Helmet worked for me

[ymfb]

Today I hit the floor hard after my chain snapped.

My head and forearm took the bulk of the impact. I have grazed my forearm, elbow, hip and to a lesser degree my shoulder. My Kask helmet has a significant dent in it and is now in the bin.

I was stood up on the pedals and probably doing 5 mph as I’d just set off.

Helmet was 4 years old and I had already started to look for a replacement, probably a MIPS.

If your a helmet sceptic don’t bother replying I’m even more convinced of the benefit than I was before today.

[Pinhead]

Good for you

I would no more ride without a helmet than drive without a seat belt

I know you have asked sceptics not to reply but they will bore us with "I have ridden for 200 years and never fallen off or needed one

[Paulatic]

In 200 years I’ve broken a chain once
It wasn’t a helmet I needed

[Pinhead]

In 200 years I’ve broken a chain once
It wasn’t a helmet I needed

[Psamathe]

Disappointed that people want to shut down discussion about cycle safety, only seeking views that agree with their own. We will never make progress in any area where differing views are repressed.

Ian

[cycle tramp]

Today I hit the floor hard after my chain snapped.

My head and forearm took the bulk of the impact. I have grazed my forearm, elbow, hip and to a lesser degree my shoulder. My Kask helmet has a significant dent in it and is now in the bin.

I was stood up on the pedals and probably doing 5 mph as I’d just set off.

Humour me...
..would you have been on the bottom of the drop bars, in a high gear, perhaps starting from a t junction or rounding a corner at the bottom of a hill?

[Cowsham]

I know exactly what happened --- he bought such an expensive helmet he couldn't afford a decent chain and felt so invincible in his old helmet that he tramped too hard on the pedals broke the chain and fell off cos he's too inexperienced.

Sorry just replying on behalf of some of the members since I don't think you'll get many replies on this forum.

Big pinch of salt required

[ymfb]

Today I hit the floor hard after my chain snapped.

My head and forearm took the bulk of the impact. I have grazed my forearm, elbow, hip and to a lesser degree my shoulder. My Kask helmet has a significant dent in it and is now in the bin.

I was stood up on the pedals and probably doing 5 mph as I’d just set off.

Humour me...
..would you have been on the bottom of the drop bars, in a high gear, perhaps starting from a t junction or rounding a corner at the bottom of a hill?

None of those.

[ymfb]

I know exactly what happened --- he bought such an expensive helmet he couldn't afford a decent chain and felt so invincible in his old helmet that he tramped too hard on the pedals broke the chain and fell off cos he's too inexperienced.

Sorry just replying on behalf of some of the members since I don't think you'll get many replies on this forum.

Big pinch of salt required

Get your salt, because that’s another “old wives tale”

[ymfb]

I had just set off on the flat, in a medium gear but stood on the pedals when it broke.

The chain along with the whole bike been checked at a service by the LBS only about ten miles before I came off. The broken chain is an OEM Shimano Ultegra.

Accidents whilst preventable happen, I ride about 3,000 miles a year so the likelihood is increased, the bike is regularly cleaned, inspected and maintained. My gloves were unmarked, my jersey and helmet are damaged along with my hip, forearm and shoulder, which are a bit of a mess.

[Tiberius]

I had just set off on the flat, in a medium gear but stood on the pedals when it broke.

The chain along with the whole bike been checked at a service by the LBS only about ten miles before I came off. The broken chain is an OEM Shimano Ultegra.

Accidents whilst preventable happen, I ride about 3,000 miles a year so the likelihood is increased, the bike is regularly cleaned, inspected and maintained. My gloves were unmarked, my jersey and helmet are damaged along with my hip, forearm and shoulder, which are a bit of a mess.

Sounds to me like it was just one of those things, it shouldn't really have happened, but it did. It really shakes you up doesn't it?

I'm also convinced of the benefits of helmets but each to his own. My head, my responsibility, my decision trumps anyone else's.

Hope you heal quickly and can put this behind you. All the best.

[Cugel]

Today I hit the floor hard after my chain snapped.

My head and forearm took the bulk of the impact. I have grazed my forearm, elbow, hip and to a lesser degree my shoulder. My Kask helmet has a significant dent in it and is now in the bin.

I was stood up on the pedals and probably doing 5 mph as I’d just set off.

Helmet was 4 years old and I had already started to look for a replacement, probably a MIPS.

If your a helmet sceptic don’t bother replying I’m even more convinced of the benefit than I was before today.

How interesting.

No but ..... would you care to post a list of other adamantine beliefs you have relating to practices you're convinced are beneficial no matter what? It's not so much that I'm interested in copying your various ways and modes but it would be fascinating to see them all together, to see if certain global belief-collection patterns are evident.

