If there's a law requiring helmet use, then that's one thing. If there's not, it's another matter entirely.

RP

"I'm sure none of you talk on your cell phone while driving and are always sure to obey single traffic law as well."

I don't use the cell phone while driving. That's what the voice mailbox is for. I also do obey the traffic laws. I have noticed that the vast majority of people speed, often excessively, and then get stopped at the next traffic signal. I also notice how few people actually stop at a stop sign - most slow down to 5 mph or so and then cruise on through if there is no traffic.

I always use a helmet. It has saved me more than a few times. My 8 year old son also is required to wear a helmet when he rides although almost none of his friends do. He has gotten so used to wearing the helmet though, he just puts it on automatically. At his school the kids are required to wear a helmet if they ride their bike to school. I ride to school with him and I am the only parent who wears a helmet.

There really is no good excuse to not wear a helmet, but it is a personal choice. It's really only a factor for personal safety, unlike not wearing a seat belt which can cause a person to lose control of a vehicle in an emergency because they were thrown from their position behind the wheel.

I rarely ever see any serious cyclists not wearing a helmet. When someone is biking 100+ miles weekly they know the importance of safety and the possibility that an unforeseen incident may cause them to be thrown from the bike.

<< I went to a group ride last week and I forgot to put my helmet in my car. So I rode with my baseball cap. Whatever.


and if you weren't such a cool guy, we would not have let you ride with us without a helmet ;-)

Faris Al Sutan has been in town for a while tearing up the mountains and I have yet to see him riding "with" a helmet on.

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Mike Plumb, TriPower MultiSports
Professional Running, Cycling and Multisport Coaching, F.I.S.T. Certified
http://www.tripower.org

The only real reason anyone needs not to wear a helmet is the fact that they simply don't want to. I agree with wearing a helmet. I wear mine 99 percent of the time, and even on those rare occasions when I don't wear one, I feel a bit strange. All I'm saying is that it's a personal choice (if there's no helmet law in your municipality) whether or not a cyclist wears a helmet. If someone is willing to take that risk, so be it. What concern is it to me if Rider X goes out on a training ride without a helmet? I frankly don't care. It's their noggin and they're responsible if they have an accident. If there are legal issues, such as on group rides, that require helmets, I can understand. Everybody gets so emotional when they see a cyclist out riding without a helmet, and I don't get it. If somebody wants to ride without a skid lid, I for one don't care.

RP

[reply]-The "helmet" people also use good reasoning while as I said I'm still waiting for one good reason not to wear a helmet.[/reply]

A lady friend of mine tried to dodge a squirrel that ran across in front of her (I would have mowed it down like normal), proceeded to lose her balance, flipped off to the right and fell. She hit the railing with her shoulder and caught the chinstrap on the edge of a railing...broke her neck. Without the helmet she would have likely sustained minor injuries. As it is, she's lucky to be alive, and even luckier to be walking around today.

As for me, I wear a helmet when I expect to be going over 30mph or when testing new equipment. Frequently on path rides I don't wear a helmet. It's personal choice, all you socialists who yell about the "common good" need to calm the hell down. I understand the risks and choose to accept them. I also find that with the helmet my peripheral vision is much reduced, and the wind noise from the chinstrap makes it very tough to hear what's around me. I almost got tagged by a car because I couldn't hear him coming up behind me and wobbled a bit when I looked over my left shoulder to see if there was a car there. Without the helmet I would have known where the car was, how far from me, how fast he was closing, and possibly even what type of car.

That said I have also only crashed WHILE wearing a helmet (since highschool at least). Not once did the helmet sustain even a scratch. Years of Judo training teaches you how to roll. Maybe when I crashed with the helmet on I subconsciously felt safe and was less attentive. Maybe it's fate. Either way, there are a lot of pluses and minuses to helmets. Don't ride in packs or pacelines and your chances of taking a dive drop by more than half.

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It's not against the law to eat a dog turd, but I don't recommend that either.

Gary Mc

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Gary Mc
Did I mention I did Kona

When I was 22 (a little while ago) I was doing the hilliest ride we could manage in this part of the world, which is pretty frikkin hilly (coal country in central/northwestern PA) and hot (July). On a big climb, something like 3 miles, I took off my helmet and looped it over the bars. I got to the top and decided to wait for a short flat section on the way down the hill to put it back on. I then hit a bump at about 30 and got a concussion when the helmet flipped up and hit me in the head. I had to stop to reorient myself, then threw up 3 times on the way home. The helmet cracked (one of those big assed bell hockey looking things that was pretty modern back then) and I was out of it for a couple of days. The doctor laughed his ass off when I tried to explain what happened. That was almost worse than the concussion. My Lucky Day!



