old_windbag wrote:I think anyone entering the helmet forum needs the protection of a helmet..... but here goes.
Personally I'd remove the use of fractured skull here and there because this is at the extreme end of head injuries. I think that a bang to the head can make you go "ow" and you get up and get on..... but that is not to say you haven't caused damage that you don't percieve until a few years down the line when you notice a premature decline in cognitive skills or perhaps suffer seizures or mental issues. If wearing a helmet can reduce some of the decelleration that can cause such damage then that isn't a bad reason surely.
Boxers tend not to wear helmets but nor do they suffer fractured skulls........ but a single punch can kill or seriously brain injure you. You don't have to have a career of hits to the head to have that happen. We accumulate damage to our heads through life just as we do damage to skin etc, surely to wear a helmet to reduce some of that damage is like wearing sun cream to reduce the chance of skin cancer. We don't slap that on all of the time but when we do those may be the times that without it we would have caused the damage that leads to problems down the line.
But helmet use is very contentious indeed and polarises people. It's very political.
Except the the ABA had the sense to look at the data and conclude that head gear increased concussions by a very significant factor (for the same reasons cycle helmets do), increases in cuts after removing yes, but they pale into almost insignificance when you are having a large reduction in head trauma/TBIs. So no, wearing a helmet INCREASES the chances of you actually having those micro knocks or even bigger knocks in the first place hence why the statistical evidence is so weak to promote wearing them.
That you add in the fragility of the cycle helmet itself and its inability to prevent anything other than minor abrasions, plus the increase in head size AND adding to that the diverting of responsibility from those presenting the harm in most head injury/death outcomes is exactly why they simply cannot work to prevent and lower head injuries or deaths from such, nor indeed reduce TBIs or even overall injury rates to other parts of the body.
there is simply no short, medium or long term benefit, you've fallen into the trap as many do from individuals. cycling organisations (though I suspect the UCI it was a financial reason) governments and many other official departments of not only failing to understand the actual risk factor but the harm done on an epic scale due to wearing them and the push to make them and hi-vis and other so called 'safety' aids onto the vulnerable.
