To Helmet or Not To Helmet; This is the Question

As a biker, I really think that people should disregard any study that might imply that NOT wearing a helmet is safer than wearing one.

What's 3 inches? Besides, maybe the doctor in his study was actually getting closer to the cars and not the cars getting closer to him. Maybe the helmet subconsciously gave him a false sense of security, so HE felt more comfortable getting closer to passing cars.

Do your self a favor and wear a helmet. Head injuries suck. So listen to the other study by NYC written about in this article:

"We first spied this news in the New York Times, which was interesting because that City, in their own study of a decade of cycling, discovered that of recorded bike fatalities, 97% were not wearing a helmet."

I wouldn't dream of off roading without my helmet - I do wear it on the road, although what actual use it would have if hit by a car I don't know. I can see the psychology why drivers may leave you less room, however a helmet can make you more visible to cars too.

Wow, this is so absurd it is almost beautiful. Hey, go ahead and ride without a helmet based on this whack job's conclusions, it will cleanse the gene pool a bit.

Hey MY, your question of what good a helmet will do is odd. See, its easier to mend broken bones than mend BRAIN DAMAGE. Its easier to kill a human by damaging the brain than any other part of the body. Ever wonder why MOTORCYCLE riders wear helmets? They get hit by cars, crash at highway speeds, and other horrible things that are infinitely worse than bicycle accidents. I guess the helmets do them some good (and they are not all that much more protective than a bike helmet these days)

I used to justify biking in NYC without a helmet. I've fallen off my bike more than enough and had never hit my head, and to me, that was reason enough. When I read that study earlier this year, I was also reading that pretty much all the bicyclists killed this year in NYC weren't wearing helmets. It eventually got through.

Looking back, I realize I was being pretty thick-skulled about the thickness of my skull.

If you have ever seen a bike wreck where the unhelmeted bikers head hits the pavement, you will be a helmet wearer for life after that.

One summer on the lakefront of Chicago an unskilled roller bladder ran into the biker causing her to wreck, smacking her head hard directly into the pavement.

I held a t-shirt on her head to stop the bleeding while an ambulance came. She was completely unconsious and probably will have lifetime mental deficients if she did in fact did live through it. It was a sickening experience. Please, everyone, wear a helmet.

I used to be slightly lax about wearing my helmet, until I wiped out last spring and bounced my head off a hard-packed dirt parking lot. Wearing the helmet saved me a little bump on the head and most likely some nasty road rash on my face.

This was an accident that had nothing to do with traffic -- I went off a curb, hit a rut, and my hand slipped off the bar.

Why is it that the debate surrounding helmets always involves a life-or-death scenario? I've had more accidents caused by potholes, curbs, and my lack of attention then I've had caused by a driver. None of them were extreme situations, but I'd still rather ride away embarrassed than have to stumble to the hospital concussed.

It's bad science, too.

You can't have a guy who is already committed to riding without a helmet go and report on his own behaviours and expect an accurate result.

bereft as it is of any definitive answer

Nonsense, helmets work, there is nothing but compelling evidence Dr Walker notwithstanding.

I see the post accident results often at work when customers come in to buy a new helmet and bring in the old one to show off.

It's beyond me why we persist with this, it's like climate change denialism all over again.

A coworker and I (transportation planners) agree that if you ride naked, drivers will probably give you more leeway.

Actually seams the best thing you can do if you follow the reports logic to its conclusive end; is to wear a helmet with a long wig over top so you look like a woman without a helmet.

I will gladly trade 3 inches of room for the increased chance at life.

This thread is persistent on this site for some reason. I can see why. Bicycles are a huge part of making green living work in a developed country (let alone basic quality of life in undeveloped one).

I wear a helmet and I demand that my children wear their helmets. A helmet is absolutely not a good replacement for good judgement and road riding skills. And I don't mean the kind that keep you in the pack in a hard race. I mean the kind of skills that put you in the safest position in the street as possible.

This study speaks to one thing that is rarely discussed. Cyclists may be dogmeat when they run into a car. But a cyclist can do a lot to influence vehicle drivers. Lane positioning, signaling and proactive route decisions can change vehicle driver's behavior substantially.

What does this all mean? It means that a helmet is safety of a last resort, don't depend on it only, get educated and try to educate cyclists and drivers whenever you can, make yourself visible.

Keep riding!

I'm a long time bicycle rider and a long time motorcycle rider. I say, always wear a helmet. I percieve that the roads have become less safe in recent years. It is most certainly due to cell phone usage. I had gone years without a crash and I have been hit by a car twice this year. Years ago I would not have thought that riding without a helmet was all that risky, but now, no way.
I was hit the Saturday after Thanksgiving while riding my motorcycle. My helmet saved my life or perhaps from a fate worse than death.

