I used to road race in my 20s. I never crashed in the handful of races I did as a Cat 5 amateur, though I had a few close calls like having to bunny hop onto a sidewalk to avoid someone that didn't hold their line through a corner (almost won that race, came in second) and facing terrible, rutted roads in the Chicago criterium with the prospect of around a 15 foot drop over a wall into grant park garage ramp.
That said, I've crashed innumerable time over the years, often at speed. As a teen, crashed several times on a dirt road at over 45 miles an hour without wearing a helmet. Been over the handle bars at least 6 times. Been T-boned by a car on a training ride.
Through all that, Ive managed to never hit my head. How? No clue. Just luck I guess. Didnt wear a helmet as a kid, but as an adult I wont get on a bike without on. Only injury above my knock I've had was when I dumped my road bike at 25 mph when I lost the rear end in a corner. Landed on my side, rolled onto my stomach and dragged my chin on the pavement for a bit. Broke my left hand and burnt my finger tips from that one, too. Got up and rode 5 miles home...
If I were still riding, I would definitely get one of these helmets. A lot of my gear is already Bontrager (helmet and 2 pairs of cycling shoes), and all 3 of my bikes are Trek (Bontrager is a Trek subsidiary).
My 15-year-old carbon fiber fork had a catastrophic failure two weeks ago. I’ve no idea what happened exactly but I came to in the emergency room a few hours later with road rash and a concussion. It took me almost two weeks for my brain to feel 100% again.
My helmet cracked where I hit my head. Who knows where I would have been without it.
I fell numerous times both on bike (worst at 40mph) and skis (worst at 60mph), and started with both at around age 3, so I might have the same automated instincts as you do. Never anything more serious than scratches on the sides of my body. Recently hit by a (slow) car that didn't yield, again the fall was automatic and both me and bike were more-less OK (bent front wheel only). I still don't wear helmet for either biking nor skiing, only for bike downhills I get an F1 helmet and full-body armor.
Yeah, happened to me once (steering stem broke) and twice (saddle screw broke). Instantly on the ground. Again, lucky, nothing serious, just bruises. I can imagine during a downhill at 60mph I could be easily killed...
You're good at wiping out, it's a reflexive skill, like a trained boxer blocking or dodging a punch. There's maybe a split second between when you recognize a crash is inevitable, and when you actually hit something, and the decision you make in that moment is critical. Those who haven't cultivated the skills might panic, or freeze up, or just exercise poor body mechanics and then they have a story afterwards about how their helmet saved them from something worse. Or not.
I remember when I was younger doing an x-up (turning the handlebars backwards in the air so your arms make an x) over a pretty big jump. This was something I'd done many times before, but this time, while trying to straighten out before landing, my handlebars got tangled in my shirt and stuck at a 90 degree angle. Somehow, instead of landing in that very unfortunate position, I managed to stuff my bike down between my legs and behind me before, reasonably gracefully, sliding down the landing on my knees. I was completely unscathed, but a little baffled as to how.
I ride a lot more conservatively now and a lot less regularly so I don't fall very often, but it seems like when I do, that lack of practice shows. I don't seem to get as lucky any more.
There is a whole country of serious bike riders who don’t use bike helmets (the Netherlands). It turns out that if you design your biking infrastructure well enough, it isn’t really a problem.
Two hundred deaths a year and more than ten thousand injuries for bicyclists in the Netherlands... Not going to debate whether it’s a “problem”, only assert that the belief that helmets aren’t necessary is causing some unnecessary loss of life. A few of those people in the Netherlands know that even with their well designed infrastructure and slow biking speeds, as many as 80-90 Nederlanders are dying unnecessarily every year and would live if they’d only wear helmets...
Firstly, it's certainly not 80-90 of those 200, that's preposterous if you look at more detailed analyses of the results. About 70 of those 200 deaths are from irresponsible use of ebikes by old people!
Furthermore, bikes are the primary mode of transportation for most people I know here - elderly, young, weak, strong, you name it. The USA's main mode of transportation is cars (unnecessarily large ones!), which (aside from killing over 40,000 people a year directly) also kill the environment, the bodies of those inside, and a truly horrifying number of other people by proxy of countless wars waged over oil. If you count the 40,000 direct deaths alone, you get 129 deaths per 1M Americans per year and 11 deaths per 1M Dutch people per year. Take into account the other issues involved in driving and I'm sure that number will increase by (at absolute minimum) a factor of 10.
Helmets may make sense in America, where biking is a sport dominated by 30-55 year old men on $1000+ bikes wearing criminally tight pants, sunglasses, and aerodynamic helmets. But in the Netherlands they are a preposterous idea. Wearing helmets decreases bike use, which kills in far greater numbers.
> Ah, found the American [...] it’s certainly not 80-90 of those 200, that’s preposterous
Right, yes, I’m on the only American here, and only Americans believe that bike helmets make you safe.
