Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin
Tell HN: Wear a Helmet
272 points by stevesearer on Nov 18, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 183 comments
I started commuting to work on my bicycle earlier this year and was not wearing a helmet for the first few weeks. A coworker gave me a hard time about it and I finally decided I should get one.

My chain broke on my short ride home today for lunch leaving me quickly unbalanced and on the ground in a hurry. My helmeted head definitely hit the ground and would likely have been badly injured had I not been wearing it.

I am very thankful that my coworker pressured me to wear what I thought was fairly unnecessary due to my short commute and safe riding habits.

If you ride a bicycle, please wear a helmet.



Please throw away your helmet and get a new one; they are only rated to be in one accident.

Also, get a better bicycle for commuting; chains should not break after a few weeks. This shows that the bicycle had been heavily used, or is an ancient rust bucket, and may be a "bicycle shaped object" to begin with.

I carry a Park chain linkpin press tool for opening and closing chain links. Though occasions for using that on the road are rare if the chain is well-maintained and replaced regularly, not long ago I had a fairly new chain derail off the front ring, and by some unfortunate combination of events get itself into a tight kink which jammed and caused a link to bend severely. Having the tool, I was able to splice out and discard the bent link, and be on my merry way. I also carry a short piece of chain that was left over from the original chain installation, because there is only so many links you can throw away before the chain gets too short.

When you get a new chain, the rear gear cluster should be changed at the same time, since they wear together. A new chain can slip on old sprockets even if the old chain didn't. The front rings have to be changed maybe once every three chain changes.


My $80 walmart bike lasted 3 months. My $200 bike from a bike shop lasted years (and is still going without rust) and was totally worth the purchase. I always advise people to avoid cheap K-mart, Walmart, and Target bikes in favor of ones from their local bike shop. Especially if they're presents for their kids and you want them to last throughout their teens. The gift of a functional bike keeps on giving when it turns into a memorable nostalgic functional bike that you've had for 12 years. It's worth it.


$80, $200? Did you make a typo in these? You're lucky to get a good bike for $200. A bike I can keep for 12 years would easily cost me 500 euro (~US$625 currently), for the most basic model, probably without gears at that price.


Wow, where I am, anything over $600 US would likely be a racing-style or mountain bike (or electric-assist or something).


Here in the midwest of USA, I spent $200~ for a used good bike at a local bike shop. You can spend thousands for a bike here if you want, but generally speaking at a local bike shop you can get a good durable bike for less than $500. This year I spent $350 at the same bike shop for a 1 year old used bike for my wife.

I didn't own a car when I bought my bike and I rode it most 10-15 miles most every day for 2 years. Now 5 years later I still ride it at least twice a week, and the only replacements I have needed to do is 1 set of pedals, and the usual tire stuff.


In general, if you go in a dedicated (serious) bicycle store, you should get something worth the price. After, this is just plain logic : the more you pay, the better it will be ;)


http://www.walmart.com/ip/Roadmaster-Granite-Peak-26-Men-s-M...

I had a huffy bike (walmart style) that lasted 10 years of heavy riding, before it was stolen. Replaced it with a $200 restored 80's Raleigh road bike that I got by a side-of-the-highway bike shop.

Never really understood the masses that go to a shiny hipster bike shop and pay $700-1000 for a brand-new basic commuter. There are so many used bikes out there that need loving owners.


Cool, glad that works for you. But the 'hipster' bike actually has lots of cool features, like repairable, light, faster, less problems with rust.


Can we define what we mean by 'hipster' bike? Because to me, it means "a fixie", and those just aren't appropriate everywhere.


Decent bikes from the as far back as the 60's mostly use standard threading and can be easily repaired with new parts. I ride a bike from 1971, it's quite light and fast, and like any bike that's properly cared for doesn't have problems with rust. $250 on craigslist.

One of the main advantages of buying used bikes is that people actually used to build bikes properly so they last 43 years with all stock parts.


hammock said "hipster bike shop", not "hipster bike".


Hipsters go to hipster bike shops to get hipster bikes?


You can definitely find department store bikes for less than $100. You get what you pay for.

$200 for a decent bike might be a stretch, but $300 definitely gets you in that range.


Damn. How is it that in a (generally speaking) bike-unfriendly country like the US bikes are so cheap, while in a bike-mad European country where sales per capita are probably >10 times as high prices are so much higher?


Supply chain. Entrepreneurism. More business opportunities. More tax friendly. The list can go on and on. Every European country I visit I'm amazed at the lack of department stores, and lack of overall consumerism. Where do people buy things? Where are all the stores that aren't little shops?


> Where do people buy things? Where are all the stores that aren't little shops?

They buy them at the little shops.

> and lack of overall consumerism.

Feature, not bug.


Another factor is to consider what's expected for a city bike for a daily commute.

It needs front and rear lights, fenders, chain guard, and likely a built-in lock. It also needs to be able to stand up to being outside in the rain for long periods of time.

While a bike in the US, used only for sunny days and by people who aren't wearing office clothes, and which is stored in the garage or basement, doesn't have the same requirements.


In the UK you can get a bike for comparable prices (here's an £80 mountain bike). Again, they'll fall apart aftera few months though. The cheapest decent bike? Hmm, personally, I'd guess around £300, but I haven't done enough research to know for sure.


If you're OK with friction shifters, you can get a used bike from the 80s for < $200 that will work well. I've got a buddy who beats me on flat stretches with his old Schwin World Sport (a really fun bike if you're looking for an old reliable work-horse). I happen to live in a very bike friendly city so they used bike market might not be as good everywhere.

I love the trickle down effect in bicycling. I got my 2001 Trek 5200 for ~ $1000. The components are a bit behind, but I'd be happy to ride the carbon-fiber frameset for the next 10 years!


Just beware that pretty much every sub $500 bike uses plastic bearing races in the bottom bracket. They will fail after a few thousand miles.


Your walmart bike experience resonates with mine. Last year I bought one of those, and it lasted about 2 months. The crank literally snapped apart from the part that connects the frame to the crank. I was very disappointed.


Another point of anecdata: I paid $200 for a used Dutch bike and it has served me well over 3 years of snow,rain and locusts.(10miles biked daily anywhere from -25C to 35C).

I wear my helmet mostly because of safety, but also because it is a bit like having a towel when traveling, police think you are a serious biker and never stop you.


> it is a bit like having a towel when traveling

+1 funny


I swapped a bottle of home made elder flower wine for my bike. It's made by Peugeot and when I got it it had inner tubes made by Nokia. I have no idea how old it is, but it's still doing fine 8 years after I got it.


I don't know who sold you a new cassette when you got your chain changed, but they are nothing but a salesman.

I've never heard of chains slipping teeth, most notably because it would need to slip all teeth in contact at once (8-20 of them).

If you are having your chain slip off, you need to adjust your deraileur.


When your chain stretches beyond a certain point and does not get replaced it will begin to wear down your gear teeth due to excess friction against the sides. Eventually your gears can become worn enough that they will cause skipping (aka chain slipping off the teeth).


Yes! Stretched chains (not actually stretched, but elongated due to link pin wear) will devour gears.

I have experience with this. Changed a freewheel on a bike, but not the chain, which was stretched. 11 months (!) later, the freewheel was garbage.


This used to be common advice (replace the chain and cassette at the same time). Nowadays, the best pracrice is to replace the chain before it stretches too much and starts wearing down the cogs. If you do that consistently, a cassette should last a really long time. I ride about 2,000 miles a year commuting and have been using the same cassette for 7 years, changing chains about every other year.


Chains stretch over time and use. Oil them well and often and they last longer.

Measure your chain with an old style American ruler (with 'inches'). Twenty links should be exactly 10 'inches'. [0] If it's 1/8" 'inch' longer, replace the chain. If it's 3/16 'inch' longer, replace the rear cogs and the chain both. Consider replacing the front chain rings, too, especially if the chain is longer or they're made of aluminium.

