Hats?

In article <[email hidden]>,

Just zis Guy said:

On the other hand, a diesel slick did dump me off my bike once earlier
this year - and I landed [censored] first, of course :-)

Sounds like a real hazard of the dark side. On a safety bicycle you'd
have been much better placed to see it coming and deal with it.

--
Nick Kew

On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 11:15:09 +0100, [email hidden] (Nick Kew)

wrote in message : said:

Quoted message said:

On the other hand, a diesel slick did dump me off my bike once earlier
this year - and I landed [censored] first, of course :-)

Quoted message said:

Sounds like a real hazard of the dark side. On a safety bicycle you'd
have been much better placed to see it coming and deal with it.

It's not easy to spot the difference between wet road and wet diesel
slick on an overcast morning, whatever bike you ride. At least on a
'bent you haven't got far to fall :-)

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

in message <[email hidden]>, Pete Biggs

(') said:

Steve Almond said:

Quoted message said:

The former. Risk compensation.

> Do you know how many were wearing helmets?

Cycle helmets are essentially irrelevant for crashes involving motor
vehicles.

Quoted message said:

Seems like a rather extreme position.
Surely there must be some accidents in which they help?

'Course it is, of course there are. Sadly, people are adopting such
an extreme position through fear of helmets being made compulsary. I
think this makes them look just as silly as those who insist on
helmets being worn for absolutely all cycling.

Of course helmets must help in some incidents. Equally of course,
helmets must be injurious in some incidents. The question is whether
helmets are more often helpful or more often injurious. You'd think
(and hope) the former. The fact that head injuries per cyclist mile
seem consistently to increase when helmet wearing increases indicates
that this is not as simple as it looks, and that further study is
needed.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

Wise man with foot in mouth use opportunity to clean toes.
;; the Worlock

in message <[email hidden]>, Steve Almond

(') said:

Quoted message said:

I will wear my helmet in icy conditions, simply because I have
experienced how fast a bike on ice can have you on the ground.

But it couldn't be as fast on a rain soaked diesel spill? or a
broken/collapsed front fork or wheel?

This is fantasy. An experienced road cyclist is most unlikely to just
fall off even if there is diesel on the road (it's thirty something
years since last I fell off on the road), and front forks and wheels
don't just collapse, at least not on a reasonably maintained bike.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; I'd rather live in sybar-space

"Simon Brooke" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Steve Almond

(') said:

Quoted message said:

I will wear my helmet in icy conditions, simply because I have
experienced how fast a bike on ice can have you on the ground.

But it couldn't be as fast on a rain soaked diesel spill? or a
broken/collapsed front fork or wheel?

This is fantasy. An experienced road cyclist is most unlikely to just
fall off even if there is diesel on the road (it's thirty something
years since last I fell off on the road)

Congratulations, you should be OK for the rest of your life, then.
I rode motorcycles for 37 years and had my first significant accident last
year. So I'm quite experienced and did "just fall off", braking on a
straight road at ~30mph. I was subsequently told the road had diesel on it,
and it had started to rain very slightly.

I wish I hadn't mentioned the broken fork/wheel thing. I just meant to
suggest some unforeseen breakage. Surely they happen on bicycles?

Steve

Steve Almond [email hidden] opined the following...

Quoted message said:

I wish I hadn't mentioned the broken fork/wheel thing. I just meant to
suggest some unforeseen breakage. Surely they happen on bicycles?

Very rarely. The most likely candidate would have been an early CF fork
as the first forays with composites had a habit of failing explosively.
As a testiment to the build quality a friend rode (sprinted) his racer
into the back of a van (Long story - very funny!) which ripped the
aluminium steerer out of the fork but the fork itself survived.

As for wheels, a failure that is bad enough to force you off the bike is
more likely to occur because the front brake just locked on the bent rim
than anything else. Bike components are often surprisingly resilient.

Jon

Tumbleweed said:

likely to cause major harm anyway. Just watching the tdf, you need a bum
,thigh and shoulder helmet, not one for the head!

Where on earth are you watching the TdF that requires all this
protective gear? Even if I fall off the sofa I doubt I'd incur
serious injuries to thigh or shoulder ...

-dan

--
"please make sure that the person is your friend before you confirm"

in message <[email hidden]>, Steve Almond

(') said:

"Simon Brooke" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Steve Almond

(') said:

> I will wear my helmet in icy conditions, simply because I have
> experienced how fast a bike on ice can have you on the ground.

