My helmet saved me, and broke

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
* I have had a couple of moderately serious head and face injuries in
my life, and they are no fun.
*


Head injuries? That would explain a lot.


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On Sat, 27 Aug, johnfoss wrote:

And we're not arguing about bicycle helmet studies or compulsory helmet
laws in this thread.

The problem is that you _are_ affecting the likelihood of such,
however. There are frequent calls for mandatory cycle helmet laws in
teh UK. One law has got as far as being debated in parliament before
being blocked on a technicality.

The government department in charge of roads has said it does not
favour a mandatory law _until_ the majority of cyclists wear a helmet
voluntarily. In other words, if you wear a helmet, and encourage
others to do so, in situations where it is unnecesary or inappropriate
you _are_ likely to be encouraging compulsion.

The law that was thrown out did not, in fact, include unicycles.
However, a future law would likely use the same definition of bicycle
as existing traffic law, which _does_ include unicycles. The law
thrown out proposed extending the mandatory helmet wearing to any
place teh public has free (gratis) access - not just the roads.

It is for these reasons that those people that oppose mandatory cycle
helmets speak out strongly whenever anyone makes unsubstantiated
claims about their efficacy - it's the mindless assumption that a
helmet must be good that is pushing us ever closer to mandatory
helmets for every cyclist (including unicyclists) in every place.

regards, Ian SMith
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I submit that on or about Sat, 27 Aug 2005 16:36:32 -0500, the person
known to the court as "johnfoss"
made a statement
list.com in Your
Honour's bundle) to the following effect:

*Anti-helmet fanatic, eh? That would be why most of the pictures on
my website show me wearing one, then. *

Maybe he's not reading your website, just your posts here. Based on your
previous arguments in other threads, you seem determined to assert that
a bicycle helmet offers little or no protection. For anybody. Sorry,
you're still wrong. This thread offers one example of your wrongness.

So you say. But what you will find, if you bother to read up, is that
actually cycle helmets *do* offer very little protection. And that
little has decreased over time, as the standards have been watered
down. OK, you say I am wrong - perhaps you could cite some evidence
to prove that? I have a huge collection of research papers on this
issue, but I'm always willing to find out more.

Though a BMX helmet probably would have fared better, I believe Brave
considers the money he spent on his broken helmet a very good
investment. He knows he's using a bicycle helmet for unicycling. I think
he also expects his helmet to be unusable in a major impact.

Bicycle helmets are not designed for unicycling (or inline skating or
skateboarding). Consider one relatively common fall: going over
backwards (I've done that). Cycle helmets are increasingly designed
with retention systems that take up a lot of space at the back of the
head. Less of the back of my head is covered by my newest lid than by
my ancient 1980s Bell, which is why that is the one I'd choose for
unicycling. Bike helmets are optimised for a test impact somewhere
above the forehead.

If your argument is that the foam should not have broken, fine.

Correct. It is not supposed to do that.

helmet should have saved him from obviously much greater injury, and not
been broken afterward.

"obviously"? "much greater"?

My point here is that a broken helmet is an example of a helmet which
failed to work as designed, not an example of why they should be worn.

Volvo used to used pictures of horribly crashed Volvos to advertise
their safety. I thought it was very effective.

So people drive Volvos as if they are invulnerable (ask any
motorcyclist). I drive a Volvo, by the way.

In other words, if the
product is designed to break or otherwise become unusable in the course
of doing its job, I don't see the problem customers would have of seeing
that they actually do their job.

But it's not. This is the equivalent, in your model, of holding up a
snapped seatbelt and saying "see! it saved my life!" - the device
failed to work as designed.

The helmet cracked, yes, but it also did it's job.

No, the whole point is that it did not do its job, since its job is
not to crack. We do not (and cannot without some expensive testing)
know how much of its job it did before it failed.

*For unicycling I recommend a hard-shell lid of the sort usually worn
by BMXers. Bicycle helmets are very weak, and modern fitting systems
mean they offer little protection at the back of the head.*

This sounds like very good advice for riders, and I'd especially
recommend this type of helmet for Trials and Street riders, as well as
anyone who spends lots of time above rocks, gaps, or other long drops. I
choose to use a bicycle helmet for most of my riding because I prefer
the weight and comfort, and am aware of the lower amount of protection
it offers.

There are two issues he first, the weight and comfort have driven
down the standard of bicycle helmets. Very few UK helmets are now
Snell certified (it was over 90% in 1990). You are probably better
off with a less ventilated Chinese helmet than expensive Bell or some
such (and if you do want vents, Specialized is the only major brand my
friend the helmet tester will recommend).