A stretched chain ruins gears. Ruined gears will ruin a new chain, too. Proper maintenance fixes both problems. New quality chains cost about US$10-15.

[0] Wikipedia says one 'inch' is 2.54 centimeters, if you believe that.


Sounds like me - the middle gears on my DuraAce cassette finally wore out after 20+ years so I pieced together a new one. It's a major pain on vintage bikes, definitely want to change your chain before it wears and maybe get a higher quality chain. I also recently invested in a chain cleaner - loads of fun.


> I don't know who sold you a new cassette when you got your chain changed, but they are nothing but a salesman.

My most recent experience with new-chain/old-cluster was that the chain skipped a tooth three times per pedal revolution! Replaced gears, problem solved.

To go buy the new gears, I first had to temporarily put back the old chain, to make the bike ridable. :)

Adjusting the derailleur can help; in particular the "B tension" adjustment to get the jockey wheel to track the gear cluster more closely for more wrap. However, if it's that bad, it won't help.

I have decent experience adjusting derailleurs. Even taking apart the non-adjustable ones and drilling holes in new places to change spring tensions.

> 8-20 of them

You're not going to get 8 teeth of contact on an 11 tooth cog, nor 20 teeth of contact on a 26 tooth ring.


Yes and no. You will get slipping on heavily worn cassette (read: sawtooth shaped teeth) and a new chain or vice versa, but heavily worn these days might be 4-6000 miles of abusive riding. For the average commuter, this would be several years of use, as well as a fair deal of casual riding.


I stand corrected. I've never had that happen before but i'll take your word for it.

I still wouldn't consider a cassette something you should change as a matter of regular maintenance. Certainly not as often as a chain. I've had cassettes last through multiple wheelsets.


I recently had to replace my front chainrings after about 7000 km because the chain was jumping when I applied lots of pressure. The rear cassette was also replaced because the old chain (5k km) had damaged the cogs. So gears do indeed wear out, but it takes a good amount of riding.


That's just abuse. I ride much more than 7000km per annum and never change gears. Also, it's the worn chain that wears down the gears; replace the chain more often the the gears will last many years.


> Please throw away your helmet and get a new one; they are only rated to be in one accident.

Other than Reddit style white knighting why did you say this?

You are basically defaulting to the OP is to stupid to know helmets are one use only, which is common knowledge.


Because the comment was totally off-topic /s

This is a post intended to tell people to wear helmets in the first place. I don't think the target audience is likely to be aware of that tidbit either.


> I don't think the target audience is likely to be aware of that tidbit either.

Personally I'm a firm believe people who assume others are stupid without proof are the real stupid ones.

It was white knight style, lets get karma and pretend OP is to dumb to look after themselves, I'll be the hero and give them condensing advice.

No mention of helmet reuse was in the original post at all.


So it's probably a good thing that it was brought up then.

Completeness is a Good Thing, it's unclear why you're bent out of shape about it.


In the Netherlands, where 30% of trips are by bike (compared to 1% in the US), almost nobody where a helmet, and it's extremely safe. It's almost impossible to go over the handlebars on a Dutch bike. You're sitting upright, you're going slow, the roads are safe, and there are no hills to go zooming down. Dutch cycling is basically at jogging speeds. Nobody expects joggers to wear helmets.

However, when Dutch cyclists do go fast, they wear helmets. In Dutch there are even separate words for everyday cyclist (fietser) and speed cyclists (wielrenner):

http://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/lycra-on-the-st...

I live in Seattle, where we have killer hills and shitty bike infrastructure. I always wear a helmet, and I've had three minor crashes that would have been major crashes without a helmet. When I finally move to the Netherlands, I'm not bringing my helmet with me.


You don't have to go over the bars or go fast to get hurt. Back during my cycling days a teammate was out training on a quiet country road. He crossed wheels when a kid he was passing swerved. He hit his head, went into a coma and died two weeks later. While this was a competitive cyclist, he was riding solo and training for endurance—not terribly fast, nor anywhere near race pace.

You could also be struck by a motorist. Granted, Dutch drivers are more aware of cyclists, but people still make mistakes.


Scariest wreck I ever had: maybe two miles an hour on a bike path. Slipped in wet leaves, loud bang, bright flash, and the world was on its side. Later on I figured it out: even with the helmet on I'd hit hard enough to lose that little bit of time.

Helmet, always, every time.


You could also trip in a staircase and die. I'd wager the outcomes are about equally likely. Why stop with a helmet? You should always wear knee protectors and any other amount of protective gear.

Simply put, the helmet is a political device invoked to get rid of cyclists on public streets and mask the actual risk (cars, by many orders of magnitude, and not only to cyclists, but also pedestrians). As astute people have noticed, helmets are basically absent in countries that have sane city infrastructure transport design and dedicate just a fraction of the resources to making cycling possible for everyone.

But we can't expect people to ask for that infrastructure when they don't even know what it should look like. You note "Dutch drivers are more aware of cyclists", missing the most important feature of Dutch infra: there is physical separation that makes the mistakes of human car drivers (universally useless) mostly riskless.


> You could also trip in a staircase and die. I'd wager the outcomes are about equally likely.

This is actually quantifiable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort. According to this article.

6 miles by motorbike, 17 miles by walking 10 miles (or 20 miles, there seems to be disagreement) by bicycle and 230 miles by car are all approximately the same risk of death. Stairs isn't mentioned specifically.

Also I think there's a pretty good argument for stopping with a helmet. I don't have any data but I strongly suspect that it's the single best thing you can do to decrease risk of death.


I don't care much for infrastructure that is separate from cars, unless it is completely separate. What I've seen in the USA is a sidewalk of sorts that is a few metres away from the road, but with driveways and access roads that cross the path without stop signs. The infrastructure I've seen in Amsterdam offered better, but not complete separation. (And again the awareness thing.)

The one bicycle-car collision I was closest to (my friend was in front and was hit) was on this sort of bike path. His quick reaction put him on the hood of a truck instead of into the grill.

As for helmet as oppression, I heard noise like that about 20 years ago. Damn gubmint! Next thing they'll take our guns!


"the helmet is a political device invoked to get rid of cyclists on public streets"

What?


What the OP is probably trying to say is that politicians will push for mandatory helmet wearing, all in the name of safety. Some cyclists will comply, while others will stop riding altogether resulting in less cyclists on public streets.


Help! Help! I'm being repressed.


That's like saying "I don't wear a seatbelt because I drive the speed limit".

This is some of the worst logic I've seen on here in a while. I'll keep an eye open for your Tell HN post "I should have wore a helmet"


A major argument against making bicycle helmets compulsory is that it would make people stop cycling (helmets destroy your hair, and where would you store your helmet when parked?), and that would cause more deaths due to cardiac arrest and the like than helmets would prevent. Hard to test, but IMO not an unreasonable argument (I think there are scientific papers on this, too)

And of course, the infrastructure is way different in the Netherlands, as is the culture. The fraction of car drivers that has regularly ridden a bicycle through traffic probably is very close to 100%; the fraction that has done so recently or has a kid that has done so probably still is over fairly high.

Net effect is that, despite all those helmetless cyclists (many of which break traffic laws many times a trip), dutch traffic is one of the safest in the world.


A scientific paper on this topic: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1368064

Its conclusion: "In jurisdictions where cycling is safe, a helmet law is likely to have a large unintended negative health impact. In jurisdiction where cycling is relatively unsafe, helmets will do little to make it safer and a helmet law, under relatively extreme assumptions may make a small positive contribution to net societal health." The negative health impact is "increased morbidity due to foregone exercise from reduced cycling" as a consequence of mandatory bicycle helmet laws.


I don't wear a helmet in my car because I drive the speed limit. Race car drivers wear helmets in their cars because they go very fast.

It's a matter of degree. Many random accidents could probably have been prevented by helmets, but we do not advise pedestrians to wear them.


