A friendly reminder: If you own a bicycle, you must own a helmet
I shivered at the thought of being severely brain-damaged after being hit by a car while cycling about a month ago. I am now extremely humbled by the fragility of the human body. The vehicle that hit me was going really slow--a hard requirement of the lane. An apt cyclist can easily achieve 30 MPH (48km/h). That's enough to do a lot of damage itself. Now imagine a shock with a vehicle coming in the opposite direction at a mere 20 MPH (32km/h) (that’s not what happened to me BTW. I have no recollection of the accident, and no wish to get in touch with the driver. I don’t resent him at all, in fact he was extremely caring and wanted to ride with me in the ambulance but my mom was already occupying the only spot).
I'm terrible at physics but you guys and girls are probably not, so you make the calculations. To sum up, without a helmet a ridiculously "benign" accident at low speeds can literally impair you for life.
After the crash, my helmet went into pieces. I wish someone had got it so I can visualize the extent of my luck. It was an old helmet that should have been replaced at least 2 years ago. It cost me about 30 bucks and probably saved my life or cognition.
So, cyclists: own a helmet and use it whenever you're on the bike even if there are no cars around. A skilled cyclist can still crash all by himself/herself. And a car could appear from nowhere.
Some people get brain damage by falling in the bathroom. Why would you be safer waltzing around on top of a metal frame?
The most common cause of accidental deaths are falls, and not just any falls, but falls from standing height.
If you're simply sitting on a bike while stationary, losing your balance and hitting your head can kill you. With that fact in mind, imagine how much riskier it is to be traveling fast and falling, or hitting something.
edit: I just want to edit and clarify that my stat is about accidental deaths on the job. Overall, poisonings and motor vehicle accidents are the most common causes of accidental deaths, which are then followed by falls.
Last time I crashed my bike, which was probably at somewhere near 30mph, the first I was aware anything was happening was when I noticed my helmet - with my head in it - bouncing off the tarmac. Because I was attached to the bike at the time and at full sprint I had pretty much thrown myself at the ground as hard as I could. I tore every item of clothing I was wearing, quite a lot of my skin and picked up a decent number of bruises. But I walked away (hell, I rode away and did another 20km before I got home). The bike was fine, which means I managed to get my body between it and the road, which was great because flesh heals but Campagnola rims don't come cheap...
Top helmet tip - at least in the UK, all bike helmets have to pass the same certification process so the expensive ones are no safer than the cheap ones. You're paying for the style or the colour or most likely - the logo.
Also, always replace your helmet after an impact even if it doesn't look damaged.
Sometimes you are paying for comfort. Pricier helmets sometimes have better straps, cushions, and vents.
There’s also the mips and crushed straw things.
What caused your crash?
Idiocy. Specifically mine. I shifted gears, up onto the top chainring, while accelerating and the chain overshot and as such mechanically decoupled the pedals from the rear wheel. As I was pushing down and pulling up on those pedals with all my strength at the time, you can imagine how that went.
Funnily enough my last crash, several years earlier, was very much the same mechanic although it was the chain snapping that time, not me causing the issue.
Both times I was lucky to just be involved with the road, not the cars driving on it. Although the most recent crash I was in the middle of a busy, multi-lane junction so lots of people saw. One person asked if I was OK, which was nice.
And see if the manufacturer wants your busted helmet. Giro and Bern, for example, have a program where you send the busted helmet with an incident report, it'll contribute to their research, and you'll get a discount on a new one. I haven't done that yet because I typically need my helmet to go to work and school, so I get a replacement ASAP.
Oh damn, I was taking a break from Tildes when you posted about what happened to you, @mrbig, so I missed it. I'm really sorry that happened to you, but am glad to hear you survived and are doing okay!
100% second the recommendation of wearing a helmet (and not just for biking either). One of the most clearly illustrative and funny videos I have seen on this subject: "I Love Helmets"
Thanks! I’m really fine. I’ve had some bad moments but now the recovering is going fast and strong. It’s crazy how our body really is a machine.
