Anyone else stopped wearing helmets in this weather?

[Mick F]

.......If you are homeless, your risk of an admission from head injury is 5 times higher than the "average" person ..........

Any references to this?

[Cunobelin]

.......If you are homeless, your risk of an admission from head injury is 5 times higher than the "average" person ..........

Any references to this?

One of the links id Brain Injury and homelessness (Disabilities Trust)

They discuss research from Glasgow:

The study found that people who were homeless and who also sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) were more than twice as likely to die in the seven years between 2004-2010 as homeless people without such injuries over the same period.

It also showed that hospital admission with TBI was five times more prevalent among homeless people than within the wider Glasgow population.

There is also a Briefing paper from the Scottish Parliament raising the issue:

A total of 1590 homeless people were registered in GP returns. The prevalence of admission to hospital with head injury in the homeless over a 30-year period was 5.4 times higher than in the Glasgow population. In the homeless with hospitalised head injury, 34% died in the short seven-year census period, compared to 14% of the homeless with no hospitalised head injury. The risk of death in the seven year period was 4.5 times higher than in the general Glasgow population

It is a sobering thought.... and could be conservative, one Canadian Study puts the risk of homeless people with alcohol problems at 400 times the general population

It coms back to the scandal we spend millions researching and promoting helmets in a minority group, yet such large groups as this are totally neglected

[Xilter]

Anyway, how do you know that you might not have hit your head without a helmet? How do you know the event would have happened at all if you were not wearing a helmet, your behaviour/actions would have been different? All these things are the reason why despite huge increases in helmet wearing they make absolutely zero difference, in many cases they make matters worse.

Well when you put it like that I suppose you are right. The incident would not have happened had I not been wearing a helmet. I was 7y/o and wouldn’t been allowed on my bike without it.

But then I’m so glad that was the case. having seen my helmet split open that I took it as a valuable lesson learned and won’t ride without.

[Brucey]

I've seen folk try and tell homeless people they would be better off wearing a helmet, and would they listen...?...

[Airsporter1st]

I once came to such an abrupt stop that I shot forward and bruised my balls on the handlebar stem. I was wearing Y fronts at the time and although they got torn, I didn't sustain any more serious injuries. No way would I ever ride without them since (though they are pretty tight and tend to smell a bit these days).

[Cunobelin]

I've seen folk try and tell homeless people they would be better off wearing a helmet, and would they listen...?...

They could be lectured by ill-informed Health Care Professionals, bullied and criticised by other homeless people, blamed for the severity of their head injuries, and being told that unless they wear one they will end up as a vegetable drinking soup through a straw


All the same tripe that passes as “evidence based Practice” for all too many “Health Care Professionals” when dealing with cyclists

The point is not about the homeless wearing helmets, but as with cyclists taking the common sense and pragmatic attitude of finding out why they are happening, and preventing them... something that would be of real and lasting benefit

[drossall]

Well I must be the only person in the world then who when had the front wheel lock up I went over the handle bars and split my helmet. Had to have a few stitches in my face aswell. But seeing the chunk missing from the front of my helmet and the crack running front to back...

But a split helmet has failed. It takes very little force to break polystyrene in two, compared to what it takes to crush it. A life-saving helmet should be crushed, not split. Of course, it's possible that both happened, but a split helmet is a little like a broken seat-belt.

[Steady rider]

Xilter » 5 Aug 2018, 12:12pm wrote

Well when you put it like that I suppose you are right. The incident would not have happened had I not been wearing a helmet. I was 7y/o and wouldn’t been allowed on my bike without it.

A few points, you were allowed based on someone perceiving they may provide a benefit, risk compensation allowing a 7 yo to do something. A 7yo may also think they are better protected and ride in such a way as to increase the accident risk.

Robinson 1996 detailed the incidence of cyclists hitting their head/helmet in a cycling accident was ‘significantly higher for helmet wearers (8/40 vs 13/476 - i.e. 20% vs 2.7%, p 0.00001’). http://www.cycle-helmets.com/robinson-head-injuries.pdf Robinson also provides data on the change in risk.

In addition to a higher rate of hitting a helmet v a bare head, there is also the accident rate to consider. Porter AK, Salvo D, Kohl HW, Correlates of Helmet Use Among Recreation and Transportation Bicyclists, AJPM 2016. https://uthealth.influuent.utsystem.edu ... ation-bicy The Porter 2016 report in the US detailed that cyclists wearing helmets had more than twice the odds of suffering an injury than cyclists not wearing helmets.