Maybe people should be required to wear a helmet in their car too? A UK study on the effects of cycle helmets found that if pedestrians and motorists wore helmets it would save 12 times more lives than if cyclists wore them.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8799597?dopt=Abstract

From the paper: "CONCLUSIONS: There is no justification for compelling cyclists to wear helmets without taking steps to improve the safety of all road users."


Do you wear a helmet when you go out for a walk? You choose to draw your own risk line somewhere else, but you still draw it.


Do you usually walk on footpaths, or on the road in between cars?


But bike helmets are not for accidents involving motor vehicles. They may help in some of those accidents, but they are not rated for that.

The right question is, when was the last time you fell while out for a walk, or crashed into something, such that you banged your head?

When was the last time you needed brakes in order to come to a stop when out for a walk?


I think there's something to say about it being safer to bike in general in Netherlands vs in the US. Often in the US you are riding next to busy traffic, while in NE the bikes are better protected. Along with other things too: like a car driving population that is careful about bicyclists.

So, it's not exactly like saying I don't wear a seatbelt because I drive the speed limit. Rather it's like saying I don't wear a seat belt because I live in a different country where accidents are less probable.


Accidents may be less probable, but if you happen to be one of the unlucky ones who does have one you could still die or suffer severe brain damage, so why not just wear the helmet? Sure it makes you look a bit goofier, but that's a small price to pay to protect your melon.

I do a lot of downhill mountain biking, snowboarding, etc, so I'm not one of these people that tends to be overly worried about safety, but whenever I get on wheels or something that can easily slide out of control I wear a helmet, period. I'm (pun intended) painfully aware of the amount of impact force a rotational component can add to an otherwise relatively low-speed, low-altitude fall.

Maybe the drivers are more cognizant of bikers in the Netherlands vs the US, but I still wouldn't trust them, they are not infallible and it only takes one of them one fuckup to mess me up. A helmet is a very effective (though non-perfect) fail-safe for this that costs virtually nothing (amortized over time of use before it is needed, hopefully never) and has no real downside other than pure cosmetics.


Something to say? There is no way to disagree with that. http://www.policy.rutgers.edu/faculty/pucher/Irresistible.pd..., figure 10 shows that fatality rates per 100 million km cycled of 1.1 and 5.8 and injury rates per 10 million km cycled of 1.4 and 37.5. In 2007, it was 5 to 25 times as dangerous to ride bicycle in the USA as in the Netherlands.

I doubt that has changed for the better for the USA since.

(Found via http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2008/09/three-types-of-..., a great article on safety on a great site about dutch cycling infrastructure and culture)


Anecdotical evidence: when my (Dutch) son of 18 went on a student exchange to the US, he woke up in intensive care after six weeks of helmet-less biking. Nothing ever happened on his 6-year daily 45 mins commute to school in Amsterdam.

When in the US, where nobody is used to bikers, and there are no bikelanes: wear a helmet, when in The Netherlands: nobody does it.


    It's almost impossible to go over the handlebars on a Dutch bike.
I've done it. I was cycling slowly along the road, and my front wheel went into a drain-grate that had been mistakenly oriented with bars parallel to the road. I landed on my head, had a sore neck for a while, replaced my helmet, and was glad I had been wearing one.


How to spot an American in China: Wearing a helmet, and going twice the speed of the locals.


I've actually been to China and I can tell you that there is a lot of bicycle traffic on the wide, dedicated bike/moped/motorcycle pathways. The locals are fast. Also, the drivers drive as if those cyclists were invisible. For instance, they make abrupt right turns across the bike lane without caring whether or not they are flanked by bikes or not (including electric and gas powered two-wheelers). At any time, you have to be prepared for a car to swerve in front of you to make a right turn, not always signaling beforehand.

If anything, an American who is a n00b on the scene will probably stand out by going slower than the locals, out of sheer fear.

You'd be crazy to cycle around in a place like Shanghai without a helmet.

(Also, the helmets you buy in America are made in China so why wouldn't you get one if you're in China, haha.)


In Vancouver here.

I had a bad one in October 2013. Going downhill on a wet pavement and into a corner. The bike just skidded out from under me. Luckily, the car behind me was far enough to be able to avoid me.

The back of my helmet hit the pavement quite hard. I heard quite a loud sound and was a little dazed as a result. That would have been very bad without a helmet. There isn't anything I could have done to protect my head in that situation, like choose to fall differently.

I had a huge black bruise covering much of my right hip, and a pain in the right side of my rib cage that lasted into the following spring.


I lived in Amsterdam for a while and loved commuting on my bike.

But here's an anecdote for you.

I grew up in a large town in Australia where bicycling was very popular. I rode everywhere and had paper runs. I don't remember anyone having a serious accident. At 17 I went to University in Sydney and rode everywhere; again no helmet and no accidents.

In Amsterdam I had one big crash; my wheel went between the cracks on the footpath and I face-planted into the concrete and took a lot of bark off my face.

What does that tell you? Perhaps nothing :-)


There's some interesting research out there suggesting that head/neck injuries are actually more common among helmeted bicyclists than the non-helmeted. The factors include the extra weight of the helmet, the size of the helmet causing the helmeted head to strike the ground when an unhelmeted head would not have, and additional risks taken by helmeted riders (think: risk homeostasis). Unfortunately I can't find the link that was making the rounds a few months ago.

In my own personal anecdotes, I have had one major bicycle wreck where I somersaulted into a car, one bicycle wreck where my chain snapped and I flung myself over the bars onto the street, and a couple of low-speed (~10mph) motorcycle offs where I collided with the ground but my head did not touch. Though there was one motorcycle case where the side of my helmet dragged on the ground slightly from about 5mph; it's arguable whether my head would have hit.

That said, I have hit my head incredibly hard snowboarding, after catching an edge at very low speed ("last run of the day!" type thing), and always always always wear a helmet every single time I ride a bicycle or motorcycle or snowboard, just as I always wear a seatbelt in the car. It's just a habit, and a good one.


Bicycling magazine had an excellent article that delved into this: http://www.bicycling.com/sites/default/files/uploads/BI-June...

Their assertion was that this boiled down to: do you want open head trauma or closed head trauma?

I'm not so sure that it's quite that simplistic, but seeing the data on how the helmet industry is needlessly hamstrung by outdated standards from 30 year old standards bodies is pretty startling and depressing. This alone should make you reconsider your notions of how safe your helmet really makes you.

(Of course, I still wear mine.)


I've seen this repeated many times, and people usually have this mixed up. Helmets on bicycles DO save lives: the majority of bicycle accidents are low speed (<15 mph) and they often don't involve severe trauma. I knew a guy in college who fell off his bike while trying to navigate around pedestrians at very low speed (walking speed). He wasn't wearing a helmet, and ended up with a brain injury that robbed him of the 3 years of his life he spent re-learning how to walk and speak. He's fine today, but still has a gnarly scar on the side of his head.

The same is not true of motorcycle helmets. The forces involved in motorcycle accidents are a lot higher, so fewer accidents are survivable even with a helmet. Motorcycle helmets also make you feel fucking invincible, so I can definitely see why people would take more risks.


But by the same measures you can claim bicycle helmets are important, they would be just as important for walkers as cyclists. Or people in cars.


> But by the same measures you can claim bicycle helmets are important, they would be just as important for walkers as cyclists.

Because, of course, walkers are elevated and moving at 20 to 30 km/h on an inherintly unstable platform.


It doesn't matter what they are doing, it matters if the basis for claiming helmets are useful for cycling apply to walking. And they do. The testing bicycle helmets undergo is in fact approximating the speed of a walking person falling over on their head. Research has failed to support the idea that helmets offer a net benefit for cycling. I suspect the same would hold true of walking if people took the insanity to the next step and push helmets on walkers.


I looked into car helmets a few years ago [1] and my takeaway was that in older cars helmets would have helped, but cars made in the last 20+ years have enough interior padding and airbags that helmets wouldn't add much if anything.

If you convince me otherwise I'll start wearing a helmet in the car and advocating other people do so too.

