[monksy]

The guy sounds insane. Simple physics indicates that the longer the collision the less force applied will be.

The only reason that the individual states that wearing a helmet is a hinderence is:

1. You don't look as fashionable (the words are "less human")

2. Drivers see you more as a human when you're not wearing one.

I would venture to say that if a driver notices you not wearing a helmet, the assumption is that the biker is an idiot and they would be more cautious around them. (No one really wants to hit a biker) Additionally this doesn't really fix the problem. Many bikers get into an incident with cars for reasons such as:

1. The biker was not seen by the driver until it was too late. (Lack of awareness/being used to them on the road)

2. Biker cutting off the driver

3. Road rage (on the car's side): It happens but I would suggest it less common than claimed.

4. Biker not following the rules of the road. (Biking up the wrong way, ignoring stoplights/stopsigns etc)

[jdietrich]

>The guy sounds insane. Simple physics indicates that the longer the collision the less force applied will be.

The physics involved are a lot more complicated than you think.

To give one of many relevant examples:

Bicycle helmets are tested purely against linear impacts, where the head hits squarely against a flat surface. This turns out to be completely unrepresentative of real head impacts, which usually occur at an oblique angle[1]. Injuries caused by rotation of the head are by far the most dangerous type, as substantial shear forces can occur within the brain tissue and high torsional forces can be applied to the spinal cord and brain stem.

Motorcycle helmets offer reasonable protection against rotational head injuries, because they have a smooth, round outer surface that is highly resistant to abrasion. Unlike motorcycle helmets, bicycle helmets are covered in ventilation slots, are rarely spherical, often feature rigid visors or other protrusions, and have only a very thin outer shell.

Because of the shortcomings of standardised testing procedures, a helmet purchaser has no idea if their helmet will offer any useful protection against the most common and most dangerous type of head injury; There is good evidence that many common bicycle helmet designs will exacerbate rotational forces in oblique head impacts[2], leading to the likelihood of no net improvement in safety compared to a bare head over a realistic sample of crash types[3].

[1]http://papers.sae.org/892425/ [2]http://www.bhsi.org/chinstrp.pdf [3]http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457502...

[CWuestefeld]

The only reason that the individual states that wearing a helmet is a hinderence...

You missed one important point from the OP:

One well-done study that evaluated all the current studies out there (called a meta-analysis), found there to be no benefit to helmet use when you take into account all types of injuries. Helmets protect against certain kinds of injuries (those to the head) and increase the likelihood of other injuries (those to the neck).

That last sentence there is important, so I'll call it out again: "Helmets protect against certain kinds of injuries and increase the likelihood of other injuries."

[panglott]

The simple fact is that bicycle helmets are not designed to withstand an auto collision. If you are relying on them to protect you in an auto collision, you're doing it wrong. Get a motorcycle helmet instead.

[monksy]

I approve of that! (That and requiring training/license for bikers)

[morsch]

Yes, we should all armor up before leaving the house. Or maybe just get rid of the thousand-pound blocks of steel and plastic hurtling around, barely controlled, in close vicinity to our mushy bodies.

[monksy]

I also approve of protected bike lanes. [Putting bikers on sidewalks is stupid]

Yes you should armor up. After all, those in cars are already heavily armored up with more than 50 years of safety equipment.

[Mithaldu]

> I also approve of protected bike lanes. [Putting bikers on sidewalks is stupid]

Do both. Have a bike lane on the side walk, with some separation provided by rails near crossings, or trees and such on longer stretches. Consider this for example:

https://goo.gl/maps/6PRpg

There are many small details that that keep the bikers away from the pedestrians, but it also serves the bikers (and the car drivers) by putting the curb between the two.

[monksy]

It takes a little to get used to the sidewalks/bikers in Germany. It also takes a bit to get used to trusting them.

