completed a decade before in the late '80s and early '90s. At that time helmet wearing accounted for between 3% and 10% of the populations studied.
20 years later these studies are still routinely used to promote helmet wearing. Strangely the predicted benefits have never been validated by wide scale epidemiological evidence.
The first edition of the Cochrane Collaboration made it clear that none of the studies reviewed met the Cochrane gold standard of being a double blind case controlled study. I suspect that John Cochrane has been spinning in his grave continually for the last decade.

It seems to me that you should not wear a helmet if -

(1) you genuinely believe that you will take greater risks if you wear a helmet and you cannot control this. [Poor excuse IMHO].

What about if, despite what you may genuinely believe, you subconsciously take slightly more risk because you feel safer in a helmet? That is what the risk compensation theory claims.
This behaviour modification is easy to demonstrate in everyone (except psychopaths). It is harder to prove that it always happens, but for my money that is the best explanation for the failure of widespread helmet use to deliver the casualty reduction benefits predicted 20 years ago.

I genuinely can't be fucked with this thread- but I've tried to respond to the thread so many times in the past hour that I feel I must write something:
Will- you're right to pick me apart for the inaccurate use of stats.

Charlie- you've misunderstood the basics of the trials. These are unblindable, rather like the famous Doll and Hill doctors study, however, any medical statistician will tell you that to remove bias (or innacuracy or whatever you wish to term it) in an acceptable way is simple, using randomisation of the sample as one method. I haven't got the time to go read the cochrane study, but i'd be surprised if every attempt to remove bias wasn't made.
Also the most recent meta analysis I could find easily- ie first page of google- was from 2005, also under the 'Cochrane' title.

Ed- I apologise if I came across as harsh- I still think that cycle training will never be sufficient > helmets for a novice rider for a few reasons I'll hash out now:

1. immediacy of effect. Training takes time, till then the possibility of the cyclist to have a fall within the parameters (only taking the EU guidelines- 12.1 mph) that a helmet will prevent a head injury is good enough reason to me for a helmet to be the first purchase of any novice.
   
2. As mentioned above the speed of the average recreational/ novice commuter is deemed to be somewhere from 10-15 miles an hour- hence 12.1 was chosen as a near modal point, thus, even charlie would agree that the tests carried out by the licensing authorities, to specify protection levels- will prevent head trauma.
   
   

also @ ed- just noticed you'd asked me if I'd had cycle training, and yes- I have both in the states and through merton council.

and @ tiswas- yep, most of my ire about this comes from speaking to a neurologist who's specialty is the type of brain injury that can occur from the minor falls off a bike, or in my case from an accident when not wearing a helmet (which he says was pure luck that it wasn't worse) who, having read more literature than anyone on this thread (I suspect- since he'd had a 20year career) on brain trauma from these type of accidents, would never cycle without one (being a commuter and an amateur racer himself), and he said that all the problems I had from a minor injury could have been simply prevented.

Anyway this timewaste of a thread is now on ignore.

ironically if you get training with Merton council (where ed works) they tell you, you should have a helmet to do the training.

I know, it's largely because of the council urging the trainee to wear a helmet than the instructor themselves.

contract an' all.

(I don't work for merton at the moment though, so I'll tell you to ditch your helmet in that pathetic little river near the Savacentre).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13357822

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13357822

Rapha headscarf. No Helmet Required.

(2) you genuinely believe that you are significantly more likely to be involved in an accident due to drivers taking less care around you if you wear a helmet. [Good reason though I am unsure that the evidence is there to support this significantly - please correct me if I am wrong. There is evidence to suggest that this may be a factor, but it is far from conclusive]

Regarding number two, if you genuinely believes that you're more likely to be involved in a collision, then cycle training would be extremely advantageous before resorting to wearing a lid.

the key here is being able to *avoid *a collision rather than prepare for a collision.

When you said you learn cycle training when you were 8 years old, do you mean cycling proficiency?

Seeing as the thread title actually addresses 'kids', I thought I'd mention that I wrote to Headway, the head injury charity, to suggest that if they were going to use photos along with reports of how legislation about compulsory helmet use for children is being pushed/passed, they should make sure the child model has the helmet fitted correctly. I've not heard back yet…

Story here.

I genuinely can't be fucked with this thread- but I've tried to respond to the thread so many times in the past hour that I feel I must write something:
Will- you're right to pick me apart for the inaccurate use of stats.

Charlie- you've misunderstood the basics of the trials. These are unblindable, rather like the famous Doll and Hill doctors study, however, any medical statistician will tell you that to remove bias (or innacuracy or whatever you wish to term it) in an acceptable way is simple, using randomisation of the sample as one method. I haven't got the time to go read the cochrane study, but i'd be surprised if every attempt to remove bias wasn't made.
Also the most recent meta analysis I could find easily- ie first page of google- was from 2005, also under the 'Cochrane' title......
Anyway this timewaste of a thread is now on ignore.
The nature of the trials is my point. They are 'unblindable' therefore they can never meet the gold standard set up by John Cochrane when he established the review system.
Most of the criticism of the early trials relates to their failure to remove bias, or successfully randomise the cases. The 2005 edition of the review is a re-edit of the 2000 version after they removed the fictional quotes attributed to Mayer Hillman.
The main reason why the predictions from these 20 year old trials keep being repeated is not that they are the best science but they claim the biggest benefit and so are beloved by the helmet promoters and the press.

Seeing as the thread title actually addresses 'kids', I thought I'd mention that I wrote to Headway, the head injury charity, to suggest that if they were going to use photos along with reports of how legislation about compulsory helmet use for children is being pushed/passed, they should make sure the child model has the helmet fitted correctly. I've not heard back yet…

Story here.

The races n.w does on tuesdays state that all children taking part must wear a helmet, fair enough. The amount of children whose helmets are fitted incorrectly or whose helmets don't fit is astonishing.
Mention it to the parents and all hell breaks loose.

Have you seen the typical London cyclist? It would be like trying to train a banana.

This is the second time in two days I must spread rep.. someone else amuse me ffs

yes he should have got a dolan/ribble/planet-x resin and fibre clone bike.
there's a certain comfort to be found in having the same thing as everyone else.

Ahh, where's that fishing thread..