[1] http://www.jefftk.com/p/car-helmets


Just because people don't wear them in those instances doesn't mean they shouldn't. Also, it's less likely to fall over walking than to fall over riding a bike, one is inherently less stable than the other. Get pushed walking and stumble back a bit, get pushed riding a bike and you'll most likely fall over.


I imagine you catch your self more reliably when walking, too, and avoid head injuries.


Yes, but if you throw in the fact that walkers have far fewer crashes to the pavement than walkers then it is not the same. And cars have seatbelts...


Walkers hit their heads all the time. People die from it. And seat belts do not prevent brain injuries.


This kind of research is interesting (for sciences sake), but I think it is important to bring up the fact that no-one is saying wearing a helmet doesn't help in situations where life altering head injuries would otherwise occur. It is probably fair to say that in the severe head injury probability distribution, it removes a bunch of probability from the "severe/dead" part of the curve, and adds a bunch to the "minor/tweak" part of the curve, which I'm ok with.


Chris Boardman, an Olympic cyclist for GB, recently appeared on BBC News to talk about cycling safety while not wearing a helmet during his demonstrations. He gives his reasons in this short video https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=974497519231053&set=vb....

I certainly don't disagree with him, or with you, that there are plenty of other safety aspects to consider while cycling, but I'd always wear a helmet anyway.


That was great, and only 37 seconds long!

In Ireland there are lots of bike safety campaigns and messages but the two things that have contributed most to the uptake of cycling have been the Bike to Work scheme (tax free bikes) and the Dublin Bikes (city bike rental) scheme. Arguably, the increase in the number of cyclists has done more for cycling safety than all the efforts of the campaigns.


Interesting trends regarding the "fearlessness" in the NFL suggest that all the advances in modern head protection cause the player to feel a greater sense of invincibility, thus resulting in bigger hits/injuries -

Exibit one, Kam Chancellor, The Touchdown Canceller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mThE69llX34

While it will never happen, what if they considered removing helmets from the game? - These guys would be so much more cautious (e.g., Rugby) of how they hit. Tons of injuries still? Sure, but I'd be willing to guess a massive decrease in major head trauma.

Back to bikes, regardless of the data, I'm still protecting my own head whenever I'm commuting while not protected by a steel cage.


One fundamental difference between rugby and NFL is how many players are involved in frontal impact on each play or phase of play. In rugby football you are only allowed to tackle a player with the ball (except in rucks and mauls, which are by their nature more structured) whereas in american football there seem to me to be a whole lot of players running headfirst into each other on every play.

Having said all that, my experience with rugby players is that there is a certain bravado about injuries, that if you haven't cracked a few ribs, broken a clavicle, had a stud through your cheek, etc. then you aren't playing hard enough; and should therefore buy the next round


Another thing to keep in mind: head and neck injuries might go up because accidents which would have resulted in death now result only in an injury.


I was struck by a car while biking with my helmet (which I generally wore but wasn't super diligent about). Broke my arm, which I was quite bummed about. Got back on my bike and rode one-handed to the emergency room.

At the hospital they reconstructed my accident and wouldn't you know: I fell on my occiput; elbow shattered as a subsequent side effect. Since I had had the helmet on I hadn't even noticed; without the helmet, well, I wouldn't have noticed either. I went back and looked at the helmet and the foam was damaged at the back of the head (it had absorbed a bunch of K.E.) and the back of th helmet had grit embedded.

Needless to say I ALWAYS wear my helmet.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occipital_bone - lumpy bit at the back of your skull where the bones are fused and, when looking up, your head meets the fleshy part of your neck. The lump is called the exterior occipital protuberance (in the image on Wikipedia it is anyway).


I'm Dutch, and used to biking everywhere since I've been little. It is true that people in the Netherlands don't usually wear helmets, and the infrastructure and general driving attitude (you do have to pay much more attention to bicyclists when learning to drive) promote this. However, since I've moved to Switzerland I've become accustomed to wearing a helmet. One year ago I was in a pretty serious accident where I broke two vertebrae (one compression fracture and one clean break) and... my helmet. I don't care what studies say, I'm pretty sure that in my case the helmet saved my life.

On a side note, the situation in which the accident happened could have happened likewise in the Netherlands, it was on the flat and I was on a driver lane, except maybe that it was driver negligance that could have been avoided if drivers where more accustomed to bicyclists.


I meant to say bicycle lane, not driver lane.


Ive been hit three times, the third time the helmet mattered. If I had of done false presumptions of "I've been hit before and it doesnt matter" I might be dead or worse off now.

if you have a 0 dollar brain, wear 0 dollar head protection.


Additionally if you ride a bike, grow your hair long.

Dr Ian Walker did some experiments with a bike fitted with an ultrasound distance meter and found cars kept a greater distance to people with long hair.

http://drianwalker.com/overtaking/overtakingprobrief.pdf

Alternatively, fit your bike with a flame thrower - https://www.eta.co.uk/2010/09/29/bond-bicycle-boasts-ejector...


Honestly, I think you're .... oh, I don't want to be harsh .... being a bit wishful by saying that you would have been badly injured had you not been wearing your helmet. At least, there's no evidence in your post that shows it. Probably, you have no idea.

Without a helmet, your effective head is "smaller", I know that in an accident of mine - where everyone said "thank god for your helmet" am I certain that the part of the helmet hanging out the back hit the ground, and without the helmet, my head probably wouldn't have touched.

As a long-term bicycist and a long-term motorcyclist (serious crashes in each), I am increasingly skeptical about the technology in current bicycle helmets, especially compared to the technology in my current motorcycle helmets. Bicycle helmets are simply not tested to the same standards. They use very hard shells. They extend the "impact radius" --- basically, your head becomes bigger --- with only some decrease in crash absorbancy.

Reading the literature, it seems that the current bicycle designs are based on voodoo more than good science. The designs look like what bicycle racers used 30 years ago (little leather padded strips).

Compare this to the motorcycle helmet industry. There are plenty of crashes to analyze, mostly of motorcycle racers. There are numerous standards (like SNELL) which measure levels of transient G force within the brain on a simulated head.

We deserve better bicycle helmets, and people are willing to pay for good science and proof of protection. I pay a LOT of money for my motorcycle helmet, and glad to do so. I would pay 4x the price of a current bicycle helmet to buy one with solid, verified science and an international standard behind it.

In my suspicion, the lack of good bicycle helmet science is why the upper level numbers are bad: helmets don't decrease injuries or deaths, except that they cause people not to ride.

Really, we deserve better helmets.


I think we deserve cars not crashing into us. It's only in the US that people suggest (implicitly or explicitly) somebody is at fault for his death because he didn't wear a <400g soft shell around his head after a 4 ton truck ran into them from behind (which is the majority in cases where people died).


Canada too. :(


You can do it, but you shouldn't advocate it. Arguments against widespread use:

- making people wear helmets will make less people bike, less people biking on the road leads to more accidents with bikes, and more deaths [1]

- a helmet may make people in general more reckless [1]

- cars will pass closer to people when they are wearing a helmet than when they are unprotected [1]

- if people need helmets, cycling is apparent a dangerous activity, attracting risk-seekers, skewing the statistics [1]

- compulsory helmet use in Australia seems to support some of these (perhaps) counter-intuitive arguments [1]

- helmet itself is dubious [2]

Morale: sure, wear a helmet, but don't evangelize its use. It's a tragedy of the commons if you will succeed.

[1] http://hanlonblog.dailymail.co.uk/2011/07/should-my-son-wear... [2] http://www.tbd.com/blogs/tbd-on-foot/2011/08/idea-of-the-day...


I despise this train of thought. I've heard it before. In essence, it translates to this: "We know it is safer to wear a helmet, but we need to lie to other people about it, so that more people will bike."

You only need 1 highly publicized brain injury to someone who followed this dishonest advice to undo all the gains in biking adoption you (think you) created.


People get brain injury's from car accidents all the time, why are we not advocating for people being mandated to wear them while in an automobile as well as on bicycles. As someone posted above:

"A UK study on the effects of cycle helmets found that if pedestrians and motorists wore helmets it would save 12 times more lives than if cyclists wore them."


