The Chainlink

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 S on June 3, 2012 at 12:27pm



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?  
Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on June 3, 2012 at 12:40pm

My point is, if you know how to position your body DURING a fall, you will be less likely to have severe injuries BECAUSE of the fall, no matter how quickly or slowly it happens.  I also try to anticipate the movements of everything and everyone around me to avoid dangerous situations.  I read facial expressions of people in cars, I watch people's eyes, and I generally look as far ahead of me as possible to determine the best course of action BEFORE anything happens.  I always have my hands on the brake levers and I always expect the worst.

I take a similar approach.  On a number of occasions, I've had oops moments where I was able to take a controlled fall and suffer little or no damage. The best was on a ride I was leading, where I didn't see a patch of bad pavement until I hit it. I couldn't maintain a stable direction but was able to aim the bike towards the curb, hop the curb (clipped in) and fall on the grass.  No harm beyond a few grass stains on my clothes.

However, no matter how high your level of bike handling skill and awareness of your surroundings, sometimes accidents can happen so fast that there is no way to avoid them, as Dug described.  

I had an accident 12 years ago that happened almost as fast.  A pothole in deep shadow was the start of a chain reaction crash, which I couldn't avoid because another cyclist had me hemmed in on the side where I needed escape room.  I was going about 15 mph and had maybe a couple of seconds to maneuver, not enough time to avoid hitting the friend who had fallen in front of me.  Next thing I knew, I was airborne, upside down, with feet still clipped into pedals. Then I hit the pavement - helmet/top of head, side of face, right knee, then everything else.

The ambulance came quickly, and I spent most of the day in the ER.  Fortunately, my teeth and jaw survived unharmed.  My face was torn up - stitches and road rash.  I had no head injury - the helmet cracked, my head didn't.  My neck was compressed, but I had no spinal fracture.  I had hairline fractures in one tibia and cartilage damage, requiring months of healing and later surgery.  

The neck injury has proven to be the biggest long-term problem, because it was the second hit, after I was thrown from a horse years earlier.  I've been through a few rounds of physical therapy, and I'm keeping it stable with continuing therapy exercises, but it may eventually require major surgery.  

It could have been much worse if I hadn't been wearing the helmet: brain injury and/or spinal injury.  Hopefully it was a once-in-a-lifetime accident.  I hope that you don't experience one like mine or Dug's.

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on June 3, 2012 at 1:17pm

Agreed that per capita is less useful in application than per mile ridden, but in fairness, the authors stayed reasonably safe in their conclusions . . .

I find studies like this useful in countering the folks who like to make claims such as "In Holland/China/etc.  EVERYONE rides a bike and NOBODY wears helmets and there are NO head injuries!!!"


David said:

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

Permalink Reply by David on June 3, 2012 at 4:36pm



S said:

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.
As I mentioned in my first post, that determination is based on transportation modeshare, based on US modeshare numbers from LIB/LAB and the Chinese numbers from textual descriptions in the study itself.  Cycling modeshare per trip isn't quite as useful as cycling modeshare per mile traveled (though that's debatable, one could argue that per trip data is more useful), but it's got to be better than a per capita comparison, which is almost completely irrelevant.  And since the modeshare comparison showed an almost 10-1 difference, there's a lot of room for error there.
 
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?  
My exact quote was "It's next to impossible to figure out if that's cause or merely correlation".   I have no idea how you managed to read into that the idea that I'm implying there's causation.   
Permalink Reply by S on June 3, 2012 at 6:57pm



David said:



S said:
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.
As I mentioned in my first post, that determination is based on transportation modeshare, based on US modeshare numbers from LIB/LAB and the Chinese numbers from textual descriptions in the study itself.  Cycling modeshare per trip isn't quite as useful as cycling modeshare per mile traveled (though that's debatable, one could argue that per trip data is more useful), but it's got to be better than a per capita comparison, which is almost completely irrelevant.  And since the modeshare comparison showed an almost 10-1 difference, there's a lot of room for error there.
The study indicates that the majority of the injuries to cyclists (98%) are due to accidents involving cyclists and motor vehicles.  I suspect that the percentage is very close in the US to this as well.  So, given that injuries are primarily caused by motor vehicle vs. bike accidents, I don't understand how modeshare information lets you make a determination of safety.  The differences in car ownership and usage is just one of the confounding factors in making the comparison.  The study doesn't have any information that looks like it will be able to control for this and other factors so I don't understand how you can say with any certainty that cycling is safer in China.  
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?
My exact quote was "It's next to impossible to figure out if that's cause or merely correlation".   I have no idea how you managed to read into that the idea that I'm implying there's causation.
Ummm... you say
  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. 
in the previous sentence.  Given that the outcomes of the prisoner's dilemma is the direct result of the players' actions, the implication that helmets are the cause is there.  However, that's just a sideshow to the main issue.  Namely that you are making a fairly bold and counter-intuitive statement about helmets and cycling safety and so far haven't backed it up.  Do you have any evidence or reports that suggest that increased helmet use decreases the safety of cycling in general?
Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on June 3, 2012 at 7:35pm

My experience is that riding defensively (not wearing a helmet) prevents accidents.  But if an outside force propels your body in an unexpected direction, a helmet can be nice to have.  An added benefit is that it also might make you slightly less vulnerable to being hurt by drivers throwing bottles or gang bangers wielding sticks...where again, knowing how to fall would not be so very helpful.

