Helmet Nazis at It Again!

On 16 Sep 2006 04:25:25 -0700, "Beach Runner"
wrote:


Gary L. Burnore wrote:
On 15 Sep 2006 18:33:12 -0700, "Beach Runner"
wrote:


Two years ago my father, now 80 was riding. He ducked under a bunch of
branches,
stuck his head up, and there was a tree limb.

Without a helmet, he's dead.

Maybe. Maybe not. You'll never know now.
--

If you saw the helmet, there'd be little doubt.

I don't think adults should be required to wear helmets, I don't
always. But it's incredilby
stupid not to.

Why so?

Massive population-level studies show no positive effect from helmet
wearing.

Why spend money on something that doesn't work?

Beach Runner wrote:
Gary L. Burnore wrote:
On 15 Sep 2006 18:33:12 -0700, "Beach Runner"
wrote:

Without a helmet, he's dead.

Maybe. Maybe not. You'll never know now.

If you saw the helmet, there'd be little doubt.

We're familiar with the logic: "A very fragile styrofoam hat broke.
Therefore, a fatality was prevented."

The proponents of this "logic" don't seem to realize the number of
broken helmets totally eclipse the number of pre-helmet bike
fatalities. Bike fatalities are actually extremely rare. (They're
roughly equaled by the number of poison gas fatalities in the US each
year. Should we "Always wear a gas mask when cooking"?)

I don't think adults should be required to wear helmets, I don't
always. But it's incredilby stupid not to.

That's a strongly stated opinion, even if you voluntarily included
yourself in the "stupid" crowd. Others might reserve the word "stupid"
for people who disparage others' views without bothering to learn as
much as their opponents.

If you look into the real-world data, you'd find that bicycling is NOT
an unusual source of serious head injuries. Pedestrian head injury
fatalities are much more common, both in total and per mile. Bike head
injury fatalities are less than 1% of the HI fatalities in the US.
(Riding in cars causes about half.)

And the actual performance of these fragile hats is terrible. In fact,
helmet proponents have almost probably done net harm by scaring people
away from cycling; they certainly haven't prevented a significant
number of head injuries. See
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b63eec01188.htm for one discussion
of this.

Visit www.cyclehelmets.org and at least learn that there are two sides
to this question. Then stop acting as a shill for the helmet
manufacturers.

- Frank Krygowski

Tom Keats wrote:
In article .com,
"Pat" writes:

As an aside, many helmets are not used correctly and therefore have
their safety compromized. They are really "one use" items. If you
bonk your head or even drop the helmet, its time for a new one.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I'm curious -- what happens to the styrofoam if a helmet is dropped on
the floor from, say, handlebar height? How /exactly/ does it fracture
or fail?

FWIW, I believe the "drop it, replace it" rule of thumb is a figment of
people's imaginations. I'm not aware of any helmet company saying
that. (Granted, some dedicated helmet promoters may have said that -
but they tend to be a trifle irrational.)

Dropping an "empty" helmet is unlikely to compress the foam. The mass
of the helmet isn't significant, so the force to decelerate it isn't
significant. That force is insufficent to compress the foam.

Admittedly, I've seen helmets crack their "microshell" upon being
dropped. But that's almost entirely cosmetic. And it wouldn't
surprise me if a manufacturer purposely chose a brittle, UV-degradeable
plastic for the microshell to promote such cracking and thus more
sales. (Current microshells look like brittle styrene, or other
vacuum-formable thermoplastics; they're certainly not fiberglass.)

The real rule of thumb is, if you've damaged it in a crash, replace it.
That's because the styrofoam doesn't bounce back all the way when
crushed. If you had a second crash impacting exactly the same spot in
your helmet, your level of protection would drop from "barely protects
against a 14 mph impact" (the current standard) to "barely protects
against a 9 mph impact." And of course, a protection level _that_ low
would never do! ;-)

And if currently available helmets are so fragile, what good
are they?

