Complacent cylists urged to start using their heads -- and helmets

jaycummins

you dont have to if you dont want to. but when your about to go head first into the curb, you'll wish you had worn your helmet. until then just hope it never happens

Mint Sauce

tbh, i have not always worn my helmet, like many cyclists, no mater how experieced, i have landed on most parts of my body, doing both mountian biking and road racing, including my face and head, thankfully no more than a blood injury or grazing and dented pride,

i go on the ocasional club run, and take part in an annual charity run, which both inforce a no helmet no ride policy, which obvoiusly for safety and insurance reasons i have no problem in compling to,

but now and again, i like to have that wind in my hair, unrestricted feeling, that you ocasionaly get with a lid on your head, yes i know its silly, and if i'm going on a long cycling, with speed on sprinting in mind as part of my run, and considering the lack of curtesy from other road users, yes its one of the first things i'm looking for when going out the door, especaily if i'm wearing cleats, and cant always release them in a hurry

NewDubliner

jaycummins wrote:

you dont have to if you dont want to. but when your about to go head first into the curb, you'll wish you had worn your helmet. until then just hope it never happens

That logic could apply to all activities, not just cycling. Maybe helmets should be compulsory for people leaving pubs?

Ghost Rider

Only people leaving pubs on bicycles, I'd have thought.

NewDubliner wrote:

That logic could apply to all activities, not just cycling. Maybe helmets should be compulsory for people leaving pubs?

skidpatches

I'm tempted to jump sides. Another reason to wear a helmet...
http://www.singletracks.com/blog/?p=407

Ghost Rider

If you regularly cycle past The George pub, that could well be a concern...

skidpatches wrote:

I'm tempted to jump sides. Another reason to wear a helmet...
http://www.singletracks.com/blog/?p=407

HJ Simpson

Do a lot of bears drink in the George?

rubadub

HJ Simpson wrote:

Do a lot of bears drink in the George?

I think "bear" is slang for a big hairy gay bloke.

I think BS 19304:C means the helmet covers bear attacks.

That logic could apply to all activities, not just cycling. Maybe helmets should be compulsory for people leaving pubs?

I have suggested drinking helmets before! a huge amount of A&E admissions are due to drunkeness. If everybody started wearing them you might have threads like this in 10 years with people saying they never go drinking without it. At this stage it is laughable to some, same way some people would have found the idea of cycling helmets laughable 30 years ago.

jman0

somewhere i read a blurb that suggested motorists would benefit of helmet wearing more than cyclists, due to the number of them incurring minor head injuries in crashes.
Maybe we should start a campaign, you know for health and safety reasons.

skidpatches

jman0 wrote:

somewhere i read a blurb that suggested motorists would benefit of helmet wearing more than cyclists, due to the number of them incurring minor head injuries in crashes.
Maybe we should start a campaign, you know for health and safety reasons.

thanks to seat belts, air bags and impact protection, car drivers are infinitely safer now than they were 30 years ago. This is the main reason why they now drive like lunatics endangering pedestrians and cyclists. Safety features in cars set out to cushion people from the consequences of their own folly.

the last thing we need are helmet clad motorists, who would then think they are invincible and drive acccordingly.

Victor

Ghost Rider wrote:

Only people leaving pubs on bicycles, I'd have thought.

50% of all acquired brain injuries are received while drunk. The campaign is mis-orientated.

zorkmundsson

i've only taken one spill off the bike, and was very glad i had my helmet on.

turning onto the cycle path off the street on that bridge after fairview. very rainy day, was prob going too fast, didn't turn sharp enough, over i went, skidded for about ten yards on shoulder and helmet.

was not thinking "statistically, these pedestrians helping me up should be wearing helmets too!", i can tell you.

blorg

That's anecdotal though. Maybe you wouldn't have hit your head at all if you weren't wearing a helmet (it increases the volume and thus the likelihood of your hitting.)

I've had my share of sideways slides (no helmet) and have never hit my head during one.

zorkmundsson

blorg wrote:

That's anecdotal though. Maybe you wouldn't have hit your head at all if you weren't wearing a helmet (it increases the volume and thus the likelihood of your hitting.)

