On 6/17/2018 2:47 PM, Emanuel Berg wrote:
wrote:

I've been involved in a few bike accidents
over the decades. One without a helmet.
Still have the scar on my forehead 35+ years
later to remind me of that day. Not a day
I really care to remember. Others I was
wearing a helmet. Nothing to remind me of
those accidents except my memory. Well I do
have a scar under my eye from one accident.
Helmet was not a full face motorcycle helmet
so under my eye was exposed. Went to the
emergency room to get some stitches put in my
face. My experience says its better to be
wearing a helmet when you wreck that not wear
a helmet.

I think there is no doubt a helmet helps
against those injuries.

In boxing the saying goes a helmet will protect
against scars and tears but not really if you
get a haymaker straight into the planet.
Perhaps the same logic applies to bike
accidents?

As for me, I'm not that kind of rider so
I don't use a helmet but intuitively one would
think a helmet would decrease the impact in
more severe cases as well.

Anyway there should be research on this subject
not only from the bike equipment manufacturers
but also from university hospitals from all
over the world, if anyone cares enough to look
it up what their conclusions are.

There is research of two general types.

Most research papers on helmet effectiveness track "head injuries" (as
opposed to brain injuries) in people showing up at hospitals from bike
crashes. They compare the head injury count among those reportedly
wearing helmets, vs. those not wearing helmets. They find more head
injuries in those without helmets.

The other research looks at trends (usually long term trends) when
helmet use increases. (In some cases, like New Zealand, laws and/or
publicity campaigns caused rapid jumps in helmet wearing.) Those trends
usually show no improvement in bike brain injuries, bike fatalities,
etc. In fact, recent data showed an _increase_ of over 60% in
bike-related concussions during the time when American helmet use
greatly increased.

Why the discrepancy between the two types of results? I think the main
reason is that those who choose to wear helmets are different in many
ways from those who do not choose to wear helmets. For example, one
physician in Texas performed a study of the first type to help his
campaign for an all-ages mandatory helmet law. But his study was unique
for the time because he also recorded blood alcohol content in
bicyclists who crashed. His study found that helmet use was not
significantly correlated with concussion or other brain injury, but
alcohol use was significantly correlated. In other words, it makes more
sense to get people to stop riding drunk than to get drunks to put on
helmets.

In reality, brain injury while bicycling is very rare. It's more common
while traveling as a pedestrian. And helmets have not caused any
significant improvement. They cause negligible improvement in a mostly
imaginary problem.


--
- Frank Krygowski

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