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)
>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].
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."
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.
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 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:
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.
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)
Hey i ride without bell too. On the other hand, i don't mind staying at walking speed and taking it slowly if there's some congestion up ahead. I find bell users to be insufferable dicks at most times.
> they have the legal ability to go through red lights under safe conditions
Everytime bicycles come up on HN i learn some new insanity about the USA. Do you have a link to the legistlation for that?
From my point of view, NEITHER of these three people are fit to participate in civilized society. Especially not the cop who tells the lady to shut up because she might get shot by someone.
There's something called the Idaho stop which is, very simply, allowing cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs, and red lights as stop signs. Since traffic lights are not meant for cycling at all and often don't make it safer, this alternative has turned out to be quite the safe compromise.
That page also mentions other states where a cyclist can go through a red light, usually if it is supposed to be triggered by vehicles and the smaller bicycle can't achieve that.
> 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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Ah, I see what you're saying. And I agree to a certain extent.
I guess what bugs me is that the CSPC is causing (by inaction) many thousands of people who are involved in lower energy bike crashes to get concussions.
Whether there is no market or not I think is debatable though, because the CSPC standard has definitely "warped" the market. In other words, all the helmets pass the standard and it's very difficult to tell if one is "better" than another. And because of that, differentiation is only based on looks.
Because the minimal level of protection is so high it's very hard to effectively market that one helmet is "safer" than another in that it'll protect you in the common but not life threatening crash that most people encounter. And because it's so difficult, nobody does it.
It's not hard to imagine that marketing your helmet as "safer" in some way might result in getting fines from the CSPC or lawsuits from your competitors for libel, since all helmets have to pass the CSPC test.
Given the choice between some risk of getting fired, going to jail, bankrupting your company, etc or just doing nothing, most people with the power to actually make a difference aren't going to risk anything. And I can't really blame them for it.
> An affirmative statement that a helmet passed a standard could not be construed as libel
OK so if your helmet has passed the standard, and your competitors helmet has too, what is the differentiation?
You have to say "safer" somehow, but the CSPC sort-of has a monopoly on the definition of "safe" and you might well raise their ire by marketing a helmet as "safer" because that undermines the implicit assumption that they are doing their job well by making good standards which are appropriate. So yes if you started doing this without politicking extensively you might end up in a lot of trouble.
ETA: the article you link mentions ASTM maintaining a more stringent standard!
It also has this gem, given our discussion:
There may never be an improved government standard for bicycle helmets. Experts may never come to a consensus on a standard for testing the forces most closely associated with concussions. But one test can be administered now: the market test. After all, new technology costs more. "Adding that upcharge to a $50 helmet," Scott Sports designer John Thompson told me, "is a harder sell."
I might suggest that this is the "good Samaritan" principle at work. There is a standard that the government has made, and which it enforces. The government is supposed to do the right thing (at least so people tend to believe, all the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding) and so the existence of SOME governmental standard (even if it isn't great) really screws up attempts to improve upon it.
If there was no definitive standard and instead three competing standards bodies then people would have to get informed a bit and decide what to do. But there's a government standard, so anything that passes it must be OK and everything else is superfluous. I might not think that way when it comes to buying helmets, but how many moms or dads buying their child a helmet might think exactly that?
Once the complexity is hidden behind a good/bad (it passes the test or it doesn't) metric any kind of critical thinking tends to go out the window. The CSPC test is good in that it prevents people from making helmets that would fall apart if you dropped them accidentally.
But it's not good in that there are inherent tradeoffs between foam strength and shock absorption and it has in effect arbitrarily decided that one particular point on that line is the RIGHT tradeoff full stop.
I don't have the stats for lower versus higher energy crashes. But it seems likely to me (based on 30 years and at least 50,000 miles of cycling) that lower energy outweighs higher energy by perhaps some 100:1. And if the distribution is that skewed, then perhaps you could do more good by fixing the low energy crashes even if it costs on the high energy crashes.
But ultimately I'd prefer for people to have that choice by themselves. Right now you can buy high energy helmets and that's about it. There might be SOME that can also protect against lower energy crashes. But there aren't any low energy only helmets for sale ANYWHERE. I might prefer one of those for just tooling around town at speeds of less than 15mph. Thanks to the CSPC if I want one of those I have to make it myself. While I could probably do that it'd cost me a year and $20k and I wouldn't be able to recoup that investment by selling, because again that helmet wouldn't pass the mandatory CSPC muster.
I think the situation stinks, and telling me that it is actually good doesn't make it so.
Nowhere did I say the situation was good. I pointed out that manufacturers are free to develop their own standards and provided evidence to that effect.
Having skimmed that article, I end up expecting the CSPC to move sometime in the near future, as the science around concussions is moving forward enough to make it possible to actually arrive at a better set of tradeoffs.
> I pointed out that manufacturers are free to develop their own standards and provided evidence to that effect.