I didn’t make the claim, it was made by SWOV of The Hague in the Netherlands, and republished by DutchNews. Since you’re there, maybe take this up with them? They did look at the detailed analysis, and they said helmets would save 85 Netherlanders per year, not me.
> The USA’s main mode of transportation is cars [...] killing over 40,000 people a year directly
Why did you turn this into a death competition? What does this have to do with cars? The discussion was over whether bike helmets make you safer or not.
I’m fully aware of how bad cars are. Your nationalistic slight aside, not all Americans want cars and the deaths that come with them. I can’t control that. But I can wear a helmet.
> Wearing helmets decreases bike use, which kills in far greater numbers.
That’s a strong claim. Please put a magnitude on it and some evidence and sources behind it.
Look, I'm not going to start the entire helmet debate here on HN, especially since you clearly have not done your research. But to specifically address your points:
1) SWOV has published multiple analyses of this issue. They explicitly noted that the analysis you're referring to was unusual in that it said up to 85 people would be saved per year by wearing helmets. Their other analyses, which use different modes of calculation, arrived at far lower numbers.
2) It's not "a death competition" (but don't worry, America is #1 regardless.) However, every mode of transportation has a cost in lives in many forms. Aside from direct deaths, there are also many indirect deaths from various modes of transportation. If you're going to criticize a possible safety problem in a mode of transportation, keep in mind the broader context. In the Netherlands, where trains are a critical part of the transportation infrastructure, there are more suicides by train than bike deaths (although both are around 200/yr.) You could argue for, perhaps, airport-train-style doors in front of platforms. But that too has an associated cost, and a benefit.
3) You need to consider the consequences of every action, no matter how obscure or strange they may possibly be. Anti-child labor laws sound like a good thing, right? Well, read up on the Child Labor Deterrence Act. Harkin simply introducing the act in Congress was enough to scare manufacturers around the world into action, firing their enormous sweatshops of children. Good, huh? Well, the children were at the sweatshops for a reason. Turns out that without the sweatshops, enormous numbers of children went into prostitution, theft, and rock crushing (which might not sound bad, but it guarantees the destruction of your lungs if you're not killed in a number of other ways.) Every action can have first order, second order, third order consequences...
Finally: 200 deaths a year is an extremely, extremely small number for a system with nearly 20 million users, operating carbon-free, smog-free, at extremely low cost (~20 eur/year.) And it manages to provide fresh air and exercise to all participants! There's basically nothing like it; it's a wonder of the modern world. Risking damaging this system by adding helmets... The payoff is tiny, the risk is enormous.
While I appreciate the response and attempt to address my question, all three of those links are from cyclehelmets.org, and the site is helmet skeptic. That’s not my opinion, it says right on the site that most of their material is anti-helmets. I find it incredibly biased, it tends to use emotional arguments and tries to magnify every scrap of anti-helmet evidence. I dislike how cyclehelmets.org attempts to draw causal lines from correlations at practically every opportunity. Just read your link and see how often they use words like “seem” and “suggest”, then try to imagine some of the many other possible explanations.
BTW, did you notice what the 10-year Canada study concluded? “In general the rate of head injuries is declining, but this is not consistent across the country, nor is it attributable to legislation as some provinces with legislation experienced a decline while others did not.” So there is evidence that helmet laws did not cause the supposed changes in ridership.
Do you believe that having to use seat belts prevents people from driving cars? If not, why not? Do you think seat belts make drivers more aggressive? Do you believe that helmets prevent people from participating in other sports? I live near a lot of ski resorts, and nearly 100% of skiers here are voluntarily wearing helmets, and the number of skiers is rising every year. Same goes for bikes, there are no helmet laws where I live and yet most people wear them, and more people are riding than ever. I don’t buy for a second that helmets are so offputting it drives away half of all people, there are a million possible explanations for whatever data points they found in Alberta. For example, the injury rates presented are absolute numbers, not per-capita like they should be. More injuries is expected when there are more people, and between 2000 and 2006, Alberta got more people.
That's not entirely true; slow (< 30 km/h) cyclists using the bike as utility to get somewhere almost never wear a helmet here. Spandex wearing speed cyclists almost always do though.
True, but that casual use is huge. If helmets were required, bike use in the Netherlands would plummet to UK or even American levels. Is that healthier for society?
But if you are serious about biking, not just casually using a bike to get to work or school, a helmet isn’t really a big deal and probably much more useful.
I disagree. Its probably more about lower speeds associated with casual riders.
But, people, especially kids, are unpredictable. I once literally ran over a boy around 12 years old on a bike path in the US. He was riding with a younger sibling and his father riding head on at me. They were riding inline on the right side (their right), with the kid I ran over in front. Just seconds before we were going to ride past each other (I was also on my right side of the path), the kid swerved directly across me, and dumped his bike. I literally had no time to respond, and rode right over him. I was on my mountain bike at the time, and the bike just thought it was a bump.
