indyfabz

Some soul searching is in order if you sound more like the character Sheldon Cooper than the character Sheldon Cooper does.

Duragrouch

If I was wrong, I sit corrected. But it's for this reason that I don't mount a headlamp in a very rigid housing to my helmet, I put it on the handlebars.

wphamilton

It's easy to see that a rigid, solidly attached mount could have enough leverage to break the helmet if it hit at the right angle so that's a good policy. Other than that there isn't much impact difference between hitting a curb or stick and hitting the camera. It might catch and torque your head though, another good reason for breakaway mounts.

I don't use a helmet light very often, but when I do, I have a bright flashlight wrapped in velcro, and velcro stuck to the top of my helmet. By far the most convenient mount and of course it would fly off on impact.

FiftySix

Microlattice is back in the news.

“Our technology could revolutionize football, batting, bicycle, and motorcycle helmets, making them better at protecting the wearer and much easier to have on your head due to the increased airflow,” says Eric Clough, a researcher at HRL Laboratories, a materials science doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the lead scientist on the study.
- https://bioengineer.org/material-for...head-injuries/

and https://phys.org/news/2019-11-materi...-injuries.html

mr_bill

Any what the actual facts on an action cam killed my life? Or just mere speculation?

p.s. No helmet required.

-mr. bill

whitecat

Luckily for you, some of us are from Europe, and we are pretty tehnicaly inclined, and you might even learn something new with us.

On the other hand, I am not at all suprised by your life view. I recalled I read about some thieves that tried to steal a car in America and they couldnt drive manual shifter. They stood there revving the car and not knowing what to do. I guess that is because that is America and noone cares how? Haha that is one of the worst self defeating attitudes I have ever heard. Cant even imagine being like that.

bpcyclist

So, Europeans are technically inclined and Americans are not? Isn't there, like, kind of a lot of critical, vastly widespread and ubiquitous American ingenuity, both sceintific and technical, in the world markets right now? Buncha Nobel Prizes and stuff? Am I missing something?

CrankyOne

Getting back to the OP. What wphamilton said was 100% spot on - for a helmet in a test lab.

For a bicycle helmet to provide much or any protection, including in the OP scenario, it must fit the head perfectly, be seated on the head perfectly, be strapped perfectly, be impacted within a very narrow range of source angles, be impacted within a very narrow range of angles to the helmet (which varies on different parts of the helmet but is nearly perfectly perpendicular), be impacted within a very narrow range of velocities, by an object within a very limited range of shapes and force stability. Outside of these perfect parameters (EG, in the real world) the efficacy of foam bicycle helmets quickly drops. To zero? Lower than zero?

When we have a crash we don't do so with testing lab precision. We don't have much control over most of those parameters above. The real world is messy. So far helmets do not appear to be providing any benefit whatsoever.


Road Fatalities / 1b km travelled for motor vehicles and bicycle riders.

There is almost a reverse correlation between bicycle helmet wearing and death. Just about zero people in The Netherlands wear helmets. You'll see a few more in Denmark and a few more than that in Sweden. Overwhelmingly the most helmet wearing you will see is in the U.S. So why are we about 8 times as likely to be killed as people in The Netherlands? Are our helmets providing some benefit without which the difference would be even greater? Would the Dutch and Danes have even fewer deaths if they all wore our helmets?

Is it possible to develop a helmet that will provide some benefit in the real world and not just in a lab? And still be light and practical to wear?

livedarklions

Classic example of correlation =/= causation.

No way of telling whether the differences in fatality rates are even directly related to differences in helmet use based on that data. There's a huge sticky thread on your topic--argue it there.
https://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-...hread-2-a.html

Leisesturm

Sadly, you are in fact missing something key: the actual inventors and experimenters that come up with these nifty American scientific and technical applications of engineering and mathematics aren't themselves American. Only the companies they work for are. The patents are applied for (and Nobels awarded) under (to) an American aegis, but the DNA of the patent developers is mainly European and Asian.

bpcyclist

As someone who did research for a living, I have always felt that science in general and medicine in particular are replete with conclusions of causation or even just association that the data really do not support. The list is nearly endless. The devil is in doing the hard, boring work of teasing out true relationships and excluding unrelated, but coexisting phenomena.

livedarklions

Seriously? How far down the rabbit hole of an off-topic "debate" are we going to get?

Leisesturm

I don't honestly know. Woke up this morning and the other posters comment was in my inbox. I responded, as is my wont. It might possibly happen again ...

livedarklions

You know this particular rabbit hole started when someone discredited your opinion because you are supposedly a typical non-technologically inclined American, right?

Leisesturm

They did no such thing. When and if Americans stop trying to deny or dodge the truth, something may change. You can't wish away the obvious. The 'rabbit hole' exists only in the eyes of those uncomfortable with the reality. Shall I post a link to the U.S. Patent Office website?

livedarklions

Thread back one, not the guy you quoted who put you down.


The "rabbit hole" is that the number of immigrant US vs. native-born US scientists, etc. has absolutely nothing to do with bicycle advocacy and safety, or with the topic of this thread.

wphamilton

Real world data does demonstrate that impact protection mitigates head and brain injuries and I only address impact from foam helmets in this thread. Other ways to mitigate or prevent injuries, or how many injuries are prevented, are other topics IMO.

Gresp15C

I'm American, and I work for an American company. I have 14 patents. If you look at inventions that created trillion dollar industries, you will notice that most of the inventors are American.

Telephone, movies, phonograph, triode, AC power distribution, transistor, microchip, microprocessor, laser, programming language...

This isn't about DNA, but the conditions that supported invention, including our business climate, melting pot culture, and history of government support for R&D. Naturally, Europe always gave us a good run for our money. Also, the fact that Asian researchers choose to do their best work in the US still says something.

Leisesturm

It 'is' about DNA, where is your DNA from? You, of course, need not answer, but that would only reinforce my point.

Gresp15C

Michigan.

livedarklions

Does the expression "nation of immigrants" not have any meaning for you?

Leisesturm

Irrelevant in this context. Completely irrelevant. Look, I'm trying to let this lie. But I'm not going to go out of my way to make butthurt Americans feel better about themselves by claiming that the intellectual property and endeavors of their resident aliens and naturalized citizens reflects on all Americans. It's more nuanced than that.

livedarklions

Somehow, I don't think nuance is the issue.

I smell gas, seeping from a bag.

Gresp15C

Then let it lie. But did you look at my list of inventions? Almost all of those inventors were American. Those inventions were not obscure. Some of them created trillion dollar industries. There are more.

Liquid crystal display
Object oriented programming
E-mail
Electric guitar
Lightning rod

But that's actually irrelevant to the bigger picture, which is that science and invention have always been international, since the time of Galileo if not before. The modern age of innovation may have started somewhere, but it spread wherever the industrial revolution found fertile ground. Scientists and scholars have always enjoyed open borders, and have not defined themselves by nationalities. They've always gone where the work was good. Especially in contemporary times, innovative businesses have become stateless, and have established open borders for the most highly skilled workers.

With that said, the time period when scientists and scholars felt that America was the best place to work and invent, lasted many decades. It was a darn good run.

Leisesturm

Never fails. When you got nothing you get personal. We are done. Bye.