Erke and Elvik 2007 examined research from Australia and New Zealand and stated that "There is evidence of increased accident risk per cycling-km for cyclists wearing a helmet. In Australia and New Zealand, the increase is estimated to be around 14 per cent."

Any 7 yo could be completely convinced they should wear a helmet when cycling if they fell off and hit their helmet but life is not that simple. More details may be provided shortly.

[drossall]

I may have mentioned this before. Something I found concerning was a series of bad accidents on some fairly routine off-road (mostly railway path, but with some sharp descents) rides for young people. The response proposed was to replace the standard helmets with full-face ones. I thought this was the wrong approach - better to look for the cause of the problem, which I suspected to be unfamiliarity with the disc brakes on the hired bikes - so I did substantial familiarisation sessions before setting out in the weeks when I was in charge. We had no serious accidents. Could have been good fortune, but the point was the way in which the focus on helmets distracted people from prevention into getting "better" helmets - which would have been inappropriate for the context, and probably made things worse.

[Cunobelin]

I may have mentioned this before. Something I found concerning was a series of bad accidents on some fairly routine off-road (mostly railway path, but with some sharp descents) rides for young people. The response proposed was to replace the standard helmets with full-face ones. I thought this was the wrong approach - better to look for the cause of the problem, which I suspected to be unfamiliarity with the disc brakes on the hired bikes - so I did substantial familiarisation sessions before setting out in the weeks when I was in charge. We had no serious accidents. Could have been good fortune, but the point was the way in which the focus on helmets distracted people from prevention into getting "better" helmets - which would have been inappropriate for the context, and probably made things worse.

A few years ago, Headway were using a paper from the British Dental Association that was discussing the poor facial protection offered by modern helmet design. The realistic answer is to increase facial protection is a full face helmet

[drossall]

Yes, but apart from heat and comfort considerations, I'd be worried about peripheral vision and hearing. I can't see that full-face helmets are appropriate for normal riding, as opposed to downhill when the effort is less and there are no other competitors around. Although I suppose they are used in BMX?

[Mistik-ka]

Robinson 1996 detailed the incidence of cyclists hitting their head/helmet in a cycling accident was ‘significantly higher for helmet wearers (8/40 vs 13/476 - i.e. 20% vs 2.7%, p 0.00001’). http://www.cycle-helmets.com/robinson-head-injuries.pdf Robinson also provides data on the change in risk.

Despite the title of Robinson's 1996 paper: Head Injuries and Bicycle Helmet Laws, it is tempting to use it to extrapolate conclusions about the effectiveness of bicycle helmets, while ignoring statements like "After adjusting for severity of accident and other measures, helmet wearing was estimated to reduce the probability of head injury by 63%." Robinson has not examined the effectiveness of bicycle helmets or the research that pertains to it in great detail. His paper was a very preliminary examination of data concerning the effectiveness of compulsory helmet laws, and as such certainly merits thoughtful consideration when discussing helmet laws; discussion of helmet effectiveness must look elsewhere for valid evidence.

[drossall]

That's reporting other people's research; it's not a statement by Dorothy Robinson (who may be surprised at her sudden change of gender). If you read the abstract, the thrust of the paper is that the helmet laws have been ineffective and counter-productive. Whilst there's little explicit commentary on the particular point, it's hard to read the quoting (of third-party research that estimates 63% effectiveness) as being intended to provide anything other than a contrast with the real-world outcomes being reported in Robinson's paper.

[bovlomov]

All the same tripe that passes as “evidence based Practice” for all too many “Health Care Professionals” when dealing with cyclists

..and when dealing with almost anything.

Many are trained to parrot slogans without any understanding of the science. Babies sleeping on their fronts, vaccination, pressure sores, breastfeeding, cycle helmets... ...they'll earnestly lecture you on the official line but often can't answer a simple follow-up question. Sometimes the advice is plain wrong (as with helmets), but mostly it is general one-size-fits-all advice that can go very wrong if applied unthinkingly.

I imagine they are perfectly intelligent and sensitive people in their civilian lives, but you wouldn't know it when you meet them in their professional roles. Perhaps a culture of fear makes them like that.

[brooksby]

I once came to such an abrupt stop that I shot forward and bruised my balls on the handlebar stem. I was wearing Y fronts at the time and although they got torn, I didn't sustain any more serious injuries. No way would I ever ride without them since (though they are pretty tight and tend to smell a bit these days).

Ah, there you go: the next big thing will be making sure all cyclists wear a jockstrap or a cricketer's box...