Cycle helmets save lives says Neurosurgeon - in ongoing helmet row

mooleur wrote:

mrmo wrote:

mooleur wrote:

Well said. Completely agree - the same happened to me, my life was saved by the presence of a helmet and since I've been a firm advocate!!

Prove the helmet saved your life? It MAY have done, it may have reduced the injury, it may have saved you getting a graze.

You can't know that in your crash your helmet was effective.

there is also the pro helmet question of which standard, why are helmets being sold today LESS effective than those being sold 20years ago. When I started mtbing, everything was buy Snell, it was the best standard, today, apart from Specialized?, you won't find a snell helmet and the current EN-BS standard is far less demanding.

The paramedics stated the impact on the helmet saved me from life threatening injuries which would have a strong likelihood of either ending or dramatically changing my life. TBF I took that as gospel, I ain't no Dr but that squishy bit at the back of my head that the helmet just about protected is pretty much the most vulnerable bit, I'm damn glad I was wearing one and this isn't a "pro helmet argument" here this is simply me stating the fact that I would never have liked to have known the outcome, be it negative or not, of that crash had I not been wearing one.

Well my nephew is a paramedic and a lovely lad. But there's nothing in the fact that he is a paramedic that gives him any more insight on the effectiveness of styrofoam to aborb impact or otherwise that the average man on the Clapham omnibus has. If he had the facts about what helmets are designed to do and how they work then your informed paramedic would probably be shocked about how very small the impact protection from a cycle helmet actually is. Many people are operating on the assumption that a cycle helmet is maybe a not very good motorcycle helmet in its efficacy. That's wrong by any standard of measurement.

The laws of physics, cycle helmet design, the impact absorbtion capacity of styrofoam are not a matter of opinion. Helmets are rated for 50 Joules. and that's it. I am 70Kg. so if you reverse the formula to give you the speed that the 50 joules of impact absorbtion will protect me at is 3mph

ie 50 = half of 70 x Vsquared. The answer is that V is ~ 1.18m/s.

1.18m/s = ~ 2.7mph.

People really do need to know just how little protection cycle helmets actually offer. And it's easy. Do the maths.

I am pro choice by the way. Choose to wear a helmet if you want. But don't do it because you "believe" that it offers much if any protection in a big impact.
And yes I have heard the would you like to be hit by a car wearing your helmet or not wearing your helmet, as if that is a clinching argumant. Something is better than nothing right? But that just indicates the scale of misunderstanding. It's a a bit like saying would you like to be shot wearing your T shirt or bare chested.

Make your choice but the outcome is the same except the T shirt gets ruined.

oozaveared wrote:

If he had the facts about what helmets are designed to do and how they work then your informed paramedic would probably be shocked about how very small the impact protection from a cycle helmet actually is.

You're right, they're not brilliant at impact protection, no - although your maths is a little simplistic (instant deceleration at full load, e.g. landing vertically and rigidly on your head). That said, much of the reason I generally wear a helmet is to avoid small to mid-range bangs, cracks, bumps and lacerations - like when I dragged and bounced my head, arm, hip and ankle during a 20mph off on a roundabout - which they can seemingly help with quite well in my experience. I might be alone in that regard mind, difficult to say.

oozaveared wrote:

Well my nephew is a paramedic and a lovely lad. But there's nothing in the fact that he is a paramedic that gives him any more insight on the effectiveness of styrofoam to aborb impact or otherwise that the average man on the Clapham omnibus has. If he had the facts about what helmets are designed to do and how they work then your informed paramedic would probably be shocked about how very small the impact protection from a cycle helmet actually is. Many people are operating on the assumption that a cycle helmet is maybe a not very good motorcycle helmet in its efficacy. That's wrong by any standard of measurement.

The laws of physics, cycle helmet design, the impact absorbtion capacity of styrofoam are not a matter of opinion. Helmets are rated for 50 Joules. and that's it. I am 70Kg. so if you reverse the formula to give you the speed that the 50 joules of impact absorbtion will protect me at is 3mph

ie 50 = half of 70 x Vsquared. The answer is that V is ~ 1.18m/s.

1.18m/s = ~ 2.7mph.

