No ride vs No helmet

[foxyrider]

Well, that's the thing....I've scraped my head before now and it hasn't stopped me riding, but I have had to stop because of taking skin off my palm....hence my paranoia!

+1

Helmets and gloves completely different issues

[Roadster]

I usually wear both but if forced to choose, I'd far rather have gloves and no helmet than the other way round.

[bigjim]

I read a comment somewhere from a doctor. As we age our skin becomes thinner. Hence when we fall the skin is easily damaged and bleeding where in a younger person it would more likely just be a scrape or less. His advice was about related to wearing long sleeves even in the summer just to give the skin more protection. So gloves? Definitely.

[The utility cyclist]

If you do crash, it's usually your hands, arms, hips and legs that get damaged.

Yep, I only wear a helmet on the road when I'm paid to do it......but riding without gloves or mitts really does throw my confidence and ramp up the paranoia level to 11.

I rode back from the shops without gloves last week, was the most weird feeling, felt completely naked, the first time since I was 15/16 that I'd not ridden more than a few yards without. I have mine stuffed down the back of the radiator in the hallway (at least 2 pairs weather dependant) so they are always to hand when I leave the house, bad grazes to the hands can make life very difficult and if you lose a lot of flesh/embed crap from the road it's pretty much guaranteed a trip to the hospital.
I've always been a glove wearer when I walked/walk so tbh it makes zero difference to wear for using two wheels and the benefit is that they add to comfort and the other slightly less pleasant but perfunctory role they play on both hot and cold days

[Cyril Haearn]

I always wear gloves when cycling or going by train or bus
The door handles and handrails on vehicles are covered with bacteria

[drossall]

Well, that's the thing....I've scraped my head before now and it hasn't stopped me riding, but I have had to stop because of taking skin off my palm....hence my paranoia!

But almost anything will help to prevent scraping - a woollen hat, for example. Logically, as long as it doesn't come off, it will do as much for your head as gloves would for your hands.

The OP may be able to wear a hat?

I guess the only other thing is whether protection is needed in case of falling on the wound, which would be a different kind of risk? That apart, though, I agree that the risks of not cycling are far greater than risks associated with accidents.

[thirdcrank]

... I am on the verge of venturing out helmetless and maybe just looking for some words of support !

You are approaching the age where it's dead easy to give up all sorts of activities or discover that you cannot really do them any more when you try after a break. I suggest that the priority here is getting back on your bike while it's still an option. At this time of year other things like bad weather can be an additional disincentive and you'd not be alone if you had family members urging you to give up cycling because they worry about you. Different people worry about different things and it's easy to offer advice, harder to get the advice right. I'd diffidently suggest weighing up the risk of losing your fitness and possibly ending up stopping cycling against the things which concern you personally about riding without a helmet. I say personally because my own fear is of the victim-blamers.

Time flies. Seize the day. (There are good reasons they've been using both those phrases for a couple of thousand years at least.)

[pjclinch]

Gloves... I became "a cyclist" when doing a paper round in the 70s, when I always worse gloves because your hands got absolutely filthy from the news print otherwise. I stuck with the habit for years afterwards, and when we got to the 90s and I was wearing a helmet I figured if I was worried about my head I should be worried about my hands, so kept wearing them, and the padding was useful on drop bars. Moving in to the post helmet, post drop-bar, post visiting NL era (back in the noughties) I thought about it and decided if the Dutch could do without them if it wasn't cold then so could I. So unless it's cold I don't wear them any more.
As with the helmet, first few times without you feel practically certain you're bound to regret it, just from poetic injustice, but after a bit it just ceased to be something I gave any thought to. Only problem is sometimes I forget them when I go MTBing, which is not entirely clever, but no regrets thus far despite a couple of "unplanned dismounts" (the ground's normally not so hard...).

My winter cycling hat (I'm a slaphead) is a Walz woollen cycle cap with some back-of-neck and ear protection. I really like Walz caps, I have Vulpine and Rapha caps too and I think the Walz ones are much better designed and built. The peak keeps a lot of sun and rain out of your eyes which is why I prefer a cap to a beanie. Helmet or a warm cap combine well with a Buff (or similar neck tube) if it's properly chilly.

