Originally Posted by
Eric F
Impact energy absorption is what I've been talking about, and the fact that it's happening is evidenced by the resulting crushed EPS foam. That means 100% of the impact energy was not transmitted directly to my/your head. That's a good thing. This is simple stuff.
It is nowhere near as simple as you seem to think, as evidenced by the fact that you got your calculation wrong -- it's not 100%. Hint: Consider what happens when the foam is fully compressed.
You didn't understand what you replied to and said something silly.
Speaking of holding water, I'm glad you replied again, because I wanted to educate you about your EPS foam misunderstanding. You believe that EPS foam magically absorbs 100% of energy applied to it, as stated earlier.
You "wanting to educate" somebody about
something you aren't understanding is hilarious.
And again, you are missing half of the equation. The increased size of your effective "head" necessarily results in more and more-severe impacts. So the question is not "Does foam absorb some energy?" It is "Does foam absorb sufficient energy to offset the increase caused by the effective head-size increase?"
This is silly and seriously disconnected from the real world. If you have go there to make your case, it means you really
don't have a case.
Road riders aren't "threading the needle" such that the small increase in size would result in more collisions. There could be rare (
really rare) situations where the small increase resulted in a collision but that's a case of "nothing is perfect".
Mountain bikers, who are much, much more "threading the needle" (and still not even that often) nearly all wear helmets.
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The "question" is whether you would whack branches/whatever more with a helmet than without (missing your head by a couple of inches).
The answer is obviously "yes".
But the defect of this as an argument against helmets is that, for road riders, it's a microscopic risk (so small it should be ignored).
For mountain bikers (who nearly all wear helmets), the risk is (likely) going to be much higher but they (implicitly) treat it as a risk that is outweighed by other benefits.
It's a "grasping at straws" argument. It's an argument one uses when one
doesn't have a compelling argument.