Helmets?

For all discussions about this "lively" subject. All topics that are substantially about helmet usage will be moved here.
User avatar
Mick F
Spambuster
Posts: 56359
Joined: 7 Jan 2007, 11:24am
Location: Tamar Valley, Cornwall

Re: Helmets?

Post by Mick F »

Cugel wrote:If only them chainsaw users would put on the protective gear. It would save not just their hearing, a finger or three and the odd eye but also whole legs!

If only the same could be said for those polystyrene cycling hats.
Chainsawing. I'm very familiar with.
I wear ear defenders because my Husqvarna is very noisy.
I wear overalls, gloves and boots, but all I'm doing is cutting up logs on a logging horse or cutting down a tree in our wood. No lumberjacking for me!

I could be chainsawing naked.
If so, I'd be very careful indeed.

Could it be possible ........... an argument here? ............ that making yourself more vulnerable makes you more careful?
Could it be possible that wearing a cycling helmet makes you cycle more aggressively?
Could it be possible, that cycling completely naked top-to-bottom would make you very careful indeed?
Mick F. Cornwall
User avatar
mjr
Posts: 20308
Joined: 20 Jun 2011, 7:06pm
Location: Norfolk or Somerset, mostly
Contact:

Re: Helmets?

Post by mjr »

De Sisti wrote:A non-helmet wearing member of our club (early 60s) was knocked off his bike by a taxi last week.
He has now announced that in future he will be wearing a helmet. He didn't allude to whether his
head was injured in the collision, but he mentioned damage to his crank.

None of the helmet standards test anything much relevant to being hit by any other vehicle. Please make your clubmate aware of this before he risk- compensates himself into another casualty statistic :(
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
All the above is CC-By-SA and no other implied copyright license to Cycle magazine.
User avatar
mjr
Posts: 20308
Joined: 20 Jun 2011, 7:06pm
Location: Norfolk or Somerset, mostly
Contact:

Re: Helmets?

Post by mjr »

Mick F wrote:
Cugel wrote:If only them chainsaw users would put on the protective gear. It would save not just their hearing, a finger or three and the odd eye but also whole legs!

If only the same could be said for those polystyrene cycling hats.
Chainsawing. I'm very familiar with.
I wear ear defenders because my Husqvarna is very noisy.
I wear overalls, gloves and boots, but all I'm doing is cutting up logs on a logging horse or cutting down a tree in our wood. No lumberjacking for me!

I could be chainsawing naked.
If so, I'd be very careful indeed.

Could it be possible ........... an argument here? ............ that making yourself more vulnerable makes you more careful?
Could it be possible that wearing a cycling helmet makes you cycle more aggressively?
Could it be possible, that cycling completely naked top-to-bottom would make you very careful indeed?

It's a theory. Dr Ian Walker tested it by making people wear hats and helmets and then take risk attitude tests. The helmet wearers took more risks.
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
All the above is CC-By-SA and no other implied copyright license to Cycle magazine.
Mike Sales
Posts: 7883
Joined: 7 Mar 2009, 3:31pm

Re: Helmets?

Post by Mike Sales »

mjr wrote:It's a theory. Dr Ian Walker tested it by making people wear hats and helmets and then take risk attitude tests. The helmet wearers took more risks.


Risk Compensation (or better, Risk Homeostasis) is a well known theory.
John Adams and Aaron Wildavsky are perhaps its most prominent proponents.
Insurance companies even have their own name for it, "Moral Hazard" and they disapprove. Moral hazard is the tendency of those who are insured to behave differently from the uninsured.
I find it very convincing and that if stated in some ways, so do most people.

http://www.john-adams.co.uk/
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
JohnW
Posts: 6667
Joined: 6 Jan 2007, 9:12pm
Location: Yorkshire

Re: Helmets?

Post by JohnW »

De Sisti wrote:...............................Seems like you're a bit accident-prone. Ride slower; it may prevent some of the incidents you've been
involved in.


I referred to just two accidents in which I've been involved.

Your comment to one of them may be relevant and appropriate; I wasn't hit by anything - a flat spanner in the road came up with my front wheel and got trapped between mudguard and wheel. My speed may very well have been an element in the amount of injury damage, but certainly not in generating it.

The other 'accident' (referred to by the police as an 'incident') was the action of a motorist who drove into the back of me; my speed had no effect on his behaviour/action. At the time I was climbing at no more than 9 or 10 mph.
User avatar
Cugel
Posts: 5430
Joined: 13 Nov 2017, 11:14am

Re: Helmets?

Post by Cugel »

Mick F wrote:
Cugel wrote:If only them chainsaw users would put on the protective gear. It would save not just their hearing, a finger or three and the odd eye but also whole legs!

If only the same could be said for those polystyrene cycling hats.
Chainsawing. I'm very familiar with.
I wear ear defenders because my Husqvarna is very noisy.
I wear overalls, gloves and boots, but all I'm doing is cutting up logs on a logging horse or cutting down a tree in our wood. No lumberjacking for me!

I could be chainsawing naked.
If so, I'd be very careful indeed.

Could it be possible ........... an argument here? ............ that making yourself more vulnerable makes you more careful?
Could it be possible that wearing a cycling helmet makes you cycle more aggressively?
Could it be possible, that cycling completely naked top-to-bottom would make you very careful indeed?


Risk compensation or whatever we care to call it in various circumstances, certainly exists as a common human behaviour when the human feels safer (whether the human is actually safer of not). No doubt chainsawing fellows wearing every chainsaw protection thingy (and there's a whole suit, gloves, shoes, helmet, face guards, etc.) will be a bit more blase as they wield their buzzing choppers.

