They haven't changed because they are an obvious dead end. Professional sports aside, it makes no sense to force an everyday commuter to wear such a thing for a very dubious return in safety while we put up with automobile transport and retarded city designers.
Bicycle helmets are the equivalent of telling homeowners they should build a nuclear bunker for their home because we have no interest in ensuring safety standards for nuclear reactors fearing that could cause prices to go up.
> it makes no sense to force an everyday commuter to wear such a thing for a very dubious return in safety while we put up with automobile transport and retarded city designers.
Bicycle helmets are the equivalent of telling homeowners they should build a nuclear bunker for their home because we have no interest in ensuring safety standards for nuclear reactors fearing that could cause prices to go up.
This reads like a rant for rants sake. The article wasn't about helmet laws but rather helmet technology and safety standards.
To the "dubious return" point you made - why should bike commuters not optimize for their situation? It scarcely matters whether or not their city could have been better designed. Assuming they don't intend to move to the Netherlands, it makes eminent sense to maximize their safety while on the road.
Did you read the article? It is an interesting and seemingly balanced story about balances between innovation and standards, the evolution of a threat model (from death to concussion) and what some of the most recent innovation is. It even covers some of the contemporary anti-helmet arguments.
Cyclists can and do suffer head impacts for any number of reasons, many not having anything to do with motorists or city planning. Personally, I've had several close calls with suicidal squirrels and rabbits on downhill segments. Also, it turns out that railroad tracks is a leading cause of injury according to the UBC BICE study:
Motorists also suffer from head injuries. Head injury is the leading cause of death for motorists who die in crashes. Therefore, motorists should also wear helmets.
Being a heavy object attached to your body by a thin, fairly weak neck, your head is very likely to hit the ground if you fall at speed.
Also, I live in a place that has social healthcare so, it makes sense to mandate safety since we all foot the bill.
Bicycle helmets are probably more equivalent to mandating homeowners to use insulated wire in their wiring than mandating everyone have a nuclear bunker which is very expensive and extreme ...unless of course your hair is the biggest deal on earth.
You simply didn't read the article did you? Just used the post title (which isn't the article title) as an excuse for going off on your tedious rant about how ineffective bike helmets are.
The article doesn't provide much citations for "Bicycle helmets do an outstanding job of keeping our skulls intact in a major crash." which is the premise it starts out with and builds its case off.
Obvious questions arise... like why are motorcycle or pro-sports helmets so radically different in design (full head + visor), even for scooters that barely go faster than bicycles, and how many "major crashes" result in head trauma as opposed to other kinds?
And if bicycle helmets are so great, why don't we require car drivers to wear helmets too? Surely then they would also do an 'outstanding job in keeping our skulls intact in a major crash'?
> In 1989, The New England Journal of Medicine published a study that looked at hundreds of cyclists treated at Seattle-area hospitals. The research team concluded that helmets “reduce the risk of head injury by 85 percent and of brain injury by 88 percent.”
Cite for the "bike helmets are ineffective" assertion? It's belied by the statistics in the linked article, among other things like fairly straightforward intuition...
Bravo revelation, keep fighting the good fight. My favorite quote from TFA was: "More helmet laws had come into effect, but head injuries didn't go down at all." This would be confusing if one believed the marketing! Simultaneously, of course, the helmet laws perfectly performed their intended functions: discouraging cycling while forcing people to buy yet another damn commercial product.
All the complainers are either cranky motorists or sidewalk cyclists. They feel slightly more guilty right-hooking a commuter who isn't wearing a helmet than some day-glo Lance wannabe. Witness their guilt turned to fury at the mere mention of actual facts about bicycle helmet effectiveness!
perhaps the incidences of head injuries dont go down, but what happens to the severity of those head injuries when helmets are being worn. If you classify a bruise on the forehead and a severe cerebral contusion both as "head injuries", you are unlikely to see much of a difference between wearing a helmet and not in terms of head injuries
Well that's an interesting hypothesis, and certainly study authors are well-advised to standardize their measurement procedure. Furthermore, in any specific incident you might very well be subject to a bruise if wearing a helmet and a contusion otherwise. But these studies are not about specific incidents: they reflect the totality of many cyclists spending many hours cycling. There is no reason to suspect that there would be some consistent factor that would exaggerate reporting of helmeted injuries while minimizing reporting of unhelmeted ones.
Besides who would cause a bruise an injury? I get bruises every day. Bicycling is one of the safest things I do.
I guess I am just curious as to why the study you indicated concluded that helmet laws didnt reduce head injuries. Perhaps people didnt change their helmet wearing behavior because some unenforced law? Not to be a citation jerk, but what is TFA and can you link to the study? I am genuinely curious because it seems so counter-intuitive to me.