Unfortunately in the US: Bikers don't have a lot of regulations, requirements, and their behavior is poorly enforced. (No bell, they have the legal ability to go through red lights under safe conditions [but it's taken as we can skip red lights because of lazyness])

In the state of Illinois it is illegal for a person over 13 to ride their bike on the sidewalk. There aren't even the markings for bike lanes on the sidewalk. However people still do, the ones who do still believe that they're in the right. (Although.. doing that in downtown Chicago during tourist season makes me feel that tasing them for doing should be legal)

An example of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEPx0N_jAa8

[JadeNB]

> Yes, we should all armor up before leaving the house. Or maybe just get rid of the thousand-pound blocks of steel and plastic hurtling around, barely controlled, in close vicinity to our mushy bodies.

I would love a world where we—well, maybe not got rid of cars, but at least changed our cities so that they were not the dominant and motivating force; but between accomplishing that, and wearing as much protection as possible, I know that there's only one that I can do today (or, I suspect, in my lifetime).

[mrgoldenbrown]

Yes, and in the same legislation, let's also require licenses and helmets for pedestrians, because they annoy me far more than cyclists. Also, fatality rates for helmeted pedestrians are higher than fatality rates for helmeted cyclists in some studies.

[ch4s3]

I think the key points are:

>and increase the likelihood of other injuries (those to the neck).

>There is some evidence[1] that cars may pass cyclists closer if they are wearing a helmet.

[1]http://drianwalker.com/overtaking/overtakingprobrief.pdf

*edit for formatting

[beat]

Accidents don't happen when cars are passing cyclists, though. Drivers notice this because they're inconvenienced, but it's actually pretty safe. Accidents happen at intersections, due to cars turning in front of bikes, or not being aware of bikes that are turning.

As for neck injuries... if a helmet increases my chance of a neck injury because it decreased my chance of a fractured skull, i'll take the trade.

[jokr004]

That was my thought too when I read the claim about neck injuries. Does a helmet really increase the risk of neck injury, or does it just increase the likelihood of surviving the blow to the head that caused the neck injury? Wearing a helmet should have no way of affecting your neck unless you're being stuck in the head, in which case I would definitely prefer to be wearing one.

[beat]

The author didn't provide any references for his assertion, so we won't know.

[drcode]

Yeah, I'm all for the idea of riding without a helmet when I'm commuting in downtown Chicago... but I already have two nasty gashes in my favorite helment that make it clear this would be a very bad idea.

[umanwizard]

Dude, you know you're not supposed to keep using the same helmet after you get in a crash, right?

[vvvv]

Replace it.

[lorenzhs]

Yup, replace it. A helmet is a shock absorber, the styrofoam is compressed during the collision. Once it's compressed, it can no longer absorb shocks. A helmet needs to be replaced after a crash. The damage is not even necessarily visible on the outside.

[mcv]

Insane? Because of a very reasonable line of reasoning? I think that's mostly your perspective.

There is data about what helmets and other safety measures do to bike safety. It's worth noting that the Dutch bike association is not a fan of helmet laws. Although of course Netherland has already implemented a lot more effective measures to improve bicycle safety.

[msandford]

> The guy sounds insane. Simple physics indicates that the longer the collision the less force applied will be.

The problem is that helmets are only designed (and tested!) to cover one very specific type of crash. The head smashing into the ground directly and at high speed one. And all it does is turn a potentially very severe injury into a less severe one. It shifts the risk-profile from maybe dying, maybe breaking bones in your head and definitely having a concussion to less risk of dying, less risk of breaking bones and definitely having a concussion.

It doesn't do anything when you get in a low speed crash because the compressive strength of the foam inside helmets is actually very high. Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) is the crushable material inside bicycle helmets. Here you can see that 10psi is a very reasonable number and that 25psi plus isn't unreasonable.

http://www.epsindustry.org/building-construction/compressive...

Let's suppose that 10psi is the number and that you manage to crush a substantial portion of the helmet. Maybe that's 20 square inches. That means it took 200lbs ( 10psi * 20sqin ) of force to do that. If the average head weighs 11lbs it must have experienced something like 18 Gs to make that happen. Sure 18 G is better than 60 G (or whatever if you didn't have a helmet) but it's not as though wearing a helmet turns any crash into something very survivable and with very little consequence.