However, the difference between chainsaw safety clothing and bicycle helmets is that the former actually do offer significant protection whilst the latter seem to offer very little; and only in low-speed impacts. At best a cycling helmet will absorb 7N of force (many don't manage that) which is not much. Chainsaw trousers will prevent the thing chewing off your leg even if it'll still hurt a great deal if you drop the buzzing blade into a quadricep.

You could saw nekkid and you would, no doubt, be very careful. But, as with riding a bike, things can occur that are out of your control which result in an accident. A chainsaw accident is rarely a small or insignificant event, unlike falling off your bike and getting gravel rash, bad bruising or even a broken collar bone. A chainsaw bites deep and then you bleed to death, arteries a-squirting-oh!

What about a broken head from a bike fall? Possible, I suppose, but relatively rare. In 60 years cycling I've banged just about everything but my head by falling off. I've banged my head in other activities, though. Perhaps we should all wear one when fell-walking, ice-skating or gardening?

On the other hand, my skull is quite thick, like the thing inside it. :-) Would the absorption of 7N of initial headbang by some polystyrene stop a serious concussion or similar? Perhaps ... but it won't do much with the 45-70N typically imparted to a human body during a car-smack.

Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
Brucey
Posts: 44520
Joined: 4 Jan 2012, 6:25pm

Re: Helmets?

Post by Brucey »

7N ? where does that figure come from?

cheers
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Brucey~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
User avatar
Cugel
Posts: 5430
Joined: 13 Nov 2017, 11:14am

Re: Helmets?

Post by Cugel »

Brucey wrote:7N ? where does that figure come from?

cheers


My figure was incorrect on two fronts:

1. It should have been 0.7kN. I believe this was part of an old standard for testing cycling helmets when they first appeared in the late 1980s. I had one and wore it in a 1991 race in Mallorca, the photo of which I can't now find. It had a smooth unperforated hard shell, was quite heavy and gave me neck ache. I looked like a horseshoe crab in it. :-)

2. In fact, the helmet force-absorption standards for current cycle helmets appears to be a lot less, with Snell being the best at about 0.36kN and the EN 1078 standard a mere 0.15kN.

https://www.cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2023.pdf

https://www.cyclehelmets.org/papers/p787.pdf

Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
Bsteel
Posts: 240
Joined: 31 Jul 2014, 8:41pm

Re: Helmets?

Post by Bsteel »

Illustration of the thickness of EPS foam believed to be required to prevent concussion from the drops used for CPCS testing.
It looks like there is a market for smarter more absorbent materials.

https://helmets.org/concussionhelmet.htm
De Sisti
Posts: 1507
Joined: 17 Jun 2007, 6:03pm

Re: Helmets?

Post by De Sisti »

JohnW wrote:
De Sisti wrote:...............................Seems like you're a bit accident-prone. Ride slower; it may prevent some of the incidents you've been
involved in.


I referred to just two accidents in which I've been involved.

Your comment to one of them may be relevant and appropriate; I wasn't hit by anything - a flat spanner in the road came up with my front wheel and got trapped between mudguard and wheel. My speed may very well have been an element in the amount of injury damage, but certainly not in generating it.

The other 'accident' (referred to by the police as an 'incident') was the action of a motorist who drove into the back of me; my speed had no effect on his behaviour/action. At the time I was climbing at no more than 9 or 10 mph.

I wasn't being serious.
Bonefishblues
Posts: 11010
Joined: 7 Jul 2014, 9:45pm
Location: Near Bicester Oxon

Re: Helmets?

Post by Bonefishblues »

De Sisti wrote:
JohnW wrote:
De Sisti wrote:...............................Seems like you're a bit accident-prone. Ride slower; it may prevent some of the incidents you've been
involved in.


I referred to just two accidents in which I've been involved.

Your comment to one of them may be relevant and appropriate; I wasn't hit by anything - a flat spanner in the road came up with my front wheel and got trapped between mudguard and wheel. My speed may very well have been an element in the amount of injury damage, but certainly not in generating it.

The other 'accident' (referred to by the police as an 'incident') was the action of a motorist who drove into the back of me; my speed had no effect on his behaviour/action. At the time I was climbing at no more than 9 or 10 mph.

I wasn't being serious.

How long have you been on the Forum? Long enough to know it needs signposting :D
mattheus
Posts: 5044
Joined: 29 Dec 2008, 12:57pm
Location: Western Europe

Re: Helmets?

Post by mattheus »

... especially on a forum where every accident/safey thread features a reply from a regular explaining how he would have avoided it using his superior caution and/or skill! :)
User avatar
Mick F
Spambuster
Posts: 56359
Joined: 7 Jan 2007, 11:24am
Location: Tamar Valley, Cornwall

Re: Helmets?

Post by Mick F »

As I've got older, I've got slower.
Maybe if I get very old, I'll stop and do track-stands. Maybe then I might fall off. :wink:
Mick F. Cornwall
amediasatex
Posts: 842
Joined: 2 Nov 2015, 12:51pm
Location: Sunny Devon! just East of the Moor

Re: Helmets?

Post by amediasatex »

Cugel wrote:
Brucey wrote:7N ? where does that figure come from?

cheers


My figure was incorrect on two fronts:

1. It should have been 0.7kN.


So only out by a factor of a hundred then? ;-)
simonhill
Posts: 5226
Joined: 13 Jan 2007, 11:28am
Location: Essex

Re: Helmets?

Post by simonhill »

Much as I don't want compulsion, it does beg the question, who would enforce it?

When did you last see a Copper on the street?
Post Reply