drzdave58

Ive never worn a helmet in 50 years of riding bikes for recreation/casual riding.ive never had a serious fall..I ride mostly bike paths now and don’t feel a helmet is necessary for the type of riding I do.. and it’s not the law where I live so I choose not too...that’s my right and anybody who looks down their nose at me in judgement can kiss my a$$...as well as anyone who says I’m taking a bigger chance riding without one...far more head injuries happen to people just walking around than on bicycles...but we ALL KNOW THIS..if you choose to where a helmet that’s your business....there are a lot of people who wear helmets out their that think their way is the only way...I’ve never ran into a group of riders wearing helmets and looked at them funny and asked “why are u wearing a helmet”...but I’ve been asked ‘why aren’t u wearing a helmet”...many times...or the the more arrogant ones say...”you should be wearing a helmet”...nuff said..

wphamilton

How about "because I judged the risk"? I do wear a helmet when for some reason or another I see greater risk of a fall on that particular day, so I'd be the last person to argue against "I'm willing to take the chance/risk". There is always some risk, however minute it may be.

Given my specific situation, I've worn a helmet only 4 or 5 times since June. Partly because I've been much more restrained since an accident, which is IMO an equal factor to the external factors. My greatest risks come from taking more risk, and if I am planning on sprints or pushing my limits or riding 2 hours in traffic or chancing ice or storms, that's when the helmet goes on.

curbtender

Nobody uses their helmet to prevent snatch and grab at the coffee shop? If they could incorporate a kevlar strap with a locking chin strap, I see money...

Stadjer

"Even though"? I believe a big part of the issue is that people expect too much from a helmet because it's the only thing they can do to improve safety. It's a bit like if you only got a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail. Of course it's not a bicycle helmet but a crash helmet, so if you don't crash it's not going to be any help, while the number of crashes is very important to the death and TBI stats. In a crash it only protects the skull, not the face or any other vital organ, and it's only effective in within a certain range of impact. So it's not reasonable to expect much safety from a helmet, just because it's only thing you can do on passive safety.

In the Netherlands the death and TBI rates for cyclists with helmets are actually much higher than the average, probably nearly as high as in the USA. It has probably more to do with how we ride than where. We don't expect safety from safety equipment, we rely on our skills and not just the cyclists' skills. Those are above average though, both in avoiding crashes and not landing on your head. Not just because of beeing on the bike a lot, but also because between the ages of 5-15 there's a lot of mucking about on bikes. Everybody has some experience with keeping the bike upright in difficult circumstances and with falling off. But I personally think the type of bike might make the biggest difference. The upright bikes allow much better overview of traffic, and when there's a collision with one this does often not lead to a fall, and if there's a fall, there's quite a bit of distance/time to prevent the head hitting the ground.

wphamilton

To be clear, it's well established that a bike helmet does mitigate the impact to your head in the event of a crash. It does reduce the risk of TBI, and by a significant percentage.

Have you checked that assumption? There is not "quite a bit" of extra time to fall between an upright dutch style and a normal road bike. Reasonably there might be 18 inches difference in head height. That gives you less than a tenth of a second extra.

And for that extra tenth of a second, your fall ends striking the ground about 15-20% faster. I doubt that there's any safety enhancement whatsoever from riding the more upright bike, other than you'll probably be doing it more sedately.

mr_bill

FWIW, the TBI rates for people on bikes in Amsterdam (and the Netherlands) is actually surprisingly high. And it's not just MAMIL's. (Though there are MAMIL-winkels in Amsterdam.)

But anyhow, a demonstration of real people on bikes in Amsterdam, rather than the rose colored propaganda:


-mr. bill

wphamilton

We can't really pretend it away, that the Netherlands are safer for cyclists. Bicycle fatality rate in the US is 1.5 to over 3 times as much as in the Netherlands, depending on whether you normalize it by km of motor vehicles, number of motor vehicles, or per capita.

TBI rates in the USA were 824 per 100,000 people in 2010 according to the CDC, and were 213 per 100,000 in the Netherlands according to their hospital data (Dutch Injury Surveillance System (LIS) )

350htrr

You do not need to "pretend" anything...

1; more bicyclists.
2; more bike lanes.
3; Less cars. & most vehicles are basically separated from bike lanes.
4; a totally "different|" way/culture of riding bicycles...
5; Head injuries/all injuries, should be less, in Europe on average because of the culture, that the bicyclist have a right to be on the roads and here in N. America, most drivers do not think a bicycle "belongs" on the road, and... purposely pass too close, (to send a message), sometimes misjudging, and wham, ooppps I did not mean to "actually" run them over, I just meant to "send them a message', that they are not supposed to be on the road/or and they are certainly not supposed to take the whole lane/... JMO

EDIT; In other words, concluding that people in the Netherlands who have less head injuries per Km ridden, and generally do not wear head protection, compared to people in the N. American continent where head gear is practically mandatory... and head injuries are way higher, is miss leading IMO... Why...???