"TFA" is an abbreviation for "the fine article" (Other adjectives are sometimes inferred, much like "RTFM".) You'll find the link at the top of this page, but here it is again: http://www.bicycling.com/senseless/ The quote in this case was attributed to Steven Madey, an orthopedic surgeon who designs bike helmets and other biomechanical devices. As near as I can tell, he was summarizing the studies in this field. (Well, maybe one would say he was summarizing the public health studies rather but not the clinical studies.) Here's another summary: http://www.medpagetoday.com/CriticalCare/HeadTrauma/39122
Not to be any sort of jerk, but until you've spent enough time cycling in traffic to be comfortable, your intuition regarding the safety of that activity is suspect. Several factors are involved. First of all, there is the risk compensation phenomenon (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21418079), which is also seen for seatbelt-wearers etc. and causes users of any "safety" device to behave less safely to compensate for that use. This phenomenon also applies to other road users, so that when they see a cyclist they perceive to be "protected" by a helmet they don't give her as much space, they drive faster, etc. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457506...) Other factors are follow-on effects from the fact that requiring helmets reduces cycling rates (http://www.nber.org/papers/w15658): fewer cyclists make for more dangerous roads for everyone (http://www.ctc.org.uk/campaign/safety-in-numbers) and cyclists who cycle less aren't as good at cycling. There is a "rhythm" to riding in traffic, and after I've taken some time off, I have to be more careful until I sharpen up. With regular practice, you know:
- exactly how close the damn delivery truck is going to pass, just by the engine
sound
- which car is going to change lanes without signalling, not from its brakelights
but from its slight pause in acceleration
- how fast you have to pedal to intimidate an entering SUV into waiting for you
to pass instead of turning left completely across all lanes
- the distinct whine of a BMW (the official car of assholes) that's going
to attempt a right hook from 50 feet behind
- etc.
Interesting point on the risk compensation. I can see that causing more recklessness.
The first study you mention is also pretty interesting, however it only is measuring the efficacy of legislation on safety and is not measuring the efficacy of helmet wearing itself. Im not sure if legislation on its own is a good proxy for helmet wearing and the authors do state: "While helmets reduce the risk of head injuries and we encourage their use..."
I used to ride around for years without a helmet despite laws that mandate that I wear one. Interestingly, even after two tickets I still rode around without a helmet because I perceived that I was an awesome cyclist with perfect judgement and not prone to human error at all, a typical attitude for my age at the time.
A few months after starting to wear a helmet because people were being judgmental, not because I thought I would ever need it, I got into an accident where I went flying off my bike. Short story, it saved my brain.
Ya ya, this is anecdotal, but what was important about that experience for me, is it made me realize that my perceptions of safety were totally off. Our own control over the world is actually minimal, and even we fail despite how perfect we think we are at assessing the situation.
I was stupid. Being a cyclist wasnt experience enough for me to assess my safety, I needed a couple of near misses to realize how wrong I was. I needed to physically experience how my head deals with its momentum and pavement. I needed to experience how flying through the air face first with my arms extended to cushion the blow results in my back hitting the pavement followed next by the back of my head. Some people need to learn these things through experience.
If I were to assume everyone was as dense as I was at the time, I would counter with something like "until you've had enough experience being in accidents and thrown into objects, your intuition regarding the safety of that activity is suspect"
Well, I've ridden thoroughbreds since I was 3yo, so I have some experience with being thrown through the air, and the concussive results of that. I've also crashed my bike, with and without the involvement of other vehicles. In my worst crash, I hit a concrete bollard head-on while pedaling at speed. I flipped over the handlebars and landed on my back. My tucked, helmetless head never touched a thing. I destroyed the heavy-duty suspension fork on my hardtail, but other than that I just scraped my elbow and got my office shirt dirty.
Another occasion that really sticks out in my mind is the time I laid the bike down and jumped off to the side to avoid a child who literally jumped out from behind cover into the street directly in my path. If I had been in a car, going the same speed, that episode would have ended very differently.
I don't have a problem with helmets in general. I never snowboard without a helmet. There are many rivers I won't kayak without a helmet. I don't usually wear a helmet when riding horses, but there are exceptions, like polo. I'm sure I'll encounter other circumstances that seem helmet-appropriate as well. The point is, bicycle commuting is not an extreme sport, so enforcing the conventions of extreme sport is an effective way to discourage it.
For every anecdote, there is another anecdote. You only think your helmet saved you, while I know that my lack of helmet did not harm me in the crash I described. (And if we're going to speculate intuitively, it's a good thing I didn't have a solid bulky object on my head to catch on the pavement and impart a jolt of rotational acceleration to my brain!) If you've never considered the phenomenon of risk compensation, you could think more deeply about an issue that is much more complicated than "it's bad to injure your head". Fortunately, there's a place you can go to educate yourself: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/
I guess we were both lucky then (you more so than me, but thats just opinion at this point)!
Risk compensation also applies to drunk drivers, but no one argues that driving drunk is just as risky as driving sober. Yes, it plays a part in the whole equation, but it doesnt necessarily discredit the theory!
Just because other people take bigger risks while cycling with helmets on, doesnt mean that we should write off helmets. They can be very effective when combined safe cycling practices, and perhaps thats how that information can be made useful.
'you could think more deeply about an issue that is much more complicated than "it's bad to injure your head"'
Are you about to argue that head injuries could be considered good? Please enlighten this simple thinker.
> Bicycle helmets are the equivalent of telling homeowners they should build a nuclear bunker
Um, your head gets a bit sweaty and you have to shell out $40. You look kind of dorky too, like the rest of the 50% of cyclists wearing helmets. That is not nearly the inconvenience of "building a nuclear bunker." It's more like asking the homeowner to pay a small premium on his insurance for a slightly riskier residence.
You build a nuclear bunker once. Maybe every 30 to 50 years. The tiny inconveniences of a helmet are daily. It all adds up, and is likely quite a bit more inconvenience over a lifetime.
Bicycle helmets are the equivalent of telling homeowners they should build a nuclear bunker for their home because we have no interest in ensuring safety standards for nuclear reactors fearing that could cause prices to go up.