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

Ha!

Your last sentence is basically saying "90% of commuters in london should be wearing a helmet because they are riding like they are racing"!

Does it? Where? How? I meant it to say that you shouldn't take someone else wearing a helmet as encouraging you to do the same, because it is their decision, made in the context of their ride and their skills, which may be very different from yours.

...wearing helmets normalises therefore encourages, therefore if you are anti-encouragement you are anti-helmet wearing. IMHO.
No (and, incidentally, your O isn't coming over as particularly H at the moment). I wear a helmet, because I want to for my own reasons. This is in no way an encouragement for you to do anything and I think it's quite disengenuous for you to equate my personal decision, that inherently affects nobody else, with the explicit verbal encouragement of someone else to wear one. Wearing a helmet is a million miles from actually saying "I encourage you to wear a helmet." I am anti-encouragement because of the reasons I put forward before (and the additional reason that it puts people off cycling); I am not anti-helmet, I leave that decision entirely up to the discretion of the other person (assuming they're a competent adult).

how come you and snotty disagree with me so much when I am also 100% anti-compulsion?

Because you have bizarre way of producing analogy that bear little resemblance to each other.

The problem is when non-helmet-wearing gets equated with irresponsible cycling, like by your neighbour.

I ride a sit up and beg, hardly ever bother to filter, and indicate like Brown Owl demonstrating semaphore. Yet because a helmet is such a visible signal of "I care about my safety", and the limitations of that safety so poorly understood, many would judge me as a less safe, less responsible cyclist than the hordes of lemmings that flow past me every day taking far higher risks but wearing a helmet.

So to me, those helmet wearers, the ones who protect against the low risk of a specific low-speed head injury but not the high risk of undertaking a left turning vehicle, are a problem because they confuse the picture of what a responsible, safe cyclist looks like. And that confusion becomes a real problem when questions of accident liability and contributory negligence have to be considered.

...

I'd agree with brokenbetty that when helmets provide a false sense of security and do not cause riders to consider more real and present danger, then those riders are being at best naive, and at worst dangerously reckless.

But she's saying a bit more than that. That by supporting the false view that helmets significantly improve safety, helmet wearing riders shift society's perception of what a safe cyclist is away from reality. Then genuinely safe cyclists get the blame for others faults if they fail to wear the expected symbol of safety.

I think that's a bit backwards. The false trust in helmets springs up naturally from common ignorance, and although helmet wearing cyclists help perpetuate it, they're more effect than cause.

This is trousers, great flapping loon-pants. Taking a sample of one, when I've crashed I generally hit my head, resulting in three bust helmets and no bust head.

Continue to do what you will, but I reckon most who have had a head injury in an incident haven't been wearing a lid. Incidentally, I have a red, a white and a black helmet with gold bits, like a JPS Lotus but really uncool, choose them by colour, it's is as good as anything.

Tester's point makes sense. Helmets spread the impact force and adsorb energy. Spreading the force helps avoid cracking your skull open, but doesn't help with concussion,. Energy adsorption can protect against both concussion and fracture. Polystyrene adsorbs energy as it crushes and crumbles. You can increase the energy it adsorbs by making it thicker and stronger. But if you make it stronger, lesser impacts won't generate enough force to crush it and all the energy will be transmitted directly to the skull, potentially still causing nasty concussions.

As we're playing the anecdotes game: a couple of friends have had crashes that led to worrying concussion (noticeable effect on thinking that took weeks to months to fade). Both were wearing helmets, and i got a look at one of them. The plastic outer skin was slightly scuffed and cracked, but the expanded polystyrene wasn't crushed - it hadn't softened his concussion.

I ride more and further than them, don't wear a helmet, have had a few crashes over the years, but have yet to injure my head.

I'm still not lowering the labour charge of changing the BB thought.

To the extent that i could see that the expanded polystyrene hadn't adsorbed any collision energy*, i can say that.

