A pretty interesting article I stumbled upon. An excerpt:
Yet when it comes to bike helmets, I later learned, we’re all wearing decorative versions of the same Model T: a thick foam liner (actually expanded polystyrene, or EPS) attached to a thin plastic outer shell. The basic setup hasn’t changed much since the first one was sold in 1975.
That classic design deserves serious plaudits. The $40 helmet is one of the great success stories of the past half-century. Like seat belts, air bags, and smoke detectors, bike helmets save countless lives every year. They do a stellar job of preventing catastrophic skull fractures, plus dings and scrapes from low-hanging tree branches and other common nuisances.
One of the technologies they are using to adress this is MIPS, currently only beginning to enter the bike helmet market. I think POC is leading the way with one MIPS version of their top end road and MTB helmets.
Not surprising - football helmets don’t really prevent concussions either. I had a good spill towards the end of this season and got a solid concussion. They’re really hard to prevent with a helmet.
This 2013 Bicycling article was featured in their print magazine last fall. I tried to get my hands on a Scott Lin helmet but could not find one in my size for sale in (2013) this country. I guess most of us will have to wait until the Giro and Bell models hit the retail stores.
You do not wear a helmet to prevent concussions, you wear one to prevent your brains from spilling out onto the pavement. Sure it will be great if we improve them to help with concussions, but that was not their primary design.
As a neurologist, I don’t find this weird at all. Much of the cause of concussion and other forms of closed (that is without a skull fracture) traumatic brain injury, is the acceleration/deceleration and rotational forces that affect the brain floating around inside the skull. I don’t see how anything that you put around your head would change how fast your brain decelerates compared to your skull, when everything all of a sudden comes to a stop. Theoretically, you could have a serious TBI without anything actually touching your head, if your head quickly comes to a stop (provided most of the time this is caused by something causing an impact on the skull, thus the theoretical).
From what I remember, helmets reduce the risk of death by reducing skull fractures and intracranial hemorrhage.
I can’t speak to whether or not a cycling helmet prevents concussions, but personally, wearing a helmet has saved a large portion of my scalp from being ripped off.
I do not think anyone wears a helmet thinking they product against concussions. As others have mentioned, I wear a helmet to prevent my brains from being splattered all of the road and being able to see my kids grow older. I know full well that a concussion can happen no matter what I am wearing for protection.
As a neurologist, I don’t find this weird at all. Much of the cause of concussion and other forms of closed (that is without a skull fracture) traumatic brain injury, is the acceleration/deceleration and rotational forces that affect the brain floating around inside the skull. I don’t see how anything that you put around your head would change how fast your brain decelerates compared to your skull, when everything all of a sudden comes to a stop.
I do not think anyone wears a helmet thinking they product against concussions. As others have mentioned, I wear a helmet to prevent my brains from being splattered all of the road and being able to see my kids grow older. I know full well that a concussion can happen no matter what I am wearing for protection.
I guess the comments on this thread simply prove the point of the article: that selling a helmet that potentially reduces the possibility and/or severity of a concussion is a hard sell unless the regulatory bodies intervene…
As is mentioned in the article, the MIPS system is designed specifically to change how fast ones brain decelerates compared to the skull, so the possibility certainly exists. Just because the possibility always exists of a concussion, doesn’t mean I don’t want to reduce its likelihood or severity if possible.
You do not wear a helmet to prevent concussions, you wear one to prevent your brains from spilling out onto the pavement. Sure it will be great if we improve them to help with concussions, but that was not their primary design.
You do not wear a helmet to prevent concussions, you wear one to prevent your brains from spilling out onto the pavement. Sure it will be great if we improve them to help with concussions, but that was not their primary design.
You do not wear a helmet to prevent concussions, you wear one to prevent your brains from spilling out onto the pavement. Sure it will be great if we improve them to help with concussions, but that was not their primary design.
Speaking as a neurosurgeon… EXACTLY!!!
Really??
Question your credentials, as you seem to discount that the brain (although it has it’s own buffer against concussions), would not benefit from another layer with similar function.
Also, if you get a person with a split brain on your table, the helmet would have done nothing to prevent this.
Bike helmets protect best at low speed, sharp object impacts. Every Premed student knows that.
You do not wear a helmet to prevent concussions, you wear one to prevent your brains from spilling out onto the pavement. Sure it will be great if we improve them to help with concussions, but that was not their primary design.
This!
My wife works in a major hospital and has seen her share of trauma cases. Their running joke, from a motorcycle helmet standpoint, is that they exist only so the next of kin can positively ID the body.
This is one of the reasons she’ll never let me get a motorcycle. Well…this and our two girls.
My wife got a concussion while wearing a helmet. From what we can tell, she’d have had the same concussion without a helmet but the damage would otherwise have been much worse.
She was biking one way and ran into another cyclist who was biking the other (for Philly folks, on Kelly Drive path heading away from the Art Museum, past Fall Bridge and along where there’s merging traffic). We think her chin hit the other guys shoulder. No bike helmet would have prevented that.
She went right down then, probably already knocked out. Helmet came in handy then.