Helmet worked for me

[cycle tramp]

Ha! I will just start posting links to academic research articles on the subject! And then we can have a contest of who posts the most up to date, or most authoritative research, or most thorough review of the current literature!

You can do, but any academic research will be skewered by its country and how it sees it cycling culture.
The Netherlands have a large cycling culture which revolves around using their bike as transport- as a result they may not wear helmets, but will cycle at a more sedate pace - they also have more cycling infrastructure. Thus there is likely to be less evidence that helmets are required... .if we then move to America, cycling is more about sport, so speeds will be higher, perhaps more risks taken and more cycling is likely to be taking place on the roads and as a result there will be greater evidence that helmets are of greater value.
Between these two poles is the cycling that you enjoy... by all means read the research, but keep in mind it's terms of reference including its country of origin.

[pjclinch]

Ha! I will just start posting links to academic research articles on the subject! And then we can have a contest of who posts the most up to date, or most authoritative research, or most thorough review of the current literature!

Rather than just post the links I suggest you take time to read large swathes of it (whole paper, not just the abstracts and conclusions) first, and then you might see that it is characterised by being, to quote Prof. Ben Goldacre, a "complex contradictory mess of evidence".

As has often been pointed out, cherry-picking something you like the sound of doesn't really solve anything, any more than having a "my favourite paper is in a more prestigious journal than your favourite paper and has a later publication date and 3 more references with a greater citation rate" peeing competition. People have been at that for decades and we're still not much further forward.

Pete.

[roubaixtuesday]

Ha! I will just start posting links to academic research articles on the subject! And then we can have a contest of who posts the most up to date, or most authoritative research, or most thorough review of the current literature!

It does seem very peculiar having been through the incident you've described - an entirely unexplained crash on a very dangerous road causing you serious injuries - and come out of it with a desire to proselytise headwear.

If any sort of protective gear would protect you in future against such an incident surely it would be BMX/downhill MTB style protection?

But beyond that, the learning as to how it happened and what could be done to prevent a recurrence is surely far more important than a safety aid not designed to protect against the most serious risk you faced (being hit by a vehicle after falling)?

[bjlabuk]

Does no-one on here have a sense of humour? I would have thought the 'Ha' and emoji at the end of my post would have made it obvious that my reply was tongue in cheek. Oh well.....

[bjlabuk]

It does seem very peculiar having been through the incident you've described - an entirely unexplained crash on a very dangerous road causing you serious injuries - and come out of it with a desire to proselytise headwear.

But beyond that, the learning as to how it happened and what could be done to prevent a recurrence is surely far more important than a safety aid not designed to protect against the most serious risk you faced (being hit by a vehicle after falling)?

Sure. I have learned that I didn't implement very well the correct technique to look round over my shoulder, and that had I done so correctly I might of maintained a straight path rather than veer towards the kerbside and lose control. Good thing I was wearing a helmet though! It got dented rather than my skull.

I will take on board this useful lesson and practice more on my turbo trainer in the garage how to look over my right shoulder while cycling....

[Blondie]

Good thing I was wearing a helmet though! It got dented rather than my skull.

It’s really easy to put a dent into polystyrene, you would need much greater force to do the same to a skull.

[pjclinch]

Does no-one on here have a sense of humour? I would have thought the 'Ha' and emoji at the end of my post would have made it obvious that my reply was tongue in cheek. Oh well.....

On the one hand fair comment, on the other when you've spent over 20 years being characterised as an irresponsible bad example with as good as blood on your hands it's quite difficult to drum up much sense of fun on this topic sometimes

[bjlabuk]

Fair enough. It is a serious topic at the end of the day.

[axel_knutt]

I don't know what sort of evidence you call that, but I reckon I would have cut my head at the very least had i not worn a cycle helmet. I have since replaced my helmet with a MIPS one and wouldn't cycle anywhere without wearing one.