If you crash while wearing a helmet, you're right that you can't say for certain what would have happened had you not been wearing one, but you can examine the helmet to see if it adsorbed significant amounts of energy. If it did the polystyrene will be crushed or crumbled. If it isn't, it didn't.

(* It might have adsorbed a little bit without it being visually obvious.)

Jeez - I'm struggling to work out why you are so passionate about helmets / having the last word*.

*delete as appropriate.

(2) A serious dislike of the words and tone of lots of people on this thread who seem to think that an absence of evidence that helmets are a really good thing means that they are a complete waste of time and those who wear them are idiots and helmet promoters.

I think many here believe that helmets may help for falls at slow speeds where your head hits the ground, that there are many other things to do to prevent crashing beside wearing a lid, and that people can decide themselves whether or not to wear one.

simples

Tester's point makes sense. Helmets spread the impact force and adsorb energy. Spreading the force helps avoid cracking your skull open, but doesn't help with concussion,. Energy adsorption can protect against both concussion and fracture. Polystyrene adsorbs energy as it crushes and crumbles. You can increase the energy it adsorbs by making it thicker and stronger. But if you make it stronger, lesser impacts won't generate enough force to crush it and all the energy will be transmitted directly to the skull, potentially still causing nasty concussions.

As we're playing the anecdotes game: a couple of friends have had crashes that led to worrying concussion (noticeable effect on thinking that took weeks to months to fade). Both were wearing helmets, and i got a look at one of them. The plastic outer skin was slightly scuffed and cracked, but the expanded polystyrene wasn't crushed - it hadn't softened his concussion.

I ride more and further than them, don't wear a helmet, have had a few crashes over the years, but have yet to injure my head.

Don't quote me. That purpose of that post was to abuse Tester and advocate the JPS Lotus colours. Both of which are of more importance than anything else in this thread thus far.

There was a study about the larger circumference of the helmet mean your head is more likely to come in contact with the tarmac, gotta google it as I'm not sure how to find it.
Get out of here!

So many interesting sub threads since I last looked in, I may have to stay up all night.

One more thing. Does your hearing get affected by helmet or is it just me?
I found that wearing a helmet while cycling at over 50mph creates a deafening roar, much worse than wearing headphones.

Cycling on the roads in the New Forest is probably more hazardous than cycling in London. There have been three fatalities in four years, all helmeted, all on roads with the 40mph general speed limit.

Cycling on the roads in the New Forest is probably more hazardous than cycling in London. There have been three fatalities in four years, all helmeted, all on roads with the 40mph general speed limit.

It is a different sort of hazard. Rather than heavy traffic and people not paying attention it seems to be people with absolutely no patience who cannot wait 10 seconds until a clear road can be seen.
The roads are narrow and twisty and many have 40mph limits which is a pretty bad mix when adding impatient drivers to it.

Not sure what is worse - drivers not concentrating or drivers not caring...

Just gotta ride like you're invincible!

^ They're all jostling for the secret prize for the first post that takes the thread to a hundred pages
No! YOU ARE WRONG!
The prize goes to the person who posts message 5000

No! YOU ARE WRONG!
The prize goes to the person who posts message 5000

No.

...invisible. I meant to say invisible.

^^^ you win a helmet.

Is it not possible to do x y and z to prevent a collision, AND wear a helmet that will prevent some injuries in some accidents? i thought that it was.

Your logic appears to be akin to 'why do rockclimbers use ropes, surely they should just hold on to the cliff face tightly and not let go?'
This is a nice example or risk compensation. Free climbers and bolderers don't use ropes but take fewer risks. They don't go for the slippery or crumbly holds that climbers with ropes might try.

...they also have a tendency to die young.

And cool.

A helmet saved my looks when I went over the bars drunk. I got a scuffed chin and a big dent in the peak of my helmet.

My pal Marcus went over his bars sans helmet, beaucoup booze and got two black eyes, two broken front teeth and a mashed up nose. It cost him over £2k in dental bills.

So I wear a helmet.

Especially when drunk.

don't you look a bit odd in the pub?