Second, the design, as stated above, is not optimised for unicycling,
or indeed anything else other than cycling. Modern lids with their
fancy retention systems leave the occipital region largely
unprotected, and they have "peaks" at the back for "aerodynamics"
(there is not much evidence they do anything!). For yiking a more
spherical helmet with a hard shell is a much better choice.

Brian the helmet tester rails against kids shown on TV wearing cycle
helmets for skateboarding and inline skating. Same deal: they are not
designed for that.

In case this wasn't obvious to you, your constant contention, and
seeming need to reply to every post, all make it look like you are
obsessed to disclaim the usefulness of having a helmet on your head.
Sorry, this group is not buying it.

I am delighted to have found one person who can speak for the entire
group, that should speed matters along just nicely.

(from a different post) *I have had a couple of moderately serious head and face injuries in
my life, and they are no fun.*

And I hope these were not from other online forum users after long
arguments. Really, I do!

Heh! One was an assault, actually, but it was the kid next door and I
was ten at the time. On the plus side, the sympathy vote for my two
black eyes won me the fancy dress competition at the school fete - I
went as Henry Cooper.

Guy
--
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"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

I submit that on or about Sat, 27 Aug 2005 18:49:41 -0500, the person
known to the court as "steveyo"
m made a statement
ist.com in Your
Honour's bundle) to the following effect:

My helmet, just to put some closure to this thread, was an older Bell
helmet.

One of the more spherical ones, with a Snell certificate? Those were
pretty good in their day.

So technically, my helmet did fail, but just barely. Lucky for me,
however, it SUCCEEDED in saving my bacon in a big way.

Um, well, for some values of, anyway :-)

Guy
--
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"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

I submit that on or about Sat, 27 Aug 2005 22:11:44 -0500, the person
known to the court as "DigitalDave"
. com made a
statement
cyclist.com in Your
Honour's bundle) to the following effect:

Failing that an old-style Bell Biker would probably do. If you can
find one.

You shouldn't use those old Bell helmets.
They are aged. They wont work as designed.
(the fiberglass would probably shatter like glass)
I just thew one away, so I wouldn't be temped to use it.

Yes, I know that is the received wisdom. The only thing is, I can't
actually find any studies showing that the polystyrene foam liner (the
impact absorbing part) actually does deteriorate with age - I don't
think EPS is particularly vulnerable to UV degradation, and the inside
is hidden from the sun anyway.

As to whether the shell is degraded, I wouldn't know. If you ever see
Richard Ballantine (of Richard's Bicycle Book) you could ask him, as
I'm pretty sure that's what he was wearing when I met him last year.

Any actual data on this would, as usual, be appreciated. I collect
data like some people collect wheels.

I do, however, still have an old, late 1980s Bell, Snell certified,
few vents, looks a bit like the V1-Pro. It is a no-shell design with
a vac-formed cover. I think this would fare better in a yike fall
than my expensive Bell cycle helmet, age notwithstanding, due to the
shape. Of course the only way to find out would be to subject it to
the standard drop tests, after which it would be dead anyway...

In a spirit of scientific enquiry I might actually do that, sacrifice
my old lid. I bet you a pound it performs better than a lot of modern
ones!

Anyone else who is interested and has some old lids stockpiled, drop
me an email, I'll get onto Brian Walker at HPE and see if he's game.

Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

I submit that on or about Sat, 27 Aug 2005 23:21:20 -0500, the person
known to the court as "Catboy"
made a statement
st.com in Your
Honour's bundle) to the following effect:

Head injuries? That would explain a lot.

Yup. It would explain the 2:1 in electrical engineering, for example.

It also explains why I am interested in the subject in the first
place.

Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

Almost uniquely in this forum, this topic always produces rather bad
tempered arguments. This is a pity because it is one of the few topics
we discuss that is genuinely important, rather than merely of interest
to us.

It is also a pity because those who have the strongest opinions and the
most detailed understanding can sometimes obscure the important points
for younger or less experienced riders.

In the event of an accident on your unicycle, it is unlikely that you
will bang your head. However, it is possible that you will bang your
head. I guess I've fallen off unicycles a few hundred times, and I've
banged my head about three times - including the chin incident which
would not have been prevented by a normal cycle helmet.

In the event of you banging your head in a unicycle accident, the
consequences range from a nasty bump, to a cut, to concussion, to
epilepsy, paralysis or slow and painful death.

The percentage of head impacts to falls is not as important as the
actual number of head impacts you are likely to suffer in a given period
of unicycling. This will vary according to style, experience, skill,
speed, and the place where you are riding.

The number of those head impacts which would result in concussion or
worse will to some extent depend on similar factors.

