Old age helmets

[pjclinch]

A simple balance test, walking on say 12 inch, 9 inch, 6 inch wide, 4 inch wide, 3 inch wide strips etc may allow individuals to gauge their own balance index, say 2m to 5m long., with a chart. If they have good balance, Ok ride their normal bicycle, if their balance index is reduced, ride a bicycle designed to minimise falls. If very poor balance consider all their options.

What about this test design do you think fits it particularly well for telling if someone is prone to falling off a bike?

Riding/balancing a bike is about interacting with a separate dynamic system through a steering action while walking along narrow beams is changing moving foot position in from a normal walking track and adjusting to a different weight distribution. Inner ear function will be involved with both but I think you'll need to do a fair bit of work to show that skill at one indicates anything much about the other.

That both, but particularly bike riding, are enormously subject to improvement through practice with no particular difference in innate balance ability may further distort the test.

People know how shaky they feel on any given bike. I don't see that a tangentially related very rough balance test is going to tell you much useful.

Pete.

[Bmblbzzz]

Yes, I know people who can barely walk but find it easy to cycle. And vice versa.

[Steady rider]

Yes to the two last comments, how well balancing on a bike relates to general balance?
The simple test may show up people with reduced general balance and could be relatively easy for the person to test themselves, perhaps with a egg timer designed for the task. Can they walk on a 4 inch or 3 inch strip, say 5 meters long and within x seconds. If the strips were in a circle how would they do?

For cycling the strips could be longer, say 10m or 20 m and see if they can keep in the strip. Obtain two sets of results person, see if the balance results tie up.

ps Bmblbzzz » 23 Nov 2025, 2:21pm wrote,

Yes, I know people who can barely walk but find it easy to cycle. And vice versa

.
The walking problems may relate to joint problems and cycling may have less stress on the the same joints.

https://www.google.com/search?q=does+ba ... s-wiz-serp

[TrevA]

I recently fell over and banged my head whilst getting out of bed, sustaining a deep cut to my forehead, requiring stitches, and mild concussion. A helmet would probably have saved me from this injury, but that would mean having to sleep in the helmet, or putting it on before even attempting to get out of bed.

Perhaps a pillow helmet? A pillow the same shape as a helmet....?

For all those older gentlemen who are forced to rise in the night.. Perhaps the safer alternative for the less squeamish is a wide mouth empty bottle that you will not use for anything else again...
Perhaps an old cycling water bottle, that has no other use.

Although I do sometimes have to rise during the night, on this particular occasion, it was my dog that was scratching at the door, waiting to be let out to go to the toilet!

[pjclinch]

Yes to the two last comments, how well balancing on a bike relates to general balance?
The simple test may show up people with reduced general balance and could be relatively easy for the person to test themselves, perhaps with a egg timer designed for the task. Can they walk on a 4 inch or 3 inch strip, say 5 meters long and within x seconds. If the strips were in a circle how would they do?

For cycling the strips could be longer, say 10m or 20 m and see if they can keep in the strip. Obtain two sets of results person, see if the balance results tie up.

This seems like a case of a completely unnecessary step.
Before we get to riding bikes our subject performs a beam/strip walking test.
Then they do a cycle test and see if the results match with the beam walking test, to see if the beam test was relevant...

If you're using a bike anyway, what do you gain from the walking beams/strips?

Trainers typically find that with a bit of practice riders will graduate from wobbly to good enough, mainly through tricks like confidence, familiarity (i.e., "muscle memory") and looking where they're going. Using those someone can outperform another rider who has notionally better innate balance but who can't relax on a bike and grips the bars unhelpfully rigidly.

Pete.

[Steady rider]

The intentions was mainly towards elderly people, who have higher risk factors for falls/cycling accidents.

It could help them better understand how their balance index may be reducing with age and look into the associated risk factors.

https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/ep ... 0study.pdf

[pjclinch]

The intentions was mainly towards elderly people, who have higher risk factors for falls/cycling accidents.

But again I ask, if you're looking into cycling and will be doing cycling experiments, what do you gain from a walking test? Particularly where the weight bearing nature of cycling will make for greater differences to walking in a bigger share of elderly people compared to younger people.

The linked paper doesn't seem to have anything to do with cycling.

Pete.

[Blondie]

Today, I saw two miserable looking people pedalling along.

Surely that is you projecting how you’d think you’d feel in that rain. What evidence do you have that they were miserable?

[Blondie]

If you genuinely are fall-prone, perhaps you should

This alludes to the risk of a fall happening needing to reach a threshold, before a helmet is considered a suitable intervention. What do you think this threshold should be?

[Steady rider]

Pete ...
https://www.google.com/search?q=does+ba ... s-wiz-serp
Cycling and walking balance are related. The tests could help in relating the two, and possibly contribute to understanding. They may indicate other underlying medical conditions.

[Cugel]

If you genuinely are fall-prone, perhaps you should

This alludes to the risk of a fall happening needing to reach a threshold, before a helmet is considered a suitable intervention. What do you think this threshold should be?

Moreover, how do you find it out? Only by a history of falling (or not). So, if one has a history of falling off the bike N times (we have to define N, of course) a cycling helmet may slightly reduce some of the potential head-bang forces and so may seem to be a wise choice. However, does the history of falling indicate that head-bangs occur at a significant rate? If they do, how come one is still able to recover and keep cycling to have another falling-off if no helmet protected the banged noggin?