> why are we not advocating for people being mandated to wear them while in an automobile as well as on bicycles.

While I don't know how effective they are, cars already have a safety system: airbags. Cars are also built to rigorous safety standards.

As for why pedestrians aren't mandated to wear them, they have infrastructure in place to protect them from cars: traffic laws, sidewalk/street separation, and crossing lights. Cyclists on the other hand are usually riding directly in the streets or in poor excuses for bike lanes.


I haven't seen the study, but I don't believe the claim. I'm no Lance Armstrong by any stretch, but I've done a bit of biking here and there. And twice already, I've had crashes that could have been serious without a helmet. It's too easy to fly over the handle bars. Once was a slight layer of mud over a sidewalk, which was completely unpredictable to me (but won't ever be again).

Extrapolating from my own experience (which is by no means a gold plated double blind study, but which still presents valid evidence about reality), the physics of a bicycle make the rider prone to crashes that involve head impact. You can cry "anecdotal," but I'll answer "common sense."

Besides, the people who argue that evangelizing helmet-free riding will lead to more riders actually acknowledge that helmets are important ... they just want to spread a different story publicly.


I'm sorry but I find these arguments to be a load of bull. Why are we using behavior as an argument against wearing helmets?

>making people wear helmets will make less people bike

Why not increase bike advocacy instead? Participation does not eclipse safety.

>a helmet may make people in general more reckless

Again, behavior.

> cars will pass closer to people when they are wearing a helmet than when they are unprotected

Ditto. That's why I'm glad many states have the 3 feet law. We can improve this with advocacy and legislation.

> if people need helmets, cycling is apparent a dangerous activity, attracting risk-seekers, skewing the statistics

Attracting risk takers? Seriously? Almost everything rideable on wheels has people wearing helmets. They're just as likely to be attracted to skateboarding or rollerblading by that logic.

I'll give you the last two points however, as those can be backed up with numbers, but just be aware that statistics can lie, mislead, and be misinterpreted, especially with non-controlled and non-optimal study designs.


Has the experiment in [1], where cars pass closer, ever been replicated? Admittedly, I'm skeptical. Is it correlated to the rider being more reckless, and riding closer to traffic?


There have been no attempts at replicating the experiment yet, however the study is generally regarded as valid by the scientific community [1]. One study examined the same source data a different way and came up with different conclusions [2].

[1] http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3812/do-cars-pas...

[2] http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...


The first link shows no data, just some general sense of validity based on some other claimed psychological effect. I don't mean to sound snarky, but lots of things can be made to seem plausible if certain effects are taken for granted. The second link seems to invalidate the study, as you say.

Granted, how close cars pass cyclists is only one factor affecting safety. I suspect that the most dangerous or critical situations are the ones where the driver is either minimally aware, or unaware, of the presence of the cyclist. I doubt there's a special brain circuit that influences the driver's behavior based on the cyclist's helmet without alerting the driver to the existence of the cyclist.


Please, wear a helmet. The costs of not wearing a helmet can be severe and far outweigh the minor inconvenience of wearing a helmet.

I'm a severe traumatic brain injury survivor. I was wearing a helmet (skiing crash) but lived with the effects for two years. It was incredibly frustrating -- I was surrounded by loving friends and family that cared enough to give me some painful feedback.

I'm still skiing and researched helmets in depth before returning. There's some interesting technology called MIPS[1]. The protect against moving impacts, a large improvement. Current helmets are just dropped straight down and these helmets are tested while spinning/moving/etc. That's how crashes happen -- while you're moving, whether it be on skis or on a bike.

It's a little more expensive, but it's your brain. Please protect that.

[1]:http://www.mipshelmet.com


Helmets that use MIPS may not be much better in a crash than normal helmets.

http://www.bhsi.org/mips.htm


I was riding home last winter and a car blew a stop sign and t-boned me.

My helmet hit the ground hard, I was perfectly fine.

The ambulance guys were pretty sure I would not have been if not for the helmet.

Please, wear a helmet.


I was biking down a hill about 10 years ago. Hit a bump or curve or something - either way, I flew off the bike about 5 feet forward and hit the ground directly head first almost as if I were diving into a pool of paved road.

The helmet took all the impact and my head was perfectly fine (my knees then hit the ground and got scuffed up a bit). Had I not been wearing it...

So yes - please wear a helmet.


Upvoted for "diving into a pool of paved road". Glad you are still around to share that mental image!


For all the usual discussion on HN about sample size, confirmation bias, FUD, survivorship bias, etc... I'm surprised to see so many personal experiences gaining upvotes. There are certainly quite a few linked studies and supported arguments, but they are the minority.

Isn't anyone's personal account of risk and danger pretty much irrelevant?


Not irrelevant against claims of zero risk or other absolutes. We can conclude helmets save Some lives; the ones volunteering their stories here.

As a statistical measure, no they are not much use I'm afraid. But hospital admissions etc can show the value of helmets.


I was presently surprised moving to Australia to find that it was compulsory to have a helmet while on a bicycle.

Many on my cycle run have been attaching go-pro mounts to their skull cover; I wonder how ineffective it renders the helmet if you landed straight on it.


It's been alleged that having a Go-Pro camera on his ski helmet contributed to the severity of Michael Schumacher's injury.

Of course, this is very hard to prove.


The helmet really isn't the best place for a video camera anyway; I've ridden quite a bit with a GoPro and found that the chest mount gives the best view of the action.


And replace your helmet every five years: http://www.smf.org/helmetfaq#aWhyReplace


OP might also want to consider if they need to replace their helmet after this.

> Helmets are one-use items [...] If the helmet has been involved in an impact while in use, replace it.


Also, never forget blinkers at night!

Headlights aren't a bad idea either.


Yes! And a slightly strong blinker. I have had to let some riders know that their blinkers were too tiny/weak to be noticeable.


Glad you have a friend like that. Please continue the social pressure and actively encourage your less self-preseverational friends with the same message. I yelled at my non-helmet wearing friend (otherwise very bright) and eventually he started wearing it. Social pressure can bring good change.


There is one study that shows that car drivers give less space to cyclists who look more "professional"/well-equipped than those who look like casual riders. Of course people who cite this research say that the solution is to not wear a helmet, as opposed to take measures to make drivers give you more space when you wear a helmet. In my case, I have an old large Coca-cola plastic crate on my rear rack, plastered with reflector stickers, and that seems to give me plenty of space. A female friend holds her U-lock in her left hand and that seems to do the trick as well.


Agreed. My front tire slipped to the left on wet slanted concrete. My helmet hit the ground so hard that my glasses flew off my face and were flattened upon impact. I just ended up with a little scuff and a headache. (and a broken shoulder and knuckle)

There was nothing I could do to prevent the impact, as I've trained myself to pull my money makers under me in a fall and let my body take the hit (the broken finger got wrapped up in the brake lever on the way down). There was something preventative that I could do in case of an impact, and boy am I glad I did: wear a helmet.


Your brain is your moneymaker--put out your hands!


That's what the helmet is for! ;-)

I used to reach out my hands when falling, but now I tuck them in and lead with my shoulder. that was my first major fall, but it's something that I would repeat to myself in my head while riding. In the aforementioned case, I was falling sideways and forwards. I suppose if I were leading with my head I would try to break the fall with my hands. I don't know; it all comes down to muscle memory, subliminal reaction, and how bad I'm freaking out at the time.


Relying solely on a helmet seems like a really bad idea. I recommend learning how to fall using your hands/forearms and not damage them at the same time.

Martial arts training (judo would be a good one) can help a lot here.

There are also a lot of context specific tricks you can pick up. Like if you fall skiing or snowboarding make a fist when you put your hand down instead of falling with an open hand. A fist vs. open hand won't make much of a different on snow, and the fist will stop fingers/thumbs from catching and breaking. In addition the wrist is less likely to break.


