Don't wear a helmet? I'd like to know why.

Hello All,

I'm admittedly new to the community, but Julie H. told me this group is amazingly diverse and very (hopefully) willing to offer their honest opinions on issues in the Cycling community.

Here's a little background. I'm a reporter from RedEye, and I'm looking into what seems to be a more controversial issue than most people thing: Actually wearing a helmet. I've heard from some great people on both sides, but in the interest of a balanced perspective, I would love to hear from some folks who choose NOT to wear a helmet. I've seen some people say it's a vanity/comfort issue, and others who question the effectiveness of the practice.

Whatever the case, I would be very interested to hear your opinions on the issue. I can be reached most quickly at mswasko@tribune.com. Also, if you have comments you'd like to post in the thread, I will be watching.

Thank you all very much for your help.

mick

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Permalink Reply by Gecko on June 2, 2012 at 8:37am

I kinda figured you were talking about someone else.  Sometimes it's hard to determine tone from the written word :)

James BlackHeron said:

Not you Nick, I was talking about Someone Else in this thread who admitted to the same.  

Permalink Reply by Gecko on June 2, 2012 at 8:56am

Yeah, like I said to James, it's so hard to detect tone in the written word sometimes.

But yes, we should all try to be like Bruce Lee when we ride, learn to go with the flow and such. 

On that same note, I'd like to see some statistics on how many people in China or Japan or Vietnam ride with helmets, and what the mortality/brain injury rate is over there.  The roads over there are basically huge rivers of insanity shared by big trucks, cars, motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles, and pedestrians, where if you don't ride to protect yourself and go with the flow of traffic, you get smushed. 

Zoetrope said:

I'm sorry you took that made-up scenario seriously, Nick.  

I'll sincerely try to be more like Bruce Lee on my bike, but I'll keep wearing a helmet, I guess, since I don't have experience jumping ramps or doing bike tricks.  

Permalink Reply by Zoetrope on June 2, 2012 at 9:24am

Yeah, I've seen videos on reddit and sites like that.  They were really shocking, to say the least.  From what I remember all of the victims appeared to be at the mercy of some insanely nutty drivers, though.  Far from pretty much anything I've ever seen here in the states.  

    

Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on June 2, 2012 at 11:48am

No I was not and the worst of my injuries were to my head due to impact with the ground; I walked away but the back of my head, my face and my teeth were not in the best of shape.

I crashed because a bungee for my front rack had come loose and caught in the front wheel while I was at speed propelling me over the bars.  My hand was inside the brake levers which caused me to only partially depart the bike and 'carry' it over with me breaking my right hand.  I landed on the top/back of my head resulting in a head wound and concussion.  The bike in flight then landed on my face removing one of my front teeth for me. 

At least this is what I am 90% sure happened because I want from riding along to lying in the street on my back with the bike kind of on me with the vague recollection of having gone over the bars for a reason I did not understand.  I managed to lock my bike up and make it home still not understanding how it all had happened because I knew I had not been hit.  It was only when I returned to pick up the bike after exiting my concussion haze and seeing to my injuries that I saw the tacoed front wheel with the bungee wrapped in it that I realized what had happened.

I had a scrambled head for about 3-4 days after that and issues with balance for 1 or 2 right after.  I almost always wear a helmet now; I firmly believe that it reduces the risk of getting a debilitating head injury if you strike your head (and nothing else, that is all a helmet does) and that is important to me because, due to my experience, can fuck your life up the worst in the long term. 

My fake tooth was expensive but it looks fine and I still could have carried on life with out it.  My hand hurt for a long time but it healed up fine and works 99% as well as it once did and that little bit doesn't really drag down the quality of my life.  However the few days I spent with a brain that did not work as well as it once had and an inability to maintain solid equilibrium were by far the most horrifying thing I have ever experienced in my life.  Imagine having trouble concentrating, being unable to retain what you have read and not being able to figure out things that are part of your normal professional field and able to know it.  No pump that full of worry that you may never recover that ability.

