
Bicycle helmets do almost nothing to prevent concussions - acsillag
http://gearfinder.bicycling.com/senseless/index.html
======
abalone
Sounds like many of the commenters here did not actually read the article.
It's not about "should you wear a helmet or shouldn't you."

It is very strongly pro-helmet. NOWHERE in the article does it suggest you
should not wear a helmet.

It's about how to make helmets work better, specifically against concussions.
Summary: pay more to get a helmet equipped with something called MIPS.

"The new rotation-­dampening systems may not be perfect, but they are the
biggest step forward in decades. The choices cyclists make with their money
matter. You can pretend to protect your brain, or you can spend more money and
get closer to actually doing it."

~~~
skierscott
The takeaway message seems to be that there's another safe helmet technology
that exists. Regular helmets help but MIPS[1] helmets maintain protection
against brute-force impacts and improve protection against concussions and
brain injuries.

This MIPS style helmet is a large step forward in helmets. The standard helmet
test is a just a straight drop from 6 feet with the helmet perfectly vertical.
_This is not how crashes happen._

Crashes happen while moving. There's some rotational stuff going on there, and
that's what MIPS tries to focus on. Their tests[2] focus on this. An aspect of
brain injury is diffuse axonal injury or when your brain undergoes
unreasonable acceleration. The MIPS helmet has two shells so the outer one
moves while your brain doesn't.

> President Barack Obama said that if he had a son, he might not let him play
> football; even some former NFL athletes agree.

This was refreshing to hear. Malcolm Gladwell compares football to dogfighting
because football players can experience remarkable head trauma[3]. For me, a
severe traumatic brain injury survivor, it's hard to see someone willingly put
themselves through a brain injury and even harder to see the public glorifying
a sport I see as dogfighting.

[1]:[http://www.mipshelmet.com/home/](http://www.mipshelmet.com/home/)

[2]:[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8W5X0s2AhU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8W5X0s2AhU)
@ 0:29

[3]:[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/offensive-
play](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/offensive-play)

------
awjr
As a space for cycling campaigner (
[http://www.cyclebath.org.uk](http://www.cyclebath.org.uk) ) helmet articles
are an interesting problem that tend to identify cycling as a dangerous
activity without extolling the health benefits of cycling itself.

In places like New York, where their Citi Bike scheme has had huge success
without helmets (23 million miles of riding, no deaths), utility cycling
(commuting) has been made safe through a huge investment in the segregation of
cycles from cars and pedestrians. The health benefits to the city are huge (as
well as reducing congestion) and you get people of all ages cycling now.

In Australia where helmets are a legal requirement, city cycle schemes are
failing, but this may also be to do with a lack in building out segregated
cycle infrastructure as part of these schemes. It is still a mainly hardcore,
male activity there.

The point is, helmets and cycling create flame wars with anecdotal evidence in
favour "how it saved my life" and the response being that the health benefits
to society of cycling far out weigh the risks of not wearing one (i.e. It's
calculated in the UK, that a helmet law would kill 235 people per year more
through obesity related deaths).

When I trundle to the shops or pop into town I wear a cap (being bald brings
it's own problems), but should I go out on a club ride or go off-roading I
wear a helmet as the risk of falling off is higher. I also wear one when I'm
out after dark.

Wear one if you want, don't wear one. Just make sure you are out there riding.
The health risks far outweigh the perceived risk of falling off your bike.

The real problem isn't helmets, it's the lack of segregating cycles from
pedestrians and motorised vehicles. Making people feel safe cycling to and
from shops, homes, schools and their place of work.

~~~
Tomte
> The point is, helmets and cycling create flame wars

The point is, you are very much involved in creating flame wars by labelling
the pro side as people who only have their superstitial, anecdotal fairy
tales, while saying the contra side has all the cold, hard scientific facts.