Oh, yeah, I remember what this was about...wear your helmet!

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"Maybe you should just run faster..." TM

It's not against the law to eat a dog turd, but I don't recommend that either.

Gary Mc
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Gary,

Why o Why? Do you really think those people were all insane?

Was it hot? Maybe they were more comfortable? Why does it matter so much to you. Let it go.

I leave my helmet on going up long hills because I have nowhere else to put it, not because it is making me any safer. Again, point me to some data that shows it makes cycling any safer under these conditions.

Trixy

Well, riders riding without a helmet does affect me. When they crash, they are more likely to suffer head injuries. Head injuries are expensive and drive up everyone's health care costs.

Recently I was heading away for a weekend of riding. I forgot my helmet when I was severl hundred km from home. I stopped at the first Walmart equivalent and picked up a cheap one for the weekend. Now when I go away, I take 2 helmets with me in case someone else forgets theirs.

Unless you forget, like I did, I wonder what other excuse might be acceptable for riding without a helmet. It has been shown that helmets work. Tehy don't make injury disappear but the do improve the odds. Wear a helmet. Simple.

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TriDork

"Happiness is a myth. All you can hope for is to get laid once in a while, drunk once in a while and to eat chocolate every day"

tridork wrote:

Well, riders riding without a helmet does affect me. When they crash, they are more likely to suffer head injuries. Head injuries are expensive and drive up everyone's health care costs.
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No they don't.

Insurance company outlays from head injuries suffered from cyclist not wearing helmets vs those that do are insignicant compared to total health insurance cost.

Show me the data otherwise. There is none.

I'm not angry, upset, or irritated by people who ride without helmets, but I am curious about them. I don't make any assumptions about their mental health.

You are correct, wearing a helmet doesn't make cycling safer, never said it did. Wearing a helmet makes crashes more survivable by reducing the severity of injuries. That's the point.

Gary Mc

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Gary Mc
Did I mention I did Kona

I think Seinfeld summed this one up best:

"There are many things you can point to as proof that the human is not smart. But my personal favorite would have to be that we needed to invent the helmet. What was happening, apparently, was that we were involved in a lot of activities that were cracking our heads. We chose not to avoid doing those activities but, instead, to come up with some sort of device to help us enjoy our head-cracking lifestyles. And even that didn't work because not enough people were wearing them so we had to come up with the helmet law. Which is even stupider, the idea behind the helmet law being to preserve a brain whose judgment is so poor, it does not even try to avoid the cracking of the head it's in."

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Searching for the bliss of ultimate exertion.

ROTFLMAO

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_______________________________________________________________

"the trouble with normal is - it always gets worse"

- Cockburn

HL Mencken actually ... Those Baltimorians can be pretty insightful at times.

"There is water at the bottom of the ocean." - David Byrne

"You are what you is." - Frank Zappa

"Quoth the raven ... nevermore." - Edgar Allen Poe





I digress, sorry.



The other night I was riding home on my faux-SS-messenger bike from my weekly school cleaning duty at my daughter's school - Catholic, of course. I passed trio of teens on their BMXer's, two boys and a girl.

"Where's your helmets, kids???"

"We don't need helmets. We're over twelve." Apparently there's a rule that under twelve, you have to wear a helmet.

"Oh, so you can't afford them." (Don't know where I came up with that gem.)

A chorus of "Fuck yous" and "Assholes"

"You guys do tricks on your rides??? Know Matt Hoffman??? Dennis McCoy / DMC??? Gonna be in the X-Games, do the Dew, make some cash???"

"Yeah, what about it???"

"Can't get in without a helmet. Sorry."

That kinda shut 'em up.

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Is the helmet/non helmet divide to do with age ?

My bike club is over 100 years old, and we've lots of guys in the 60+ category - most of whom never bother with helmets. The younger guys do though.

Not looking for more pro/anti rhetoric -just curious.

I'm 37 and been riding for about 23 years - and I usually wear a helmet.

a guy i work with recently had a family member die from a head injury he received when he lost his footing while walking to his table in a restaurant. I guess he should have been wearing a helmet.

A couple of winters ago I slipped on some ice and smacked my head on the concrete while walking out to my car from work. I guess I should have been wearing a helmet.

The secretary in our office broke her wrist and nose, and had two black eyes when she tripped while running down a hill. I guess she should have been wearing a helmet.