That's a separate question, best answeable by looking at head injury
data when helmet rates suddenly rise in a given population. The answer
is: not much good at all. They're an ineffective solution to a largely
imaginary problem.


And why do mfg'rs use styrofoam instead of puffy foam rubber such as is
used in anti-decubitus pads, or some other lightweight shock-absorbing
material that's better able to withstand the rigours of being handled
by butter-fingered humans in the course of daily use?

Styrofoam (or expanded polystyrene) does do a much better job of
absorbing impact than most other inexpensive materials. And it's
light, which appeals to the play-racer, weight-weenie crowd. And it's
inexpensive to manufacture. And if someone does, say, sit on their
helmet and crack it, it generates another sale.

Having said that, in the paleo-helmet days of the 1970s, there was a
small manufacturer going head-to-head (so to speak) with Bell. They
were called Skid-Lid, they featured a Lexan outer shell (IIRC) and a
bounce-back, non-sacrificial black foam inner lining. This was before
the first Snell bike helmet standard.

Then Snell came out with a standard, a drop-test for bike helmets.
Interestingly, it was immediately called ludicrously low - but Snell
said "Anything more, and cyclists won't wear them." Amazingly, that
standard was set at a level that the existing Bell product passed, and
the existing Skid-Lid product failed.

Skid-Lid sued, claiming (IIRC) that Bell had collusion in setting the
test level. And interestingly, Skid-Lid produced lots of "My Skid-Lid
saved my life!!!!" stories, of the same sort we see here. But
Skid-Lid was a tiny operation, and they lost to the wealthy Bell.

So now your helmet is designed to self-destruct.

- Frank Krygowski

(Tom Keats) writes:

In article ,
(Bill Z.) writes:


That doesn't work very well when you live, as I do, in a
MHL zone and the person you tell to f____ off is the cop
writing you a no-helmet ticket.

Did you write to your elected representative before your MHL law was
passed? I did in California, pointing out that we had adults in town
who road very short distances to a train station to commute to work
and that their commute was safer than driving regardless of whether
they used a helmet or not because most of the distance was by train,
the safest mode of transportation. I also pointed out bike locker
shortages and vandalism problems at the train stations, making leaving
a helmet with the bike problematic. Eventually a MHL was passed but
it only applied to those too young to drive.

Nobody is claiming that helmets are a panacea, but they are useful.

Lots of people are.

Not so - I presume you mean people on this newsgroup, not some
reporter filling space in some newspaper article.


Acme Bicycle Safety Course

1) Always wear a helmet while riding, so drivers won't feel
so badly when they hit you

"Acme Bicycle Safety Course" does not post on this newsgroup
and the "points" you provide suggest that you simply made it
all up - hardly a way of developing any credibility.

--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB

Followups trimmed to only groups that have "bicycle" in them.

On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 09:17:40 -0500, Roger Houston wrote:


"Bill Baka" wrote in message
.. .
The major part of his liver fell in the exact middle of their cloth. His
head, unhurt, was about 50 feet away, without a helmet.

You are SO full of ****.

So plonk him. If everyone who can't stand the BS he spouts plonks him,
then it will be as if he weren't even here. Your own S/N ratio view of
r.b.m will increase, even if the actual S/N ratio of r.b.m does not.

--
Chris BeHanna


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Note: followups trimmed to bicycle-only newsgroups.

On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 11:40:24 -0700, frkrygow wrote:


Tom Keats wrote:
In article .com,
"Pat" writes:

As an aside, many helmets are not used correctly and therefore have
their safety compromized. They are really "one use" items. If you
bonk your head or even drop the helmet, its time for a new one.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I'm curious -- what happens to the styrofoam if a helmet is dropped on
the floor from, say, handlebar height? How /exactly/ does it fracture
or fail?

FWIW, I believe the "drop it, replace it" rule of thumb is a figment of
people's imaginations. I'm not aware of any helmet company saying
that. (Granted, some dedicated helmet promoters may have said that -
but they tend to be a trifle irrational.)