Let's accept that it saved your life just for the sake of argument, what it hasn't proved is that a population of helmet wearers will have a lower mortality rate than an equivalent population of non-wearers, and it's the latter that informs the decision of a potential helmet wearer of the risk, not the former. In advance, you can't know whether you'll be one whose life is saved by wearing a helmet, or one whose life is lost as a result of it, so the only option is to compare the probabilities.

Don't you think you might have negotiated the manoeuvre differently if you hadn't been wearing a helmet?

Dodds found that people wearing helmets were 30% more likely to have limb & torso injuries than non-wearers, are their helmets jumping off their heads and battering them all over, or are helmet wearers just 30% more accident prone?

[cycle tramp]

I don't know what sort of evidence you call that, but I reckon I would have cut my head at the very least had i not worn a cycle helmet. I have since replaced my helmet with a MIPS one and wouldn't cycle anywhere without wearing one.

Dodds found that people wearing helmets were 30% more likely to have limb & torso injuries than non-wearers, are their helmets jumping off their heads and battering them all over, or are helmet wearers just 30% more accident prone?

I fink.... its more complicated than that...
Going back to any Sunday morning in 1997 and I'm wearing a helmet.. I'm going to be cycling some 45 miles, between 12 and 15 mph in a group of cyclists and we're going to be riding really close together. I'm using a bike with dropped handlebars, 2 inches below my saddle which means with my limited neck mobility I can just about see the horizon. I'm going to be cycling on roads I don't know, but it will include urban roads with high density traffic and country lanes which may also be covered in slurry...

Me last Sunday, I'm not wearing a helmet. I'm going to be cycling half a mile to the shop. I know the roads very well and they are clean, an all in a 30 mph limit. My handlebars are about 3 inches above my saddle and I've got great visibility. I doubt if I'll even reach 12 mph and i'm riding by myself

Looking at the risks for each scenario it's immediately obvious that the younger me is facing a far higher risk of falling from my bike, colliding with a third party or having a third party collide with me.
Sticking my neck out here, I suspect helmets (mostly) are worn by people who view cycling as a sport or hobby and will ride in a manner that reflects this.
I suspect those who cycle because its just a bit too far too walk, or are saving for a car, or can't afford the bus don't, and will ride in a manner that reflects this.

[pjclinch]

I don't know what sort of evidence you call that, but I reckon I would have cut my head at the very least had i not worn a cycle helmet. I have since replaced my helmet with a MIPS one and wouldn't cycle anywhere without wearing one.

Dodds found that people wearing helmets were 30% more likely to have limb & torso injuries than non-wearers, are their helmets jumping off their heads and battering them all over, or are helmet wearers just 30% more accident prone?

I fink.... its more complicated than that...
Going back to any Sunday morning in 1997 and I'm wearing a helmet.. I'm going to be cycling some 45 miles, between 12 and 15 mph in a group of cyclists and we're going to be riding really close together. I'm using a bike with dropped handlebars, 2 inches below my saddle which means with my limited neck mobility I can just about see the horizon. I'm going to be cycling on roads I don't know, but it will include urban roads with high density traffic and country lanes which may also be covered in slurry...

Me last Sunday, I'm not wearing a helmet. I'm going to be cycling half a mile to the shop. I know the roads very well and they are clean, an all in a 30 mph limit. My handlebars are about 3 inches above my saddle and I've got great visibility. I doubt if I'll even reach 12 mph and i'm riding by myself

Looking at the risks for each scenario it's immediately obvious that the younger me is facing a far higher risk of falling from my bike, colliding with a third party or having a third party collide with me.
Sticking my neck out here, I suspect helmets (mostly) are worn by people who view cycling as a sport or hobby and will ride in a manner that reflects this.
I suspect those who cycle because its just a bit too far too walk, or are saving for a car, or can't afford the bus don't, and will ride in a manner that reflects this.

This is pretty much the state of it, though the complications go deeper still. So while on the one hand you have e.g. the sport crowd who very typically wear lids because the risk of falls in sport cycling is relatively high, on the other you have the highly risk averse trundlers who are wearing lids because they're particularly cautious.