Anecdotally I went over the handlebars once at 22mph. Another cyclist popped out of stopped traffic (not at a crosswalk) and I had about 10 feet to react. I hit her back tire and knocker her over, but I went over the bars and pivoted around my front wheel right into the ground. Headfirst. I was wearing a helmet and very glad to have been but my helmet only had about a 3" diameter flat spot on the top.

Personally I would have preferred that the foam had only been 5psi (instead of 10psi) and that the crush zone had been larger and it would have slowed things down more. But helmets have to pass a CSPC test and it's a 6 foot drop, which means that it doesn't do much unless it's a very, very bad fall. Personally I thought my fall was pretty horrible and that the helmet should have used up the majority of the crush zone, but while the flat spot was 3" in diameter it was only about 1/4" deep out of the 1" or so of total foam depth.

http://gearfinder.bicycling.com/senseless/index.html

I get that you understand the simple physics, but as it turns out, real life is substantially more complicated than JUST simple physics most of the time.

[monksy]

So you're upset that the material will not protect against lower impact collisions and still protect you against high impact collisions? (yet still be wearable)

[msandford]

I wouldn't say "upset" is the correct word, but perhaps "disappointed" is accurate.

It is disappointing that helmets only seem to protect against very severe events. Because these very severe events also happen to be fairly rare. So basically a bike helmet is not like buying health insurance, but more like buying life insurance that only pays out if you're eaten by a wild animal. And you live in the First World. But you pay for it just the same, because you have to put on and wear that helmet EVERY SINGLE RIDE because you never know when your ticket might get punched.

The point is that it seems like if you want to make people safer, the helmet should protect them against lower energy collisions and higher energy collisions both. But the CSPC test is a one-size-fits-all test that ALL helmets have to pass and as a result, there's absolutely no differentiation whatsoever. So all bike helmets have to protect you against truly horrific crashes, crashes that people riding around at 5-15mph will never experience.

It'd be nice if the CSPC would make a few categories of protection that you can buy helmets for. Casual cycling, BMX, mountain and road say. And then let the manufacturers tailor the helmets towards the risk that people ACTUALLY face when they bicycle.

The way it's done right now would be like requiring formula 1 cars to have airbags because they're cars too and all cars have to have airbags.

> So you're upset that the material will not protect against lower impact collisions and still protect you against high impact collisions

I don't think it would be impossibly difficult to get a helmet that had 1/2" of 3psi foam and 1/2" of 15psi foam. Then you could get some protection against the common concussion injury and still retain most (if not all) of your death mitigation as well.

But so long as the CSPC has a one-size-fits-all test it's very unlikely that things will change.

[maxerickson]

The helmet buys you t. Lower density foam buys you less t.

Pondering it briefly, I think it is difficult to arbitrarily change the size of the compressed zone of the helmet, as that depends on the contact patches (helmet head and helmet ground) and so the shape of the helmet more than the density of the foam. It can be optimized for a given foam thickness, and then you're done.

[msandford]

You've assumed constant foam density which I don't believe is a given. That's how all helmets are made right now, but nothing would prevent someone from making two separate pieces and bonding them together, except cost. And what's the incentive to increase cost (and thus price) unless you can use that to differentiate somehow?

[maxerickson]

You say cost, I see perception of market. A article in Wired (or whatever) talking about how you worked with Snell to develop a new testing standard that accounted for lower energy crashes would be great marketing. The problem is that the helmet would be more expensive and assuming it used crushing foam, more fragile than existing helmets.

[msandford]

I guess I think cost and perception of the market as the same thing. If you increase cost but don't increase perceived value, then you're lowering profits for a noble reason, but not one that's defensible to shareholders. If you increase cost and increase perceived value at least you maintain profits and you don't get fired.

But if the CSPC doesn't give manufacturers any incentive by having different protection classes or levels or any way to differentiate whatsoever, well, what's the point of spending more money to achieve a good societal outcome if it means that you get fired? Incentives matter and you can look at it from either side of cost but ultimately a lot of what we're talking about here is dollars.

[maxerickson]

My point is that manufacturers can respond to the incentive provided by the market, they don't have to wait for the CSPC to drop a certification.

A simple thesis coming from that point of view is that there isn't much of a market for (presumably) more expensive helmets that protect better in low energy crashes.

