Finally Bought a Bicycle Helmet

Talking bout bike safety last night with the wife, and both us agree that there should be a FLASHING red light on the back of each and every bike that would be light sensitive to come on at dusk. This should be made as a law, with hefty fines for those who don't have them! This could save the many as the light dims at the end of the day and they are wearing dark clothing, that blend them in with the road ahead.

The helmet? In a slight, slower accident it could help. However, on a brutal impact where the brain is still travelling that short distance before it comes in contact with the inside of the skull? The jury is still out with me. A race car helmet would work, but the design/weight is too much for a bike rider.

My rant for the day.:confused:

Q
 
Any competent helmet is better than no helmet. The fashionable but ineffective close fitting shells I call "Darwin derbies" popular with Harley riders are a cautionary example of the incompent type that lack the protective impact absorbing crush lining.
 
I have two friends that have died. One road and one mountain biking. Both wore helmets.

I have a number of other friends and including myself that have been nailed by cars or crashed. Those of us who survived, have scars and we still have complete mental and motor skills because we wore helmets.

Being smart is and has been the new cool.
 
Oddly
For road riding I wear a helmet.
Honestly an old woman almost took me out last summer trying to make a right turn through me.
Helmet wouldn't have helped much in that one.
Nice trails by me maybe a mile from the house.
I feel safe enough to make that mile.
Probably biggest danger on trails is T boning or being tee boned by deer. Followed distantly by hunters.
I try to wear a lot of blaze during season even though they're not supposed to be hunting near trails.
 
Have always worn one and I think an accident I once had it saved me. Won’t go into the details but I once went over the bars and landed on my head in the street. Took a big chuck out of the Bell helmet i was wearing. Straightened the handle bars and rode home.
 
Just did a scan on bike helmet safety and have never seen so much "all over the map" research based (supposedly) results on the wearing/non-wearing of these devices.

Even brain surgeons are making remarks and taking sides on this issue, and some are not for the donning of these helmets. Discovered that there SO many variables in the methods of testing, the composition, the types of accidents, the effects on both bike rider/vehicle drivers, the ages of bikers, the analysis of results, and a whole host of other issues on this sensitive subject. Both camps of pro/con stick to their guns as to their POV's. Some (med experts included) of the cons even go so far as to say that the helmets cause damages to the neck that might have happened by wearing said head gear.

I'm still staying with my, "the jury is still out", as I'm still not sure which way to go on this accessory in the game of bicycling. Guess it's up to personal choice...unless you live in an area where helmets are the law.

Q
 
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Talking bout bike safety last night with the wife, and both us agree that there should be a FLASHING red light on the back of each and every bike that would be light sensitive to come on at dusk. This should be made as a law, with hefty fines for those who don't have them! This could save the many as the light dims at the end of the day and they are wearing dark clothing, that blend them in with the road ahead.

The helmet? In a slight, slower accident it could help. However, on a brutal impact where the brain is still travelling that short distance before it comes in contact with the inside of the skull? The jury is still out with me. A race car helmet would work, but the design/weight is too much for a bike rider.

My rant for the day.:confused:

Q

I do not quibble with your "Jury is still out" because of the various types of accidents and injuries that one can suffer on a bike in so many various accidents. In the case of helmet use, I specifically address the issue of head trauma and potential neck trauma - everything below that is really not addressed by helmet usage but rather the mechanisms of what hit you / you hit, where on your body, what forces, and whether there are multiple impacts (ie being run over or hit again.

IMO, the issue with head trauma is between surviving the initial impact of head to hard surface or sudden stops. The primary purpose of helmets is to try to prevent major / significant damage to 1) superficial facial and head tissues - nose, cheeks, jaw, eyes, forehead, all areas of scalp, maybe ears. Full face helmets like used on motorbikes and racing would excel at that for low speed purposes like bicycle riding but for many, the complete facial coverage would be suffocating as would the weight of those helmets in typical bicycle riding positions. Most bike helmets can help with protecting some of the head structures that it covers but the face is left fairly uncovered so a lot of facial trauma could happen but thankfully mostly does not occur because only a small percentage of crashes are head over the bars and face plant. If you've ever seen extremity road rash (even through jerseys, light jackets, and shorts), one can appreciate what your face and head can look like if skidded across the ground unprotected. And that's for just the exposed skin on your head.

The second purpose is to protect the skull from direct and solid impact on the ground or hard object through dissipation of said impact energy on more surface or the destruction of the helmet itself to protect the skull. This is quite important in low speed impacts because skull fractures become the leading cause of more extensive brain injury - which include meningeal artery tears, meningeal tears, cerebralspinal fluid leaks, concussions, direct and countrecoup brain concussion and and contusion, and bleeding in and under various coverings of the brain and brain itself (hematomas). Diverting or dissipating or otherwise vectoring the impact forces can significantly decrease the likelihood of direct skull damage and lessen (not eliminate) the potential for direct or indirect brain injury. At least if the helmet has done its job, its hopefully prevented a major traumatic skull fracture and attendant higher risk of brain injury. Think cracked coconut shell or melon rind.