However you look at it, the business of "proving" that a cycling helmet is indicated is a very difficult business. This is why people choose to wear one out of fashion, peer-pressure, hearsay and other "reasons" that have nothing to do with any sort of objective risk estimation and management.

[pjclinch]

If you genuinely are fall-prone, perhaps you should

This alludes to the risk of a fall happening needing to reach a threshold, before a helmet is considered a suitable intervention. What do you think this threshold should be?

Moreover, how do you find it out? Only by a history of falling (or not). So, if one has a history of falling off the bike N times (we have to define N, of course) a cycling helmet may slightly reduce some of the potential head-bang forces and so may seem to be a wise choice. However, does the history of falling indicate that head-bangs occur at a significant rate? If they do, how come one is still able to recover and keep cycling to have another falling-off if no helmet protected the banged noggin?

However you look at it, the business of "proving" that a cycling helmet is indicated is a very difficult business. This is why people choose to wear one out of fashion, peer-pressure, hearsay and other "reasons" that have nothing to do with any sort of objective risk estimation and management.

"Objective risk estimation", if you could do it, would give you a probability, and of course low probability events still ocurr and high probability events may not happen. One should typically play the odds, but where is the line between "safe enough" and not?

A popular unit of risk is the micromort, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort for more.

However, in light of the fuzziness involved I'd say Nearholmer's "perhaps you should" is actually a pretty fair take. Limits and numbers were not given, only "perhaps".

"Could you be a bit more vague?"

Pete.

[pjclinch]

Cycling and walking balance are related. The tests could help in relating the two, and possibly contribute to understanding. They may indicate other underlying medical conditions.

They both rely on balance, but as the search you posted throws up the mechanisms used to retain balance are very different between cycling and walking.

The medical profession already has numerous tests for balance - before implementing another it would be wise to assess what's missing from existing ones and asking whether a proposed new one plug those holes.

Pete.

[drossall]

"Objective risk estimation", if you could do it, would give you a probability, and of course low probability events still ocurr and high probability events may not happen. One should typically play the odds, but where is the line between "safe enough" and not?

The line plainly moves, in that society's attitude to risk in general has altered over time, so the bar for what is acceptable has been lowered (i.e. lower risks are no longer acceptable). What's possibly more feasible is to compare risks and ask, "If you feel compelled to take action on this risk, why are you not concerned by these which are seemingly higher?"

[Cugel]

Cycling and walking balance are related. The tests could help in relating the two, and possibly contribute to understanding. They may indicate other underlying medical conditions.

They both rely on balance, but as the search you posted throws up the mechanisms used to retain balance are very different between cycling and walking.

The medical profession already has numerous tests for balance - before implementing another it would be wise to assess what's missing from existing ones and asking whether a proposed new one plug those holes.

Pete.

How to test an individual's (current) propensity to have falls of one kind or another? The obvious answer is to acquire a history of performance of the balancing acts, counting the incidents where the balancing failed. Can an artificial test of any real utility be devised to simulate such balancing acts and any propensity to fail at the balancing? Maybe - but they would never be as good as the history of the actual balancing acts performed in the full circs in which such balancing is done.

So here's another complication in such assessments: what of the real-world circs in which such balancing acts are done add or detract from the risk of not-balancing when one needs to? In cycling the answer is that there are many such real world peripheral circs. They could never be included in a simulator test that didn't tend to become "actually cycling about in the real world".

And this history would need to be analysed to identify the rate of head-bangs when un-balancing occurred; and the percentage of serious head bangs; and those in which a cycling helmet either reduced the impact or alternatively contributed to any injuries (such as those from a rotational jerk to the neck when a helmet catches on something).

If such history and a sufficiently fine-grained analysis of it could be made (which seems unlikely but possible*) I suppose one might derive some sort of probability figure for varying cycling circs and the individual cycling in them that might be the basis of deciding to wear a cycling helmet or not. What probability figure should be the watershed?

If such figures are derived and result in the buying and wearing of a cycling helmet, what other everyday activities involving the possibility of falls should have histories recorded and decisions made on the analysis? How much history is needed? As individual behaviours and capabilities change over time, what makes such a collected history redundant or irrelevant?

************
In short, such calculations of risk can never ne anything much better than a wild guess (AKA an intimation or, more bluntly, irrational** fear). How much easier to choose the cycling helmet and its wearing based on fashion, peer pressure, adverts and other factors? A lot easier. Which is why it's what helmet buyers actually do.

* Some can make an informal history of their conduct whilst needing to balance in some way, coming to the conclusion that "I'm very good at it, rarely falling" or "I fall over all the time, everywhere" and various in between balancing-skills. That could be a legit basis of an ad-hoc analysis and decision resulting in the use (or no use) of a cycling helmet based on the probability of a future fall/head-bang. Having road-cycled for 65 years and fallen rarely, with no head-bangs involved, I use that history and its "analysis" to decide not to wear a cycling helmet unless I can foresee a very dangerous cycling circ in my next planned ride. (Although in fact I'd just not ride)

** Irrational meaning not-rational in the sense of not being able to be rational as there's insufficient data to rationalise with, so the human being resorts to the evolved mode of "assume the worst as there's always dangerous beasts about".