"Roger Geffen, Director of Policy at CTC the national cycling charity said: “Once again researchers have unearthed evidence which casts doubts on the usefulness of cycle helmets. They not only provided limited protection - they are only designed for minor falls, not collisions - but there is also evidence that they may increase the risk of collisions happening in the first place, by making either drivers or cyclists less cautious, or indeed by increasing the risks of neck and other injuries.”
I would say it is a massive logical leap to try to connect a study that was looking at LEGISLATION and declare that helmets are not useful in preventing injury. It is a further massive logical leap to attempt to conclude that the reason helmets don’t prevent injury is because it increases the supposed recklessness of people involved.
So, putting aside the legislation angle, as that is theoretical, is your thesis that it is as safe to ride a bike without a helmet as it is with? And if so I assume you do all your riding without a helmet?
This isn’t the only study of this type, just the latest one. They all show the same thing. That helmets are not useful in preventing serious injury. Or if they are the benefit is too small to be significant.
Unfortunately these kind of population surveys are the best data we can get for the effectiveness of helmets. The testing protocols are a joke, and the “helmet saved my life” anecdotes do not square with statistics of actual injury rates.
Perhaps research needs to categorize injuries and which types most often result in fatalities (head/brain, internal, etc.?). Obviously, a helmet won’t/can’t protect everything.
This isn’t the only study of this type, just the latest one. They all show the same thing. That helmets are not useful in preventing serious injury. Or if they are the benefit is too small to be significant.
Unfortunately these kind of population surveys are the best data we can get for the effectiveness of helmets. The testing protocols are a joke, and the “helmet saved my life” anecdotes do not square with statistics of actual injury rates.
The objective measures of effectiveness are accomplished by the helmet testing standards, which likely prescribe a certain amount of acceleration that a human head would be subjected to from a fall of typical ride heights.
The premise that the standards or helmets themselves are ineffective because real-world reductions in head injury statistics aren’t found isn’t true. If you can find one case in which a helmet can be found to have reduced acceleration by some amount, then that helmet has reduced injury. The cloudiness of the statistics could be that people engage in riskier behavior when they feel they are protected, perhaps something like “moral hazard” in economics. There are certainly studies that show drivers will move less for what they perceive to be a “skilled” rider in full cycling gear than a perceived casual rider.
Any statistic involving many humans is bound to be difficult to interpret cleanly, which is probably why the metrics for safety equipment are based on physically measurable reductions in accelerations.
What this study is saying is that rather than legislating helmet use, government should focus on providing safer bike paths that are separated from traffic. It does not address that question of whether helmets protect riders. I agree that the best way to reduce injuries from bike vs car collisions is to keep bikes and cars apart from each other. I am also going to continue to wear my helmet when I ride.
What this study is saying is that rather than legislating helmet use, government should focus on providing safer bike paths that are separated from traffic. It does not address that question of whether helmets protect riders. I agree that the best way to reduce injuries from bike vs car collisions is to keep bikes and cars apart from each other. I am also going to continue to wear my helmet when I ride.
This.
Until the culture shifts away from being so auto-centric and drivers start respecting other modes of transportation, separated bike lanes are ideal.
Look at the cyclists in Denmark or Belgium. Rarely do they wear helmets.
I see people who don’t wear helmets in the same category as people who don’t wear seatbelts. If you want to be stupid and maim/ kill yourself that is fine, but don’t expect us to pay the hospital bills. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way…
This isn’t the only study of this type, just the latest one. They all show the same thing. That helmets are not useful in preventing serious injury. Or if they are the benefit is too small to be significant.
Unfortunately these kind of population surveys are the best data we can get for the effectiveness of helmets. The testing protocols are a joke, and the “helmet saved my life” anecdotes do not square with statistics of actual injury rates.
Right now I can only think of mandatory bicycle helmet laws for children, is there any place that has a mandatory law for adults?
I also can’t tell from the above post if you feel that helmets are unnecessary or if you feel that the helmets we now have are just not good enough. If it’s the latter, be careful what you wish for. As someone who has walked away from a helmet splitting crash with nothing more than a stiff neck, I’m pretty happy with the helmets we now have.