I took safety one step further, and just haven't been back on the bike since. I keep saying I gotta get it fixed up and start riding again, but I'm not in too much of a hurry. I got a recumbent stationary bike for the house, and I ride that in front of Netflix. I actually ride now more than I ever did!

On a side note, I've actually been thinking of taking up martial arts training.


If you're moving quickly and could impact the ground, is maybe a better phrasing. Check out this skateboard wreck I saw posted on reddit a little while back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9yL5usLFgY

A person in the thread (so value accordingly) said they worked in an ER and their estimation of the result of the impact, were there no helmet involved, was "likely death."

Also, as kazinator said, helmets are only good for one crash (or even drop from very high off the ground). Get a new one!


I can also recommend martial arts fall training, which saved my head in a similar situation.

I got my handlebars hooked on a rail going downhill and flew over the handlebars; my training allowed me to take the whole impact with my hip and butt. Light graze on the forehead, I'm lucky my reflexes told me to tuck in the head. (However, I couldn't walk that day. Cycling was fine.)

I'm wearing a helmet now, but I'm not sure the situation would have ended as well if I had been wearing it then, because of the bigger head radius.

edit: spelling


For me, years of skateboarding have trained my subconscious how to fall/roll. I got 'doored' once on my bicycle, and I think that training paid off. I was really lucky my face didn't smash into the door though.


It's really frustrating to see cyclists who can't fall. I guess it comes down to lots of practice falls during childhood and infrastructure that supports safe cycling for children but...


It always amazes me how many cyclists I see riding without helmets (and anecdotally they seem to be the ones who typically ride in a less safe/defensive manner as well).

My wife works in healthcare and has worked in settings looking after patients with acquired brain injuries and she always tells anyone (even if she barely knows you) to wear a helmet. She's met too many young people turned into living vegetables or something similar to idly stand by and watch people take that risk.


I'm not sure riding defensively is always the best thing to do. For example, say you are in a narrow road, and a car behind you has barely enough space to overtake you. A defensive rider would move as far to the right as possible to be overtaken, which is very dangerous, while the correct answer would be to ride straight in the middle of the road so that the car driver is not even tempted.


Defensive riding does not mean running away from cars.

Taking the lane when it is unsafe for others to pass is in fact one of the most important rules of defensive riding.


Defensive cycling 101: disambiguate. Your intentions as a cyclist should be crystal clear to all other traffic participants. Make it very clear the motorist will not be able to pass you.


You should signal everything using Lisp S-expressions; no confusing infix where the motorists wonder whether you're being left-associative or right-associative, and what the precedence is.


Especially inside roundabouts its recommended to drive in the middle in order to not give any cars an insensitive to overtake and taking the next exit while you as a cyclist want to take the second next one.

Despite driving in the middle it still happened to me when I was younger and I could luckily jump of the bike when the car hit me as he took the exit.


I disagree. The defensive move would be to take the whole lane and not give them room to pass.


You've got a good understanding of how to ride safely, but perhaps a poor definition of cycling "defensively". You're confusing "defensive" with qualities of meekness or lack of assertiveness.


> It always amazes me how many cyclists I see riding without helmets (and anecdotally they seem to be the ones who typically ride in a less safe/defensive manner as well).

Interesting, the opposite is true in my case. In London (England) it's usually the Lycra-and-helmet set I see lane splitting and light-jumping.


I crashed while mountain biking a couple of years ago, and hit the ground headfirst with all of that energy driving through my head and then my right shoulder/arm. The impact was severe enough to split my helmet and knock me unconscious for a couple of minutes. I expect that without that helmet I likely would have been killed or very seriously injured.

So yeah, don't play around... just wear the damn helmet. That's my advice anyway.


Weird coincidence; last night I was car-doored on my bike ride home from work. I had my lights on and flashing, I was paying attention, and a guy opened his car door about 20 feet in front of me, way too close for me to respond. Even if you're careful, the people around you aren't always going to be. My helmet saved me a pretty serious head injury last night.


When I was 18 I crashed riding home from the gym at night. I was jumping off of a curb and my shitty front-wheel collapsed under the weight, bringing the bike to a sudden halt and sending me over the handlebars. Wasn't wearing a helmet. Landed face first and slid into San Pablo avenue. Concussion and Ripped most of the skin on the right side of my face off. I was pretty grotesque for awhile. Half my face was just an open wound.

If I had been wearing a helmet the cushion around my head would have lifted most of my face off the ground. Probably would have ended up with nothing but a chin scrape.


Glad to hear you're safe! And as a fellow bike commuter I echo the message to wear a helmet.

Your head is arguably the most important part of your body. I'd like for it to be socially acceptable to wear a helmet at all times.


A bit OT: bicycle corridors are one thing in SF that is mostly good with a bit of second order bad.

Good – if you know the routes you generally try to ride with other cyclists, safety in numbers. Plus the wide green lanes help make it abundantly clear to cars that this is a bike lane.

Bad – the other streets turn into crazy biking gambles. Every once and while I see someone riding on Guerrero and want to yell at them to go one street over (Valencia) and reduce your collision chances. It emboldens bicyclists to not follow the law quite as well, or maybe since the sample size is high, I don't know.


In my case, when I was much younger, I skidded on some gravel and went head-first over the handlebars. I had a finger-thick dent in my helmet. I'm glad that dent was not in my skull.


Absolutely. Can't stress this enough. This image is worth a thousand words:

http://i.imgur.com/cpgbU6o.jpg


I experienced a highside [1] dirt bike crash a few years ago. I hit the ground with incredible force, which fractured my arm.

The following day, one side of my body was covered in contusions, and I had a severe phone-shaped hematoma on my thigh.

I have every reason to believe that wearing a helmet prevented a serious brain injury. Also, Otterbox makes a pretty good product.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highsider


The thing that made me start wearing a helmet was the realization that, even if I'm the safest possible bicyclist there's ever been, there's no way to stop the environment from acting against you!

I managed to go over my handlebars while riding down a quiet side street (with no hands, like a badass :/ ), when a gust of wind blew me sideways and caused me to overcorrect and crash.

The Lord protected me on that one and gave me a chance to be a bit more proactive :)


Some comments here suggest buying new. I didn't, and I'm perfectly fine with it. Used bike shops are your friends, people. Find a reputable one and you'll always go back.

In Minneapolis? Yeah, it's not in season right now, but bookmark http://oneononebike.com - not affiliated, but I've recommended plenty of people over to Gene and they've always thanked me.


I second that. I started commuting myself four months ago when I got my current job in a new city. After just two weeks I fell down from an elevated cycling path, and hit my head (w/ helmet) on the tarmac. I had to replace my helmet, but I walked away with just a small scratch on a hand.

Also, check regularly the tightness of your wheel spokes, and replace a wobbly wheel if you can.


A helmet has saved my father's life several times while commuting to/from work. We have at least one of the helmets saved, complete with a crack down through the entire side. It was a hard enough hit for him to be unconscious for a few minutes. The EMTs said that without the helmet, it would have been dicey odds of survival.


if cycling is the primary transport,you might want to consider this. https://www.youtube.com/embed/0aX-WXBMI8I?start=29&end=33 http://www.hovding.com/


Good news, and yes please wear helmets. A similar incident happened to a friend of mine. Literally the day before his boss insisted he wear a helmet "to protect his investment." Invasive managers aside, if it were possible for companies to incentive employees to wear helmets, I would support it.


Just to echo the OP: Was biking with my brother and a friend in San Fran. The friend crashed when his tire got stuck in the trolley track. Then my brother crashed same way while looking back to see what happened. Always wear a helmet; Especially in San Fran


> My helmeted head definitely hit the ground and would likely have been badly injured had I not been wearing it.

Now buy a new helmet and go get your head checked (literally, a helmet will protect against a skull fracture but not a concussion or other brain injuries)


Some practical advice: Even if you don't ride a fixie, you should get comfortable doing skid stops. Just because the rear wheel locks up doesn't mean you have to lose balance.


Glad to hear you're safe Stephen, thanks for the reminder.