I've had my share of sideways slides (no helmet) and have never hit my head during one.

oh it's totally anecdotal. but to be honest, i can say that my wearing a helmet does not make me cycle more recklessly. i take your point though.

blorg

zorkmundsson wrote:

oh it's totally anecdotal. but to be honest, i can say that my wearing a helmet does not make me cycle more recklessly. i take your point though.

I'm not suggesting it makes you cycle more recklessly at all, I'm referring to the point that the cycle helmet increases the volume of your head thus making it more likely that you are going to hit it against something simply because there is more there to hit (I don't think this increases the risk of injury, but I do think it makes it more likely that you are going to experience a head impact and thus mark on the cycle helmet.)

Ghost Rider

Interesting argument, that one. Never heard it before.

By the way, this thread just keeps going and going. If only the human skull were as resilient...

blorg wrote:

I'm not suggesting it makes you cycle more recklessly at all, I'm referring to the point that the cycle helmet increases the volume of your head thus making it more likely that you are going to hit it against something simply because there is more there to hit (I don't think this increases the risk of injury, but I do think it makes it more likely that you are going to experience a head impact and thus mark on the cycle helmet.)

dub_skav

One of my major arguments is about the increased radius of the head. As discussed in other threads I believe this leads to increased likelihood of concussion and increased torsional effect on the spine in the case of your helmet hitting the ground.

I know this thread is nowhere near reaching a concensus but at least there are interesting points being raised on both sides.

Tayto2000

I wear a helmet when cycling, and I cycle a lot. The wearing of a helmet in itself has many effects which have been mentioned already in this thread but a helmet should be the final flourish on the entire effort of avoiding brain injury, not the sum total of this effort.

Risk management is something pactised daily by all of us to one degree or another. This involves identifying a risk and then taking steps to reduce or eliminate the risk. Taking in this case the risk of brain injury while riding a bicycle (Ignoring for the moment the risk of other injuries to which helmets are not relevant), the hierarchy of risk control can be applied.

Managing the risk of sustaining brain injury while cycling a bicycle:

1. Eliminate: Stop cycling. Sadly I think a lot of people have taken this option in the face of ferocious urban traffic.

2. Substitute: In this case analogous to no. 1, find a different method of travel.

3. Reduce: Reducing the number of journeys made would reduce risk but is not practical, try telling your boss you'll only be coming in 3 days a week to reduce your risk of a head injury.

4. Adapt: I don't think there is a huge amount of change that can be made to the mechanical process of cycling itself (ie pushing the pedals and steering) that would improve safety. Not very relevant here.

5. Technical Progress: If anything modern bikes are easier to cycle at speed but they should be immune to structural failure or anything similar that could cause or contribute to an accident.

6. Restricted areas: Don't want to get into an argument about cyclepaths here but this is the intention behind them at least. Isolating the cyclist from traffic is intended to increase safety.

7. Multiple controls: This covers the most practical risk control, training. Experience and training in riding in traffic are the best methods of defense against brain injury while cycling and of course it is relevant to all aspects of cycling, not just injury avoidance.

8. Planned maintenance: Keeping the bicycle roadworthy and well maintained is essential. Brake failure coming into a crossroads is not good.

9. Personal Protective Equipment: Note the official wording on this: "This should be used only as a last resort, after all other control measures have been considered, as a short term contingency during maintenance/ repair or as an additional protective measure." In other words, the wearing of a helmet (PPE) is absolutely the last measure that should be taken to avoid brain injury. This doesn't necessarily mean it is pointless - it's an additional protective measure but one that comes after all else has been exhausted.

But training, road condition, cyclelanes, bike roadworthiness etc should all be addressed ahead of the decision whether or not to wear a helmet.

oobydooby

Tayto, is that your own contribution or is it from somewhere else? (It's excellent by the way, but you mentioned 'the official wording')

Tayto2000

I have a health an safety qualification, part of which involves risk analysis and management. The hierarchy of control measures is standard, it's applied to any identified risk in the workplace. You can google it, or this particular wording was taken from here:

http://www.gcal.ac.uk/healthandsafety/forms/Risk%20assessment%20guidance%20doc%203.pdf

Obviously there's far more risks involved in riding a bicycle than just brain injury, but I think that it's the one most relevant to helmet use.