What got me the most were the not so little things. For a period I was unable to close my eyes real hard because the nerve responsible for eyelid hadn’t regenerated yet. I couldn’t eat without dropping food on the table because my cheek and lip muscles were weak and I had to make the food move in my mouth using the hands—from the outside! Hahaha
I still cannot handle straws, last week I made a mess in the car trying to absorb a milkshake.
I think I’ll feel completely healed once I can drink a super thick milkshake. That’s my goal.
The surgeon was very nice and skilled, but on a trauma center they don’t spend much time explaining things, there are burned and shot people coming non-stop, so I got paranoid with things that were completely normal. I’m now much calmer and confident in my recovery after an appointment with an specialist outside of the hospital that clarified things for me.
This goes for skateboards too! Especially so if you're longboarding at higher speeds.
Ah man, I really need to get one. I ride quite a bit, and had an accident some time ago. So there's this street that's pretty narrow that two cars can just barely drive past each other. And the street goes down a hill. So I'm coming down that hill, and I see one car coming in front from a far, no problem. Then I notice there's another one behind it, it's fine. We're coming closer to drive past each other, and when it's ~100m left, the first car decides to stop. The second car stops behind it as well, as you would do of course, if you see someone else (in this case me on a bike) coming the opposite direction, so all good. However, it waits only for like a second or two. Then it starts taking over the first (stopped) car, basically at the same time when I'm nearing them. So the situation becomes like this: two cars and my bike are all in parallel on that narrow street. I'm trying to fit between the car and the curb, and it looked like I'd make it. But I just ever so slightly touch my left handlebar on the side of the car, hit the curb, and go over the front wheel. I land very nicely on my stomach, getting to think "that's not too bad".. and a second later feel my bike hitting me on the head. Had to get a couple of stitches, but they didn't even want to cut the hair in that spot. Not sure if that's one of the reasons, but now there's a scar you can easily feel with your fingers.
Dude, buy it today. Don’t even think about it. You’ll spend 30-50 dollars to protect something so valuable you can’t even put a price on it.
If you can spend more get a mountain bike helmet, cause it protects your face too. If I had one of those I wouldn’t be drinking milkshakes with a spoon hahaha
I'm a huge helmet advocate, and try to keep it to two simple arguments:
At low speeds, even if it won't damage the helmet, you won't hurt your scalp.
At higher speeds, you're scalp should be okay, and your brain will be contained. You'll still get a concussion (probably even with MIPS), but that's easier to treat than a brain hemorrhage.
That's a tough argument to defend. It's hard to quantify and influenced by culture, local regulations, etc. On the other hand, we know a lot about the physics of a crash -- the forces involved and how much pressure a human skull can endure. So yeah, I'm a skeptic about far-reaching arguments like this one. They're like a long chain that will hold on optimal conditions, but the links are made of paper.
Besides, many of the author's claims are nothing more than general subjective impressions. I fail to see much value in this article. Looks like a lot of cherry-picking and confirmation bias to me.
And it falls 100% for the perfect solution fallacy. No doubt about it.
I’ll leave the argumentation for the others, but I’d just like to say that a lot of this article seems to be built on top of the perfect solution fallacy.
You can get injured at slower speeds for sure, that was jut an example. And even a casual cyclist can eventually go downhill due to the geography of the location.
But I do concede that if there no cars around, it’s generally a much safer environment.
That site is utter nonsense. Unfortunately, I had to write this comment three times, as that site was every bogus argument I've seen against wearing/requiring helmets, and I was quite irritated upon reading it.
There are some concerns, but they aren't the cyclists. People passing too close is a driver problem, the cyclist can't control that. The cyclist can control their behavior. I think it would be wise to warn people about dangerous riding, and the potential for feeling safer with a helmet, and encouraging them to behave as if they weren't wearing one.
I'll pick a few gems I've seen people take seriously:
Any crash I've been in, my neck was fine. Nowhere near end range of motion. I can lay on the ground, on my side, and get my head to the floor no problem. It's safe to say my head will hit without a helmet. Anytime my head hit the ground, typically around 16-20mph, my neck never even got near end range of motion. If your helmet hits, that's a hit your head would have taken in a slightly different spot.
