Maelochs

Interesting. My last big crash (that i remember) was in June 2016 ... i was rounding a corner at about 18 mph, stuck the front wheel in sand, went down hard on my left side. Hit my head but my helmet was fine since it was at home .... but i did break my collarbone.

This says to me that we should be investing in shoulder pads, not helmets.

shelbyfv

I've read that the VA Tech ratings are legit. https://www.helmet.beam.vt.edu/bicyc...t-ratings.html

shelbyfv

Good one!

RiceAWay

Helmets are pretty much the same as the very first ones that were made in the 60's by Bell. While we are talking about helmets let's be clear about something. A helmet of the "normal" type is designed to prevent skull fracturing. That problem is that isn't the real danger from bicycle deaths. Most bicycle deaths and serious injuries are not caused by falling on your head but from being hit by a car at high speeds. Under these conditions no helmet is going to help much. You normally have massive body trauma and what has happened to your head is secondary.

What helmets were designed for was the overwhelming majority of accidents - fall offs from your own mistakes - running over something and being thrown off or riding in a group and running into each other. These can be pretty serious because almost no one knows how to fall correctly. Helmets were originally designed not for bicycles but for racing cars and motorcycles where injuries are completely different.

In cars and motorcycles you head is basically being protected by the hard shell. In cars you strike your head on objects inside the car with reduced force due to your seatbelts and the crash cage surrounding you. On motorcycles You generally have the bike slide out from under you as your cornering traction disappears. Helmets were really never designed to work in the real world but on tracks and so they have never had much of an effect on the death rates.

However, Trek through their subsidiary Bontrager, started actually thinking about the causes of serious head injuries and research and development of means to reduce these injuries. In the real world riding the most serious non-lethal injuries are from concussions - either major or minor. The Royal Swedish Institute of Technology invented the MIPS system (Multidirectional Impact Protection System) was in my opinion erroneously developed to prevent the head and neck sustaining a twisting moment. While I suppose this lends some increased protection it is too little and in the wrong direction. Bontrager on the other hand addressed the actual causes of injury - too rapid a deceleration of the brain in the skull which causes the brain to tear away from the supporting structure that support it allowing the brain to slam with force into the other side of the skull causing damage which can range from nearly none to death. The more often this occurs, the more often permanent damage can occur. This is why Football has now changed its rules forbidding head butts. Even though these individually were not bad, over time players became almost totally disabled. This is also what happened to Mohammed Ali.

In any case, rather than the Styrofoam that most of the helmet makers use to be able to pass the international helmet standard, Bontrager designed a material that did two things - it cause a far slower deceleration of the skull with an impact and a progressively higher deceleration. In this manner they reduce the liability of a concussion by some 48 times and yet still pass the ISO standards.

So the Q-cell Bontrager helmet available from most Trek Dealers in my opinion is a VAST improvement. Also, while you CAN buy them also with the MIPS system, that seems to have no effect since the cause of concussion was addressed and this reduction in deceleration also reduced the turning moment that the Royal Institute was addressing. Q-cell helmets have come down from my original $150 to one a friend recently bought for $70.

The absolute worst thing you could do is accept any information on helmets from anyone that says, "My helmet saved my life". While it MAY have the chances are so miniscule you're talking to someone with an overinflated sense of how hard his fall was. I should also add that you CAN learn to fall and get the least amount of damage but unless you practice it enough and get hurt enough times it isn't likely you're going to learn.

As for a normal helmet - these offer no protection at all. I wrote a paper on them and using the available information pedestrians without helmets and cyclists with helmets appeared to have the same fatality rates in traffic.

But I am sticking to my Q-cell Bontrager helmet.

badger1

... and this thread, like sundry others, provides solid evidence for the wisdom of the mods creating a dedicated 'helment' sub-thread over in A&S. That is where this belongs.

It's simple. If you (op or anyone else) don't think an expensive helmet is worth the money, don't buy one. There are any number of sub-$100 helmets that meet or exceed European/U.S./Canadian safety standards. Me? I like my Giro Synthe MIPS: very light; very well-ventilated; very comfortable; doesn't look like a mushroom (am I that shallow and vain? You betcha!). Well worth the money for those features ... to me.

badger1

Citation ... in a peer-reviewed journal ... please. Otherwise, your prolix post means nothing.

u235

If anyone riding a bike is at risk for this from repetition... they REALLY need to take up a different form of exercise or transportation and I'm sure other body parts will be far mangled already.

