damocles1

Contradict yourself much? Your responses beg the question...

Do you wear a helmet?

Unless you're a flipping turtle, which it sounds like you must be, how exactly do you ride protecting your head at all times. That statement, in itself, is so non-sensical, that it borders on just being ignorant.
Of course, it sounds like you know more than Snell, the CPSC, the published studies and the myriad people who have had their heads/lives saved by helmets...

Do my little test, see what happens!

Reynolds 

Because common sense has proved to be sometimes right and sometimes wrong.

Tulex

What you provide for basis has nothing to do with reality. Any study can be twisted to suit the desired outcome. The fact is that people may actually put themselves at risk believing that a helmet will protect them. Riding faster than they would without one. Riding in areas that they wouldn't without one. Taking chances they wouldn't without one. But that speaks NOTHING of what the helmet did for them.

The reality is that a blow to the head is energy. A helmet is designed to absorb that energy. The statistics that you provided have nothing to do with that concept. To suggest that a helmet does not absorb energy, or that reducing the energy in a blow to the head does not save lives is to fail.

Dantebfd

He was exaggerating about having to scrape your brains off the road- we just use a hoseline to wash your brains down the sewer. I don't think modern fire engines even carry brain scrapers anymore.

jacobsdad

I hope you feel better soon! Those pics speak volumes on how necessary it is to wear a helmet.

Reynolds 

grolby

Okay, you're right. What you BELIEVE based on what you say is "the reality," is much more reliable than actual statistics. Your personal beliefs are far less biased then silly things like peer-reviewed studies. And thank goodness for that. What would we do without geniuses like you?

grolby

You are essentially arguing that OBVIOUSLY it takes a certain amount of energy, X, to cause a fatality. Then, in a given impact, your head hits the ground with energy E, which is greater than X. The helmet absorbs a certain quantity of this energy, Y. What you are saying is that when E-Y < X, a helmet contributed to saving a life.

This would be a sensible argument if it had any basis in reality. It does not, of course, because you have no flippin' idea of what you're talking about. Head injuries do not work that way. It just ain't that simple, bub. So yes, I take peer-reviewed studies of the data, which generate useful statistical information about what actually happens in the, um, what's it called... oh yeah, the REAL WORLD - over the uninformed, presumptuous, hypothetical bloviating of some BF fool. Have a nice day.

bratton

helmets are good. you can all put away your e-peens now.

Tulex

You are so far off. Your assumption? is that all accidents happen at a speed beyond that of a helmets ability to absorb the impact. THAT isn't reality "bub".

And you can view studies anyway you like. I on the other hand understand that the chosen data used in many studies is used mainly for the purpose of proving the desired result.

I will stand by my original post. Any idea that a helmet can't contribute to saving a life is pure ignorance. To argue that it doesn't save lives because it doesn't save all lives proves my point.

grolby

I am assuming no such thing. Low speed accidents can result in fatal head injuries. Or they can result in no harm at all, with or without a helmet, even if the impact velocity is the same. There are a LOT of factors in play in any given accident. Again, the actual evidence contradicts you.

Your "understanding" is foolish, self-serving and arrogant. Peer-reviewed studies with large sample sizes are extremely reliable sources of statistical information. They are certainly much more reliable than your ignorant babble. The notion that I should cast aside the one in favor of the other because studies are not perfect is too asinine for words. I have considerably more faith in the scientific method than in your hand-waving postulations.

Then you remain, ironically, ignorant, yourself. You accuse me of making assumptions about your argument and claim that studies exist only to prove the desired result*, but you yourself refuse to consider any data that might refute your beliefs. This is willfully stupid in the extreme, and is exactly the same crime you accuse the conductors and statistical studies of committing!. The information out there completely contradicts your argument. Your insistence that I should somehow take you seriously is pathetic - who do you think you are that your opinion matters in the face of impartial data?

You also are consistently misrepresenting my argument. I do not argue that helmets don't save lives because they don't save all lives - that would require accepting your premise that helmets can obviously make the difference between life and death. I do NOT accept this premise, because statistically it is NOT obviously true - again, there is no correlation between helmet use and a reduction in head injury fatalities. I'm not even saying that it is impossible, but that on any meaningful scale, they don't prevent head injury deaths in the population.