This is miserable science. How did he measure how close the cars were getting? Did he just guess? That 2,500 guesses that are likely to be affected by the results that he was looking for. This is hardly an objective study. In economics we call this conjecture.

Have you people been hit on the head before putting a piece of Styrofoam on your head or something?

Helmets are bullshit, just a cheap plot to be seen to do something about the worlds most efficient and economic form of transport.

How will a small piece of Styrofoam on your head protect you against a 2 tonne lump of steel? I suppose if you hear a lie often enough you start to believe it eventually.

There are countries where entire generations grow up using a bike as their primary form of transport. Accidents happen of course everywhere and if you want to fool yourself that you are safer with a "helmet" then go ahead and put one on. But all you are really doing is delay the introduction of real solutions for cyclists. Separate cycle ways, better motorist education/training and so on.

Every one in a while the helmet issue comes up and every time I hear you people regurgitate the same crappy lies about helmets making you safe. They don't, Helmets may protect your skull if you are inclined to fall on your head a lot but that is about it. If a car passes you too close and drags you along you will be mangled into a bloody mess that extends well beyond your skull.

Compulsory helmets does nothing more than provide a false sense of security.

I used to ride a bike pretty much everywhere all my life until about 10 years ago they made wearing these ridiculous pieces of uncomfortable Styrofoam compulsory. On that very day I sold my bike and have soly relied on motorized transport ever since.

So all idiot do-gooders here, have a good look at the stupid arguments you support without thinking thing through. Do you really need to tell me what to do for my health?

Helmets are no panacea. Wear 'em if you want, don't if you don't. Clearly there is no consensus on how effective they are, so just make up your own mind, ok?

Ultimately, the number one way to protect yourself from being hit or killed is to ride predictably and visibly. No one is going to hit you if they can clearly see you (unless they have it in for you, I suppose) and no one will hit you if they understand what you are doing. The number one predictor for crash frequency is lack of experience. Learn what the hazards are - door zones, no lights at night, swerving, riding in the blind spot of cars/trucks, and failing to yield to other traffic with the right of way - and avoid them.

And you can help keep others from hitting you by promoting bicycle awareness and policies that promote bicycling as legitimate vehicular traffic on all roads.

Dinther has unfortunately committed a couple logical fallacies, which I will take the liberty of pointing out.

Dicto Simpliciter (sweeping generalization):
"A helmet will not protect you in all accidents, therefore, a helmet is unneccesary."

Straw Man:
Arguing against cumpulsory helmet laws in a debate about wearing helmets by choice.

While I do agree that the ultimate solution will be changes in urban planning and traffic laws, it's silly to say that one's personal choice to wear a helmet impedes desired changes. It's even sillier for a person to allow compulsory helmet laws to dissuade them from bicycle transportation, unless one cares about personal style more than personal safety and climate change.

i've been driving a bike in large cities, daily, for the last 5 years. never wore a helmet, never had an accident. BUT, i am very careful.
However, this doesnt necessarily mean helmets are useless. i don't like them, but if for example i had children riding bikes i would insist they wore theirs all the time. You can never be too sure about road safety.
In addition, I have recently found a very good safety benefit in the form of a mirror. Keeping an eye on what is going on behind me has saved me lots of times when driving a car. Now i can use a mirror to have traffic in check while cycling as well. I would recommend it to all of you (if not urge you to install a mirror asap)!
And there is the added benefit that a mirror (even a small one) is visible from a car driver's p.o.v. and it gives you a 2 inch space next to the handlebar, that car drivers will not violate in fear of getting their vehicle scratched ;)

Hey Dinther,
Why don't you take a trip the the head-trauma unit at your local hospital and see if you still feel the same way about "ridiculous pieces of uncomfortable Styrofoam." It doesn't always take a smack from a 2-ton truck to give you brain damage or kill you.

I used to not wear a helmet, until i met a guy (a good biker too) who hit a pot hole and got knocked out cold in the middle of the street. Not fun.

I think it's important to note that this study says nothing about the actual effectiveness of helmets in accidents. It's entirely possible that it is true, that wearing a helmet does increase your risk of getting hit, and it still is a good idea to wear a helmet. If the protection a helmet provides outweighs the risk of increase accidents that it brings in, then it's still a net gain to put the helmet on.

Ultimately what this study shows though is that there is not nearly enough data on bicycle safety... The main fact right now is that we need more facts on these issues.

Helmets CAN save a life, but they should be considered a last resort.