Let's just leave it at that.

~~~
TheAnimus
There is also another benefit of a helmet, it changes how people treat you.
They apparently respect cyclists more when they wear a helmet.

I was in a collision a two months ago. The driver hit me on purpose, because I
had call him a wanker, he became self defining in this, by swiping me with the
rear of his car, thankfully the relative speed difference would have been at
most 10mph, so I only had minor injury (three fractures).

The police, who have a job to collect evidence, were not remotely accepting
that I was not doing anything wrong. My arm was injured, my head obviously
not, so before the ambulance arrived someone had helped me remove it, and clip
it to the holder on my bag. Immediately the police were questioning me, asking
why I wasn't wearing my helmet when the accident happened.

My head never came close to hitting the ground during the impact.

The fact is that people are very judgemental. Cyclists who wear helmets tend
not to be the ones who cycle straight through junctions at red lights whilst
smoking a spliff such as the space cadet I saw this Monday the 6th, 9:30am,
Highgate.

It was interesting, that despite the obvious location of the collision, A lane
that the car should not have been in, the Police were been told off by the
paramedics for been hard on me, taking me off gas+air (mild anesthetic) so I
could be breathalised for signs of alcohol consumption would be one good
example of how I feal they acted poorly. Only after they found my pilots
license did the police start to treat me with any dignity or respect, it was
frankly shameful, as the other party had already admitted he used his car to
injure me to a witness. Best of all, the driver isn't even been charged with
assault.

~~~
jchrisa
There are studies suggesting that drivers give wider berth to the un-helmeted:
[http://www.helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm](http://www.helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm)

------
konstruktor
Discussions of cycle helmets are usually very one sided, focusing on head
trauma and completely ignoring other kinds of trauma as well as the positive
health effects of cycling.

Wearing the helmet doesn't just add a certain amount of padding to the head
without any negative side effects: For example, motorists keep less distance
while overtaking you [1] and making helmets mandatory reduces cycling by up to
a third [2].

I would really hope that people would look at advocating helmets as a public
health intervention, and judge all its effects together.

[1]
[http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/articles/releases/overtaking11090...](http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/articles/releases/overtaking110906.html)
[2]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410838/?tool=pu...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410838/?tool=pubmed)

~~~
danieltillett
I would say the reduction in cycling is a pretty significant effect. I love
cycling, but I am far too scared (or wise) to ever consider riding on a street
shared with cars and trucks. In the end if anything goes wrong the driver will
feel sad and I won't feel anything.

~~~
spion
I've been cycling in traffic for almost 3 years in a country with no bike
lanes and pretty bad motorist behavior regarding cyclists. It was scary the
first month, but then you get used to it and you learn a couple of rules that
reduce your chances of getting into an accident significantly [1]

Learning these rules really makes all the difference. Would you prefer to get
into an accident and not get killed (thanks to a helmet), or to significantly
reduce your chances of getting into an accidents altogether?

A note on gear: get all the lights (front, back, laser lane) and reflectors
(for individual spokes and tires too) that you can, set them up to blink, and
use a bell and a mirror

[1]: [http://bicyclesafe.com/](http://bicyclesafe.com/)

~~~
djeikyb
Please keep the blinking reasonable and non-distracting. A lot of cyclists
where I am have what amount to high-powered strobe lights aimed at car-
driver's faces. I've also been the victim of this while riding my bike down
canal paths at night. It's no fun being completely blinded while a fellow
cyclist zooms past.

------
jdmitch
As an avid, but fairly aggressive cyclist, I have gotten into a fair number of
accidents. Some of the injuries sustained, and the ways in which other
injuries would have been likely without a helmet in those situations, have
convinced me that many of these studies don't take into account some very
common situations in accidents. Direct head impacts are relatively uncommon,
due to natural instincts to protect oneself. More common are:

\- Side impact from vehicles turning across the bicycle lane. This is the most
common cause of fatalities in road accidents in London, and if the vehicle is
going at speed, nothing can be done with or without a helmet. Usually,
however, the vehicle is slowing to turn, or just clips the rider who hasn't
had time to react. When this happened to me, I banged into the side of the van
which was cutting me off, and my helmet kept my head from hitting the vehicle,
likely right at the temple, which could have caused significant damage.

\- Unintended dismount. I find a huge number of "accidents" are really
accidents that were just barely prevented by a quick manoeuver, which often
leaves the cyclist on the ground. I have avoided collisions quite frequently,
but still ended up doing a little barrel roll off the bike. In these cases, I
may not be moving fast, but it is nice knowing my helmet will keep me from a
kerb to the head.

-Scrapes and abrasions. This is the most painful injury, and one of my most gruesome accidents involved a nasty abrasion on my face - had I not been wearing a helmet, it would have probably meant about half of my scalp was rubbed off as well, so very happy to have been wearing a helmet in that instance.

The "crash test dummy" proof that we don't need helmets doesn't stack up in my
experience because I think a confident cyclist is more likely to have oblique
and "minor" accidents rather than major direct collisions, and major head
trauma is just not going to be prevented by a $40 piece of foam and plastic.