Then let's bang that drum. "Wear a helmet, don't be stupid." That's like in "Premium Rush," when Wiley says "brakes are death, you'll go to stop when you should maneuver" (paraphrasing), or even more akin to saying seatbelts will encourage street racing. It's a behavior issue that needs to be corrected by each individual, but is definitely not a systemic issue.
This is a systemic issue. We don't punish people harshly who intentionally run over cyclists, forget those who do it by accident. Every juror in these cases thinks they could be the one to hit a bicyclist that "came out of nowhere." Driver's education and testing is utter BS in much of the country (US) as well. The best thing a cyclist can do is hog their lane and force drivers to use the next lane to pass them, at least where legal to do so. I've found, at least, that's the best way to ensure your safety. In any environment, there will still be the few hyper-aggressive people you need to dodge, but I haven't found a single method of behavior that makes their prevalence better or worse.
The US generally only has mandatory helmet laws for kids and motorcycles. Where are the adults? Oh yeah, they're trying not to die on the abysmal American bicycle infrastructure. It's something of a "If you build it, they will come" system: Make it safe for people to ride bikes in the city, and people will ride bikes in the city. And honestly, I'm opposed to adult helmet laws for non-motorized vehicles, I figure each adult can take the risk, but I encourage people to wear helmets because I'd rather you bonk your helmet or go for a walk for exercise than have your family argue about whether or not to disconnect your life support.
Except that there aren't helmet laws for adults in America. Not on a federal level nor in most states.
I’m generally against any strong advocacy of helmets because it discourages cycling. According to the federal office for territorial development bicyclists save 3,7 centimes for every kilomètre they cycle, this is a very high societal benefit and every fewer cyclist means society is losing out on at least 10 centimes per kilometre (assuming the take the bus instead; more for a car). With such great benefits on the line, we really should not make cycling appear less safe or accessible by mandating helmets.
Accidents don't care about how careful you are, and small mitigations like helmets can save your life even if you were to fall slightly more often.
From the website you linked:
In what possible scenario would one's head be close enough to the pavement that it would make contact with a helmet but not without a helmet? You have already fallen.
Frankly I think there is a lot of begging the question here. Though I appreciate the site for what it is ("How to Not Get Hit by Cars") and its criticisms of "Effective Cycling" are absolutely valid.
Actually, this is making me really angry to read. "drivers passed an average of 8.5 cm (3 1/3 inches) closer with the helmet than without". If 8.5cm makes a difference then the casualty has basically already happened. Riding a bike on a road with cars is DEADLY serious.
Linked from the original website:
There are plenty of scenarios with risks somewhere between "no cars in sight" and "face-first down a cliff". It seems very weaselly to me that the commentators are using this thought experiment combined with snarky formal logic to dismiss the original paper's conclusions. About head injuries.
THEN GET A NEW HELMET?!
I wear Bern helmets, they're big, but I can hear everything I can without a helmet. When you're bicycling at a decent clip you mostly get wind noise anyway, with or without a helmet, so cycling, or even driving, by ear is basically useless except to be somewhat aware of a car somewhere behind you because you hear it, but don't see it in the 140 degrees of forward vision.
Most ski helmets I picture cover your ears. Is that what you're talking about? Most bike helmets I picture sit on top of your head, with some reaching down to the nape of your neck.
It definitely is important for biking to be able to hear.
Thank you for the reminder! Me and my husband bike year around to and from work, store etc and have for years. And no helmets... which is, lets be honest kinda dumb but its always one of those yearly "oh we should buy helmets" thoughts that is quickly forgotten. Adding it to the calendar now.
Now, I want to add that we live in a city with insanely good roads and bike paths which is one of the best ways to ensure biker safety.
Sorry to hear about your crash. My bro was in one and even with a helmet it caused some permanent nerve damage in one of his arms. My uncle also almost died and was also wearing a helmet. I am grateful both were wearing helmets as they could have been dead if they were not.
I myself used to never wear a helmet. Then one day, a while ago now, it became obvious to me for numerous reasons that I should wear one, one of them of course being the realization that falling from a bike going 30 mph could cause permanent injury if not death.
I also used to find it silly to wear a helmet. Now I think I feel silly not wearing a helmet.