For me, I reckon that the likelihood of banging my head in a fall is
almost negligible, except when I'm riding in a rocky area. However, I'm
often on quite a tall uni, riding at over 10 mph, on tarmac or concrete,
near to kerbs, fence posts or traffic.

I (almost) always wear a helmet. I find it presents no disadvantages,
other than the minor inconvenience of having to remember to put it on,
and it can be hot.

But will the helmet help? It is a bicycle helmet designed for road
use.

Obviously, it will do more good than harm.

In the seatbelt argument, you can find examples where not wearing a
seatbelt has prevented injuries, and examples where wearing a seatbelt
has contributed to injuries. However, surgeons looking for organ donors
point to a very sudden and marked drop in the availability of organs
after seatbelts became compulsory. It is the same with helmets: helmets
will prevent some injuries. They will fail to prevent some, and they
will even cause a few. (Probably neck injuries.) However, they will
generally do more good than harm.

But what is the best helmet? Not necessarily a bicycle helmet. Even a
padded rugby or boxing helmet will do some good. A motorcycle helmet
would offer most protection, but would be so heavy and uncomfortable
that it might increase the risk of the accident in the first place.

The ideal unicycle helmet should protect the head from falls in all
directions. The particular weakness of a road-bicycle helmet is impacts
from behind. Unicyclists sometimes fall backwards and crack their
heads; bicyclists almost never do.

The best helmet I ever had for protection was probably my
polythene-shelled kayak helmet. It was supported on the head with a
cradle, with some soft foam as well. The shell was ventilated (to let
water out!) and was slightly pliable. It was designed to hit rocks at
speeds of 5 - 10 mph or so, and to spread the impact, rather than
allowing it to focus on a single point. The shell would deform slightly
to take some of the shock out of the impact and would spring back to
shape. It was rounded, with no projections or shaping that would
provoke a neck injury.

Compared to that, my bicycle helmet is quite weak. The outer shell is
thin plastic and the main protective layer is a polystyrene moulding
that will crush or break in certain circumstances. Crushing is good
protection; breaking is better protection than none.

On the other hand, the cycle helmet is more comfortable, lighter, and,
yes, it looks better. Let's face it, it may be irrational, but safety
is not the only thing we take into account when choosing whether to wear
a helmet, or which one to wear.

I think a BMX style round helmet would be better for the sort of riding
that involves hopping, dropping, and that sort of thing, where the
direction of a fall is less predictable. A road bicycle style helmet is
probably the best compromise for road and cross country. A full face
BMX helmet is probably best for hard MUni.

And are modern bicycle helmets as good as the early ones? Some of them
are awful, some of them are very good. Don't choose on price. Don't
choose on "features". Go to a good cycle shop (not a toy shop), look
closely, ask questions, try the helmets on. Spend what you need to.
It's an important purchase. If you like the helmet, you will wear it.
If you hate it, you won't.

And if you choose not to wear a helmet, as long as that is an informed
decision, it is your responsibility.

I am generally for wearing helmets, but against compulsory helmet laws.


--
Mikefule - Roland Hope School of Unicycling

"As it was, the tip of my nose barely touched the road"

(Steveyo, philosophical in the face of near disaster.)
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Ian Smith wrote:
*On Sat, 27 Aug, johnfoss wrote:

And we're not arguing about bicycle helmet studies or compulsory
helmet
laws in this thread.

The problem is that you _are_ affecting the likelihood of such,
however. *
I certainly hope we are not affecting any bicycle helmet studies. If we
are, those studies shouldn't get published! As for helmet laws for
bikes, any discussions we have here, though they may have a slight
effect on helmet use among unicyclists, should seriously not make a
measurable difference in the outcome of any bicycle helmet legislation.
Certainly not enough of a difference to be detected, as in many of the
helmet effectiveness and demographic studies that have been quoted in
similar threads.
*In other words, if you wear a helmet, and encourage
others to do so, in situations where it is unnecesary or
inappropriate
you _are_ likely to be encouraging compulsion.*
I haven't encouraged people to wear helmets unappropriately or
unnecessarily. I have always maintained the situations where I
personally wear one and when I don't, but recommended that others use
their judgement for their own situations. Also that bicycle helmets are
not the best choice for high-impact riding, such as Trials, Street and
Freeriding.


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John Foss, the Uni-Cyclone
"jfoss" at "unicycling.com" -- www.unicycling.com

"Read the rules!" -- 'IUF Rulebook'
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Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
*I submit that on or about Sat, 27 Aug 2005 16:36:32 -0500, the person
known to the court as "johnfoss"...*
Your "court" is an online forum. Maybe you could update your lengthy
reply headers to be more accurate?
*OK, you say I am wrong - perhaps you could cite some evidence to
prove that?*
Today's circumstantial evidence, submitted to our non-court, is
BraveSirStupid's personal account of being protected by his helmet. He
is not a study or a paper, he's just one guy who we've known for years
through this forum. We have no reason to disbelieve his story. Crack or
no crack, his helmet protected him. This is the part of the story that
you seem unwilling to acknowledge. At the same time, this is the part we
consider a "positive helmet experience." He got protected. The same
result may not have happened with different variables in the situation,
but this is one example of a helmet doing its job.