DITTKD

oobydooby wrote:

Tayto, is that your own contribution or is it from somewhere else? (It's excellent by the way, but you mentioned 'the official wording')

It's the standard Health and Safety Risk Assesssment Procedure wording that's used by all building sites/ tradesmen etc. for all things that can cause an injury, applied in this case to cycling. I think it comes from the ISO and/or the HSA guidelines.
But basically, if a Health and Safety professional were to analyse cycling as a process with Health and Safety risks, that's how he'd break it down.



EDIT: GAH! Too slow!

oobydooby

Both 'Health and Safety' and 'Risk Management' have jumped up a notch in my esteem :cool: Thanks

cyclopath2001

DITTKD wrote:

But basically, if a Health and Safety professional were to analyse cycling as a process with Health and Safety risks, that's how he'd break it down.

How would that process relate to going up a ladder and cleaning one's the window of a two-storey house. Would it prescribe a safety helmet?

Also, the helmets worn by construction workers, do they contain shock-absorbing material like cycle helmets & are they secured by a strap so that they say attached in the event of a fall?

I've often wondered just how much protection those helmets offered.

Tayto2000

For cleaning a two storey house you could control the risk of injury from a fall at step one, eliminate the ladder. Most companies now use those long flexible wands to clean upper storey windows on small buildings, faster and safer.

If not, wearing a helmet would again come last as a control ahead of setting things up right, ladder maintenance etc etc. And if PPE were to be used it would be more likely to be a safety harness, not a helmet.

Builder's helmets aren't designed to protect against the owner falling on them they're to protect against things dropping onto the person's head. They don't have padding or a strap, they're just a shell with a cradle for the skull and don't offer a huge amount of protection. On a building site they would be relying more on safe systems of work, training and following procedure to protect the workers than hoping a small plastic helmet will save someone who has accidentally had a 5-ton concrete pipe section dropped on them by a crane.

bikergal

Would not dream of getting up on a bike without a helmet... I cringe when i see others on bikes without them...

Victor

Tayto2000 wrote:

6. Restricted areas: Don't want to get into an argument about cyclepaths here but this is the intention behind them at least. Isolating the cyclist from traffic is intended to increase safety.

Again without wanting to get into the cycle path argument, their primary use is progress, not safety.

Tayto2000 wrote:

Builder's helmets aren't designed to protect against the owner falling on them they're to protect against things dropping onto the person's head.

They also provide protection against injury from upward and sidewards movement of the head towards a fixed or sharp object.

Of course the increased diameter problem raises its head(!) again and its not unknown for people to hit their helmets off say scaffolding, even when they duck, simply because they needed to duck more because of the helmet.

Tayto2000

Victor wrote:

Again without wanting to get into the cycle path argument, their primary use is progress, not safety.

True, the safety aspect comes about as a side effect of isolating from traffic. Of course it's not much use if it's badly designed and cuts you in and out of a main road every twenty feet...

Victor wrote:

They also provide protection against injury from upward and sidewards movement of the head towards a fixed or sharp object.

True. Potato/potahto

Victor wrote:

Of course the increased diameter problem raises its head(!) again and its not unknown for people to hit their helmets off say scaffolding, even when they duck, simply because they needed to duck more because of the helmet.

And hitting helmets off things is a problem...? I sometimes catch my top on doorhandles when I'm going into a room, doesn't mean I'm going to start going around naked to avoid it happening.

rp

Tayto2000 wrote:

And hitting helmets off things is a problem...?

Well, it'll could get expensive, if you follow the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) recommendations:
"return to manufacturer for inspection or destroy after impact, impact damage may not be visible"
You wouldn't want to be cycling around with a useless piece of plastic strapped to you head, would you?

cyclopath2001

Tayto2000 wrote:

Builder's helmets aren't designed to protect against the owner falling on them ...... they would be relying more on safe systems of work, training and following procedure to protect the workers than hoping a small plastic helmet will save someone who has accidentally had a 5-ton concrete pipe section dropped on them by a crane.

To be consistent, properly padded and secured helmets should be used by builders & on the road, only properly licensed operatives should be in charge of dangerous equipment like cars?

Tayto2000

rp wrote:

Well, it'll could get expensive, if you follow the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) recommendations:
"return to manufacturer for inspection or destroy after impact, impact damage may not be visible"
You wouldn't want to be cycling around with a useless piece of plastic strapped to you head, would you?

I'm talking about builder's helmets in this context, I would hope hitting your head off scaffolding while cycling isn't a common problem.