You cannot make the world a safe place even if you wrap yourself in bubble wrap and never leave the house; shit happens and there is nothing you can do about it.  However you can, if you want, choose to reduce those risks by wearing safety equipment that makes sense and, at least to me, the minor inconvenience of wearing a helmet is not enough to offset what I see as the benefits.  I could take other safety measures but I do not believe the increased protection of, for example, wearing elbow pads everywhere I ride (I once scuffed and elbow in a wreck) outweigh the inconvenience factor because a messed elbow, to me, is not as big a deal as a messed up head.  Your brain is a fragile thing and it is surprisingly easy to hurt...

I had a friend as a kid and his dad dies after having had a heart attack.  The heart attack was survivable but he died from the head injury he received when he fell from having it.  It was my understanding, and this could be inaccurate, but he never even received a head wound and only feel from the standing position to the floor but it was enough of a trauma to the right place that it caused enough brain trauma to take his life. 

It's a sad and tragic story, one to which there is no solution but it illustrates two important points I think every single person reading this thread should carry away with them:

1. Shit happens and shit happens fast.  Shit also happens anywhere, anytime and in many cases straight up put of nowhere.  Sometimes you have time to react, other times shit has happened and the only reaction you are going to have time for is trying to figure out what the fuck just happened to you.  It's never a bad idea to protect yourself.

2. You cannot legislate or impose safety.  Based on the above story nobody is safe walking on a hard concrete surface unless they wear a helmet; we must pass a law that all sidewalk users wear helmets to keep them safe in the event of an uncontrolled fall!  It's a stupid idea; as stupid as trying to pass a law forcing people who ride bikes to wear helmets because, in the long run, it only saves a few lives at the cost of the freedom of choice of scores of people.  99.9% of people out there choose not to wear a helmet (I just know there is some weirdo out there doing it somewhere and it warms my heart to think of him) while walking because the chances of a fatal head injury are really slim.  A higher percentage wear them cycling over walking because they access it to be a greater risk and worthy of that; others do not because they do not believe it to be enough of a risk to warrant the protection.  Neither person is wrong, they just each have a different risk tolerance.



Nick G said:

Were you wearing a helmet when this took place?  Did you hit your head?  Why did you crash in the first place?

notoriousDUG said:


Then I had my bad accident; the one where I went from riding to laying in the middle of Milwaukee Ave. before I even realized that I had been in a wreck.  Sometimes things happen to fast for you to react or protect your melon and that is why it is, in my opinion, a good idea to wear a helmet.

Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on June 2, 2012 at 11:49am

this site needs a like button; I owe you a high five.

James BlackHeron said:

Sometimes when you are slamming your hand on car's windshields and screaming at the top of your lungs at the occupants trying to scare and intimidate them it's hard to keep track of the birds flying overhead and the trucks coming out of the alleys. 

-just sayin'

Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on June 2, 2012 at 11:50am

Wait, what made up scenario? 

you flat out bragged on this forum to doing exactly what James described; or are you changing your story again?



Zoetrope said:

I'm sorry you took that made-up scenario seriously, Nick.  

Permalink Reply by Thunder Snow on June 2, 2012 at 4:38pm

In this study, published by the American Journal of Public Health, China didn't come out too well.  The death rate from bicycle injuries is seven times per capita the US rate. This is only one study of one Chinese province, but it makes a point.

 

Injuries to bicyclists in Wuhan, People's Republic of China.

G Li and  S P Baker
 

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: This study examined the morbidity and mortality from bicycling injuries in Wuhan, China.

METHODS: Police department data for the year 1993 complemented by data from emergency room interviews were analyzed.

RESULTS: The death rate from bicycling injuries was estimated as 2.2 per 100000 population, more than seven times the rate for the United States. At least 79% of the fatalities and 17% of the emergency room cases sustained head injuries, the majority (71%) of which resulted from contact of the head with the concrete or asphalt road. None of the patients was wearing a helmet at the time of injury, and helmet use among the general bicyclist population was nonexistent.