~~~
threeseed
I am surprised people are so flippant about injuries to the head. How many
times do we hear stories of people dying from being punched and hitting their
head on the curb/ground ? Or the long term effects of concussion.

Helmets work. Governments around the world wouldn't be making them mandatory
just to screw with people.

~~~
judk
I don't know about your general claim. CFLs are highly toxic under non-ideal
real-world handling conditions, and governments love mandating those.

------
candeira
Helmets still protect against skull fractures, and I'll take that while I can.

------
ck2
Yes but they should have opened with this paragraph buried in the article:

 _The $40 helmet is one of the great success stories of the past
half-­century. Like seat belts, air bags, and smoke detectors, bike helmets
save countless lives every year. They do a stellar job of preventing
catastrophic skull fractures, plus dings and scrapes from low-hanging tree
branches and other common nuisances._

~~~
frabbit
Is there a solid citation as to how effective bicycle helmets are at
preventing catastrophic skull fractures?

Also, surely it depends on which type of helmet we are talking about? Talking
about "helmets" in general does not make much sense when there are so many of
them adhering to several different standards.

------
freshflowers
Helmets are a red herring in the whole cycling discussion. Unless you're
racing or mountain biking, you shouldn't need a helmet for regular cycling
anymore than you should need a helmet for crossing the street on foot.

There's nothing inherently particularly unsafe about cycling (at least no more
unsafe than many everyday activities), even while sharing the road with cars.

The only thing that makes cycling unsafe in certain countries are the drivers,
and the culture that puts cars above other traffic to the point where it's
apparently okay to run over the odd annoying cyclist.

~~~
jan_g
I don't think that's healthy point of view. Helmet has saved my skull once and
a close relative of mine had an accident that would save him lots of pain had
he wore a helmet (he hit a curb with his head when falling down).

Comparing cycling with walking on foot is, well, unusual to me to say the
least. Of course, you can fall down walking as well, but as a cyclist, you are
faster and you are sharing the road with other bigger/heavier vehicles. I
would not dream of going on a bike to cycle in and around my town (somewhat
hilly terrain, relatively narrow roads) without a helmet.

------
robg
Consider that your brain is an egg yolk floating in a shell. A concussion is
the rapid loss of velocity slamming the yolk into the inside of the shell,
scrambling it up if you will. A helmet can't do much there except minimize the
velocity a tad bit.

The benefit of the helmet is prevent a crack in the shell, your skull, so your
brains don't spill out onto the pavement in a crash. It's not perfect, but
given your are traveling at high rates of speed on a hard surface, the
insurance is your brain mostly intact inside the shell versus a scrambled mess
on the ground.

Preventing concussions - the yolk from slamming into the inside of the shell -
is a hard problem. The brain is floating in liquid - the cerebrospinal fluid.
To take another example, drop a ping pong ball into a glass of water. Now try
to move fast without the ball hitting the side of the glass. The amount of
padding on the outside of the glass won't do much to prevent the ball from
hitting the inside of the glass.

It's not just crashes you need to worry about. Even roller coasters cause
concussions, albeit small ones, but still with cognitive decrements.

~~~
Shorel
Last night I fell. I use a motorcycle helmet. I think I was sliding on the
ground for about 4 or 5 meters.

The helmet did not touch the ground, but if it had, it would have prevent
countless scrapes in my face or scalp. Not deadly fractures, but something
painful and probably disfiguring.

My point is: a proper helmet (think BMX) prevents a lot more than fractures.

The gloves surely had a lot of work to do as well, and saved my left hand from
any scratches.