Kid was fine, maybe a bit of road rash, dad was pissed at me. Something along the likes of "WTF are you doing riding recklessly and hitting my kid?". The real WTF was like "did you not see what I saw? You kid swerved in front of me and dumped his bike." Dad was so irate I got to the point quickly of: I'm done talking with about this, whats your insurance amd I'm going to call the police to sort this out (my bike had a little bit of damage like a dinged wheel and a bent pedal from it). To this day, dont know if he was running a scam or just had a moron for a son, but as soon as I threatened to bring the cops in, the dad dropped it and went on their way.
I had a Chinese driver's license for a while, and did a little driving there over about a month.
I had a simple rule when driving. At every moment in time, imagine the most asinine/ignorant thing every driver around you could possibly do. And that is what they will do.
But.
They will do it slowly. So when somebody just merges straight into you while you're in the straight lane, they'll just ease it over slow enough that you can react.
They'll cut directly across from the left lane to the right lane, ignoring the lights, to make the turn they feel like making. And run over a little old lady in the process, and scream at her body.
I was all like "I know the rules, I'll follow the rules", and I'd do batshit insane things like stop for pedestrians because they had the right of way. They'd look at me like I was a serial killer just waiting for my chance, usually until they noticed I wasn't from around there. Then they'd laugh at me and walk.
China has great rules of the road. Nobody follows them.
That is bad advice. It remains advisable to wear a helmet. What you are saying is roughly equivalent to, "If car infrastructure is sufficient, we will no longer need helmets." At best the need is reduced.
Does the fact that they don't mean that they shouldn't? Researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia did a study and concluded that wearing helmets in cars would prevent many serious injuries: http://www.copenhagenize.com/2009/10/australian-helmet-scien...
That’s a straw man. Most motorists wear seat belts, because seat belts prevent the most common injuries (including head injury) in small to medium crashes. Helmets don’t protect motorists from common injuries, while they do protect bicyclists from common injuries.
Most of the Dutch cycle at 15 mph on upright bicycles. No wonder they don't need helmets. For bicycle sports or even fitness rides I would say the helmet helps a lot. I was lucky to wear one two times.
I'm Dutch, you're almost right. Most people won't even reach 15 mph. Speeds around 10 mph are more common.
Funny thing: wearing helmets is much more common in Germany. If you see adult cyclists wearing a helmets on upright bikes they'll speak German most of the time :)
Generally I wear a helmet if I'll be doing more than 15 mph, or riding through a city.
I've never hit my head in a cycling wreck, but just a week ago, this past Monday, I tripped over my dog that darted in front of me, fell and hit my head on the hardwood floors in our living room. No concussion, but did require 3 or 4 stiches over an eye. Even in a fall like that, had I been wearing a bike helmet, it wouldnt have offered any protection.
Like I said, as an adult, I believe in helmets and religiously wear them while riding since I was about 20 (now 38).
Likewise, I said I was incredibly lucky. When I got hit by the car, by all rights, I should have slammed my head on the ground, but didn't. Not a dent or scratch on my helmet. After getting hit, I saw ground, sky then ground again before impact and my bike landed on the opposite side of the Street's sidewalk. Trashed about a $3500 carbon race bike and faced close to $40k in medical bills between ambulance and ER treatment (this was in the US in 2008). I never saw a bill, though because I wasn't at fault as the guy that hit me ran a stop sign and his insurance immediately accepted fault.
The most frequent pieces of gear I've trashed during accidents: gloves and shorts. Neither hold up well to sliding across dirt roads or asphalt.
I did by crashing into another person on a bicycle when I was riding and hit the back of my head on the road. I felt a bit nauseous and spent about 10 minutes lying down in someone's back yard. After that, I walked home. That was close to 40 years ago and I'm still fine. For what it's worth, I still ride about 300 to 400 miles per month without a helmet.
That said, I've crashed innumerable time over the years, often at speed. As a teen, crashed several times on a dirt road at over 45 miles an hour without wearing a helmet. Been over the handle bars at least 6 times. Been T-boned by a car on a training ride.
Through all that, Ive managed to never hit my head. How? No clue. Just luck I guess. Didnt wear a helmet as a kid, but as an adult I wont get on a bike without on. Only injury above my knock I've had was when I dumped my road bike at 25 mph when I lost the rear end in a corner. Landed on my side, rolled onto my stomach and dragged my chin on the pavement for a bit. Broke my left hand and burnt my finger tips from that one, too. Got up and rode 5 miles home...
If I were still riding, I would definitely get one of these helmets. A lot of my gear is already Bontrager (helmet and 2 pairs of cycling shoes), and all 3 of my bikes are Trek (Bontrager is a Trek subsidiary).