It seems to me the "no helmet" folks you are referring to aren't necessarily advocating NEVER wearing a helmet...only that you should have a choice to do so or not. I wouldn't advocate going without a helmet when you're hauling ass down a road with cars traveling at high speeds buzzing by you. However, I don't think it's necessary to wear a helmet while tooling around my neighborhood at speeds slower than my running pace either. Obviously you're at risk of suffering head injuries when on your own two feet.

It seems to me the "always wear a helmet whenever you even think about getting on a bike" folks are the ones who tend to get ramped up about the subject.

the whole "escalating health care premiums due to head injuries caused by not wearing a helmet while riding your bike at < 10 mph" argument is a big load of BS.

btw...I drove 1 mile to the corner store last night to get ice cream without my seat belt on too.

the whole "escalating health care premiums due to head injuries caused by not wearing a helmet while riding your bike at < 10 mph" argument is a big load of BS.



Tell that to the family of a friend of mine who rode his bike to a ball game doing about 5 km/h. He went down hit his head. Paralized for 4 years and now he is dead because of this.

I have also witnessed another friend get up close and personal with the inside rear wheel of a transport trailer. Yes she got tossed, she spent 3 months in the hospital with her jaw shut. Took about a year before she could ride again. Luckily she was wearing a helmet, otherwise she too would be dead.

Why is it the simplest things are the hardest for people to understand?

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Scott McNamee
Cranks Bicycle Shoppe

Many years ago I was crossing Chestnut Street in Philly at 16th Street. An older woman stepped off the curb, not noticing the SEPTA bus to her left. He laid on the horn, she stopped herself but still slipped and fell into the street. The rear wheels ran over her head. The tires must have been way underinflated. She got up started cursing a blue streak and beat the hell out of the driver, with her pocketbook.



HE should have been wearing a helmet.

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I guess we should start bitching about people who slip and fall while on their own two feet and suffer head injuries for driving up our health care costs too.

btw...I also know of a guy who died last winter while standing still on his downhill ski's. yes, he was at a ski center...but he wasn't even skiing yet. one second he's standing there talking to his kid, the next he's lieing on the ground dead because his head hit the ice so hard.

So are you telling me that this family friend of yours drove up your health care premiums? I'm highly doubtful of that.

personal choice.

I don't get why you don't get this.

Mike,

Thanks for the insightful post about Faris.

I think Faris's sponsors will love to hear that. I am somewhat "connected" to the organization who sponsors him and his team.

You can tell him that, if you see him next time.

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adrialin

(BOMK, racing drug and supplement free since 1985)

Ok, so these people were exercising, doing something that gives health benefits that outweigh the risks, whilst not putting other people at risk. Why aren't you simply happy to see this?

"Insurance company outlays from head injuries suffered from cyclist not wearing helmets vs those that do are insignicant compared to total health insurance cost."


Unless you show real data from accidents with helmets versus accidents without helmets (with a reference, please), your point is as invalid as any other from your camp.

"No they don't" doesn't really cut it for me. Makes your post "insignificant".

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adrialin

(BOMK, racing drug and supplement free since 1985)

How many times have you seen a family out for a bike ride with a kid in the baby seat all strapped up in their little helmet and both parents without? After many years of seeing this I asked a couple how well their kid would like watching them drooling in their soup for the rest of his/her life after they get themselves a brain injury. You just can't imaging the #%@&*^^%^&^%$$! I got with that question.

I rode for my first year sans helmet. My nephew's new bride worked in a head injury clinic and aked me politely over and over again to wear a helmet. When I couldn't stand hearing her and my wife one more time, I bought and wore a helmet. On my first ride with my new helmet, a 70 year old guy in a pair of those "I can't see shit sungasses" made a left turn into a driveway and launched me 7 feet into the air over the roof of his old Nissan and continued on into the bank where he had some business to transact. I landed on the street, squarely on my head splitting the helmet in two flipped over on my back arnering some fine road rash in the process. The bike had a tacoed front wheel bent fork, crank was wrapped around the BB and actually was repairable. Other than the road rash and some soft tissue damage, I was OK. Needless to say, I am one big fan of the helmet rule.

Buckle up!

I guess because I don't understand people making personal choices that are potentially harmful and have little or no return in any other way.

I don't understand not wearing your seatbelt. Sure it's a perosonal choice, but how does wearing a seatbelt negatively effect you? Same goes for a helmet. It's like someone handing you a 100$ with no strings attached and saying...nah I don't wan. Personal choice, sure, but makes no sense to me.

~Matt