------
klearvue
The article's title is "Senseless". HN's title, I believe, is bound to distort
one's impression of helmets' usefulness.

~~~
Confusion
Yes, an early quote from the article:

    
    
      The $40 helmet is one of the great success stories of the 
      past half-­century. Like seat belts, air bags, and smoke 
      detectors, bike helmets save countless lives every year. 
      They do a stellar job of preventing catastrophic skull 
      fractures, plus dings and scrapes from low-hanging tree 
      branches and other common nuisances.
    

Helmets are good. The author is wondering why they aren't better at preventing
concussions.

~~~
oever
New paper helmets help prevent concussions because they have a crumple zone
that make the deceleration more gradual.

"If you crash at 15 miles per hour in a normal helmet, your head will be
subjected to around 220G [G-force], whereas the new design absorbs more of the
impact and means you experience around 70G instead," says Surabhi.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25681895](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25681895)

------
lclarkmichalek
I'll take a scientific study over a blog post, please.

Or to be less glib, the statistics he quotes seems very open for
interpretation. "Stat #3: As more people buckled on helmets, brain injuries
also increased". Need I say it? I think we're all pretty post hoc ergo propter
hoc'd out at this point

~~~
lacorp
Stat #3 might derive from the fact that a person is more likely to survive a
crash with a helmet on. If someone dies because they aren't wearing a helmet
it will be reported as a death, but if they almost die and the helmet prevents
death but they receive some brain damage then it will be reported as a brain
injury.

------
kryps
A differing opinion about MIPS helmets from the "helmet advocacy program of
the Washington Area Bicyclist Association" (consumer-founded):
[http://www.helmets.org/mips.htm](http://www.helmets.org/mips.htm)

~~~
adolph
Thanks, it is interesting that the need for MIPS may come from all the aero-
styling in helmets.

------
bumbledraven
This is one reason I wear an airbag bicycle helment
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hövding](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hövding))

It would be have been nice if the article mentioned this option.

~~~
ndr
You just need to be sure to keep its battery charged, turn it on before you go
and accept to buy a new one once it fires.

~~~
bumbledraven
The battery is supposed to last 18 hours when the device is on, and 36 days
when off. It charges quickly over USB. After I zip it up, I do have to
remember to fasten a button to turn it on. It would be nice if it alerted me
with a periodic beep or something when it was zipped up but not buttoned.

Bicycle helmets in general are not supposed to be re-used after a crash; a
Hovding is no exception.

------
pessimizer
A related helmet controversy:

[http://jalopnik.com/5582380/how-the-truth-about-
motorcycle-h...](http://jalopnik.com/5582380/how-the-truth-about-motorcycle-
helmets-got-a-journalist-fired)

"Ford has long been controversial with major helmet makers, authoring 'Blowing
the Lid Off,' the seminal expose of the flawed Snell M2005 helmet safety
standard. In it, he proved through objective scientific testing that helmets
made to that standard transmitted more forces to riders' heads than some less
expensive helmets made to the DOT standard. Ford's article turned conventional
wisdom on its head, proving that certain less-expensive DOT helmets were,
according to his testing, capable of transmitting lower forces to a rider's
head than the typically more expensive Snell M2005 brain buckets."

The original article:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20070305231245/http://www.motorcy...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070305231245/http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/gearbox/motorcycle_helmet_review/)

------
danieltillett
Of course they do. They discourage people riding bicycles and thus help people
avoid concussion.

More seriously the people who ride bicycles on streets with cars are much
braver than me. I have been lucky in life and seen few examples of serious
accidents, but of those I have experienced first hand around 25% have involved
people who were riding bicycles.

------
Tomte
Even if those societal effects were true (there are studies for both sides,
and especially the helmet opponents are usually very outspoken and even rude,
to the point that they lose credibility), the important thing for me as an
individual is not whether helmets lead other people ("the society") to cycle
less, but what the effect is on me.

Personally I feel some chilling effect (sometimes I cycle without helmet, so
some friction is certainly there). But it's not very strong.

On the other hand, I have never consciously experienced a difference in car
driver's behaviour whether I wear a helmet or not.

And I certainly am not cycling in any riskier way when I'm wearing my helmet.
If you do, you should really think about what you're doing.

~~~
pessimizer
>especially the helmet opponents are usually very outspoken and even rude, to
the point that they lose credibility

They have to be, because they don't have budgets and per diems. The pro-helmet
side makes a fortune from selling helmets. The anti-helmet side runs on
passion - whether that passion is for the truth as they see it (or as
experiment and study have shown), or simply 'government out of my cornflakes'
libertarian rage.