People really do need to know just how little protection cycle helmets actually offer. And it's easy. Do the maths.

I am pro choice by the way. Choose to wear a helmet if you want. But don't do it because you "believe" that it offers much if any protection in a big impact.
And yes I have heard the would you like to be hit by a car wearing your helmet or not wearing your helmet, as if that is a clinching argumant. Something is better than nothing right? But that just indicates the scale of misunderstanding. It's a a bit like saying would you like to be shot wearing your T shirt or bare chested.

Make your choice but the outcome is the same except the T shirt gets ruined.

It split, rather than absorb and compress, which is what led our ambulance conversation to believe that this crack would have been the impact of hitting something sharp (we think probably the pavement corner). Said informed paramedic was certainly right that the split in the shell meant that the helmet, while not doing it's designed job of compressing, was doing a worthwhile job in being there before my head. I'm definitely not denying the science of how road helmets are designed to work essentially renders them pretty poorly equipped for most scenarios, but in some cases - even if they're rare - helmets can prove to be useful.

Might also be worth noting that while the equation relates to immediate impact, if we were to hit a car travelling at one speed while travelling at another, dependent on weight and environmental variables this would mean the possible final impact of the helmet/head would be reduced to, perhaps, an insignificant enough speed that would make its use viable.

Long and short - cyclist hits front of car, cyclist tumbles around 4-5 times before hitting road, tumbles again possibly 2-3 times before head reaches final impact... despite the reduced speed actually not causing too much damage, with there being important softer areas around the skull, the helmet could play a pretty significant role in protecting those. Then again, it might even do the opposite.

My choice is the fact that I want to avoid the risk of one of those few occurrences, even if it's 1000 to 1. I've done the maths and despite the rare probability in my opinion I'd like to make every precaution I can to preserve my own life.

I'm rambling now!

Ordinary Cycling Girl wrote:

I just don't get why people are so arrogant

Your mate binned it so that means everyone else must be arrogant?

Perhaps not the best way of making friends and influencing people don't you think?

Ordinary Cycling Girl wrote:

I feel quite strongly about this subject after witnessing a friend of mine have a fall from her road bike on a corner, which didn't involve a car. She knocked herself unconscious and cracked her helmet in the process - the crack in her helmet would have been a crack in her skull had she not been wearing it. I just don't get why people are so arrogant to think it won't happen to them. It's just not worth it. You are not invincible. (I wrote a post on this over on my blog and was surprised to hear via twitter how many people are so against helmets...mainly mountain bikers, I might add). I value my brain and think it's worth protecting.

Maybe it would have been a crack in her skull, maybe it wouldn't. maybe without the helmet she wouldn't have lobbed the bike, or would have fallen better and not hit her head. The fact is that I don't know and neither do you. You want to wear a helmet while cycling that's fine, good for you. I can't understand why you wouldn't be equally keen on wearing one while walking, driving a car, standing in the shower, ...

But no-one has to be rational all the time. The real issue is not whether you want to wear a helmet, the real issue is whether you have so mistaken the risks associated with different behaviours that you want to devote time and effort to compelling me to wear a helmet, instead of focussing time and effort on removing motorised traffic from our roads and providing safer options for cyclists and pedestrians

oldstrath wrote:

...You want to wear a helmet while cycling that's fine, good for you. I can't understand why you wouldn't be equally keen on wearing one while walking, driving a car, standing in the shower, ...

My car has a lot of airbags which should help protect my head in case of impact. Opportunities for my head to hit the kerb/road at 30-40mph seem fairly low while walking or showering. Am I doing it wrong?

factor41 wrote:

oldstrath wrote:

...You want to wear a helmet while cycling that's fine, good for you. I can't understand why you wouldn't be equally keen on wearing one while walking, driving a car, standing in the shower, ...

My car has a lot of airbags which should help protect my head in case of impact. Opportunities for my head to hit the kerb/road at 30-40mph seem fairly low while walking or showering. Am I doing it wrong?

Don't need to hit your head at 30 mph. Doubt the children Mr Carter saw had been doing 30 mph, and there's little evidence a helmet would protect you if you were travelling at that speed when you landed. Go and ask your local neurosurgeon where most of his cases get injured - slipping in the shower will be high up there.