Dropping an "empty" helmet is unlikely to compress the foam. The mass
of the helmet isn't significant, so the force to decelerate it isn't
significant. That force is insufficent to compress the foam.

Agreed. If you drop a *motorcycle* helmet from a significant
height, then the helmet's own mass can lead to damage to the shell, which
is itself sacrificial, as is the EPS lining within. But then, comparing
motorcycle helmets to bicycle helmets is ludicrous.

It is, I think, the association with motorcycle helmets that gets
people to be true believers in bicycle helmets. There is no way a
one-pound (at most), full-of-ventilation-holes bicycle helmet is going to
offer the same level of protection as a four-pound, hard-shell-encased,
full-faced motorcycle helmet. Even that motorcycle helmet has severe
limitations; however, given the relative speeds, if I go down on my
motorcycle helmet, I'd rather abrade the shell of the helmet against the
asphalt than my own skin and bone.

Of course, if you try riding a bicycle in a full-face motorcycle helmet
(and, in fact, I used to wear a shorty motorcycle helmet while bicycling),
you're going to have severe issues with heat build-up, and the weight of
the helmet is going to make your neck and upper back hurt.

Would you believe it--I've had people tell me (and they believed it)
that Fabio Casartelli would still be alive today if he had been wearing a
bicycle helmet! In his crash, not even the best motorcycle helmet would
have saved him.

--
Chris BeHanna


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On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 20:22:09 GMT, (Bill Z.)
wrote:

(Tom Keats) writes:

In article ,
(Bill Z.) writes:


That doesn't work very well when you live, as I do, in a
MHL zone and the person you tell to f____ off is the cop
writing you a no-helmet ticket.

Did you write to your elected representative before your MHL law was
passed? I did in California, pointing out that we had adults in town
who road very short distances to a train station to commute to work
and that their commute was safer than driving regardless of whether
they used a helmet or not because most of the distance was by train,
the safest mode of transportation. I also pointed out bike locker
shortages and vandalism problems at the train stations, making leaving
a helmet with the bike problematic.

You are to be commended - some people posting to these newsgroups who
claim to be active California cyclists did not even know that an MHL
existed in California.

Eventually a MHL was passed but
it only applied to those too young to drive.


I believe the MHL in California applies to those under 18 - is that
the driving age in that state?

And as for the use of the term "only" - there are over 10 million
residents who are currently required to wear a helmet while cycling;
California passed the first MHL in the United states, and has
continued to expand the number and situations where people must do so.
Wiht recent moves towards "rationalisation" such as that in Ohio, it
would not be surprising to see all Californians fall under another
MHL.

On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 16:35:55 -0400, Chris BeHanna
wrote:


Would you believe it--I've had people tell me (and they believed it)
that Fabio Casartelli would still be alive today if he had been wearing a
bicycle helmet! In his crash, not even the best motorcycle helmet would
have saved him.

In a sense they may have been (sort of) correct.

We know that having to wear a helmet puts people off cycling. If he'd
been made to wear one while young, he could quite possible have
stopped cycling as a sport and done something (or nothing) else, and
so would not have died as he did.

"Gary L. Burnore" wrote in message
...
On 16 Sep 2006 10:40:24 -0700, wrote:


Tom Keats wrote:
In article .com,
"Pat" writes:

As an aside, many helmets are not used correctly and therefore have
their safety compromized. They are really "one use" items. If you
bonk your head or even drop the helmet, its time for a new one.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I'm curious -- what happens to the styrofoam if a helmet is dropped on
the floor from, say, handlebar height? How /exactly/ does it fracture
or fail?

FWIW, I believe the "drop it, replace it" rule of thumb is a figment of
people's imaginations. I'm not aware of any helmet company saying
that. (Granted, some dedicated helmet promoters may have said that -
but they tend to be a trifle irrational.)

