My lack of helmet worked for me.

[Mike Sales]

^^^

What happened could, and probably did, depend upon a whole host of confounding factors, the most likely being that the mandate deterred from cycling those least at risk of head injury, leaving a population of sporty types with a naturally higher risk profile.

The most risk averse would probably have been amongst those wearing a helmet already, and are unlikely to object to wearing a helmet if they were not.
Perhaps there is something in the idea that such laws make cycling appear unwarrantably dangerous, and best left alone entirely.
Or is it that the utility cyclist is most deterred by such laws? Which is a bit of an own goal, since cycling, even helmetless, is a net health gain for the nation.
And here we go again: any speculation, however lacking foundation, must be the reason that helmet laws have never reduced casualty rates anywhere. What they do is reduce cycling.`
We can see examples, across the North Sea, of nations where many more miles are cycled per head, in safety, but without helmets, in the main. Helmet laws are characteristic of nations ( curiously often English speaking) where cycling is unpopular and dangerous. And they have failed to make cycling safe.

[Cowsham]

I'm a bit confused now can we have a list of helmet and anti helmet posters please ? -- just in case I accidentally offend one or t-other.

[Nearholmer]

Or is it that the utility cyclist is most deterred by such laws?

That’s exactly what some studies seem to suggest. They suggest that utility cyclists might get put-off, and that sporty types who have a higher risk, and a higher risk appetite, (a) don’t get put off, and (b) are wearing helmets already. Way back up thread, someone linked to a very good study where these issues are discussed at length.

At a personal level, that’s why I’m opposed to helmet mandation: there seems good evidence that it puts off the very people one would ideally encourage.

Which is very different from a “not wearing one works for me” position, which is an individual, rather than population viewpoint.

[drossall]

I still just don't understand why when there is a piece of safety equipment available that is barely any inconvenience at all, why anyone would seek to try to discredit the safety credentials of using said equipment.

I don't believe that anyone really does. But we do try to explain why we don't bother. Truly, I don't think anyone is arguing against someone else wearing a helmet. What we are doing is mitigating the effects of people constantly saying how important it is, when it almost certainly isn't, and government have said that they may legislate when percentage adoption is high enough.

Add to that that some people do seem to hear "Wear a helmet when cycling" as "You'd probably be safer travelling by a different method", which undermines the safety in numbers effect that is demonstrably more important to safety than any helmet, and you see some of the issues.

And as for the "barely any inconvenience", you really do have to explain why you don't apply the same standards elsewhere and wear every imaginable piece of safety equipment in all situations. Otherwise, you're doing what any other reasonable person does, and only wearing what seems worthwhile. Which is what people are arguing for.

To the best of my knowledge, the first doubts appeared in The Journal of Product Liability in about 1986. They, like many others including Goldacre and Spiegelhalter, were not trying to discredit anything. That's not to say that the evidence is one-way - it just seems rather more mixed than some people appreciate.

I disagree. I believe that as a sport cyclist that a helment should be used but I am not going to tell you to put one on.

That, again, is one of the things that get so difficult. Helmet standards are about the forces involved in falling off sideways from a standing start. All the interesting things in crashes go as the square of speed. If you're arguing that a sports cyclist who might regularly hit 30mph needs a helmet more than someone who potters at 10mph, you're arguing that someone whom a helmet might help shouldn't bother, and someone exceeding its parameters by a factor of 9 (i.e. 3 squared) really should. That makes no sense to me.

[pjclinch]

I'm a bit confused now can we have a list of helmet and anti helmet posters please ? -- just in case I accidentally offend one or t-other.

List of anti helmet posters... Let's see, over time there's been SwiftyDoesIt, The Utility Cyclist... and I can't think of any more off the top of my head.

Pete.

[irc]

But I ride a lot quicker than that. I'm just back from 65km of technical, slippery, loose gravel riding where I averaged 29kph, hitting over 60kph.
............................

If I am riding road, I ride considerably quicker again, with many of my rides averaging over 35kph, and I regularly exceed 70kph.

The consequences of falling off at those speeds could be very severe. If a helmet reduces my chance of serious head injury even by 20%, then it's well worth having.

You are a bad parent! (joke)

But as you said it was bad parenting not to wear a helmet then indulging in a hobby of high speed riding where a fall will have serious consequences is bad parenting. Helmet or not. A risk avoided it better than a risk mitigated by 20%.