Really? LOL. Crashes are semi planned events and/or with expected predictable responses? That is no different than saying you can just learn how to ride better and not crash to begin with. I'd bet most people that crash hard had absolutely no idea before the crash, at any point during the crash, and after the crash that they even crashed until someone standing next to them tells them. I got hit by a motorcycle on my bike when I was a teenager. I had NO idea what happened or that I even got hit by something. I was riding my bike and next thing I knew I was confused laying on the side of the road with a bunch of strangers hudling around me asking me my name. In the end, I was not hurt other than scrapes and cuts but there was no planning. To this day if those people were not there and told me, I'd have no idea what happened or if it was a motorcycle, a car, a seizure, random blackout or whatever.

We've all seen this I'm sure and he does land on his head for the most part, I guess with some practice falling, he could have planned for this and done something different?



Statistics are like bikinis, what they reveal is suggestive but what they conceal is vital.

garygorgor

I like fb marketplace. Sometimes you can find a good deal and negotiate

JW in AK

That says to me that you may have hit your head a bit harder than you realized.

Maelochs

So, I tried to do a little research on how people get hurt riding bikes.

From what i can see, most serious injuries to cyclists are head trauma in crashes with cars. People who get hurt while riding, not due to cars crashes, break collarbones. Once you get hit by a car .... yeah, 3500 pounds times 50 mph into nearly naked human---you Know I am counting on that styrofoam cup to save my life.

Oh, and the people who crash but aren't hit by cars .... were going too fast for the conditions. In other words, self-inflicted.

When I look for stats, they just aren't there. How many head injuries and of what severity to cyclists not involved in car wrecks? Can't find it. Most common injuries for all cyclists, not involving cars? Fractured clavicles seem to be the most common, but i don't trust the source. Cycling injuries among experienced cyclist not involving racing or cars? No data i have found.

Other stuff I have read shows a strong correlation between people dying and not wearing helmets---but one-to-three quarters of head injuries seem to involve car wrecks, and there was also a high correspondence between those people having no lights and riding the wrong way at night. So ... no helmet, lights, riding smart, not under the influence? No data. maybe none or not a lot of those guys get hit.

Of course I haven't looked very hard .... but based on everything I have found in the last hour or so, it seems that dude that said that helmets were good for stopping lacerations in crashes bad enough to cause concussions but no to kill seems about right.

I'd like to see a lot more independent testing on Wavecell before i start believing it reduces impact force by 50 percent in the real world.

n any case .... my standard position is "Don't crash." This and more.

if you ride a bike and crash a lot, stop. Seriously, if you cannot ride safely, stop riding .... or ride on and accept the risk I guess. In a way, we all do.

I have friends who know I ride in traffic and are astounded, because they can see that while I might be doing 15-20 mph---enough speed to really mess me up if I crashed on my own---I am surrounded by people traveling two or three times that fast, often while lighting cigarettes, drinking bear, and texting. To a lot of people riding on the road at all is too dangerous.

And, having been the victim of a few stupid drivers .... sometimes there is nothing the rider can do. Lights, bright clothes, reflectors, hand signals ... none of that matters if the driver isn't paying attention. None of that matters if the driver pulls into oncoming traffic to beat the rider to the stop sign ahead, and then cuts back to avoid oncoming traffic.

It's a crap shoot.

If you think a MIPS or a Wavecell helmet is going to save your life by all means wear one. Wear two. I don't care.

I try to ride smart. I try not to generate a lot of karma. i try to stay aware all the time. And when my time comes, none of that will matter.

canklecat

Found the reference to the Folksam tests, reviews and explanatory videos. Very interesting, and surprising. I'd have assumed the POC Omne Air Spin I got last year would have fared better. The EPS foam is thicker than my Bells, the polycarbonate shell seems sturdy, and it covers lower on the occipital region.

I'll still wear it because it's very well ventilated and comfortable, so I'm more likely to actually wear it. I swap between the POC and a Bell Formula MIPS, which weighs a bit less but doesn't cover the occipital region quite as well.