Of course, given enough force (like riding downhill at 25+ MPH, or being hit and thrown by car at similar speed) even a helmet properly placed, may not be able to protect or prevent serious head injury - but, big BUT, it give you a much better and fighting chance than without a helmet because it can give you the chance to change the vector of force (sliding, bouncing, breaking, etc.) instead of the skull/scalp making the first contact while your body is dissipating all the force and motion put into it. Bike helmets ARE for relatively low speed crashes - crashes which can and do cause significant injury if unprotected and the objects hit (road, curbs, sidewalks, immovable objects) cannot give way.

Once you exceed 25-35mph speeds, the forces are considerably higher and head injury is going specifically depend on whether the head is directly traumatized or lucks out and is deflected or rolled or otherwise relatively LESS affected - i.e. the luck of the impact and subsequent fall/contact. Motorcycle riders know this issue because of the speeds they are at and if they have to lay down a bike, they roll or slide in some semi-controlled manner if possible (of course, with full leathers also). Higher speeds (50+) on motorcycles simply must depend on avoidance because hard and sudden impacts there will bypass literally any body defenses known except for Iron Man armor (well, maybe Rhodey couldn't survive his War Machine fall?).

Motor racing helmets are primarily designed to survive the initial impacts of the head within a cockpit which itself is designed to cocoon and protect the driver as much as possible. However, the violent actions of a race car crash cannot predict nor protect against penetration or objects hitting the driver with massive forces at speed - many drivers have been killed by flying debris/shrapnel like wheels, body and chassis parts, and wings, or neck and lower skull damage by sudden impact stops that transmit into the body, neck and head (basilar skull fractures) - hence the HANS head movement restriction devices that are now used in vehicle racing that supplements the helmets. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANS_device. It is interesting to note, like pretty much all safety advances (seat belts, any helmets, fire suppression, HANS, roll cages, etc., even track barriers and mobile medical/surgical units), these were resisted by the drivers, teams, and even sanctioning bodies for long periods of time until enough drivers DIED, and real research put knowledge into the equations.

Of course, many cyclists will be injured or killed by accidents or collisions with motor vehicles where the injuries are bodily or neck related, areas where the helmet will have little to no protection because of the forces and impact areas of the body affected or the human body is so physically traumatized by the auto/fall that they would not survive much like being struck as a pedestrian.
 
I'm a skilled mountain biker, ride 3x per week except in winter. Won't ride without helmet and eye protection. Had 1 real crash in the last 2 years. Over the bars, was not going fast. Rolled out of it, got up and was just fine. But my helmet had a 3/4" dent where my head hit the corner of a rock. Saved me from a serious head injury.

Recommendation: buy the best MIPS helmet you can afford, and upgrade every 2 years to a better one.
Also, I will not ever ever ride a bike on the road with cars, not worth the risk.
 
Helmets are not for the riders, they're for the EMTs that come scoop you up.

That's why they are called brain buckets!
 
With the exception of the last four years due to health reasons I've been riding for 50+ years. In my adult years when helmets started becoming popular I felt that after all these years of not wearing one that it would jinx me if I started now. Well I'm healthy enough to start riding again and it will be with a helmet. I'm old enough and wise enough now to stop taking chances. I've hit the ground a few times without serious injury and I if it happens again, I don't want it to be my last time.
 
With the exception of the last four years due to health reasons I've been riding for 50+ years. In my adult years when helmets started becoming popular I felt that after all these years of not wearing one that it would jinx me if I started now. Well I'm healthy enough to start riding again and it will be with a helmet. I'm old enough and wise enough now to stop taking chances. I've hit the ground a few times without serious injury and I if it happens again, I don't want it to be my last time.

Quite accurate - the older you are, generally the more fragile your brain is. My two grandchildren recently had head knocks from falls and they literally just bounced and were OK, even I at roughly 7 years of age took a header from a 4 ft high fence and landed squarely on my forehead onto a concrete driveway - and survived with no injury (well some might say I've been brain damaged!) - why? Because the skull is a bit larger than the brain at their age plus have some actual flexibility to absorb and distribute impacts, their brains are younger and more able to tolerate small hits, and their blood vessels are soft, pliable, and can stretch. Fast forward to our ages of 50+ - our craniums are solidly fused together, our skull plus brains now weigh about 11 pounds or pretty much like a light bowling ball flapping around on the stalk we call our necks. The brain inside is now well differentiated and interconnected so damage can be quite specific and the brain has much less ability to reform/renew or create new connections if injured. Top that with very little additional space inside the cranium as the brain and meninges (the coverings of the brain) pretty much take up all the space inside. All the arteries and veins are now 50+ years old and may have atherosclerotic changes rendering them much less pliable, potentially stiff, and less able to move or flex - leading to increased risk of tearing or rupture.

This is why falls for elderly people (typically aged 65+-90) where they strike their heads can lead to bleeding inside the skull and a hemorrhagic stroke or worse - once bleeding starts, time and access to competent emergency health plus a neurosurgeon is the difference between making it out reasonably intact or losing minor to critical brain functions and/or death. That is the same reason to wear seat belts and have air bags in vehicles - trying to prevent the potential head trauma of striking anything inside the car while decelerating. It doesn't always mitigate the neck and basilar skull fracture risk but it beats hitting the steering wheel / windshield / window pillars or worse, being ejected through the windshield or windows.
 
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