CONCLUSIONS: Bicycle-related head injury is an important public health issue in China. The effectiveness of safety helmets in developing countries needs to be evaluated."


 
Nick G said:

On that same note, I'd like to see some statistics on how many people in China or Japan or Vietnam ride with helmets, and what the mortality/brain injury rate is over there. 

Permalink Reply by David on June 2, 2012 at 5:09pm

Comparing per capita cycling injuries is breathtakingly ridiculous.  Who funds this stuff? 

The only reasonable comparisons would be injuries per cyclist or better yet, injuries per mile cycled.  The report itself says that cycling is the primary means of transportation in China, so one would expect the per capita bicycle injury rates to be much higher as well.

Making a hand wave at the data, cycling is called the primary means of transportation in China yet accounts for only 45% of the fatalities.  On the other hand, cycling modeshare in the US is roughly 0.4% and yet accounts for 2.2% of the traffic fatalities.   So cycling is safer than driving in China, though the opposite is true in America. 

Also, assuming "primary" means a >50% modeshare, then cycling is 100 times more common in China than in America, yet the per capita difference in death rate is only 7 times.  Like I said, that's just a hand wave at the data, but based on this report it looks like cycling in this particular province in China is much safer than cycling in America.



Thunder Snow said:

In this study, published by the American Journal of Public Health, China didn't come out too well.  The death rate from bicycle head injuries is seven times per capita the US rate. This is only one study of one Chinese province, but it makes a point.

 

Permalink Reply by Thunder Snow on June 2, 2012 at 5:47pm


David, you make a very good point that since there are many more Chinese cyclists per capita of population compared to the USA, you could expect more injuries. So this may be an apples to oranges comparison.  I'm not a medical doctor or researcher, and am unqualified to judge the competency of this study.  But do you know of any studies with a better miles-per-cyclist-injured criteria than this one? 

To me, the "results" and "discussion" sections on the last pages of the article seem to make a compelling argument that helmet use could have limited some of the injury and deaths.

The Centers for Disease Control & the Snively Foundation--the creator of the Snell Foundation, which is the gold standard testing lab for helmets of all types--were the funding source for this study, so I'm not too worried that the funding came from a dodgy source.

 


David said:

Comparing per capita cycling injuries is breathtakingly ridiculous.  Who funds this stuff? 

 

Permalink Reply by David on June 3, 2012 at 4:54am

I think you and I have completely different criteria on what constitutes dodgy funding.  

In this case, the funding appears to come from a source that clearly has preconceived opinions on helmet use, which to me explains why the authors took research that clearly showed cycling to be safer in China than in the US and tacked on an executive summary that tried to show the opposite by making a non-valid comparison.   And I'm sure they did it with clear consciences, since they feel that they're trying to encourage safer practices. 

This sort of thing permeates the entire helmet discussion.   Bell and Giro aren't funding all those school bike safety programs just because they're greedy capitalists, they're also doing it because they honestly believe that helmets are safer and people should wear them.   These doctors probably weren't looking over their shoulders worried about their funding when they added this summary, rather this foundation chose to fund authors that already had strong feelings about encouraging helmet use.   If you try to look for corruption and bribery you're never going to find it, what you'll find is honestly concerned people who happen to have all the funding on their side.  

A really quick note on the "results and discussion" section you mention.  As doctors, they look at individual injuries and wonder how to prevent them, and helmets would obviously help.  But there's a lot of evidence to suggest that helmet use functions as a sort of multi-player prisoner's dilemma: each individual is safer with a helmet even though there's a negative correlation across populations between helmet use and cycling safety.  On the other hand, It's next to impossible to figure out if that's cause or merely correlation, and I haven't seen many studies that tried to do it (see above re: funding).   And none of this says anything conclusive about whether anyone should wear a helmet on the streets of Chicago, a topic that I'm just not going to wander into. 