I've had only one head impact in many years of cycling and having been hit by cars more than once. I think the car was traveling about 10-15 mph. My old Bell helmet has an impact mark on the occipital (rear/side behind the ear) -- right where I'd have expected a head impact if I instinctively rolled with a fall. The polycarbonate shell separated from the EPS foam, but did the job.

And, BTW, I don't rely on "rolling with the fall" in real life. While I'm a bit slower at 62 I participated in a lot of full impact boxing and martial arts in my misspent youth. My defensive reflexes are probably better than most guys my age. But we must be realistic. We're not going to have any control over how we fall in most fast moving situations, whether striking debris, being hit by an animal, a miscue from the guy I'm drafting in a group, or a car. Look at most falls among young racers at the peak of their fitness and finely honed reflexes. They usually crash like a sack of potatoes, just like the rest of us.

My other race related and self-inflicted crashes were mostly sideways slide/whomps, downside arm instinctively outstretched (I'm not gonna be able to unlearn that instinct now), so the worst injuries were always to the ribs or shoulder.

It ain't like motorcycle road racing where you're so low that you can feel the loss of control on a curve and slide away from the bike (there was a spectacular example of that kind of save this weekend). And those guys crash badly on anything other than those slide-outs on curves.

I'll take almost any helmet over none now. So I'll keep wearing the POC, although it's disappointing to see it didn't fare better in the Folksam tests.

https://nyhetsrum.folksam.se/sv/file..._vuxen_ENG.pdf

https://nyhetsrum.folksam.se/en/2020...cisive-factor/

canklecat

Incidentally, I can confirm the Bell Formula MIPS (possibly their best value) works as claimed, within the limits of my single experience: I was smacked on the head by a railroad crossing arm*.

The MIPS system did what it was supposed to do, and deflected the blow while the harness remained securely in place on my noggin. Nary a scuff to the polycarbonate shell, no noticeable impact to my head. While I'm pretty hard-headed, that direct blow without a helmet would have hurt, probably with a scalp injury at least.

*(Long boring story -- I was tailgunner for a casual group ride and stopped about 10 feet before the tracks when I heard and saw the caution signals. While I was looking around to check on the group and the distance of the train, I neglected to notice I was standing directly under the downswing of the crossing arm. The train was so far away and apparently not even moving I was surprised at the alarm and simply didn't notice I was stopped in the path of the crossing arm.)

Phil_gretz

I try to find a good used helmet from a private seller. That way, someone else has taken the depreciation. I get one with a few miles left in it, needing only routine service items like de-lousing and replacing the pads and straps.

nomadmax 

I had a crash on 8-5 at about 40-45mph and hit my head at least twice while tumbling; I was wearing a low end Giro non mips helmet. I was seriously injured but had no head injuries. I'll replace it with another Giro but this time it'll probably be a mips version.

Garfield Cat

Maybe not the safer discussion but more of the comfortable.

Two things: the retention system and the ventillation. That's where its at. The retention system is about the fitting and thus the comfort. Retention systems (the inside of the helmet) have come a long way.

The ventillation is another thing.

Heat and sweat are the two things that have an effect on ride performance. I mean heat and sweat on the head. The ventillation system is very important. It could be a trade-off, a tipping point, if you will. Trying to get the "most and at the same time the least". The most ventillation with the least amount of material. Sorry, but that's the reality of the situation.

Perhaps recreational riders really don't ride as an occupation and their choices would not be the same as a pro rider who is maybe a bit more "over the top" about winning and performance. So? Don't but it if it doesn't fit your needs, and not your wants.