I see people who don’t wear helmets in the same category as people who don’t wear seatbelts. If you want to be stupid and maim/ kill yourself that is fine, but don’t expect us to pay the hospital bills. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way…
I don’t see those groups as similar at all, but if we were to go down that route, then all the diabese who live in McD fall into the same group too I don’t want to be paying for their hospital and ER bills either, yet we all do.
What this study is saying is that rather than legislating helmet use, government should focus on providing safer bike paths that are separated from traffic. It does not address that question of whether helmets protect riders. I agree that the best way to reduce injuries from bike vs car collisions is to keep bikes and cars apart from each other. I am also going to continue to wear my helmet when I ride. I agree with your analysis of the paper. Few additional elements. All quotes from the paper
“A potential explanation for the lack of an effect of helmet legislation is that our study examined injury risk, including both the chance of being in a
crash, as well as the chance that the crash caused a head injury.” Therefore it is impossible to differentiate the effect of legislation on the relationship between helmet wear and head injuries.
on the issue of risk taking increased by wearing a helmet, the authors write: “Others have considered the impact of helmet use on risk-related behaviours. Such studies are not always consistent, but some have findings that could help explain our results. For example, one study found that new male (but not female) helmet users tended to increase their cycling speed and one found that drivers approached a cyclist more closely when he was wearing a helmet” So two studies, mainly showing a small effect in men. No replication of the studies, something to be done to compare data.
on the type of injury, there is an artefact in the method: “The injury data set was a full enumeration of inpatient discharge data from all acute care hospitals in the country. These injuries required a hospital stay, so the study focus was more serious cycling injuries.” I don’t blame the authors who acknowledge the issue. However the artefact implies that accidents where the cyclist was protected by the helmet, did not report to the hospital and therefore were not recorded.
The authors did not have direct data on whether cyclists were wearing their helmet or not at the time of the accident. They only used a survey where cyclists were asked how often they wear their helmet if they have cycled in the past 12 months. Therefore it is impossible to draw direct relationship between severity of the injury and wearing helmet.
This is not a bad study. What is bad is to try to use it to draw conclusions unsupported by the data and its analysis. I will also carry on wearing my helmet.
Australia has had mandatory helmet laws all bicycle riders for many years. After passing the law bicycle riding plummeted and never recovered.
This isn’t groundbreaking research. I got into it a bit on the proposed helmet legislation for California. There is a big difference between wearing a bike helmet and laws requiring persons to wear bicycle helmets. There is plenty of research on the latter and all of it that I was able to find concluded that such laws accomplish nothing other than discouraging people from riding, so much so that mandatory helmet laws may have a net negative public health impact if you look at reduced physical activity, people choosing cars instead of a bike, more cars on the road, bigger roads to accommodate more cars that also end up being less safe for bicycles and pedestrians and discourage bicycling and walking, putting more people in cars, and, finally, poorer air quality and higher GHG emissions. Research concludes that the better way to make bicycling safer is with better laws and better street design and infrastructure.
Also, if you look at Denmark, the Netherlands, and most other European countries, nobody wears helmets. There is a big difference between riding for sport, fitness, or recreation and just riding down the street to the grocery store. For the US, the big effort is getting people to do the last one.
I don’t care what the study says…in fact, I didn’t even bother reading it.
I’ll continue to wear my helmet when riding, and I’ll even cover it in tin foil if need be.
^^ This. The melon-shaped depression in the windshield below was caused by my helmet–anecdotally, of course. Honestly, I’d also cover mine in tinfoil if it didn’t ruin aero effects.
I see people who don’t wear helmets in the same category as people who don’t wear seatbelts. If you want to be stupid and maim/ kill yourself that is fine, but don’t expect us to pay the hospital bills. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way…
Considering how often head injuries are the result of car accidents (around 50%), maybe you should wear your helmet in your car as well.
The premise that the standards or helmets themselves are ineffective because real-world reductions in head injury statistics aren’t found isn’t true. If you can find one case in which a helmet can be found to have reduced acceleration by some amount, then that helmet has reduced injury.
Actually you don’t know that.
A helmeted head is quite a bit larger than a bare head, so it will strike the ground with greater frequency.
Human heads are quite resistant against direct force impacts, but have a very low tolerance of sudden rotation. Helmets protect against the former, but make the later worse.
I don’t want to be paying for their hospital and ER bills either, yet we all do.