After meeting loadsa people over the decades, I've noticed that there are such belief-packages that are commonly found. My theory is that they're determined not so much by the believer's various processes of ratiocination but by an insistent family or peer group-imposed "education"; or by what mass media influences the believer has habituated themselves to gawping at, day-in, day-out.

Do you wear a helmet when going up & down stairs or walking in the fells? I've banged my head quite hard when doing so (not every time, of course) yet foolishly don't wear a helmet. I confess that doing so would make me too much of a joke in the eyes of the other stair and fell traversers so I cravenly adhere to the social norms for such activities. Those helmet makers could be making a fortune from such folk and their dangerous stair and fell activities!

[Cugel]

My head, my responsibility, my decision trumps anyone else's.

Well ..... apart from the decisions of your cycling peer groups, the helmet-advertisers and their cycling mass-media pushers as well as the opinions of various swivel-eyed mass media organ "journalists" of the gutter press.

Our "decisions" to purchase and use various consumer products may not be quite as straightforward as you propose, one feels. The pressures to conform to certain very heavily promoted norms can be enormous in consumer-producer world.

But I may be talking rubbish. Let's haver lookit yer risk assessment.

[pjclinch]

Today I hit the floor hard after my chain snapped.

My head and forearm took the bulk of the impact. I have grazed my forearm, elbow, hip and to a lesser degree my shoulder. My Kask helmet has a significant dent in it and is now in the bin.

I was stood up on the pedals and probably doing 5 mph as I’d just set off.

Helmet was 4 years old and I had already started to look for a replacement, probably a MIPS.

If your a helmet sceptic don’t bother replying I’m even more convinced of the benefit than I was before today.

I suspect you may not understand what people are sceptical of.

Your helmet did what it was meant to do in the sort of situation it was meant to do it in. That's good, but it's not the same thing as "an intervention that prevents a significant number of serious head injuries across the population" and could have been similarly useful had you e.g. tripped over your shoelaces or a crack in the pavement, which is probably more likely than breaking a bike chain.

There's not much argument that a helmet won't work as designed and specified, as yours did. There is a rather greyer area about whether cycling in general is particularly generative of that type of fall and whether it is always worth protecting against it: trips and falls and car crashes cause far more head trauma than bike prangs, after all, and despite getting much the same sort of injury you'd have had without your lid folk who've survived such injuries don't decide to wear helmets for them next time.
EN1078, MIPS or not, is designed to mitigate minor injuries in a low energy impact. It does that, that's good. It's designed for the same sort of fall that school children have every day in their playgrounds and for which the answer is a sticker and some TLC rather than moralising about how important crash helmets are. It's designed for the same sort of impact as hitting your head on a low door, yet that seems to warrant "Mind your head" notices rather than e.g. tourist attractions handing out site helmets to everyone at some of the venues built when people were shorter.

So no argument from me that your helmet did you some good. My scepticism about helmets isn't about the sort of thing that happened to you, it's that pushing people to use them won't have much effect on serious injury you'd get hospitalised for and won't have negative consequences outside of the sort of prang you had.

The scepticism isn't that helmets don't work as specified, it's that they are anything like as necessary as an "essential" cycling accessory as their proponents often make out.

Pete.

[cycle tramp]

I had just set off on the flat, in a medium gear but stood on the pedals when it broke.

The chain along with the whole bike been checked at a service by the LBS only about ten miles before I came off. The broken chain is an OEM Shimano Ultegra.

Accidents whilst preventable happen, I ride about 3,000 miles a year so the likelihood is increased, the bike is regularly cleaned, inspected and maintained. My gloves were unmarked, my jersey and helmet are damaged along with my hip, forearm and shoulder, which are a bit of a mess.

Thanks for getting back to me - its appreciated.
Just for the record I'm not against anyone wearing a helmet, but I do enjoy the choice of not wearing one and wearing one. If I was still part of the Sunday morning chaingang, then 'yes on most occasions I would'.
However I'm not, and following a thread on this very forum under the technical section, I twiddle along in light gears, and don't even stand on the pedals anymore. The thread was about crank failures when people stood on the pedals, and that sometimes the crank snaps or the bottom bracket shears... its a hazardous event, especially if you cycle in traffic, because there is then a chance of you falling into the path of a vehicle... at which point it probably is irrelevant if you're wearing a helmet or not (blunt force trauma to the thorax and abdomen)
So yes, while I don't always wear a helmet, I don't stand on the pedals either. It's choices - I think the way mostly people ride their bikes in the Netherlands (relaxed and energy persevering) whilst not wearing helmets might indicate tge reason why they feel the need to wear helmets... and I think that was also very true of my Grandfather (who used to commute to work in a grey flat cap and managed over 11000 miles).
Obviously if you're placing speed at the same priority of safety then you'll feel different.