~~~
Tomte
The "pro helmet side" in Internet forums does not have "budgets".

~~~
pessimizer
The pro-helmet side in general has far louder bullhorns, regardless of what
goes on in internet forums (which is one of the no-budget places you see anti-
helmet people.) The anti-helmet people aren't passing laws and running public
service messages on TV with their partially publicly-funded nonprofits.

------
damian2000
Being from Australia I can't fathom not wearing a helmet. Its like wearing a
seat belt in the car, just something you don't notice doing anymore.

Anyone who is discouraged from cycling due to having to wear a helmet would
more than likely also be discouraged by many other reasons - bad drivers, bad
weather, flat tire, etc.

~~~
3pt14159
I don't wear a helmet and I ride in downtown Toronto. Helmets save lives, but
they also make motorist treat you differently. Also, they don't really save
_that_ many lives. Cycling without a helmet is safer than walking (kilometer
for kilometer) and safer than being in the passenger seat while a new driver
is driving.

~~~
ozten
> but [helmets] also make motorist treat you differently.

The biggest threats from cars in my experience is when the driver doesn't know
you are there.

~~~
mmariani
Not only yours, in my too. That's why I always try to make eye contact with
drivers, and when that doesn't work yelling always does the trick. Another
thing that improved my safety was installing lights on my road bikes.

------
Shorel
Except for BMX helmets.

They look sturdy. Lots of people ride with them in Bogotá. I use a motorcycle
helmet as it helps a lot against the usual rains.

No silly social issues against helmets. Everyone minds their own business
here.

------
planetix
The thing is I wouldn't be alive without bicycle helmet. Same goes to my aunt.
So what if I get concussions if the alternative is loosing consciousness and
getting driven over by a car.

------
Rapzid
With massive deceleration at the core of the problem I don't see how anything
more than incremental improvements in mitigation can be achieved with a
sufficiently thin helmet..

~~~
Confusion
The army faces the problem of massive deceleration and new solutions for tank
armor are being thought up constantly. Those solutions are also required to be
sufficiently light and thin (while stopping the much more massive deceleration
of rockets and bullets).

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
Yes, but the army is using directional explosives to solve that issue. I'm not
sure that would work for a cyclist.

------
bane
That's okay,they do decent job of keeping your brains inside your skull in an
accident, that's nothing to sneeze at.

------
merraksh
_Snively estimated that a naked head struck the surface with a force more than
1,000 times greater than gravity, or 1,000g, which is lethal._

I assume it meant "the acceleration of a naked head upon hitting the surface
is estimated as 1000g", as I can't make sense of it otherwise. It would also
help to say what height he dropped it from or the impact speed.

------
sklogic
Besides being useless, there are also some negative side-effects: helmet
limits field of vision significantly and distracts from perceiving audio- and
visual- information properly. I feel blindfolded in a helmet, even in a very
light one.

~~~
jmartinpetersen
I'm not sure I understand. Exactly what part of the world does your helmet
block you from seeing? I can't see mine at all when it's on properly.

Considering that a lot of people use in-ear headphones or casually check their
texts while biking in Copenhagen, the added distractions of a helmet still
seems like a net win.

~~~
sklogic
Helmet reduces the side vision to something that feels like 20% less then
normal. And yes, I cannot also tolerate any hats, hoods and such.

As for the potential Darwin prize winners with earplugs - this is something
that should be a matter of legislation first, not the stupid useless helmets.

~~~
judk
Are you talking about motorcycle helmets?

~~~
sklogic
No, I'm talking about bicycle helmets, including the lightest ones. I feel
deaf and blind in any helmet - or even in a hat.

------
lotsofmangos
Not from cycling, but I lost a couple of passwords (and who knows what else,
but the passwords I can verify) by bashing my head while drunk. The previous
day I could log into the email accounts associated with them, the day after I
couldn't. None of the other ton of passwords that I use for work were affected
and I can still remember nearly all of my older ones. The only correlation is
that both of the passwords I knocked out of my head were long standing
accounts whose passwords I had changed in the previous month. I still know
where roughly on the keyboard they were though.