Because of the different couture/attitude towards bicyclists,
Because of the different speeds/distance's per person riding.
Because of the different distances people need to ride to accomplish their goals for the day, in Europe 4, 5 |Km of riding gets you to your job, and 4, 5 Km gets you home, here 15Km to 30Km to the job and 15Km to 30Km home is not uncommon, thus the pressure for speed...

A TOTALY different measuring stick, than just using the Km traveled per rider. IMO Thus, NOT really comparable per Km of trave...

njkayaker

Yeah, it's different.

A lot of the cycling in the Netherlands is like enhanced walking. A lot of it is slow.

It also helps significantly that a large fraction of the population cycles.

(I've ridden there.)

njkayaker

This doesn't mean helmets are useless (it doesn't say anything useful about that).

I-Like-To-Bike

I've ridden in The Netherlands and the U.S., a lot of the cycling is relatively slow in both countries, as most of the cyclists are not enthusiasts hell bent to be a Strava star or KOM with every commute, grocery run or recreational ride.

A lot of the cycling everywhere, including the U.S. is probably considered relatively slow and not up to the speed standards of BF brand cycling enthusiasts, advocates and self appointed safety experts.

350htrr

Well, I certainly am NOT a safety expert... BUT, IMO... It probably doesn't take too many people to "skew" the numbers, or even that many extra vehicle/bicycle/faster/longer rides, riding/driving together on streets not actually designed for them being together to make a HUGE, difference in accident rates or the type/severity of injuries that happen in even lets say10% difference in riding stile/riding circumstance/riding speeds... again, JMO

njkayaker

You are making things up again.

Many more people ride more frequently in the Netherlands than people do in the US.

Most of the riders in the US ride slowly, but there aren't that many of them and they ride infrequently.

(In any case, preferring to ride faster than this doesn't require approval from you.)

njkayaker

The Netherlands has many cyclists that ride regularly and slowly. It might not just be "infrastructure" that makes the injury rate lower.

Proportionally, many fewer people ride in the US (there are many people who ride very infrequently).

Stadjer

No, it mitigates the impact to the head in the event of an impact to what would have been directly to the skull. If I would go mountainbiking I would wear I helmet too, I don't say they're useless, you just have to narrow it down to what it does. It doesn't do anything to avoid a crash, on the contrary it seems, it does not do anything for all the other possible ways to get hurt or killed in a crash than an impact to the skull, it does not offer any meaningfull protection in a very heavy impact to the skull. It offers protection within a certain range of crashes, that can make it wise to wear one but doesn't make it the difference between safe and not safe, as it is often portrayed.

If you reason from the ER with an impact to what otherwise would have been the skull yes. If you reason from all the cyclist cyling, it's a different picture.

That's if you fall like a bag of potatoes, which is not the proper or the likely way to fall. On an upright bike it takes quite a sudden decellaration to go over the handlebars head first and land without beeing able to land with your arms first. I've crashed into two pedestrians lately and I was doing about 20 km/h and I think I managed to brake a little on both occassions and I'm not sure, but on both occassions I didn't fall to the ground but stayed on at least one foot. I've been in crashes and falls but never even close to hitting my head, I've seen quite a few crashes and falls but never saw someone close to hitting the head. It's probably not as much the height as it is the posture, no toeclips of course, there's often a foot out on the ground, and there's the reflex to take the impact on the shoulder and move the head away from the pavement. Which is often quite close and might have impacted the helmet if it was worn because of it's larger circumference and added weight.

The dynamics and physics of a cycling crash are complicated, especially because the cyclist is human and capable of influencing the impact. There's even research suggesting that wearing a helmet impacts not only the cyclist's behaviour but also the behaviour of drivers before an eventual impact. Anyway, it's the 'you should wear a helmet' people that have to explain why countries with more helmets are unsafer. And that's not just a matter of two extremes with very different cycling, but also the case when you compare Denmark and the Netherlands or Germany and Denmark.

No, it's 80-year olds on E-bikes too. There was a sudden peak in deaths and serious injury

Amsterdam is a bit chaotic, not really a representation of cycling in the Netherlands. Besides, I didn't see anything that would have made a helmet useful.

wphamilton

That goes without saying, the helmet mitigates impact to the skull.



It absolutely is the likely way to fall on a slide-out. You will hit the ground in under a second, possibly in as little as half a second, and unless you're concentrating and ready for it you will fall like a sack of potatoes. And regardless, the simple physics is that free-fall from a given height will happen in a given amount of time. Please don't be tempted to argue with me about that.