 

Well said!

Permalink Reply by David on June 3, 2012 at 8:34pm

S said:

The study indicates that the majority of the injuries to cyclists (98%) are due to accidents involving cyclists and motor vehicles.  I suspect that the percentage is very close in the US to this as well.  So, given that injuries are primarily caused by motor vehicle vs. bike accidents, I don't understand how modeshare information lets you make a determination of safety.  The differences in car ownership and usage is just one of the confounding factors in making the comparison.  The study doesn't have any information that looks like it will be able to control for this and other factors so I don't understand how you can say with any certainty that cycling is safer in China.  
I have to apologize. I've read this over and over and I can't figure out with any certainty what you're trying to say here.   To me, a reasonable measure of cycling safety is "what are the odds of dying each time I take a trip on the bicycle".  That's very roughly per capita traffic mortality times cycling (trip) modeshare.   It seems to me that you're trying to say that cycling is safer in China only because there's fewer cars and therefore it isn't *really* safer.  Is that a reasonable interpretation?  If so, I agree with you, cycling in China would be just as dangerous as here if cycling conditions were identical to the US (in fact more so, since helmet use would be less).

However, that's just a sideshow to the main issue.  Namely that you are making a fairly bold and counter-intuitive statement about helmets and cycling safety and so far haven't backed it up.  Do you have any evidence or reports that suggest that increased helmet use decreases the safety of cycling in general?
 
You'll be happy to know that I don't have international bicycle injury statistics in front of me.   As I said originally, there's a paucity of studies on the topic and so the evidence is very spotty and even anecdotal to a degree.  And to the degree you're posting just to say "gotcha!" rather than have a conversation, you can now go home happy.  :)
 
However, I'm somewhat baffled that you think I'm making a counter-intuitive statement, since the same point has been re-iterated over and over by multiple posters in this very thread.  There's multiple posts here about how much safer people felt in various countries where helmet use was much lower than the US.  The statement that countries that are safer for cyclists than the US also have lower helmet use is as intuitive as anything gets.  Do you honestly have the opposite intuition, or are you just being contrarian here?    
 
But perhaps much of this is due to a misreading, so let me be crystal.
 
1.   This doesn't imply causation.  It might be mere correlation, or it might be causation in the opposite direction (i.e., people wear helmets here precisely because conditions are so dangerous). 
 
2.   increased helmet use decreases the safety of cycling is exactly what I've gone out of my way *not* to say.   In fact, I think it's clear that marginal increases of helmet use tend to increase safety.  To say, as I have, that there's a negative correlation between the two across populations is not to predict that changes within a single population will show the same correlation.   In fact, I think the jury is out on that, at least as large fluctuations go.  
 
     2a.  One corollary to this is that I think it's true that as cycling conditions become safer, more people begin to cycle and many of those new cyclists don't bother wearing helmets since conditions no longer require them.  You can even see that effect on the relatively safe bike trails around Chicago.    I mention this only to point out that there are multiple ways that the negative correlation can occur that don't require the simplistic causation you seem to think is necessary, or perhaps that you seem to think that I think is necessary.  There's a lot of things that could cause this correlation.
 
My apologies for the ridiculously long post, but I don't think I'm saying anything that's particularly controversial here, so I thought filling in the details rather than just making the hand wave I did earlier might help.
 
Permalink Reply by Matt M. 18.5KM on June 8, 2012 at 6:34am

Permalink Reply by Kevin C Dormant on June 8, 2012 at 11:22am

Let the bickering continue...

Compulsory Helmet Law Matrix.

Permalink Reply by Zoetrope on June 8, 2012 at 11:35am

Let's not.  

Permalink Reply by Joe Studer 8.0 mi on June 8, 2012 at 2:30pm

And don't get me started on refined sugar!
 
James BlackHeron said:

The thing that makes me laugh is smokers who rave about other people not wearing a bike helmet.  

Permalink Reply by Joseph Kim on June 8, 2012 at 2:33pm

I was sideswiped at a stop sign and a helmet prevented a concussion from becoming brain damage or worse.  I know this doesn't answer your question "why don't you wear a helmet".  Some counterarguments are that helmets create a false sense of security, and that helmeted riders take more risks. I think there is some truth to that, but those points do not outweigh the benefits.  When you ride, you are the only one you can count on for your safety.  Don't do yourself a disservice - wear a helmet.

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