Do Helmets Make Us Safer?
9:15 pm, by tricky coyoteEvery so often I get an email from an indignant xtracycle.com surfer. “How dare you show riders without helmets??? Do realize how bad of an example you’re setting for the world?”
Conventional wisdom agrees. But I don’t. And lots of statistics don’t either.
In life expectancy terms, commuting to work by bike in London is 20 times healthier than driving. So if we want people to be healthier, we should encourage them to ride to work. One problem with bike helmets and bike helmet laws is that they often discourage cycling, which makes the populace as a whole much less safe.
Another problem with helmets and helmet laws and all the attention that the bike community gives to safety safety safety is that it gives the impression that cycling isn’t safe, which makes people not want to do it. What about fun fun fun?
From a wow article in the British Medical Journal:
“The statistical wrangle over the effectiveness of helmets is actually a side issue; what we need people in authority to understand is that cycle helmets inevitably damage public health. Even for cyclists on Britain’s roads, the health benefits exceed the risks by a factor of 20. The health benefits of cycling are so great
and the health injuries from driving so great
For a thorough education on the subject, check out some to the article’s footnotes and responses.
So do I wear a helmet? Sometimes. When I’m going mountain biking on a hard trail, or doing some very aggressive Manhattan riding, or just when the spirit grabs me. And lots of times I don’t. I like to exist in a state of feeling comfortable going both ways, so I don’t feel naked without one and don’t ride stupid just because I have one.
And I’m all for making helmets look more cool, too, so they don’t do as much to discourage riding and use. Mine’s a Vigor bmx lid with flames.
And then there’s the whole question of the Golden Bubble, which I’ll open up next time.
March 4th, 2006 at 6:25 am
[...] Konkluzja, jaką można wyciągnąć z powyższych rozważań jest taka, że to nie kask czyni rowerzystę bezpiecznym. Co więcej może mu dawać złudne poczucie bezpieczeństwa, osłabiając jego czujność. Dużo ważniejsza jest kultura ruchu drogowego, przestrzeganie przepisów (zarówno przez zmotoryzowanych jak i cyklistów) oraz podnoszenie umiejętności jazdy na rowerze. Nie bez znaczenia jest też oczywiście odpowiednia infrastruktura – rozdzielenie ruchu samochodowego od rowerzystów poprzez budowę ścieżek rowerowych. MET, za TreeHugger, a Cycle Helmets, za Xtracycle. W kategorii: Idee, Rowery [...]
March 4th, 2006 at 10:12 am
o, now you stepped in it!
the “comfortable going either way” thing is interesting - avoiding the pitfalls of habit by mixing it up? my helmet use is about the same: yes when going hard/fast and probably not otherwise. also when sun/rain/cold protection is desirable, i tend to wear a helmet. i hadn’t framed this non-habit as a way of managing my own safety awareness, but it rings true: i *do* ride a little more gingerly without a helmet, and the reasonably fresh impression of my own cranial fragility spills over to when i ride helmeted, too. maybe the safest of all worlds.
as a parent who likes to push bikes as family transportation to other parents, i know that helmet attitudes are especially strong when kids are involved. there’s the whole “setting an example” thing for little people who lack the experience and reasoning abilities *not* to rely on habits like handwashing and helmet-wearing and so on to stay well, even when a more reflective approach to germs or kinetics would be best. my son asks me why i don’t wear a helmet whenever i don’t: i tell him that i will be very careful. and then when i do wear one: same thing: “i am being very careful.” maybe i can keep him guessing until he’s past the age of legal compulsion.
March 7th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
As someone who most often does not wear a helmut, even at my most aggressive on the streets of Manhattan, I’m fascinated and uncomfortably comforted by this reasoning. As someone with one head, I’m still open to finding a helmut that fits snuggly on my oddly large and apparently uniquely shaped head.
April 1st, 2006 at 1:13 am
Statistics are only good after the fact and they apply only marginally to an individual event.
I helped work on a kid who tipped off the back of a moped driven by his grandfather on the sidewalk at walking speed. After we couldn’t save him, the ER doc explained to me that all it takes is a fall of about 4 feet on to concrete for the brain to start bleeding after it sloshes against the skull. It was a really difficult conversation to have with the grandfather.
After that day, I wear a helmet to lube my chain!