While I may hit the dizzy speeds of 25mph downhill I am averaging around 12-14mph for most of my riding. Running speeds. The human skull has evolved over millions of years to survice running speed crashes. Collisions with cars? I don't think you will find any helmet maker who will claim protection there.

More seriously, as your average speeds are perhaps twice mine there is 4x the kinetic energy to involved if you crash. So a helmet may be a logical choice for you. That does not mean it is a logical choice for everyone.

[pjclinch]

Speeds and impact energies...

There are common misconceptions about these in relation to helmet ratings. Helmets are rated for about 12 mph which doesn't mean a gentle trundle, it means that's how fast an adult's head it typically going in the vertical plane by way of acceleration from gravity if it hits the ground in an unbroken fall.
Lateral speed isn't really an issue unless one hits a wall/tree/lamppost etc. because it's not how fast you're going/kinetic energy you have when you hit the deck, it's how fast you lose it. If you hit hard ground going down you lose all your vertical speed pretty much at once, and that's what gets bones broken.
There are various videos of impressive slide outs in Moto GP where the riders hit the deck at seriously high speed, slide for a long way and then just get up. Racing leathers are not impact-proof at 100 mph, but as the energy is scrubbed off slowly they don't have to be. Hit a wall head on and that speed and that's it.

Were I doing gravel racing (as opposed to the sedate gravel touring I do) even if it weren't the rules I'd wear a helmet. The design goal of a helmet is a "better hairnet", improving your chances of being able to get back on and continue in the event of a spill with a head-whack rather than abandon, and given the higher chances of falling due to being racing the chances of that go up a lot. Also the case that while racing comfort is not really an issue, as long as it's not so bad as to impede your performance.
I was at our local JCC 'cross training session last night, insurance had me in my helmet but again I'd have been wearing it anyway because lots of close-action sharp elbows jostling round tight corners on off-camber banks means high chances of falls and the main risk isn't the grass we were on but other people's bikes. No lives would have been lost, but a lid can mean the difference between sitting out the rest of the session and just getting on with it.
In other words, speed and crowds increase your chance of an off, coming off increases your chances of hitting your head. As has been noted, skulls have evolved to save you in those sorts of relatively low energy sharp stops, but they haven't evolved to the point where you can just get up and carry on as you were before.

So helmets for racing (or other such riding where there is a conscious trade-off of increased risk against more thrills, arguably excepting hill climbs which are typically slow ITTs), smart move in terms of finishing a race and unlikely to be much comfort downside: that's what they were originally developed for, after all. In terms of saving your life, hard to say. People are still getting dead racing, generally when they have a crash well beyond the impact energies generated by a simple fall to the ground.

Pete.

[roubaixtuesday]

Speeds and impact energies...

There are common misconceptions about these in relation to helmet ratings. Helmets are rated for about 12 mph which doesn't mean a gentle trundle, it means that's how fast an adult's head it typically going in the vertical plane by way of acceleration from gravity if it hits the ground in an unbroken fall.
Lateral speed isn't really an issue unless one hits a wall/tree/lamppost etc. because it's not how fast you're going/kinetic energy you have when you hit the deck, it's how fast you lose it. If you hit hard ground going down you lose all your vertical speed pretty much at once, and that's what gets bones broken.
There are various videos of impressive slide outs in Moto GP where the riders hit the deck at seriously high speed, slide for a long way and then just get up. Racing leathers are not impact-proof at 100 mph, but as the energy is scrubbed off slowly they don't have to be. Hit a wall head on and that speed and that's it.

Were I doing gravel racing (as opposed to the sedate gravel touring I do) even if it weren't the rules I'd wear a helmet. The design goal of a helmet is a "better hairnet", improving your chances of being able to get back on and continue in the event of a spill with a head-whack rather than abandon, and given the higher chances of falling due to being racing the chances of that go up a lot. Also the case that while racing comfort is not really an issue, as long as it's not so bad as to impede your performance.
I was at our local JCC 'cross training session last night, insurance had me in my helmet but again I'd have been wearing it anyway because lots of close-action sharp elbows jostling round tight corners on off-camber banks means high chances of falls and the main risk isn't the grass we were on but other people's bikes. No lives would have been lost, but a lid can mean the difference between sitting out the rest of the session and just getting on with it.
In other words, speed and crowds increase your chance of an off, coming off increases your chances of hitting your head. As has been noted, skulls have evolved to save you in those sorts of relatively low energy sharp stops, but they haven't evolved to the point where you can just get up and carry on as you were before.