Be on the lookout for symptoms of concussion - they can take weeks to manifest. Take care especially if you're working long hours, it can make it worse.


Please "Stop forcing people to wear bike helmets"

http://www.vox.com/2014/5/16/5720762/stop-forcing-people-to-...

"While they do protect your head during accidents, there's some evidence that helmets make it more likely you'll get in an accident in the first place."


As a Dutchman: lol, helmets.


1 Bicycle cyclist riders save your brain!

2 * allegedly stupidity and dumbing down of the USA 3 increases and the 'i wear a helment' is an example.

4 * At age 58.34 years, I still ride a bicycle. I have 5 survied various adventures, including learning to 6 ride as a child in New York City, NYC, USA.

7 *the WISDOM OF AGES to SAVE YOUR BRAIN

8 1.) fastest way to lose your career, and live in 9 the 'nursing home prison' for a life sentence is 10 'bicycle cycling cyclist.'

11 2.) Do I have the best equipment like helmet?

12 3.) Do I assume that the 'impaired driver' or 13 old driver with OLD EYES does not see me? 14 Do I assume that I am running Microsoft Windows 15 XP and I have alreaady been 'cracked'??

16 4.) Do I practice FALLING OFF MY BICYCLE in a 17 controlled procedure? Do I know how to tumble 18 and roll?

19 5.) Like driving a car, where is the escape route? 20 Like soft grass and NOT lighting poles?

21 6.) Do I practice tumbling on 'hard ground'/ 22 DO THIS PRACTICE to strengthen your neck muscles! 23 Push on your head with your hands, while rolling 24 and rotating your head. 23 Push on your head with your hands, while rolling 24 and rotating your head.

25 7.) Why does this work? The reason GRANDMA dies 26 SLOWLY is hip fracture from falling down. 27 That's the reason why TAI CHI WITH WEIGHTS works. 28 It 'strengthens the BALANCE FUNCTIONS.'

29 8.) WEAR ALL PROTECTIVE GEAR. Ater a few falls, 30 and YES I AM STILL ABLE TO WALK AND HAVE ALL 31 MY FINGERS, wear the 'dollar store cotton gloves' 32 and the knee covers and yes SAFETY GLASSES.

33 9.) Most sunglasses shatter. Blind for the rest 34 of your life and then you go to the 'nursing home.' 35 Even MURDER in the USA has an average sentence of 36 less than seven years.

37 10.) 1.) fastest way to lose your career case: 38 THE CENTRAL PARK JOGGER with TBI traumatic brain 39 injury. When you LOSE YOUR short term memory, 40 your career, especially if you are a programmer 41 or white collar work IS FINISHED due to TBI.

42 11.) A truck tractor trailor jack-knifes and 43 skids. The car crash and 'multi-car pilup' 44 cuts off your legs. What a pity! 45 Seeing in the old age homes in Florida, FL, 46 USA, this is not a problem.

47 12.) Think of it this way. Would you rather have 48 dementia - Alzheimers or 'wheelchair no legs 49 disease.' For me the choice is 'wheelchair.' 50 http://theinvisiblegorilla.com/blog/2010/06/22/ 51 unexpected-bicycles-and-inattentional-blindness/ 52 "unexpected-bicycles-and-inattentional-blindness"

53 14.) YOU ARE INVISIBLE for this is the USA - 54 United States of Attention Deficit and 55 USA - United States of Amnesia. 56 Europe and even Asia - cyclists are treated 57 with respect. In the USA, expect loose dogs, 58 even wasp nests operating out of abandoned 59 houses, sand and slipperty stuff on the roads 60 and drivers who don't care and can't see well.

61 15.) the most dangerous times are are dawn 62 and dusk. Simply test your OLD FRIENDS with 63 OLD EYES who have a driver's license.

64 16.) How do we know this is true? The 65 rate of motorcycle accidents in Florida 66 and Arizona is very high. The old driver 67 or teenager texting says in the court: 68 " HE CAME OUT OF NOWHERE; NEVER SAW HIM."

PPPS. There is little penalty in the USA for 'manlaughter.' or Traumatic Brain Injury. Let's take an alleged legal case in FL or AZ, USA, shall we??

the worst penalty for BAD DRIVERS that might happen is two (2) years in jail. Florida, FL, USA protects the house. Civil courts cannot usually get the 'pension/annuity.' The worse that can happen to the GARBAGE TRUCK DRIVER is he gets fired and usually the company will try to protect him. LIKE THE BIG BANKSTERS, company fines are a 'small inconvience.'

PPS. Some of the garbage truck drivers may be hearing impaired, SO THEY DO NOT HEAR YOUR WARNING BICYCLE HORN.

Have you ever seen 'rear view mirros' on GARBAGE TRUCKS and other commercial vehicles THAT HAVE NO BLKND SPOTS??

plenty BLIND SPOTS.


I feel like I just took a trip to the time cube.


> If you ride a bicycle, please wear a helmet.

Or you know, don't, because you've got perfectly safe bicycle infrastructure and you're never going faster than 20 km/h anyway.

What works for you is not a universal law.

You know how this bicycle helmet issue always turns into a shouting match on the internet? I think it's to a large extent because people don't have the empathy to see themselves in the situation of a bicyclist on the other side of the world, in a different automotive culture, with different laws and history.


Falling off your bike at 20 km/h and hitting your head is still enough for a decent head injury.


Pfft, you don't need to be going that fast. My wife was pushed off her bike at perhaps 5 km/h and fractured her shoulder. Took nearly a year of healing and revalidation.


That would be an argument for wearing protection when walking as well, you know?


Kind of ... no, not really. Walking at 2mph with both feet on the ground, very different from balanced on a frame of pipework rolling at 5mph. Much more likely to 'land on your feet' when walking.


Parent poster wrote 5 km/h which is really the speed of most walkers not 5 mph. I'm sure that if you get hit by a car that's going fast enough it won't really matter if you have a bike, a skateboard, or just the soles of your shoes…


Yeah but you don't have to hit a car to take a dive on your bike. Just stopping at a light you can go over.


I take it you missed his part about breaking his chain.

That said: http://www.vehicularcyclist.com/hfaq.html and a variety of research suggesting that helmet laws reduce ridership which causes far more cost (in heart disease and inactivity ailments) than the lack of helmets.


Its the old observers paradox. "I haven't had a bike accident, so bike helmets aren't necessary". Nothing works but resorting to the statistics. What statistics have you to offer?


Here in the Netherlands, nearly nobody wears a helmet. If the horror stories in this thread are to be believed, half the population of the country should be clinically brain dead at this point. They're not, so perhaps not wearing a helmet is not as dangerous as some people believe.

Regarding statistics: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1012.html has some useful pointers. Conclusion: "Despite the considerable effort that has been put into research about cycle helmets, there is no real-world evidence that helmets have ever resulted in the net saving of even a single life. However, if helmets were actually effective, then many more pedestrian and motor vehicle occupant lives could be expected to be saved if these groups wore helmets."


So I've seen the cycle commuters in the Netherlands. It's at a nice relaxed pace where it's unlikely a cyclist will be surprised or an equipment failure is going to be catastrophic. The use case is going to dictate what equipment is going to be needed.

When I had an internally geared hub, I had it fail on a steep uphill where I was standing to get enough torque down, where it essentially went into neutral, similar to a chain snapping. This almost threw me off the bicycle. Netherlands, relatively flat.

I've since switched to a road bicycle and traveling at higher speeds. Once a taxi blindly crossed in front of me, sending me hurtling over the taxi. I landed on my head, lost consciousness briefly. Helmet was deformed. Without it, the outcome would have been much more catastrophic.

Another incident, this time going slowly down a steep mountain road, while tightening my line to avoid an oncoming car, the front wheel slipped on leaves sending me down to ground. Landed mostly on my side but helmet hit the ground really hard, enough to stun me. The inner support of the helmet broke mostly free of the outer shell but stayed in place because of the chin strap. This too could have ended badly with no cell phone reception for about 15km and a civilization 30km away.