Over the bars is actually easier because the rotation will throw you up a bit, giving more time. Even so, your idea that the dutch bike is safer because you're higher is misguided. Given your druthers, you should rather fall from a lower distance than a higher one.

There is some suggestion of that, but it's dubious IMO. Those tests looked at the first seconds of riding, the first few hundred feet. Once you're accustomed to the helmet, or no helmet, you will ride the same either way. Naturally there would be exceptions, black trail MTB, racing around turns, etc, but just out for a ride it's not going to make you more reckless to have a helmet nor cautious to not have one.

curbtender

Wow, that's a lot of bike/pedestrian interaction. Pretty much like riding your bike on a sidewalk in San Francisco. Think I'd rather deal with the cars.

njkayaker

???

wphamilton didn't say they did this.

No one has said it does this.

???

njkayaker

The weight is distributed differently. There's more weight forward on a road bike. If there's an "over the handle bar" event on upright-posture bike, there's a bit more time available to "catch" the weight moving forward.

Many city bikes are "crank forward", so the rider can drop a foot to the pavement while still sitting. That means the seat is lower.

wphamilton

It's all but meaningless. Six inches further forward? A foot? At a sedate 12 mph you'd go over the handlebars at 1/15 a second faster if you're leaning forward and the bike stops. I know, you said "catch your weight" as if you're going to stop it by pushing against the handlebars while the bike is moving. But you know as well as I do that you go over the bars when the bike flips. When the bike is flipping - pushing the bars won't help you much and you wouldn't have much extra time if it did.

Lower is better for sure. Makes it harder to flip, don't hit the ground as hard. But his 6 or 8 inches (maybe) lower from the cruiser gets subtracted from his, what did I say, 18 inches higher from sitting up. 2/3 of that because it's only the upper body, so it more or less balances out on the center of gravity. All of this, the idea that the cruiser is just safer because of geometry, is really weak when you get to the details.

The cruiser is safer because you're going slower on a cruiser. Everyone in the bike street is going slow, because it's crowded, distances are generally short with few hills to pick up speed. The geometry is because of where they are and how they ride. That's what makes them safer, not the geometry.

njkayaker

This sinks your idea that people have enough time to Akido roll themselves to safety.

Is going over the bars even that common?

You are less likely to be in the position of flipping over in the first place.

Moving your butt back off the seat of a road bike improves braking and reduces going over the bars substantially. Even though it's a small change in position. Moving back is a relatively high-order skill. The point is that small differences in weight distribution has a useful effect. Riders of "cruisers" are already doing this, somewhat, because the seat is behind the crank.

The seat is lower; the upper body is farther back; the head is a bit higher. There's less weight going into rotating the bike.

This is a large (possibly, the largest) part of it (as I said earlier).

==================

Many people (not you) attribute the reduced risk in Europe to "infrastructure". (It's a mistake to consider Europe as one thing)

They have no idea that some of it is awful.

I had one experience (in Augsburg?) in a narrow, recessed bicycle-lane on a sidewalk, a passing rider brushed against me. Advocates in the US would not have considered it an acceptable bicycle lane.

Much of the infrastructure (in cities) is designed to make cycling slower.

mr_bill

Literally heads v tails. Mad skills
if you keep landing shoulder?

-mr. bill

wphamilton

No it doesn't. A half to full second until you hit the ground is plenty of time while in a fifteenth of a second, almost no one can react.

I did a few years ago, and once a few years before that. Many times from a motorbike in a misspent youth. I don't know how frequent it is in general..


I was thinking it would sap most of the enjoyment out of it, but you'd probably get used to it.

njkayaker

As a generally applied maneuver, sure it does.

If you have all that time to roll, you have the time to push back. And few people have the ability to roll. Everybody can push back. Or, it's easier to learn. (Of course, it might not always be possible.) And you can be pushing back (to some degree) before the 0.15 seconds).

It's mostly a city thing. People OK with it because the alternative is walking.

This is an example of what I'm talking about. It's lower than the sidewalk. There's small lip.

Nothing really wrong with it but it isn't really designed for riding bicycles fast.

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3628...=en&authuser=0

This is outside of the Amsterdam inner city (what is shown is fairly typical in many cities). Inner city Amsterdam is its own thing.

wphamilton

I don't think you're ever going to agree with me. But think about this part at least. The time it takes to move forward a foot or two, at 20 feet per second, is far less than the time it takes to fall 5 feet.

.2 seconds is the cap for almost everybody, the fastest they can react even with training. So no, they cannot push back to some, or any, degree before .15 seconds.

On the other hand, any average person can very easily react fast enough to roll out of an over the bars event. There is that much difference in the timing. The last time that happened to me, I did precisely that - in my late 50's slowed down and out of practice. Falling from a low-slide, I might or might not catch myself. I'm not actually guessing here or talking theoretically.