There are various tricks one can pull to try and normalise the "type of cyclist", like normalise head injuries against injuries to unprotected body parts, but at the end of the day it's very difficult with the data that typically comes out of incident databases like STATS19 or hospital admission records to be sure you're not comparing either apples to oranges or at least Cox's Orange Pippins to Golden Delicious.

Pete.

[Jdsk]

...
Dodds found that people wearing helmets were 30% more likely to have limb & torso injuries than non-wearers, are their helmets jumping off their heads and battering them all over, or are helmet wearers just 30% more accident prone?

If that's a reference to:

"Evaluating the impact of cycle helmet use on severe traumatic brain injury and death in a national cohort of over 11000 pedal cyclists: a retrospective study from the NHS England Trauma Audit and Research Network dataset":
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen ... 5.full.pdf

then:

1 As always I'd strongly advise drawing any conclusions from any single study. The best approach is to systematically search the available evidence for all relevant studies.

2 The findings in this study that relate to injury to other body parts do not require explanations based on either of the two suggestions quoted above. If there is a protective effect from wearing a helmet than they're predictable from the inclusion criteria of the study design. This is discussed at some length in the paper.

Jonathan

[bjlabuk]

Let's accept that it saved your life just for the sake of argument, what it hasn't proved is that a population of helmet wearers will have a lower mortality rate than an equivalent population of non-wearers, and it's the latter that informs the decision of a potential helmet wearer of the risk, not the former. In advance, you can't know whether you'll be one whose life is saved by wearing a helmet, or one whose life is lost as a result of it, so the only option is to compare the probabilities.

Don't you think you might have negotiated the manoeuvre differently if you hadn't been wearing a helmet?

I don't think I claimed it saved my life and I wasn't trying to prove anything. I simply stated the circumstances, and the extent of injuries I sustained elsewhere on my body, compared with the lack of any injury to my head due to wearing a helmet.

Yes, I was cycling on road bike with dropped handlebars, recording my time/distance with Strava etc and didn't want to stop at the side of the dual carriageway. I thought I was checking over my shoulder correctly, while still maintaining my course, as I had done on numerous previous occasions successfully, but on this occasion something went wrong. Call it lack of attention, reduction in flexibility, wrong positioning of the hands, etc. I mean we could do a full H&S Fault Tree Analysis to determine the root cause .......or you can just accept my word that I am glad I was wearing my helmet.

[mattheus]

Let's accept that it saved your life just for the sake of argument, what it hasn't proved is that a population of helmet wearers will have a lower mortality rate than an equivalent population of non-wearers, and it's the latter that informs the decision of a potential helmet wearer of the risk, not the former. In advance, you can't know whether you'll be one whose life is saved by wearing a helmet, or one whose life is lost as a result of it, so the only option is to compare the probabilities.

Don't you think you might have negotiated the manoeuvre differently if you hadn't been wearing a helmet?

I don't think I claimed it saved my life and I wasn't trying to prove anything. I simply stated the circumstances, and the extent of injuries I sustained elsewhere on my body, compared with the lack of any injury to my head due to wearing a helmet.

Yes, I was cycling on road bike with dropped handlebars, recording my time/distance with Strava etc and didn't want to stop at the side of the dual carriageway. I thought I was checking over my shoulder correctly, while still maintaining my course, as I had done on numerous previous occasions successfully, but on this occasion something went wrong. Call it lack of attention, reduction in flexibility, wrong positioning of the hands, etc. I mean we could do a full H&S Fault Tree Analysis to determine the root cause .......or you can just accept my word that I am glad I was wearing my helmet.

Just FYI: if you think your post didn't add anything to the helmet discussion, then please be aware it was quite a boring story. People fall off their bikes every day.
Perhaps you have a blog where you could record your rides and the various incidents therein? Would Strava provide the functionality you need?

[Blondie]

Sure this will have been posted in 2013 when published. Worth reading again plus some of the responses.

https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f38 ... eytype=ref