[rjsw]

5. Biker not using lights at night "because they are in a bike lane".

[panglott]

Bike lights are far more important safety gear than a helmet is.

But not having a helmet attracts more negative attention than not having lights does.

[Eric_WVGG]

I used to consider lights “optional,” but since bicycling has grown in popularity, I have observed more lightless riders — or failed to observe, rather — and now quite agree. I’m amazed that I got away with riding effectively invisible, with no incidents, for as long as I did.

Now I’m baffled by the fact that lights aren’t built into the frames of all non-competitive road bikes…

[mcv]

They are standard on all Dutch bikes. Is that not true in other countries? Bikes without lights, rear reflectors and reflectors on the wheels or tires are far, far more dangerous than not wearing a helmet.

[panglott]

Reflectors are standard in the US, I think, but not lights.

Reflectors are in no way enough.

[mcv]

You are right, just reflectors is not enough (though tire reflectors are amazingly effective for traffic coming from the side). Lights really should be standard.

[mcv]

> But not having a helmet attracts more negative attention than not having lights does.

Not true. At least not universally. It all depends on how many and what kind of idiots live where you bike.

[umanwizard]

Is this true?

I assume anyone riding without lights at night is a gigantic moron. I barely notice people not wearing helmets, which is much more common (sadly, they are both fairly common).

[apendleton]

Among cyclists, not having a light gets noticed, but the non-cyclist narrative about crashes in, say, a newspaper, is almost always "X was/was not wearing a helmet" and almost never "X was riding without lights in the dark."

[maccard]

That depends on where you are. I was stopped at 5am one morning cycling across Dublin city (my light died on the way) by the police.

[lorenzhs]

Lights are mandatory in Germany. Every bike needs to have them installed to be road legal, even if it's only used during the day. (There are some exceptions for racing bikes)

[mcv]

Lights are also mandatory in Netherland (at night, at least). That doesn't mean everybody actually has them.

[monksy]

I never considered the usage of lights, because I've never seen them used in Chicago.

[strictnein]

Really? That's surprising. They're widely used in Minneapolis.

[monksy]

My suspicion is that its due to all of the streetlights in Chicago.

[Mithaldu]

And police doesn't stop and ticket for that?

[panglott]

Traffic policing in the US is insane in general. Everyone driving takes the speed limit as a speed minimum that should be exceeded by 10-15 mph, and everyone runs red lights all the time (the drivers try to make the light and fail, while the cyclists at least stop to check and make sure there's no ongoing traffic).

It seems like police almost totally ignore cyclists, unless an individual cop wants to harass someone for being on the road at all.

In Louisville, when the police show up at an auto-bike collision, they think they cannot cite a driver unless they personally witness the accident, no matter how egregious or reckless the accident. http://bicyclingforlouisville.blogspot.com/2009/02/tour-de-f...

[Mithaldu]

Fwiw, in Germany in car vs anything squishier incidents the fault is assumed by default to be on the car driver, and only small percentages can be shifted to the other person.

Regardless of whatever obligations the other participants have, the car driver as the operator of the most powerful thing has the supreme obligation to pay attention.

[panglott]

This is of course the sane policy. But we don't even have universal pedestrian right of way.

[monksy]

Police RARELY ever ticket bikers. I've seen it only happen once, it was so surprising to the biker: the cop had to cut him off because he wouldn't pull over.

[Mithaldu]

That is completely insane. Here in Germany cops will intentionally park themselves in the winter season on paths popular for kids to get to school to stop them and give them a talking-to if they rolled through without lights on. And adults without working lights will get ticketed, as well for much smaller offenses. (I once got ticketed for heaving radio ear plugs in on both sides.)

[mcv]

In Amsterdam, cops regularly organize a big light check point where they stop all bikers without lights, and let them choose between a stiff fine or buying (much cheaper) lights right there. Most people choose the lights, which goes a long way towards solving the problem.

[JoeAltmaier]

We had a crowd of a dozen get tickets for blowing through a stop sign. Its embarrassing to responsible cyclists when clubs get an arrogant crew, above the rules of safety.