Ordinary Cycling Girl wrote:

I feel quite strongly about this subject after witnessing a friend of mine have a fall from her road bike on a corner, which didn't involve a car. She knocked herself unconscious and cracked her helmet in the process - the crack in her helmet would have been a crack in her skull had she not been wearing it. I just don't get why people are so arrogant to think it won't happen to them. It's just not worth it. You are not invincible. (I wrote a post on this over on my blog and was surprised to hear via twitter how many people are so against helmets...mainly mountain bikers, I might add). I value my brain and think it's worth protecting.

NO NO NO NO NO. This is nonsense on stilts. It completely misunderstands how a helmet is supposed to work. If the helmet cracks it is because it didn't work. It was overwhelmed by the impact.

The way a helmet is designed to work is for the styrofoam to absorb the impact by compressing. It only works at between 50 to 100 Joules. The BS EC and US standard is 50 joules some of the better helmets brand new and perfectly worn may give up to 100 joules of impact protection.

If the impact is of such a force that the styrofoam is unable to contract quickly enough then it cracks, splits right open. In so doing it fails to absorb the impact.

Your friend was not saved by a helmet. Her head received exactly the same impact as it would had she not been wearing a helmet. She was concussed despite wearing a helmet because the helmet failed completely. It provided no protection at all and transferred the impact energy straight to the skull. It failed completely because it wasn't designed to absorb that kind of impact. It is generally the speed of impact that causes the split. Lower velocity higher mass impacts of the same overall force don't cause failure so often.

This velocity effect is the same effect as people that break bricks with a Karate chop. The effect is a shockwave through the material. You could send more force but more slowly ie increase the mass and reduce the velocity in the equation and the brick would not break.

Helmets do not fail and save your skull. They just fail and in failing don't absorb any impact energy, they just transfer it.

mrmo wrote:

http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1081.html

thought I would throw this in,

Quote:

In a recent Court case, a respected materials specialist argued that a cyclist who was brain injured from what was essentially a fall from their cycle, without any real forward momentum, would not have had their injuries reduced or prevented by a cycle helmet. This event involved contact against a flat tarmac surface with an impact energy potential of no more than 75 joules (his estimate, with which I was in full agreement). The court found in favour of his argument. So a High Court has decided that cycle helmets do not prevent injury even when falling from a cycle onto a flat surface, with little forward momentum. Cycle helmets will almost always perform much better against a flat surface than any other.

..and this a bit further down...

My purpose is not to dissuade people who wish to, from wearing cycle helmets. They do, I promise, work a little better against a flat surface, than the Court decided in the case I cited above. After all the Snell B-90 standard called for four impacts on each test sample, two of which were tested against flat surfaces with an impact energy of 100 joules each. The tragedy is you cannot buy helmets to this standard any more. Manufacturers prefer the easier standard that they helped to write.

Rather my purpose is to illustrate that the whole cycle helmet issue contains many hidden issues of which most researchers are quite unaware.

Referring back to the Court case mentioned early, the very eminent QC under whose instruction I was privileged to work, tried repeatedly to persuade the equally eminent neurosurgeons acting for either side, and the technical expert, to state that one must be safer wearing a helmet than without. All three refused to so do, stating that they had seen severe brain damage and fatal injury both with and without cycle helmets being worn. In their view, the performance of cycle helmets is much too complex a subject for such a sweeping claim to be made.

End of the first paragraph is telling IMO... but anyway, as you told me, we shouldn't be talking about "F**** helmets".

fukawitribe wrote:

End of the first paragraph is telling IMO... but anyway, as you told me, we shouldn't be talking about "F**** helmets".

Exactly, which is better being hit by a car not wearing a helmet, being hit by a car wearing a helmet, or not being hit by a car.

Which problem would you put the effort into solving?

Helmets are just a distraction, sometimes they help, sometimes they don't. What the helmet debate does achieve is to allow the elephants to have a rave in the room.

zanf wrote:

The Energy Glut' and actually argues that we should be fighting against overuse of vehicles, cutting back on road building as the case for them increasing economic growth is not supported and redesign cities for people before we're all too obese and riddled with related illnesses to move/breathe.

Is this because not doing some exercise causes obesity?

leqin wrote:

Is this because not doing some exercise causes obesity?

If you really want to reduce it to such a smartarsed comment, then yes.

zanf wrote:

leqin wrote:

Is this because not doing some exercise causes obesity?

If you really want to reduce it to such a smartarsed comment, then yes.

I was not being smartarsed and I am deeply offended that you should assume that I was being so, but not suprised - this is road.cc - it is overflowing with people who are

So I will now switch on my smartarse circuit and ask you another question and you can give me your smartarsed answer.

According to the BBC website last week, although it was it was reported elsewhere, scientific investigation seems to be showing with a great deal of correlation that our modern day exposure to artificial light is a major factor in humanity's tendency to become fat and obese and that this, along with other factors, is why we are seeing a ever growing obesity epidemic - based on that would you propose that we should design our homes and citys so that we give up artificial light, which would have to include street lighting, headlamps, that multi megaton Cree LED mountain bike light you just armed your cheap MTB with - your smartphone - your TV - the screen your looking into at this moment... so, at a even more fundamental level and staying right within the bounds of science, we would have to give up things which produce electromagnetic radiation and, naming just one thing - just one thing - that causes you and me and indeed everybody here on road.cc to produce electromagnetic radiation then are you prepared to give up riding your bike so that you cannot become a lard arse.

smartarse mode switched off

4ChordsNoNet wrote:

How many helmets on sale have a BS Kitemark, or whatever it is these days?

from the CTC website

http://www.ctc.org.uk/cyclists-library/regulations/standards

'Helmet Standards

Helmets for cycling are one thing where Trading Standards Officers have been keen to root out any dubious products, even though there is no law specifically prohibiting the sale of helmets that don't conform to any standard. So you can be sure that any cycling helmet in the shops will at least claim to meet a reputable standard, probably BSEN1078. The "EN" bit signifies a European standard (or "Norm") adopted by BS. But if you can find any helmets with a Snell Foundation B90 (or higher) sticker in them, that's a substantially stronger standard.'

I've never seen a helmet without the EN marking (the kit was used for British Standards which have been superseded).

4ChordsNoNet wrote:

I've not read all the comments, so it's possible that this point has already been said.

I think what the neurosurgeon from St George's was saying has been taken out of context slightly. I believe what he said is that the helmets currently on sale are a waste of time wearing, as they offer little protection. £9.99 from Argos isn't worth the money. How many helmets on sale have a BS Kitemark, or whatever it is these days?

I'm pretty sure all of them meet the EU standards or they wouldn't be allowed to sell them. Not sure about small ebay sellers, say, but I think its a safe bet someone like Argos would have to obey the law.

Anyway, one major purpose of wearing a helmet is to avoid nagging by helmet-fixated people, and even the cheapest, most dubious, helmet can achieve that.

LinusLarrabee wrote:

Do helmets cause more injuries than they prevent? That's the only question worth asking. From that, a rational decision can be made wether or not an individual wishes to wear a helmet.

Helmet-specific advice or true also of ski goggles for head-on bee impacts?

LinusLarrabee wrote:

Do helmets cause more injuries than they prevent? That's the only question worth asking. From that, a rational decision can be made wether or not an individual wishes to wear a helmet.

Simples, yes.
New Zealand, introduced a mandatory cycle helmet law. In '94 there were just under 500 KSI per 100,000 cyclists. In '11 this had almost doubled to just under 900 KSI per 100,000 cyclists. The worst part is cycling dropped from just over 250,000 to 130,000.

http://rdrf.org.uk/2013/12/17/the-effects-of-new-zealands-cycle-helmet-law/

LinusLarrabee wrote:

Do helmets cause more injuries than they prevent? That's the only question worth asking. From that, a rational decision can be made wether or not an individual wishes to wear a helmet.

When riding a bike or just in general?

LinusLarrabee wrote:

Do helmets cause more injuries than they prevent? That's the only question worth asking. From that, a rational decision can be made wether or not an individual wishes to wear a helmet.

Really? If that's the criteria you'll support wearing helmets, toesavers, safety googles, kevlar vests, fireproof clothing, etc ALL THE TIME. Best be safe.