Hiro11

I've found that how a helmet fits and performs has almost nothing to do with how much it costs. Helmets I currently own:

$60 Bell Avenue MIPS, one of the most comfortable helmets I own: light, perfect fitting, great straps, well ventilated, disappears on my head. Works great with glasses. It's also is top rated from a safety perspective. This helmet is a steal for the money.
$60 Bell Nomad MIPS, similarly well rated for safety, a bit less comfortable than the Avenue but still pretty damned good. Great for winter fatbiking.
$150 Bontrager Wavecel Specter. Top rated for safety but an overall awful helmet. Ridiculously hot, the strap loosens repeatedly on every ride, the giant buckle digs into my throat,it's heavy. The only upside is that it does have comfortable pads.
$220 Lazer Z1 MIPS: good ventilation and top rated from a safety perspective but I can't get the straps to lay right, it's uncomfortable on my head and the retention system is a pain with glasses.
$300 Kask Utopia: terrific helmet. Well designed and well made, it fits me perfectly, it has a terrific strap system, it's one of the best ventilated helmets I worn despite being a full aero race helmet. No MIPS, very few safety ratings and the fact that it rides so high makes me think this is not a particularly safe helmet, I could be wrong.
$300 POC Tectal Race Spin: OK helmet. It is the best made helmet I own, from a quality perspective you're getting what you paid for. It's designed to ride very low on your head which makes it a bit of a pain with glasses but it's fairly comfortable and very well ventilated. Safety is questionable? I don't know that I agree, seems very robust and offers good coverage while still being pretty light.

To me, it comes down to how a helmet fits on my head and how much I like the straps. Find a brand that works for you and stick with them. Bell and Kask seem to work well for me, YMMV.

RiceAWay

Tell me, I have to post this at least once a year. After I got tired of trying to keep up with little guys in motorcycle races; I became the safety director of the American Federation of Motorcyclists and in order to be competent at what I was going I went down to Bell and was shown around and we held a discussion about helmets.

Every time I publish this information you say the same thing. Do you have memory problems so that you can't remember anything for more than a couple of months? Trends in US Cyclist Deaths - research, statistics, data

I am also an electronics engineer that has worked extensively in R & D with medical instruments and laboratory instruments that are used for medical purposes. My guess is that you don't even know what peer review means so exactly why do you make these sorts of postings. You don't "peer review" statistics in case you were unaware of it. I have since compared helmet use by cyclists and pedestrian fatalities and everything is pretty comparable to what it was when this paper was written. That was BEFORE the Bontrager Q-cell. That may not make any difference either but at least they have addressed the real problems. While the Bontrager was the highest rated helmet in these tests It isn't clear to me what this test was measuring. Since angular momentum is not particularly dangerous and measuring it as a part of your test rating may not be of any use. https://www.singletracks.com/mtb-new...g-concussions/ However, they may believe that angular impacts are more common and more dangerous on MTB's.

Pardon me for being so rude, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night.

RiceAWay

I have to agree with you that the Bontrager is hot, I can't say that I've had the problem with the straps you've had. Remember that everyone has a different shaped head. The most comfortable helmet I ever used was a $10 Chinese helmet that had an ISO rating. It fit my head perfectly and was very comfortable.

To expand on my original posting. Although statistically helmets do not appear to change fatality rates that is NOT what I recommend helmets for. Since the most common bicycle accidents are the "fall off" a helmet WILL protect you from minor injuries. Whacking your head on the ground can really turn a pretty good ride into a terrible day even if there was little to no real injuries.

11 years ago I had a severe concussion when an early carbon fiber fork fell apart and dropped me on my head. For two years I was out of it and getting progressively worse since my short term memory was so bad I didn't even remember to eat and lost 42% of my weight. This was also accompanied by a type of seizure that often occurs in diabetics - they cannot remember that the seizure occurred after it happens and they recover. A friend of mine was a cop and his wife a nurse and she saw me have one of these seizures and not know it happened and they got me to a Professor of Neurology at Stanford. With a Football team they know a lot about concussion there. It took a couple of months to balance my medication and then suddenly one day it was if I just woke up. That is scary as hell since I couldn't remember anything from 2 years and I couldn't even remember ANY of my bike rides and I had been riding for 40 years. I could get lost driving to a store. The long and the short of it is that don't expect anyone else to protect you - get a helmet designed to reduce the possibility of concussion and use it.

joeruge

I was in the market for a motorcycle helmet a whole bunch of years ago. I saw $50 helmets and $500 helmets, all with the Snell approved safety sticker.

I asked the salesman what was the difference between the $50 helmets and the $500 helmets if they both passed the same tests. He said to me, "Well, if you have a $50 head, get a $50 helmet."