*Aside from being entirely false (peer-reviewed statistical studies are an extremely useful means of assessing phenomena at the population level), I have to wonder who would want a helmet study to show that they do not reduce fatalities? There's a lot more money to be had in saying that helmets DO save lives than in saying that they make little difference. The really positive news for the helmet industry is that case studies seem to show that if you DO suffer a non-fatal head injury while bicycling, you want to be wearing a helmet when it happens. Improved prognosis for head injury recovery is no small thing, it really is a tremendous benefit. That doesn't make the hysterical "save your life, wear a helmet" brigade any less hysterically WRONG.

gbg

This is so wrong I don't know where to start. I suppose if you do a nice low side at 60mph you can come out of it in a reasonable condition if all goes well. What if that low side is on a corner and you go into the guardrail, I don't think "going limp" as a jellyfish will help you then. How do you roll and go limp when a car rear ends you at a stoplight and you head hits its windshield.
On the "some statistics about people wearing helmets get into more accidents" could it be that more people wear helmets so of course more will be in accidents. Just wear a helmet!!!

Tulex

You know grolby, you can believe what you want. You stated "Stop assuming that the condition of your helmet after a crash tells you anything about head injury aversion" in your original post. I'm fairly confident that the the condition of the helmet tells you that it absorbed some of the energy that was meant for the head. And, I'm fairly confident that less energy going to the head is always the better option. But, if you want to believe that your studies show that helmets don't save lives, good for you. I happen to believe that the studies ignore much data, and data that is immeasurable. And who would want to make a study that disproves helmet safety? Maybe the same kind of people that believe these studies? Just guessing. And, when you figure out how to measure how many non fatal injuries would have been fatal without the helmet, then you might be able to add that to your studies. I doubt though that you will get very many volunteers that survived helmet crashes to re-enact the crash without a helmet.

Go ahead and have at it. I'm done arguing with you. You win.

grolby

"Some" being the operative word. How much? Who knows? Does it take much energy to crack an egg or break a glass? EPS foam, like eggshells and glass, is extremely intolerant of deformation. It takes very little force to crack it. With a good helmet, cracking is at BEST incidental to the amount of energy absorbed. With a crappy helmet, cracking may make things worse as the foam falls away in such a manner that it no longer provides protection. Your confidence doesn't matter when you're simply wrong.

Emphasis added. My point being, simply, that your beliefs are irrelevant except to the extent to which they are supported by some kind of rationale. The rationale you've given is, essentially, "The results in the literature do not corroborate my personal feelings about the effectiveness of helmets, so I reject them." You expect me to take this seriously. Naturally, I don't. You keep making the same intuitive assertion about how helmets "should" work, under which it is self-evident that they save lives according to your reasoning. The problem is that there is no evidence to suggest that they work or prevent accidents according strictly to the mechanism you describe, no doubt because there are considerably more factors involved in a brain injury than simple impact energy, including things like impact site, torsion, angle of impact, and on and on. It's pretty rich for you to say that studies "ignore much data," and then present as a serious alternative your childishly simple understanding of how head traumas occur. You have NO data at all. Studies are not perfect, but they are leaving out a lot less data than you are.

It's kind of a Quixotic argument to be making in any case; no amount of argument about why helmets SHOULD reduce head injury deaths will have any effect on the fact that they clearly DON'T. It's certainly bold to take on reality in this way, but it is ultimately delusional and sad. It's not even that your argument is necessarily wrong. Helmets conceivably could mitigate an otherwise fatal impact under the simplistic circumstances you describe. What you're not getting is that they clearly do not do so consistently or often. If they did, the statistics would reflect that. It's like you're arguing emphatically for the reasons that your perpetual motion machine should work, even as it lies motionless behind you.

You are also consistently misrepresenting my position, which is quite irritating. There are CLEAR safety benefits to wearing a helmet. There are lots of good reasons to wear one, and I encourage people to do so.