Thunder Snow said:


David, you make a very good point that since there are many more Chinese cyclists per capita of population compared to the USA, you could expect more injuries. So this may be an apples to oranges comparison.  I'm not a medical doctor or researcher, and am unqualified to judge the competency of this study.  But do you know of any studies with a better miles-per-cyclist-injured criteria than this one? 

To me, the "results" and "discussion" sections on the last pages of the article seem to make a compelling argument that helmet use could have limited some of the injury and deaths.

The Centers for Disease Control & the Snively Foundation--the creator of the Snell Foundation, which is the gold standard testing lab for helmets of all types--were the funding source for this study, so I'm not too worried that the funding came from a dodgy source.

 

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on June 3, 2012 at 5:51am

When I was in Toronto recently, I spent time riding and observing the conditions around me.  Most of my riding was along the Harbourfront (similar to Chicago lakefront near the Loop with a busy street - 1-2 lanes in each direction - instead of Lake Shore Drive), downtown, and within a few miles of those congested areas.  I'd estimate helmet use at 20-25%.  

The bikes I saw on this visit and previous trips were more often some form of utility bike, comfort bike or basic vintage bike.  I saw Bixi bikes everywhere (comparable to a Dutch bike in many respects).  Except on the weekend along the lake, I saw relatively few lightweight road bikes.  Those road bike riders almost always wore helmets and were generally going 15+ mph.

Many of the streets where I saw the highest volumes of bike traffic were very congested, comparable to Milwaukee Ave., Clark, Lincoln, etc.  I'd estimate average bike speeds at 8-12 mph.  I saw very little aggressive driving behavior against cyclists.  Drivers tended to respect cyclists' space and leave 3 feet.  Overall pavement conditions were significantly better than what we have here.  I found no craters that would be hazardous to bikes. All of that gave me a greater feeling of safety compared to average conditions in Chicago.



Mollie said:

I wear a helmet for safety, and I never questioned the need for this practice until I traveled to Paris last year.  I used their bike-share program which didn't come with a helmet.  However, in riding all around the city, I never once came across a pothole, and they had designated bike lanes/paths all over the place.  I was shocked by how safe I felt on my bike compared to when I ride in Chicago!  A helmet didn't feel as necessary as it does in Chicago where I'm significantly more concerned that I'll have an accident because of a pothole or the overall lack of safe, respected bike routes.  (I certainly appreciate and take advantage of what progress the city of Chicago has made, but we've still got a long way to go.)

Permalink Reply by S on June 3, 2012 at 6:27am



David said:

In this case, the funding appears to come from a source that clearly has preconceived opinions on helmet use, which to me explains why the authors took research that clearly showed cycling to be safer in China than in the US and tacked on an executive summary that tried to show the opposite by making a non-valid comparison.   And I'm sure they did it with clear consciences, since they feel that they're trying to encourage safer practices. 

...

 

A really quick note on the "results and discussion" section you mention.  As doctors, they look at individual injuries and wonder how to prevent them, and helmets would obviously help.  But there's a lot of evidence to suggest that helmet use functions as a sort of multi-player prisoner's dilemma: each individual is safer with a helmet even though there's a negative correlation across populations between helmet use and cycling safety.  On the other hand, It's next to impossible to figure out if that's cause or merely correlation, and I haven't seen many studies that tried to do it (see above re: funding).   And none of this says anything conclusive about whether anyone should wear a helmet on the streets of Chicago, a topic that I'm just not going to wander into. 

 

 

How are you determining that biking is safer in China than the US based on the study? As you rightfully point out the study doesn't look at injuries per mile so it's hard to compare accident rates in the two.  Also, the study indicates that 98% of the injuries were due to bike vs. vehicle accidents which is probably close to what it is in the US.
Saying that increasing helmet use is correlated with decreased cycling safety is a pretty bold statement especially when you imply that there is causation.  Do you have any citations or anything to back that up?  

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