I thought that was good advice!

RiceAWay

I found a Trek HIFi 29er that a guy was selling real cheap. I drove over there and the bike was brand new. He had decided to ride a bike, bought the best thing on the market at the time and then, getting home rode it across the street, hit the curb and fell down and decided that riding bicycles was not for him. I had been riding a modified street bike off-road and the change was almost unbelievable. It is quite easy to climb REALLY steep stuff with a bike like that. They have long wheelbases and enough weight on the front end that the front wheel doesn't lift when you're pushing hard up a slope. However, I was used to riding really fast (comparatively) uphill and more carefully downhill with no suspension. Full suspension bikes weigh so much that they really drag up hills and you have to push them pretty hard to get a thrill going downhill which I suppose makes them pretty dangerous.

So I sold the HiFi and got a cyclocross bike. While even a hard tail could pass me downhill, I would get to the top long before them. I bought a Redline Conquest and outfitted it with hydraulic disk brakes on them. It was REALLY hard to get hydraulic drop bar levers at the time so I put a flat bar on it and Avid disk brakes and Shimano XT components. With this I could shoot by the full suspension bikes on the climbs that it would embarrass them. It shouldn't since it was just a matter of weight.

One time I peaked out on a local hill and started down the other side which was pretty steep. Coming up the other way was one of the local clubs for MTB's. They were composed mostly of beginners so I pulled off of the smooth track and rode in the rougher stuff along side of the path. It was looser dirt that had rain ruts under it because the previous year which was a heavy rain year. So I had to ride pretty carefully down the hill, I passed maybe 20 of these beginning riders. And ahead I could see a younger Hispanic kid who was just beginning and he was having a hard time with the climb. I was intending on riding past him and then pulling over into the smoother trail when under that dust I hit a very sharp rain rut. This threw me forward on the bike and I instinctively tightened my grasp on the bar. This pulled the brake levers of course and disks are so damn powerful it locked the wheels and launched me into the air. Well, this was a pretty steep hill so I was over 6 feet above the ground when I started falling. Being an experienced crasher, I rotated around and landed on my side to spread as much impact over as great an area as possible. Ahh, I thought, no broken bones. Suddenly CRASH, the bike fell on top of me.

The Hispanic kid asked, "Uh, are you OK?" "AM I OKAY???" echoed off all of he surrounding hills for several seconds. I kicked the bike off of me and stood up. I was Okay except for some cuts on my fingers. Then I realized I had probably scared the kid and told him I was fine and no damage. He started off up the hill and I climbed back on the bike and took off and arrived at the bottom of the hill without any further incident. From there I proceeded to a local bike shop that had a bathroom where I could clean up and bandage my fingers. After doing this I picked up the helmet to put on and it had a large dent in it. Without that helmet it might not have been such a simple crash. That bike shop had a policy of giving you a 50% off a helmet purchase if you traded in a broken helmet. So I got a new helmet and went home. This is why I recommend helmets. It is these sorts of problems that they prevent and certainly not being hit by a car.

And I hope that didn't turn that kid off of riding.

RiceAWay

That was a common enough statement in those days. Motorcycle helmets were all the same and they worked not with the Styrofoam padding inside but the hard shell which allowed your head to bounce along the road at high speed without sanding your face off. On the track we would use leathers as well so you could have a crash that looked absolutely horrible and you would barely have road rash.

RiceAWay

I do a lot of climbing so when you're going dead slow ALL helmets have poor ventilation. On the downhills they all have good ventilation. That is just something you have to ignore. If you're on the flats and pushing hard maybe you can detect a difference in ventilation but I can't say that I ever have. Until my Bontrager, I always used Bell out of loyalty to the company that developed the helmets.

Hiro11

I'll try to remember that. Thanks.

fietsbob

buy what you think is affordable...

badger1

Heh; no pardon needed! The phrasing in my initial little response was a bit intemperate, so turn about is fair play. By the way, yes -- I am old, but as far as I know I don't have any short-term memory issues. Certainly can't recall bringing this up before; could be wrong. And for the record I'm very well aware of what peer review is, and for that matter of the use of statistics within structures of argument. Both are integral to my professional life.

That said, thanks for the response and the link. Answers my question.