They do NOT make you safe and they do not gurantee that you will walk when you have an accident.

The problem I see with bike helmets as well is that they are almost useless if you do a face plant and even if you hit sideways they may not cover enough to help you.

I remember a discussion on a Triathlon list with pros and cons and someone was mentioning that if a rider at the Tour would have worn it, he'd walked from the accident that killed him. This accident had him hit a pillar head first on a mountain descent at a speed of close to 100kph, no helmet in the world will save you at those speeds.

Wear a helmet it MAY save your life, but don't expect it will. It's not a "magic shield" and it can provide a false sense of security, both to you and to the driver who cuts too close.

The way you ride the bike contributes way more to your safety than any piece of equipment could ever provide.

I can't believe the amount of anti-helmet sentiment that still lingers. I thought it was a dead issue long ago. Years ago there were plenty of unhelmeted riders in the pack rides that I do. Now they are rarely seen. Two of the longest holdouts now wear helmets. They wear them because both suffered head injuries. One of the guys wasn't seen in the pack for a year after his crash. I called him a few weeks after his crash and he was barely coherent. Remembering back to the advent of the modern foam helmet it was pure vanity that kept people from wearing helmets.

Some of you assume that wearing Styrofoam is a choice. If it were so here in New Zealand I would not have a problem with that. After all People wear crystals or rabbits feet to ward off bad luck all the time.

In New Zealand it is compulsory to wear Styrofoam and I do take issue with that because it is an excuse so local government doesn't need to deal with the real issues.

In the Netherlands where I grew up as a kid a lot of emphasis was placed on cyclist training that was even part of the primary school curriculum including a practical cycle test conducted by the local police.

Shit happens people and if a guy cracks open his head because he refused to wear a helmet then that is NOT stupid. It is called an accident. Same deal with seatbelts and all those other compulsory safety measures regardless if they are effective or not. What is stupid is speeding, dangerous driving, drunk driving.

Do you wear a Kevlar vest just in case you trip and fall onto a pair of scissors you are holding? You could shift the argument in what is more likely to happen and that will remain a fuzzy area but to curtail peoples freedom of choice is massivly stupid. Something that should by now begin to dawn on the American people as a lot of freedom is being dumped again in the name of security.

How about we all strap ourselves into straight jackets and check ourselves into a padded room in the nearest mental hospital you'd be safe there. Nothing will happen you won't die (You won't live either but never mind that)

Sure I feel sorry for those who end up in hospital but death is a price you pay for life. Something our generation seems to want to ignore.

I take issue with the very first statement in this discussion: "As a biker, I really think that people should disregard any study that might imply that NOT wearing a helmet is safer than wearing one."

Why should evidence and experience not weigh in on an issue of, potentially, life and death?

For many years, I have been very pro-helmet. Recently, however, a friend that I was harassing about the point challenged me to show him hard evidence that he really should be wearing his helmet. Sure, I said, and went off to look.

I found, instead, pretty compelling evidence that if I am NOT (1) under 18, (2) drunk, or (3) driving on a major highway then wearing a helmet while on a bike is no more likely to protect me from serious injury than is wearing a helmet while walking down the sidewalk or while driving a car.

On top of this, there are a number of studies that were set up to document the drop in serious head injuries that resulted from the imposition of mandatory helment laws in some of the nations that have already been discussed here... and which found instead, to their shock, that the law appeared to have INCREASED the rate of serious head injury in bikers. The most common interpretation of this effect is that in every place where a law like this has passed usage of bikes has dropped off, and thus the level of "herd" protection (eg, cars are more careful of bikes because there are so many around and they're used to them) has decreased. While this intepretation can certainly be disputed, the fact that head injuries have repeatedly increased when healmet laws are implimented is pretty clear at this point.

Honestly, when I read all of this, I was shocked. It didn't fit my intuitive expectation - but, that doesn't mean that it's false. And, learning it affected my life: once I'd realized that not wearing a helmet on my ride down a couple residential streets and then along a completely separated bike path through a park to work was increasing my risk of head injury less than not wearing a helmet while walking down the street to get lunch out with coworkers... well, I stopped wearing one. And you know what? No matter how much I'd told myself that my behavior about bike riding wasn't determined by such a stupid issue of a helmet... well, it sure was easier to show up at work looking professional in the mornings despite having ridden in! And, um, why, look at that, my rate of riding instead of bussing increased substantially. And, oh, wow, I lost weight! Look, I need some new cloths!