Anyways... it depends on use case. Over here in Tokyo, the utility bicycles and cyclists are just like the Netherlands. Sedate pace, low number of incidents. The roadies and faster cycle commuters have necessary equipment including helmets, safety glasses, gloves, blinkers, and lamps.

I recognize I have a higher risk profile and take on extra precautions.


Read the thread! Everybody seems to know somebody/have experienced an accident where the helmet saved their skull. That "conclusion" can't be serious. Real-world evidence is all around us. I'm calling bull on that site.


Can you explain what you mean by "perfectly safe bicycle infrastructure" and how this removes the need for a helmet?


In the Netherlands we have dedicated cycling lanes along larger roads and car drivers that are comfortable with cyclists. Almost everbody cycles, nobody wears helmets. And we haven't got a raised head injury mortality or paralysis rate because of bike injuries. I've never had an injury and probably traveled more kilometers by bike than any other means of transportation.

I do wear a helmet while road biking but that's a whole different topic.


Look here, and search for "Netherlands" for the full horror storey of 'safe' bicycle infrastructure:

http://www.bhsi.org/stats.htm


I don't see a horror story. Could you explain it?

In the Netherlands, 1/4 of all trips, and 8% of all distances traveled, are by bicycle, so the numbers reported there are hard to compare to other countries.

What level of fatalities and head injuries would count as "not a horror story" to you? What level of fatalities by running or jogging would count as "not a horror story" to you?

(BTW, the statistics only list "head/brain injury". I presumed that a scratch on the chin would count as a head injury. Also, the text under "And more from the same paper" does not exist in the referenced paper. The text says the 'estimates are partly based on research carried out in countries like the United States and Australia', so don't really reflect the infrastructure.


The first paragraph in the Netherlands section:

"67,000 casualties of cycling crashes are treated at a first-aid department (Source: Injury Information System LIS), 8,000 cyclists are admitted to hospital (Source: National Medical Registration LMR), and 190 people die as a consequence of a cycling crash (Source Statistics Netherlands – Unnatural deaths). Of the seriously injured bicycle casualties2 admitted to hospital, a third were diagnosed with head or brain injuries (32%). "

We can assume 'seriously injured' does not include scratched chins.


I read those numbers. My point is that I don't know how to interpret those numbers.

The Netherlands has a cheaper health care than the US. Do people go to the first-aid department for minor problems more often than they do in the US?

For example, in college I cut my figure once while cutting a loaf of bread with a hard crust. I was on the campus medical plan. I walked to the campus medical center and got a single stitch. Had I had to drive some place, and pay $100 in co-pay, then I would have waited longer and perhaps not gotten it.

The text says "Of the cyclists with serious injury who are admitted to hospital following a crash with motorized traffic, almost half (47%) are diagnosed with head/brain injury". It doesn't say that they only have a head/brain injury. Could be a broken collarbone and facial injury? The relevant Table 1 in the paper says "Annual number of cyclists admitted to hospital with head/brain injuries as main or second diagnosis", emphasis mine.

So no, we cannot, based on the presented data, assume that the head/brain injury is the serious injury.

In the US in 2012, 4,743 pedestrians and 726 bicyclists were killed in crashes with motor vehicles. http://www.pedbikeinfo.org/data/factsheet_crash.cfm . Do those raw numbers mean that bikes are safer than walking, in case of a car crash?

Certainly not. It needs to be scaled by amount of time that people are on a bike, vs. walking. More people walk in the US than cycle. "There are 127 million walking trips and nine million bike trips in the U.S. every day (2009 NHTS)." http://www.pedbikeinfo.org/data/factsheet_general.cfm .

While in the Netherlands, some 25% of trips are by bike, and 20% by foot, and 8% of all distances are covered by bike. See http://books.google.com/books?id=apGsBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA352&lpg=P... .

Tell me how to combine all that data to get a horror story. Because it's proved to be too complicated for me to figure it out based on what I can see.

My own experience in the Netherlands is that biking there is a joy. It feels very safe compared to biking in the US.


You are kidding, right? What non-serious brain injury do you suppose they are diagnosing?


I have no clue. The information stated is "Head injury is the general category and generally implies brain injury, but sometimes there is head injury without brain injury."

I see nothing about if "generally implies" means 5% or 95%. Do you? I assume it's "more than 50%", so I went to the referenced paper. That says:

> In Table 2 head injury is the most general injury category which may also include injury to the back of the head, face and brain (some studies consider facial injury as a head injury, other studies do not). Brain injury specifically refers to the brain, and facial injury specifically refers to injury to the face (chin, nose mouth, jaws, eyes, forehead, ears). Elvik compared the risk proportions of a specific injury occurring or not occurring

In Table 2, however, you'll see that brain injury appears to be less common than non-brain injuries involving the head.

However, Table 2 is a metadata analysis with insufficient few brain injury studies to "allow correction for publication bias", and not specific to the Netherlands. (A copy of the paper is at http://www.cycle-helmets.com/elvik.pdf .) Therefore it can't be used to conclude anything about the situation in the Netherlands.

You'll also notice that point 3 of the conclusion in Elvik reads "When the analysis is updated by adding four new studies, the protective effects attributed to bicycle helmets are further reduced. According to the new studies, no overall effect of bicycle helmets could be found when injuries to head, face or neck are considered as a whole."

So, no, I don't know. I ask how you know when that information isn't available in the papers you cited.

Where is the horror story?


The horror story comes in when folks go to the hospital only when they are seriously injured, the diagnosis IS brain injury, those 190 dead people could have been saved, and we don't struggle to interpret all the data as naively as we possibly can.


If you say that even 1 dead person is a horror story, then I'll agree with you, and stop this discussion.

Otherwise, if some lesser number is not a horror story, then please explain why 190 dead people is a horror story. Roughly what level would not be a horror story, but 'merely' tragic?

Is that level based also on the number of trips, or amount of distance traveled bike? Or is it simply the absolute number of deaths? How does that compare to the number of people who die by walking, running, swimming, or kayaking?

We cannot eliminate all risk. What level is acceptable? You seem to suggest that no risk is acceptable. The vast majority of the world seems to disagree with you.


A concussion perhaps? Normally not too serious, sometimes just monitored overnight in hospital or at home.


"Perfectly safe" is of course impossible. It should be read as "as safe as walking" or, more realistically, "as safe as running." (Wearing a helmet while running, or while driving, may also be safer than not.)

For a safe infrastructure, see how Amsterdam and Copenhagen have bike lines which are independent of traffic and of pedestrians, including it own bridges and overpasses. See also how routes are arranged so that cycle and pedestrian routes are more direct than car routes, how bikes have right-of-way over cars, and how limited speed limits and narrow roads keep cars from going fast in roads which are shared with cycles.

Also, it wasn't only "perfectly safe bicycle infrastructure" but also "and you're never going faster than 20 km/h". That's a 3 minute km or 5 minute mile, which is slower than many people can sprint, and slower than the fastest marathon paces. It's hard to understand why cyclists, on their own paths, need a helmet when runners who might pass them do not.


I think its because runners have their feet under them, and can respond in some emergencies. Falling off a bike almost always ends up head-first, with arms outstretched to brace yourself (broken collar-bone from the impact) or not (broken helmet/head).


Cyclists can also respond in some emergencies, including some that aren't available to joggers. For example, I found that two wheels + two feet made it possible to travel on an icy road where two feet alone felt very dangerous. Cyclists also very rarely get a sprained ankle.

I don't find where "falling off a bike almost always ends up head-first." My own injuries seem more of the slip on an icy or wet patch and fall on my side variety.

Looking around, according to http://books.google.com/books?id=cxn2dKfCg1AC&lpg=PA138&ots=... "gravel rash" on the hips, knees, butt, and elbows is the most common injury.

Bruising, cuts, and breaks (collarbone, ribs, and wrists, in that order) are relatively less common. I don't get a sense that head-first events top the list.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: