Intelligent Helmet Thread

>>1073548
>sometimes danny was a victim blaming shitlord

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>>1073533
No one can deny encasing your head in a protective material will increase your chances of survival in a catastrophic crash.

The arguments are:
Why should you have to when other "safe" activities don't warrant helmets?
Mandatory helmet laws discourage cycling, thereby making it seem unsafe and thereby less people are doing it. Less people means less funds allocated for safe infrastructure which goes way further than a helmet ever will.
Encourages victim blaming and also risky behaviour because you believe you're protected.

basically if something is going to reduce my risk of catastrophic grain damage and the only trade off is that my hair might not look great after a ride and slightly more weight and slightly less aerodynamism, then yeah I'm going to wear it

Does /n/ wear a helmet? I don't. I have one but I don't really use it because since most of the time I'm just riding on bike trails. I only really wear it when going longer distances than my usual leisure rides and when commuting around areas with traffic. I see almost everyone wear one, at least the more dedicated cyclists which are different at a glance because they're not riding roadmasters. Biggest reason I don't wear one is because I feel like it's just in the way and also because occasionally it's gotten my neck to hurt. Should I be wearing one always though?

Wearing a helmet screams to the world "I don't know how to properly ride a bicycle, this helmet functions as adult training wheels for me!"

>"bu bu but what about accidents out of your control?!"

Sure, but then why don't you wear a helmet in your car, or walking down the street?

Everything has risk, you just think bicyling has greater ones because dumb fucks like yourself wear helmets all the time and create the perception.

but yeah when it really comes down to it I don't wear a helmet, just so i can be contrarian and different and it's a slippery slope once you've ridden without one for awhile, it's almost impossible to start again, way to uncomfortable. I'm just hoping I die instantly and don't become brain damaged

>>1073797
I hope you wear the helmet while walking too, especially stairs and intersections can be so dangerous!

I wear a high-vis helmet like a lemon.
Seems silly but really it makes the helmet actually useful by increasing my visibility, and it means I don't have to tie myself up in high-vis bullshit, I can just pop on the helmet.

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>>1073797
>basically if something is going to reduce my risk of catastrophic grain damage and the only trade off is that my hair might not look great after a ride and slightly more weight and slightly less aerodynamism, then yeah I'm going to wear it

>>1073533
>Can we do this?
>This Thread
Apparently not.

I might find the time to look into that a little bit, but I doubt it's worth the hassle. The main arguments here are:

>the styrofoam is intended to compress and in this way spread and reduce the force that is passed onto the skull
But is that true? Is that the only way that it would work? Hard hats don't have styrofoam in them, but the protect your head from shit falling onto it.

>it is common for helmets to break without the polystyrene foam compressing at all
How common is "common"?

>According to their senior engineer, in that time they did not see any helmet showing signs of crushing on the inside.
According to Shaquille O'Neal, the Earth is flat.

>In high impact crashes [...] the forces can be so great that a helmet will compress and break in around 1/1000th of a second. The absorption of the initial forces during this very short period of time is unlikely to make a sufficient difference

Does the duration of the absorption really matter? Any absorption is better than no absorption, right? And how unlikely is "unlikely"?

>(Oblique impacts) As the surface of a helmet is some small distance from the surface of the head, again the wearer may have suffered no injury at all if a helmet had not been worn.
"May" as in "I'm pulling this one out of my ass".

>A better indication of the effectiveness of helmets comes from trends in fatal and serious injuries across whole populations of cyclists

No, because helmets are used to prevent head injuries, not other injuries or fatalities. As far as I know, the vast majority of bicycle related fatalities are not caused by head injuries in the first place. A good argument against bicycle helmets would be a rise in head injuries despite mandatory helmet use.

The arguments are all pretty weak and often rely on shady sources. Some of the cited studies also used very small sample sizes.

>not wearing a helmet

You deserve to die/get brain damage then.

Good riddance t b h

>>1073825
Helmets are tested by both dropping them onto flat surfaces and angled surfaces (road and curb simulation). They measure g-forces and brains wearing helmets suffer much less g-force.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alQY9MJr3o8
Found the video.
Anyway while this video shows how shit fake helmets are, it's easily a demonstration as to why helmets are important, considering that there's a dent in the skull of the test dummy wearing the fake helmet and no dent in the real helmet test dummy.

>>1073828
So the protection doesn't come from the styromofam compressing alone? Or does a small compression offer much more protection than the author imagines?

>it's easily a demonstration as to why helmets are important
I'm not saying you're wrong and you probably aren't, but I'm always pretty sceptical about testing this stuff in labs because real life circumstances are much more complex. Will you really hit a curb this way? And if you hit it at an angle, is your level of protection the same? If helmets are tested like this, manufactures will build them to perform well in those test. But will they perform well in real life?

Should I wear a helmet when I ride alone in the woods?
There are no roads, only trees and gravel.
How likely is it to hit one's head on a tree?

>>1073830
You're right in that the tests make the standards, but it's a judgement call to say how well they make it up. The test in question is designed to be easily standardised across multiple laboratories rather than be a completely accurate simulation.
But if you look it's measuring a worst case scenario- 90 degree impact on a pointed bit of curb from however many feet up they were testing.
If you hit it at an angle, the forces involved are dramatically reduced, it's newtonian physics. Oblique impacts are less dangerous than full on impacts.
But a helmet's primary purpose is not to crunch but to spread an impact. How do you break an egg? It may be true that a helmet doesn't help much if your head hits a flat surface, but it helps a fuckton if you hit a pointed bit of road, like a curb. A helmet stops your skull collapsing into your brain and that's a pretty good deal.

>>1073833
>If you hit it at an angle, the forces involved are dramatically reduced
That makes sense now that I think of it.

People who don't wear helmets while road cycling really do seem to have brain damage. With how retarded the average cager is, it's well worth wearing one.


In fact, here's a fun thing you can do. Put a helmet on, and swing a hammer at your head. Not too bad. Now take the helmet off and repeat.

>>1073825
>>1073828
>>1073830
>>1073833
>>1073848

OP returns. Thanks for le rational discussion. I'll be contemplating this good stuff

>>1073826
Life is a drag I'm probably gonna an hero at some point anyway I feel the same way t b h

>>1073813
Get the fuck out of here, casual faggot. By saying "I ride safe enough to not need a helmet" you're saying "I'm a little bitch who never pushes myself to go faster or do difficult things."

>>1073813
you're being a goof.

>>1073533
I thought you meant helmets with a heads up display on that piece of glass in the front.

>>1073533
>can we do this?
no. it's 4chan and there are trolls and fuck you. if you didn't know this already then you are naive, if you did then you shouldn't have posed the question.

anyway, if nothing else a helmet is protection against dickass cops.

>>1073533
>419 dollar fine for not wearing a helmet
>10 dollars for meme piece of foam from supermarket


ez choice senpai

>>1075677
>>419 dollar fine for not wearing a helmet
>keep living in third world shithole

ez choice senpai

>>1073627
you certainly are braver wearing protective gear. and i have fallen a lot before in my life and never hit my head. interestingly ever since i wear a helmet i fell two times and both times landed on my head. when the head is your best protected area you will not try to defend it at all cost.

>>1073825
>>the styrofoam is intended to compress and in this way spread and reduce the force that is passed onto the skull
>But is that true? Is that the only way that it would work? Hard hats don't have styrofoam in them, but the protect your head from shit falling onto it.
Have you seen the inside of a hard hat? No they don't have styrofoam, but they have a suspension system of slightly elastic plastic bands between your head and the outer shell. That serves the same purpose and is less brittle than styrofoam hats that would be compromised by the rough treatment that workhats experience. A cracked styrofoam helmet might as well be no styrofoam helmet.

So yes, that is the only way it could work, senpai. Absorption. If it's due to reboundless plastic bands stretching or styrofoam collapsing is immaterial, but the principle is the same. It's a cushion.

>>1075680
straps get weaker as they deform foam gets harder to compress as it deforms. straps are obviously inferior.

>>1073797
I rode my mountain bike through a cornfield once and caused catastrophic grain damage

>>1073627
>Why should you have to when other "safe" activities don't warrant helmets?

what other "safe" activity that doesn't require or heavily recommend helmets has you moving at speeds similar to cycling?

dumbasses in this thread going "wear a helmet while walking then lol!", you don't walk at 15-25 mph

>>1073807
>Sure, but then why don't you wear a helmet in your car, or walking down the street?

>in a car

airbags, protective cushioning, basically being in a huge metal cage to protect yourself, crumple zones

>walking down the street

low speed, usually hands free, able to react quicker when you fall so you can put your hands out, don't have a bike between your legs, not clipped in

remember kids, wear a helmet or you'll end up retarded like the anti-helmet crowd in this thread

>>1073831
>crash on the street without a helmet
>usually people around who will hopefully come to aid

>crash while riding in the woods alone without a helmet
>nobody around to offer help if you get knocked unconscious
>get eaten by a bear or Deliverance'd

don't risk it

>>1078016
Uh... Driving

In fact, the auto industry stifled safety campaigns for car helmets to prevent driving appearing unsafe and instead promotes cycling helmets. Interesting innit?

>>1078043
read
>>1078017

>>1078094
Those measures aren't sufficient to replace motoring helmets. Car accident head trauma is more common per trip made than cycling head trauma and cardboard crumple zone headband helmets have been proven to more than halve injuries. Walking head injuries - even serious ones - are also more common than cycling head injuries, per mile travelled.
Head injury is simply not a typical characteristic of cycling. Quite the reverse. Cyclists are, compared to other travellers, disproportionally safe from head injury. Arguing for cycling helmets, no matter their anecdotal benefit, is therefore irrational.
Research it, anon.

We have some data points in that helmet laws are effective for motorcycles but not for bicycles. The various states in the US passing and repealing helmet laws and the corresponding injury rates are evidence of both.

The effect of helmets is relatively small, outside the known high risk areas, particularly compared to the effect of car/bicycle interaction.


>>1078098
It seems that the rational thing is to get cagers to wear helmets.

>>1078098
Can you provide sources for this? I often have to defend my decision not to wear a helmet because the safety it provides me is actually less than the effect it has on my subconscious to make me more reckless because of my perceived safety. Usually I'm dismissed because I don't have any data to suggest that the helmet is not as helpful as people think it is.

>>1078098
So... head injuries being rare in cyclists has no relation at all to the high level of helmet usage?

>>1078702
Do you even OP? Also, Copenhagenize at TED is a good introduction.
>>1078705
As luck would have it there are very large populations of unhelmeted cyclists to study. Whole countries, in fact. Helmet usage levels also aren't as high as I think you think they are, and you can compare head injury frequency from one group with the other if you collect the statistic point. Which is done in several countries. You can also compare the rise in helmet usage with the (lack of) drop in head injuries after passing helmet laws, or running campaigns.

This is properly and thoroughly researched. But never mind, I'm sure you can just fling some """obvious truths""" out there from the comfort of your recliner and we'll all be in awe.

Hi there.

I have about twenty years of cycling experience, approximately three thousand miles per year on the low end.

This last weekend I had my fourth serious wreck. As with the other three occasions, it happened because I did something stupid for no good reason.

As with the other three occasions, I was not wearing a helmet.

As with the other three occasions, at no point was my head anywhere near the pavement. I did risk, but happily avoid, serious joint injury such as a rotator cuff injury.

Here's the thing. If I am not wearing a helmet, I choose not to ride in the road or otherwise expose myself to driver stupidity EVER. If I have to sit at a traffic signal for twenty minutes to avoid the shitters while I'm not wearing a helmet, I'll do it.

If I'm riding singletrack, I wear a helmet.
If I'm riding on the road, I wear a helmet.
If I'm riding on MUP, I ride to maximize the enjoyability and safety of myself and all other MUPpets - even if that means I have to slow down and re-accelerate more often than Lance Faggot Armstrong did on his TDF Non-wins.

Helmets are a useful safety device.
But if you are already an idiot, they can't protect you.