I guess you've never crashed. I have, many times. And most of those times there was damage to my helmet. Had I not been wearing it the damage would have been to my head. I don't care what a "study" says, I have real world experience. Those that write such things probably don't. It's all academic. When I put on my helmet I don't tell myself, there, now I'm completely safe and I can take risks that I wouldn't take if I weren't wearing one. That's a ridiculous attitude.

Not sure this article is sending the right message. I am someone who has raced mountain bikes, and put many KMs on my road bike. In addition four years ago I had a near-life ending accident after being hit by a vehicle (which cut me off, he never saw me, and I t-boned him). When I came too, the paramedic was very clear - without my helmet they would be scrapping me up - it cracked in 4 places...I had a concusion - nuff said.

Some comments have questioned whether or not a helmet would be of any use in an accident involving a car or vehicle. I commute daily on my bike and my personal bad experience involved a head on collision with a trash truck (a real hunk of metal). From piecing it together afterwards the helmet cracked in half so that my head didn't. A few stitches and a headache later I walked out of the ER fine when I otherwise might have been in pieces without my helmet. I have no doubt that in my case it absolutely saved my life.

In a way its like saying that impact absorbing bumpers on cars dont help in collisions. The whole idea is that they absorb the worst of the frontal or rear force if possible, and at worst enough to keep the body of the car (and the passengers) together. Would you want a car without bumpers just because some accidents occur from the side?

wow. the study wasn't saying: don't wear a helmet. it was giving note to the research that cars drive closer when they see a helmet on a cyclist. just an attempt at facts folks, just so you know, numbers don't always say what you like. but in this case, from what i can tell, it just shows that TO BE A CYCLIST ON THE ROAD, you must exert extra caution. and for chris'sakes folks, keep on your precious helmets!

I wear a full face helmet both on and off road, it has saved my teeth at least twice...

...I'd rather look a prat than look like i've lost most of my face to roadrash...

...let alone the benefits of actually being alive...

Personal experience can not take priority over real data. I've been in more than my share of accidents, and the severity of damage to me or my bike has nothing to do with the damage to my helmet. Going down a hill, I hit a patch of sand, skid and fall. My helmet it totaled, my bike is find and i have a scratch on my wrist and knee. I could say that my helmet saved my life, because of course if it broke, my head would have broken, because the two are roughly equivalent, bone and Styrofoam. The last time I was hit i didn't have my helmet on and way slammed by a car, just about destroying my bike, yet I walked away more or less unharmed. Had i been wearing a helmet, it would of likely shattered, because thats what they are made to do.

Just because you get into an accident and your helmet breaks does not mean that your skull would have broken had you not had a helmet.

The point still stands that bicycle helmets are not made to withstand realistic impacts, such as high speed falls or auto collisions. Rather they are tested against a fall from the saddle to a flat surface while stationary. Any protection against being run over by a truck is a pure coincidence.

That English doctor who did the helmet study was actually hit three times from behind while doing the study. Both times he was wearing his helmet . Lucky, eh?

He also found that wearing a wig with long hair increased the passing clearance.

tOM

I live in the Netherlands, and I have been riding a bike al my life. Here almost every one has one or more bicycles.
On a population of only 16.4 million people there’s an estimated 21.5 million bicycles, and almost no one wears a helmet and many don’t have there lights on at night. And still only 100 people die every year from bicycle accidents. In Belgium there are10.3 million people and an estimated 5.2 million bicycles, and most people wear helmets especially kids. But sadly 135 cyclists died in accidents last year. The difference between Belgian and Dutch roads can explain why fewer cyclist die in the Netherlands. On Belgian roads you ride on the right side of the road (like in most countries) when cars rush by you can get sucked on to the road or under a passing truck. You can also get ran over by a car from behind, "You’ll never know what hit you". On the Dutch roads bicycles are mostly separated from other traffic by a barrier. On narrow roads just a white line and on most main roads a strip of grass or some small bushes. In the city’s the bicycle lane is sometimes put on the right side of the parked cars next to the pavement where you cant get hit by a driver pulling out of a parking space or cars driving to close. If there is more space between cars and bicycles, cars are more likely to notice a cyclist when there turning. Almost every car has a blind spot between what you can see in the mirror and what you see thru the window. If your riding along close to a car, your often in that blind spot. So stay in front or behind cars were they can see you.

Helmets can protect your head in an accident. But if you want protect the rest of your body, I suggest making a bicycle friendly infrastructure where maybe one day helmets are no longer needed for safe cycling.

I think making cyclists ware helmets just creates a false illusion of safety while the danger is still present. Cyclists shouldn’t be forced to wear uncomfortable helmets. Helmets give only a bit of extra safety. Its not a magic hat that will keep you from harm.