They can only develop their own standards in excess of what the CSPC already requires of them. And their standard already sets the bar very, very high. Too high to be useful to most people.
So while that statement isn't blatantly and grossly wrong, I would argue that it's not really correct either. A more honest statement might be "manufacturers are free to develop their own standards (so long as they also meet CSPC minimums) and provided evidence to that effect"
A large portion of the point of this debate is "are the CSPC minimums a good tradeoff" and so pointing out that people can do whatever they want in excess of the CSPC minimums isn't exactly great form.
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?
I don't see how my beating the point (to death) that manufacturers can go ahead and do that is bad form. If you want it, go ahead and take the last word.
Yes manufacturers can do it. I agree 100%. The point is that they aren't able to get anything for it! The CSPC test has FALSELY COMMODITIZED bicycle helmets where all helmets are SEEN as having the same level of safety regardless of the truth. Which then makes it very tough to sell people on extra safety, because all helmets are supposed to be AT LEAST SAFE ENOUGH thanks to the test.
I'm not trying to get the last word here, I'm trying to actually convince you of something. I know I'm doing something wrong, but I can't tell what. To me it's incredibly obvious that this particular standard is causing undesirable outcomes in society. I'm doing my damnedest to try and convince you of that. I'm having no success whatsoever. Intuitively it must be my fault; only I can tell if you're getting the gist of what I'm trying to communicate. It would be folly for me to blame you for not understanding my bad explanation.
1. Helmets only help you when they crush or break or deform. If they don't do this, they haven't really protected you.
2. Helmets are very strong, this is so that they can survive a very bad, high energy accident. This is required as per CSPC.
3. EPS doesn't start to crush until you've exceeded its compressive strength. In helmets, this is dictated by the maximal impact that it has to withstand.
4. Lower than maximal impacts will cause very little of the helmet to get used, or perhaps none at all. That means that the helmet did little or nothing to keep the person safe.
5. Crash severity is probably distributed as 1/x or as Poission meaning that low energy events are far, far more frequent than high energy events. Probably by several orders of magnitude.
7. The false commoditization of helmets (due to the CSPC test) makes it very difficult to convince people that there is anything else even worth looking at for safety (since everything is definitely safe enough), and even if you can do so you still have to design your standard to be in excess of the CSPC standard.
8. This leads a great many people to suffer concussions where a better designed helmet might have prevented them, while still providing an excellent level of safety for truly severe events. It is entirely possible to make a helmet which wouldn't pass the CSPC test that can provide good protection against concussion and death at the same time.
I think the problem is that you are imputing a position I have not taken.
I'm not especially convinced that the density of foam used in current helmets is egregiously bad, but that's a little different than being opposed to regulators and industry taking steps to make better helmets (it perhaps makes me a bit blase on the issue, and I anyway tend to come off as irreverent, whether I intend to or not).
and I didn't really come along for the ride. I see how dismissing the idea of CSPC fines might come across as argumentative, but I really don't think that is a risk (especially in the face of extant private standards), and it is a different issue than the good Samaritan and false commoditization statements you have followed up with.
They're all separate issues unless you want better outcomes from helmets in crashes. In that case, any one particular issue could change a bit and there are better odds that you'd see things start moving in the right direction.
The existence of private safety standards doesn't mean that you're somehow exempt from the Federal ones.
I think it's a complicated issue and that there are a number of factors whose confluence is very unfortunate for cycling helmets at the current time. I do agree that this isn't the issue of our time or something that has great influence on the nation. But I tend to get very disappointed when there are federal regulations that are well-intended but end up giving people a false sense of security.
From the Bicycling Magazine article:
"Thompson sees his challenge as story and price. He has to convince customers that a MIPS-equipped helmet is safer, despite the fact that all helmets pass the same safety test. "If the customer can't digest that message," he says, "you're adding a system that nobody will care about.""
"Most helmet designers and marketers are avid cyclists. The entry hall at the Dome is jammed with staffers' bikes. They value their brains and those of their customers. But their customers—from top pros to weekenders—haven't been clamoring for safer helmets, and the unchanging CPSC standards helped to ensure they were never offered one. And the industry's independent safety experts have for years insisted that no helmet can reduce concussion risk. Repeated often enough, that becomes accepted wisdom.
When the MIPS system appeared, those experts dismissed it. "That's not doing anything except taking up space," Dave Halstead told me. "It's a wonderful solution for a problem that does not exist."
Randy Swart, the ASTM helmet subcommittee's co-vice chairman, said he found the MIPS data "just not compelling." He called MIPS "an unproven technology. I think it just adds complexity—and could add to the thickness of the helmets."
In some cases, these assumptions were not true. The MIPS system doesn't make helmets larger or heavier. The idea that the only safer helmet is a bigger helmet has been accepted for so long that it's become an ingrained assumption."
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…
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.
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.
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).
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."
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)
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...
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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)