It seems like a no brainer: if you enjoy your ability to engage in coherent, cognitive processes and you ride a bicycle you should wear a helmet. But the old adage appears to be true, ‘common sense ain’t so common.’ At least not these days. It is fairly common knowledge that in the event of a crash a bicycle helmet can save your life and prevent you from becoming a human vegetable. But have a look around many cities and you’ll notice that it seems fewer riders are taking the simple steps -like putting them on their heads- to wear these life saving devices. More often than not you’ll see the helmet strapped to the handle bars, and I am not sure that they will do there job there. It would seem that helmet use is facing a rapid decline, but why?
Before you get up in arms about the fact that you still wear your helmet and many people you see are wearing helmets, let me just say that I am not insinuating that everyone is opting out of using cranium protection systems, but a lot are. And it just may be because it’s cool not to wear them.
There are a lot of people that are riding away without their helmet and it may be because people love to follow trends, cool trends set by others. And what could be cooler than movie stars? Movie stars like Gerrard Butler, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin and even Arnold Schwarzenegger have been spotted riding without their helmets. How can common sense ever hope to beat the terminator. Somehow someway something has to change but my question to you is how can we make the helmet cool again, how can we make wearing a helmet something people want to do? Anything uttered by authorities or parents is automatically uncool so we have to appeal to something else, a higher level of reasoning that can convince people that wearing a helmet is better than cool, it’s lifesaving. There is no simple answer or solution, making it the law seems to have been ineffective and it could be argued that many intelligent people are not wearing helmets, so it isn’t an intellectual deficiency. Not that irrational behavior has ever held intellect in high regard.There is a distinct gap between knowledge and action and the solution lies somewhere in bridging that gap…
On that note I leave you with a question: What do you think would make people change their behaviour and strap a lid on their heads?
Tags: Axiom, Axiom Gear, Bicycle Helmet Safety, Cycling and Helmets, Cycling Safety, Helmets, Wearing a Helmet
Helmets are uncool. Helmet laws have stopped a lot of people cycling and have done nothing for head injury rates, see Robinson DL. No clear evidence from countries that have enforced the wearing of helmets. BMJ. 2006 March 25; 332(7543): 722–725. doi: 10.1136/bmj.332.7543.722-a. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16565131 (Robinson’s work uses the best scientific methods, all available control groups and so on.)
In real accidents bike helmets don’t seem to crush as designed, they break instead. The senior engineer of Bell Sports, the market leader in cycle helmets, has written: “Another source of field experience is our experience with damaged helmets returned to customer service… I collected damaged infant/toddler helmets for several months in 1995. Not only did I not see bottomed out helmets, I didn’t see any helmet showing signs of crushing on the inside.” In 1987, the Australian Federal Office of Road Safety found that in real accidents “very little crushing of the liner foam was usually evident… What in fact happens in a real crash impact is that the human head deforms elastically on impact. The standard impact attenuation test making use of a solid headform does not consider the effect of human head deformation with the result that all acceleration attenuation occurs in compression of the liner. Since the solid headform is more capable of crushing helmet padding, manufacturers have had to provide relatively stiff foam in the helmet so that it would pass the impact attenuation test…”
It appears that helmets break easily, but don’t absorb the impact, see the engineers quoted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet#Criticism_of_current_standards.3B_new_designs. A broken helmet has simply failed, and the widespread anecdotes on the theme of “a helmet saved my life” seem to owe more to wishful thinking than to science. As for the occasional anecdotes about “a car ran over my head” (http://www.kptv.com/news/21541052/detail.html), see the pro-helmet site http://www.helmets.org/smush.htm; if a car goes over your head, I’m sorry to say you won’t be sitting up and praising your helmet. The only known connection between helmets and death is that helmets have strangled a few young children who were wearing helmets while playing off their bicycles, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet for an incomplete list.
To answer your question – fearmongering is the best way to make people strap a lid on their heads. Helmet propaganda may tend to overemphasize the very small dangers of cycling and seldom seems to emphasize its large benefits. At my moderately advanced age it’s far too dangerous not to cycle – regular cycling, Danish style, not too far, not too fast, nearly halves the death rate, see http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/160/11/1621 All-Cause Mortality Associated With Physical Activity During Leisure Time, Work, Sports, and Cycling to Work. Andersen et al, Arch Intern Med. 2000;160:1621-1628. Taking up moderate exercise is about as beneficial as giving up smoking. Bicycling is good for health, but bike helmets don’t seem to be. If you want to boost safety, following the helmet trend doesn’t seem to be a good way to go.
Mr Keatinge, wake up and shake your head, all those reports and studies do not take into consideration the hundreds of thousands of unbraindamaged people that did not die or become a vegetable as a result of a bicycle accident. As much as they are reputed to use the best scientific methods etc they only deal with people who suffered brain injury or death and not the people who walked or rode away relatively unscathed and as such they are flawed in the most basic sense. No reasonable person would even try to defend them.
I personally have crash tested more than a few helmets (both bicycle and motorcycle) over the years and I have managed to keep my brain functional at the highest level.
I always endeavour to wear my helmet when riding.
[...] couple of weeks ago I put up a post about wearing helmets. To me, wearing a helmet had always just made sense. I work in the bicycle [...]
Mr Willing, the point about the best scientific work is that there don’t seem to be any people who’ve actually been saved by their helmets. We all know there are plenty who think their helmets saved them. That’s not quite the same thing.