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

I buy you coffee for that comment.

The 'lucky it's not my forum' bit, no doubt :)

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.

I got bollocked for removing a helmet from my 2yo. He has a well fitting one, but we'd left it at the in-laws summer house. He was in the trailer, and he had on my 5yo's. It was obviously more dangerous then protective. But people just want the comforting sight of a helmet, and dont think too much about ahat they are trying to achieve by putting it on.

Mention it to the internet and all hell breaks loose.

.

This thread is shite n pointless.

However I have been unable to go to work for 6 weeks after crashing my bike and suffering a fractured skull.

In the future I may or may not wear a helmet.

If it is shite then don't come on it.

It is not pointless - it is educational. I have learnt that the evidence is not as conclusive as I thought it would be, and I have learnt that (despite no evidence to back this up) that sticking with a BMX type hard-shell above a road helmet with thin casing and bits jutting out the baack is probably a wise move.

Though if you are doing long rides in the summer, the overheating and subsequent dehydration that you would suffer would have a huge impact on your cognitive ability. Those vents and bits sticking out of the back are to help keep you cool

http://www.jacn.org/content/26/suppl_5/549S.full

As such you would be more likely to have a crash.

where a helmet?

On your head.

do you seriously think that you can prove to me why i should not wear a helmet?

[edited due to reduced cognitive ability caused by overheating.]

was just pointing out that your bmx lid would not be good on long road rides

On your head.

^ that...

and undertake cycle training not lorries.

fucks off

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.

If you think that the Cochrane people are a sinister shadowy cabal, you're w r o n g.

was just pointing out that your bmx lid would not be good on long road rides

Problem?

You're not trying hard enough.

why people do what they do is always interesting isnt it?

one of the commonest sights is a parent on a bike, helmetless, often riding with poor skill, next to kids on bikes with badly fitted useless helmets.

or, this one cracks me up even more, parent, helmetless dragging bike trailer/tagalong total lack of road awareness with kid in/ on wearing helmet.

its all sociocultural

m.f. your post remind me of this;

ha, all good
program on now ch4 docu about a+e in kings college hospital inc bit about cyclist injury, real

interesting news - cycling have been declining in Copenhagen, despite helmets not being compuslory, there have been quite a lots of helmet promoting in Denmark.

I get the impression that people are mixing up what would be probably counted as passive safety (if talking about motorised transport) with active safety -a bit of a stretch, but I'm counting cycle training as an active safety measure.

[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_safety[/ame]

Things like seat-belts (i.e. helmets) are passive, whilst things like strong brakes, reactive steering, good suspension (i.e. things that can help you avoid an accident) are active.

The article I linked to above mentions risk compensation- ABS brakes are a great example of a safety measure that did not bring about the reduction in accidents that was assumed because people got used to being able to brake much later.

ABS brakes are a great example of a safety measure that did not bring about the reduction in accidents that was assumed because people got used to being able to brake much later.

I'm pretty sure you're attributing the wrong cause to the failure of ABS to reduce collision rates. I doubt that most people ever activate their ABS in normal driving, except where there is a significant grip reduction such as ice or wet overbanding, so it's not that everybody is out there desperately late braking into every corner, the problem is that people don't hit the pedal hard enough even in an emergency. To see if this is the case, the thing you'd need to study is the effect on collision rates of "Emergency Brake Assist", where the ABS computer detects an abnormal, but still well short of maximal, brake application and then hits the brakes as hard as possible, slowing the vehicle more quickly than the driver would have done without the intervention of the computer. Most people have no clue how fast you can stop on a dry road, so they only hit the pedal hard enough to feel like they are coming to a sudden stop, not hard enough to exploit all the grip available.

I may very well be attributing the wrong cause- however it is often mentioned (in the motoring press) that ABS is a bit of a poser in terms of safety kit though as it clearly has a big benefit (being able to steer when braking as hard as possible), yet it never brought about the reduction in crashes that the technology promised.

I once watched somebody have a very expensive crash which I would definitely have avoided because I insisted on having ABS and the chap who caused >£20k of damage to his and another vehicle clearly didn't, as he gently slid with all 4 wheels locked up into the back of a stationary BMW X5, which then cannoned into another stationary car, thus wrecking both ends of the X5.

Cadence braking.

Wrecking an X5? He did the world a favour.

^True.

I've never triggered the ABS in my car except in the snow, when it became a total liability.

That's probably down to the totally unsuitable tyres (T1-R's) than anything else though.

In other news- I crashed my mountain bike when I was 17 and have a prominent facial scar to this day that I would have avoided if I had been wearing a helmet.

Cadence braking.

If you can cadence brake as accurately and rapidly as the latest ABS systems, well done, but how are you steering if you're using both hands and both feet to independently cadence brake the four wheels?

I've never triggered the ABS in my car except in the snow, when it became a total liability.

It does feel pretty weird to have the ABS in action while you're barely moving and also barely decelerating, but calling it a liability is a stretch, since you didn't do the control experiment with the ABS turned off.

The thing I noticed when playing in the snow is just how abusive you have to be with steering, throttle* and brakes to get the car moving around, even on ordinary tyres. You'd need to be properly insensitive to do it by accident, but I suppose most drivers (i.e. the ones who didn't start on two wheels) are pretty clueless.

*Note: I only have about 70hp at my disposal, and most of that in a rev band I never visit. YMMV.

I have a bit more than that, but never used it- the car was on a steep slope.

Once I got it stopped I left it there until the snow went.

I'm going to put snow tyres on this year, rather than leaving track day rubber on there.