As far as being careful, well, I’ve had a fork crown fail and almost died when the handlebar crushed my trachea, but the foam in the helmet was crushed on the front side from the pavement impact and on the back side from my skull bouncing against its negligible mass. I was being very careful. And still I was unconscious for 48 hours. but alive.
And I’ve ridden long enough to know that no amount of care can control the impact of the idiocy of some drivers. So have you.
Bottom line: What is your brain worth to you? How often is it worthy to you?
Excuse me as I take my helmet off and dismount my soapbox!
April 6th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Hey Bill,
I’d twist your first sentence a little to say stats are pretty much irrelevant after the fact of the individual incident; but beforehand, I appreciate them in shaping my lifestyle choices. Nutrition research that shows how a predominance of bodies react after years of margarine intake affect my own personal margarine intake decisions. Statistics about plane travel could affect my propensity to go jumbo or puddle jumper. Stats about head injuries in auto accidents and bike accidents might, and do, make me ask myself: if I’m not wearing a helmet while I’m riding in a car, why am I wearing one on a bike, or if I don a lid on a bike why don’t in a car? And so on. Do you really wear a helmet while lubing?
My brain is worth a lot to me! But that doesn’t mean I do every thing I can possibly do to ensure it’s complete safety; it just means its safety is part of my desicionmaking process, a process that also weighs the life-giving value of some potentially dangerous activities. A friend of mine, one of the worlds best and most extreme whitewater kayakers, died a couple of weeks ago getting hit by a train. Life can be so capricious.
I love riding with hair flying in the wind…
I hope that both of us continue to be protected by the golden bubble!
April 11th, 2006 at 1:38 am
I tend to wear my helmet in the fall and spring when the freezing rain makes staying upright interesting but once winter comes forget it, there is no way that I can fit my extra-large head in my helmet when warring a toque (and if you think I’m going to bike in -30˚ with no toque you are crazy, but I will bike. I have studded tires that I use in winter and tend to wear my helmet pretty much only when it is warm enough to where a thin balaclava instead of a good thick toque. Wearing a helmet is not yet a bylaw in Saskatoon but they are working on it, I acknowledge that riding in the winter is more risky and I think that warring a helmet should be promoted but the choice should ultimately be that, a choice, because sometimes it just isn’t practical to where a helmet all the time every time. l work at a summer camp up north and lead bike trips on the trails in the area. Everyone wares helmets then because you never know when you might hit a root the wrong way or that ATV coming down the trail (or in the case of one of my campers a moose)
The most important thing is just to ride and have fun
April 17th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
As others have mentioned, statistics are meaningful only to groups of people and not the individual. The decision to wear a helmet is (in most areas) up to you. However, the argument you pieced together to try and show that helmets somehow make cycling less safe is ludicrous. If you don’t want to wear a helmet; fine. Just don’t confuse others with specious arguments. The fact is that helmets very often are the difference between horrible head injuries and slight concussions; between death and recovery.
April 19th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
By “ludicrous,” do you mean contrary to your (and my) intuition, or do you mean that the statistics compiled in the referenced articles are clearly contrary to established fact? I felt that the authors in question made some really good points about how our intuitive assumptions about helmets might themselves be somewhat specious. I don’t think the issue is cut and dry, and therefore see benefit in bringing contrary viewpoints to light.
April 21st, 2006 at 12:36 pm
OK Tricky, let me see if I can express myself more clearly. Statistics can be used to demonstrate the effects of helmet usage or lack thereof on the entire population of riders in a given area.
I would like to interject here that statistics are merely calculations that allow us to come to conclusions (correct or incorrect) about the subject being studied. Your original post was, in my opinion pretty much an example of sweeping conclusions drawn from some set of statistics not shown.
But- My point was not to argue over these assumptions, or to put down your view on them. What I was trying to express was my view that statistics are quite meaningless to the individual. Sure, statistics can (and do) help us make decisions, but the fact that cycling is 20 times healthier than driving won’t alter the fact that the helmetless cyclist who goes down head first on that unexpected patch of gravel would surely have been better off wearing one. I still have yet to hear of a single instance where anyone was harmed by the use of a helmet while commuting to work.
In more than 25 years and thousands of miles cycling I have only gone down twice (believe it or not) and only once did I hit my head. My helmet did show impact damage, but I didn’t even have a headache. Still, two incidents in so many miles does show that cycling isn’t too terribly dangerous.
Whatever you decide to do helmet wise, be careful and have fun.