Geez, your arguments are depressingly stupid. Where does the money for that skewed study come from? Anti-helmet people are not sponsoring studies on their efficacy because they have no money. Fail.

I do, indeed, but it's not because you're just now throwing your hands up in disgust. You lost the moment you made a counterfactual claim in the face of scientific evidence, and then insisted that I take your ignorant misunderstanding of head trauma and how helmets "should" work more seriously than actual data collected, reviewed and published by thousands of people considerably more intelligent than you.

hammy56

Im glad your avatar wasnt injured.

Saintly Loser

You've probably already done this (guessing from your categorization of your concussion), but if you haven't, GET YOURSELF TO A HOSPITAL!!!! Headache, memory loss, etc. -- your brain has taken a pretty severe impact. Have yourself checked out as soon as possible.

I won't bother with the back-and-forth bickering about the efficacy of helmets. You know it was good that you were wearing one. Good luck, and I'm glad you were wearing your helmet.

spry

Timaaah!
Tell the big lump he,s watching too many roadrunner cartoons at the station.

merlinextraligh

Better question to those who doubt that helmets on average reduce the number and severity of brain injuries:

I'm going to hit you on the head with a cricket bat; would you prefer it to be with or without you wearing a helmet?

fix

You guys keep arguing, and I'll keep wearing my helmet.

DrPete 

Fixed that for ya.

I still advocate helmet use for all my patients, adult and pediatric, and do it personally. Do I have some actual well-done study to cite to make that recommendation? Only in young children.

So you're left with the fact that there's really no down side to wearing a helmet, and while the degree to which it helps isn't quantified particularly well, we know it DOES help to some extent, but if you start citing articles etc. you just end up looking like an idiot, because none of the studies are all that good.

TarmacDude

This is so wrong I don't know where to start.
It's not.

I suppose if you do a nice low side at 60mph you can come out of it in a reasonable condition if all goes well. What if that low side is on a corner and you go into the guardrail, I don't think "going limp" as a jellyfish will help you then.
It's a general rule, and obviously won't apply to all situations

How do you roll and go limp when a car rear ends you at a stoplight and you head hits its windshield.
As I said, it's impossible to cover all scenarios, it's just a general rule of thumb. Obviously you need to be able to have some time to react, even if it's just a couple of seconds. In intense situations everything appears in slow motion. If you've been in the military, law enforcement, or in an accident, a second is all you need to make some evasive maneuvers.

On the "some statistics about people wearing helmets get into more accidents" could it be that more people wear helmets so of course more will be in accidents. Just wear a helmet!!!
Yes, you should wear a helmet as I said in that post, I totally agree with this, just don't let that helmet give you some kind of false sense of security. I believe a helmet will protect you if you do land on your head to some degree, but you should take every measure not to land on your head if possible. That's all I was really saying...and tucking, rolling, and letting your body go limp will help you sustain less damage if there is time to react...depending on the situation of course. Some times there just isn't enough time, and if it's your time to go...R.I.P.

Tulex

DrPete, I'm not going to have the same argument with you other than to state that the fact that there is literature that downplays the effectiveness of helmets in no way proves the lack of a helmets effectiveness. If you guys want to site studies that suggest that helmets don't save lives, that is your choice. Studies are only as good as the data used. Todays bicyclist is not yesterdays bicyclist.

Fact 1. The harder the blow to the head, the deadlier it is.
Fact 2. A helmet may reduce the blow.

If you can find literature that shows that reducing the force of a blow to the head is a bad thing, well then you have it.

And also, I didn't site articles, yet you did in the fix? ok...

DrPete 

Did you read my post? I guess not.

Tulex

You said in your fix that it is reasonable to believe that helmets can't contribute to saving lives based on an assessment of current literature. I don't see any literature that says that. I only see literature that says there is not proof that it does.

So, you point your post in one direction with a fix, and a different direction with the added part, which no, I did not see in your original post.

Reynolds 

They must be busy scraping brains off the road in Denmark and the Netherlands - I hear there are many cyclists there but only a few wear helmets.