For bicycles:

From the Bell website:

How often should a helmet be replaced under normal wear and tear?
Bell has a general recommendation of replacing a helmet every three
(3) years. If you have any questions as to the condition of your
helmet please call us for information or to set up a free inspection.

What if a helmet becomes damaged?
If the helmet is visibly damaged (cracked outer shell, crushed or
cracked foam liner or any other damage) or involved in a serious
crash, don't use it. Damage to a helmet is not always visible! Some or
all of the helmet's protective capacity is used up when impacted.






For motorcycles:

From the Shoei Website:

Helmet Replacement
Ultimately, the useful service life of a safety helmet is dependent on
the intensity and frequency of its use. Helmet replacement is
recommended even if only one of the under-mentioned points applies:

1. The helmet was subjected to an impact.
2. The comfort padding or the retention system has become loose due
to heavy use or display signs of deterioration.
3. The synthetic foam padding displays signs of heavy use and the
helmet feels too loose. Test: with the retention system fastened, the
helmet turns to the side when you gently shake your head.
4. There are indentations in the EPS liner and/or white scratches
can be seen on surfaces with black paint.
5. Even if none of these is applied, we, SHOEI, recommend
replacement in 5 years after it's first purchased at retail.




Dropping an "empty" helmet is unlikely to compress the foam. The mass
of the helmet isn't significant, so the force to decelerate it isn't
significant. That force is insufficent to compress the foam.

Admittedly, I've seen helmets crack their "microshell" upon being
dropped. But that's almost entirely cosmetic.

Not according the manufacturers.

And it wouldn't
surprise me if a manufacturer purposely chose a brittle, UV-degradeable
plastic for the microshell to promote such cracking and thus more
sales. (Current microshells look like brittle styrene, or other
vacuum-formable thermoplastics; they're certainly not fiberglass.)

The real rule of thumb is, if you've damaged it in a crash, replace it.

For you it's real.
--
gburnore at DataBasix dot Com
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WTF are you doing over here. Gave up on us conservatives in the other
newsgroup?

Charles of Schaumburg

Chris BeHanna wrote:
Followups trimmed to only groups that have "bicycle" in them.

On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 09:17:40 -0500, Roger Houston wrote:

"Bill Baka" wrote in message
.. .
The major part of his liver fell in the exact middle of their cloth. His
head, unhurt, was about 50 feet away, without a helmet.
You are SO full of ****.

So plonk him. If everyone who can't stand the BS he spouts plonks him,
then it will be as if he weren't even here. Your own S/N ratio view of
r.b.m will increase, even if the actual S/N ratio of r.b.m does not.

It isn't BS. It actually happened in the town of Santa Cruz in the 70's.
The train was coming slowly across the bridge and slowing even more
because of the people and cars on the street. Some drunk 20 something
went onto the bridge and tried to show off by hopping on the train and
due to his excess inebriation he missed and went under the wheels of a
boxcar. Since the bridge had spaces between the ties the pieces of him
went through the ties and onto the people below. My wife and her son
from her first marriage saw it somewhere between 1974 and 1977 when I
met her. I don't know the name of the paper there or I would try to look
it up, but my XP just took a dump and I have spent 9 hours installing
2000 Pro so I am not really a happy computer operator right now. I may
just transfer everything over to Ubuntu Linux which I installed last
week, with Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird which I am using now, plus
open office.org suite, and it does not crash. It did about 100 updates
while I was working and I didn't have to reboot even once. Let's see
Windows of any vintage do that.

Anyway, Google is useless for finding one incident back then since the
narrowest searches I could perform either got me 40,000 hits on junk, or
if put quotes around "Santa Cruz" and "train fatalities" I got 3 that
weren't even related. If anybody knows a better search engine I will
post the information if it hasn't been buried in microfiche.

Bill Baka

Why in the hell would I post BS about something I had nothing to do with?

My gripe is being on r.b.m and all the excessive cross posts, so I never
know who I am replying to. Brickston and Dolan did that.