So helmets for racing (or other such riding where there is a conscious trade-off of increased risk against more thrills, arguably excepting hill climbs which are typically slow ITTs), smart move in terms of finishing a race and unlikely to be much comfort downside: that's what they were originally developed for, after all. In terms of saving your life, hard to say. People are still getting dead racing, generally when they have a crash well beyond the impact energies generated by a simple fall to the ground.

Pete.

re the emboldened, you seem very well informed on the area.

Has there been any research on the benefits of helmets in racing? In the last four decades they've gone from unheard of to ubiquitous.

We seem to have a lot of deaths still in racing, indeed, there seems to be more concern on this than ever, but that's just impressionistic.

Have helmets brought a measurable benefit to racing cyclists?

[pjclinch]

Has there been any research on the benefits of helmets in racing?

None that I'm aware of (not that I've actively looked, mind), and it would be difficult to do because these days the culture and the rules require everyone to wear them and you'd have great trouble controlling for other developments if your benchmark is historical data.
Too many variables.

Also the case that what people tend to want to know is do they save lives and serious injury, but the actual design goal is the sort of thing that doesn't get reported on much: did it make the difference between abandoning the race or being able to get back on?

We seem to have a lot of deaths still in racing, indeed, there seems to be more concern on this than ever, but that's just impressionistic.

Have helmets brought a measurable benefit to racing cyclists?

Strictly speaking the answer to the final question is "no", but that's because we don't have a good way of measuring, not that it surely hasn't been a benefit.

The number of sports cyclists who seem convinced that their helmet has saved their lives seems anecdotally large, but one wonders why there weren't far more fatalities back before anyone was using them if their feelings are to be given serious credence.

Pete.

[Stevek76]

Fairly sure they've had aero benefits , certainly TT/track but I regular road helmets may shave a watt or two off too?

[drossall]

Good points from pjclinch in response to my remarks on racing, although the point remains that, if you're going to bounce down the road (which is also what hairnets were always designed for), making your head bigger may just increase the chance of an impact. We don't know for sure how these things balance out of course because, as discussed, there aren't any studies and it's hard to see how they would be done. The point is also well made that helmets can't be that effective, because, subjectively, casualties in racing are going up and not down, even if the causes for that lie elsewhere. None of this changes the point that many people probably are thinking about collisions with solid objects, and not skidding and bouncing, when they state the importance of helmets at higher speeds.

I think style plays a large part in the wearing of helmets by racing and club cyclists. Most tend to wear the same kind of clothing, the same sunglasses, and so on, just as, previously, many wore caps. That may be another reason why percentage adoption is obviously higher than among utility cyclists.

[cycle tramp]

I'm a bit confused now can we have a list of helmet and anti helmet posters please ? -- just in case I accidentally offend one or t-other.

List of anti helmet posters... Let's see, over time there's been SwiftyDoesIt, The Utility Cyclist... and I can't think of any more off the top of my head.

Pete.

..I'm more pro-choice than anti-helmet.
I've cycled with people who wear black and without a helmet all day and they've suffered no injury and yet i've seen other people who (i believe) are cycling short distances while wearing a helmet doing hazardous things like dropping off a pavement in front of a car.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I generally don't like the subconscious message that helmets=safety and therefore everyone who wears a helmet is instantly safe...

[pjclinch]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I generally don't like the subconscious message that helmets=safety and therefore everyone who wears a helmet is instantly safe...

This binary approach to safety is certainly not limited to cycling or helmets, and is covered well at https://www.kaupunkifillari.fi/2019/03/ ... ng-safety/.

Well worth a read.

Pete.

[mattheus]

Good points from pjclinch in response to my remarks on racing, although the point remains that, if you're going to bounce down the road (which is also what hairnets were always designed for), making your head bigger may just increase the chance of an impact. We don't know for sure how these things balance out of course because, as discussed, there aren't any studies and it's hard to see how they would be done. The point is also well made that helmets can't be that effective, because, subjectively, casualties in racing are going up and not down, even if the causes for that lie elsewhere.

I think that's objectively true, isn't it. It's a plain fact!

But yes, speculation on the various causes is very subjective ...

[mattheus]

I'm a bit confused now can we have a list of helmet and anti helmet posters please ? -- just in case I accidentally offend one or t-other.

My pleaseure (with a little help from google):
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/105130972525060486/