Please don't come back yet again on how the helmet cracked ("failed").
We got that. But if this type of helmet is designed for a single major
impact, after which it is supposed to be replaced, I still don't see the
problem in this particular case. The helmet succeeded and failed at the
same time. The failure is rather irrelevant in this instance, and is
outweighed by the success.
*helmet should have saved him from obviously much
greater injury, and not
been broken afterward.

"obviously"? "much greater"?*[/color]
Sorry if that part was giving you trouble. I meant if he had the same
fall with no helmet on. I think most of us get it.
*So people drive Volvos as if they are invulnerable (ask any
motorcyclist). I drive a Volvo, by the way.*
I don't need to ask motorcyclists to have noticed this on American roads
as well. But apparently we agree the cars are popular! I was talking
about success of advertising using broken product, not behavoir changes
of users of the product. Brave was just mounting his unicycle, not
trying something because he felt "emboldened" by having a helmet on.
*But it's not. This is the equivalent, in your model, of holding up a
snapped seatbelt and saying "see! it saved my life!"*
Though this is a pretty unlikely situation, yes, it is. The person
holding up the seatbelt is trying to tell (most of) us, how glad he was
that he was wearing it. That same most of us are able to extrapolate his
accident without the seat belt. Oh yeah, good thing he was wearing it!
*No, the whole point is that it did not do its job, since its job is
not to crack. *
I will continue to contend that its job is to protect the wearer first,
and not crack second. So the helmet succeeded *in this instance* but may
have been less successful in a harder impact. I don't have a problem
with this measure of success, since it's not a helmet test, or a
statistic, just one guy's experience.
*There are two issues he first, the weight and comfort have driven
down the standard of bicycle helmets. Very few UK helmets are now
Snell certified (it was over 90% in 1990).*
This is true. When shopping for a helmet, look for the Snell sticker or
certification. It is a more stringent test. Weight and comfort are
certainly issues for people with helmets. Too cumbersome and they are
less likely to get worn, even if you bought one. So it becomes part of
the balance of risk management and (hopefully) personal choice.
*You are probably better off with a less ventilated Chinese helmet
than expensive Bell or some such (and if you do want vents,
Specialized is the only major brand my friend the helmet tester will
recommend).*
I have often pointed out (to people that will listen) that in general,
when you pay more for a higher-end helmet, you don't get better
protection (as within brands, all helmets often pass the same
certifications). What you're paying for is mostly more holes!
*Second, the design, as stated above, is not optimised for unicycling,
or indeed anything else other than cycling.*
Hopefully we've said this enough times. However I consider road riding
on my Coker to be much closer to *bi*cycling than it is to BMX or
skateboarding. I will stick with a bike helmet for that activity. At the
same time, I admit I should be using a BMX-style
helmet for my MUni and other rocky/droppy riding.
*I am delighted to have found one person who can speak for the entire
group, that should speed matters along just nicely.*
At the moment it's looking like "the group minus Ian Smith."


--
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John Foss, the Uni-Cyclone
"jfoss" at "unicycling.com" -- www.unicycling.com

"Read the rules!" -- 'IUF Rulebook'
(http://www.unicycling.org/iuf/rulebook/) -- 'USA Rulebook'
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I usually don't get involved in these, since I can make my own mind up
about wearing a helmet, and the times it has benefited my own health.
However, after this comment:

Maybe he's not reading your website, just your posts here. Based on
your
previous arguments in other threads, you seem determined to assert
that
a bicycle helmet offers little or no protection. For anybody. Sorry,
you're still wrong. This thread offers one example of your
wrongness.

So you say. But what you will find, if you bother to read up, is
that
actually cycle helmets *do* offer very little protection. And that
little has decreased over time, as the standards have been watered
down. OK, you say I am wrong - perhaps you could cite some evidence
to prove that? I have a huge collection of research papers on this
issue, but I'm always willing to find out more.

I feel an experiment coming on. We get Mr 'Guy' to stand under a 500g
weight, raised to a 50cm height (above his head). We then let him choose
whether or not to wear a helmet. If he choses to do so, we win. If he
doesn't, he wins but runs the risk of a serious concussion.

Weight drops. Point is proven.

Reasonable?

Loose.


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