Pete.

[Cyril Haearn]

A thick padded wool hat or maybe two or more of them might protect ones head if one fell off
Might get a bit warm mind

[millimole]

I wouldn't worry about it, how many times have you fallen on your head?

This is the point - how many miles have you ridden? In all those miles how many timed have you come off? Of those times how many times have you hit your head? And of the times you hit your head (if any) would a helmet have made any difference?

The arguments for helmet wearing become vanishingly small.

I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my wobbly using hovercraft full of eels.

[[XAP]Bob]

Did 4.5k miles last year - have commuted for a decade (probably ~25k miles). I wore a helmet for some of that time, but not a lot recently.
I've come off six times that I can recall (ignoring three stationary clipless moments)

# when a van I was leaning on whilst talking to the driver took off - scraped leg.
# wheels went from under me on ice one evening - bounced off hip and arm.
+ swerving to avoid a head on collision with an Audi who was on the wrong side of the road - bruised elbow, clouted knee.
# front wheel didn't make it back onto a path after going around a couple of old ladies - no injury that I can remember.
- rear washout on the raptobike when I had to tighten my line through a corner over gravel - bruised ankle.
+ rear ended by a car - scraped up knees, elbow, hip.

The only times I've ever hit my head have been against doorframe or walls when wearing a helmet - because my proprioception failed to account for the additional diameter.

Key:
# upright bike
+ 'bent trike
- 'bent bike

Note that two of these had no other vehicle involved, two were single vehicle incidents due to my reaction to another vehicle, one was another vehicle from a standstill, only one was a true 'hit by another vehicle'.

No idea what that shows...
Maybe I should wear elbow and hip pads?

[Si]

Well, that's the thing....I've scraped my head before now and it hasn't stopped me riding, but I have had to stop because of taking skin off my palm....hence my paranoia!

But almost anything will help to prevent scraping - a woollen hat, for example. Logically, as long as it doesn't come off, it will do as much for your head as gloves would for your hands.

Ah but, my point was that although I might get the same injury in each location, it has different consequences.....palm of the hand stopped gripping the bars so stopped me riding, head was painful but didn't stop me riding, hence gloves more important to me when I start with the paranoid worries about risk.

[Psamathe]

If you do crash, it's usually your hands, arms, hips and legs that get damaged.

Yep, I only wear a helmet on the road when I'm paid to do it......but riding without gloves or mitts really does throw my confidence and ramp up the paranoia level to 11.

Interesting because chatting to a non-cyclist I met before Christmas and cycling came up and she asked "you do wear gloves don't you?" - which surprised me because most people (non-cyclists) think first of helmets yet this person's 1st thoughts on safety were about gloves. Apparently a friend of her's had a bad fall cycling and it did really bad damage to her hands (loss of skin&muscle as she slid down the road - which apparently took ages and ages to recover from).

Ian

[Psamathe]

I think individual reaction to the same accident would vary significantly. A couple of years ago I took a slide on dry roads when turning right (road must have been slippery but who knows - 100% my fault). Rear wheel slid and I was on the ground and my helmet did take quite a bash making a sharp noise. And my reaction was that whilst it made a loud noise that does not mean it was necessarily a hard bash and that my head might not have even made it to the road surface without a helmet increasing my head size. But you see others who immediately start the "last night my helmet saved my life" ...

I do think how an individual reacts to the surprise of an accident can determine their assessment as to the part a helmet played. And when you suffer an accident I doubt you are best placed to accurately assess the part played by your helmet (or lack of helmet). And with your focus at the time of the accident and confirmation bias and I tend to question personal assessment of the role of the helmet.

Ian

[[XAP]Bob]

And when you suffer an accident I doubt you are best placed to accurately assess the part played by your helmet (or lack of helmet). And with your focus at the time of the accident and confirmation bias and I tend to question personal assessment of the role of the helmet.

With the exception of the - my head/helmet went nowhere near the ground.
That observation is probably reasonable. It's harder to suggest whether an unhelmeted person may have hit a helmet...