But it couldn't be as fast on a rain soaked diesel spill? or a
broken/collapsed front fork or wheel?

This is fantasy. An experienced road cyclist is most unlikely to just
fall off even if there is diesel on the road (it's thirty something
years since last I fell off on the road)

Congratulations, you should be OK for the rest of your life, then.
I rode motorcycles for 37 years and had my first significant accident
last year. So I'm quite experienced and did "just fall off", braking
on a straight road at ~30mph. I was subsequently told the road had
diesel on it, and it had started to rain very slightly.

I wish I hadn't mentioned the broken fork/wheel thing. I just meant to
suggest some unforeseen breakage. Surely they happen on bicycles?

Things that jam in the spokes can cause the front wheel to suddenly stop
rotating, which has a tendency to precipitate the rider (if travelling
fast) over the bars. I've never yet done this...

Apart from that, no. Bikes are remarkably strong for the forces they are
exposed to, and there's not much risk of sudden catastrophic failure.
Tyres fail, which is a nuisance; transmission components fail. But even
total failure of the transmission (changer into the spokes of the rear
wheel, for example) should not make you fall off.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

The Conservative Party now has the support of a smaller proportion of
the electorate in Scotland than Sinn Fein have in Northern Ireland.

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 12:46:21 +0100 someone who may be "Pete Biggs"
<[email hidden]> wrote this:-

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Cycle helmets are essentially irrelevant for crashes involving motor
vehicles.

Quoted message said:

Seems like a rather extreme position.
Surely there must be some accidents in which they help?

'Course it is, of course there are.

The swerve is very interesting. I did not say that there are no
crashes involving motor vehicles in which cycle helmets are of use.
What I did say is that they are essentially irrelevant. They are
essentially irrelevant for a variety of factors that have been
discussed before.

Quoted message said:

Sadly, people are adopting such an
extreme position through fear of helmets being made compulsary. I think
this makes them look just as silly as those who insist on helmets being
worn for absolutely all cycling.

I think you should direct your comments at those who distort the
views of others, whether they do so accidentally or deliberately.
Interestingly such distortions are a common approach by helmeteers.
There are many examples.

--
David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
prevents me using the RIP Act 2000.

David Hansen said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> Cycle helmets are essentially irrelevant for crashes involving
> motor vehicles.

Quoted message said:

Seems like a rather extreme position.
Surely there must be some accidents in which they help?

'Course it is, of course there are.

The swerve is very interesting. I did not say that there are no
crashes involving motor vehicles in which cycle helmets are of use.
What I did say is that they are essentially irrelevant. They are
essentially irrelevant for a variety of factors that have been
discussed before.

"Essentially irrelevant" reads like an extreme view or exaggeration to me.
A large proportion of collisions with motor vehicles are slight enough for
a helmet to be of some potential use if the cyclist's head does hit
something--including the road when falling off after the collision.
That's hardly essentially irrelevant. That's highly relevant to the
essence of what helmets are for.

A cycle helmet may not be much good when the cyclist's head hits a car at
speed but that is a specific point.

~PB

Steve Almond said:

I wish I hadn't mentioned the broken fork/wheel thing. I just meant to
suggest some unforeseen breakage. Surely they happen on bicycles?

They do but rarely badly enough to cause serious injury or any head
injury. I've experienced many things go wrong on bikes (including forks
breaking), but I can't recall any of them causing anything more than a bit
of grazing and bruising at worst. The exceptions become famous because
there are so few of them.

~PB

On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 21:15:32 +0100, "Steve Almond"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Could you point me in the general direction of the 'light'? I'd ignorantly
assumed that helmets for bikes were as sensible as helmets for motorcycles
(seatbelts for cars etc.....).
Can you guide me to enlightenment?

Even bike helmets made to the /most/ stringent safety standard are
designed to protect your head from a fall from head-height onto a flat
surface when cycling at up to 7mph.

Almost all bike helmets available for purchase in the UK today only
meet /lower/ safety standards.

Few serious head injuries happen to cyclists falling over by
themselves at near walking-pace.

Most serious head injuries happen because cyclists are hit by a large
motorised vehicle.

Large motorised vehicles can be thought of, for these purposes as 1
tonne (small hatchbacks), 2 tonne (SUVs) to 40 tonne (artics)
sledgehammers hitting your head at up to 70mph.

To recap:

The best helmets are designed to protect from a fall from your bike at
a gentle jogging pace.

Bicycle helmets are /not/ designed to protect your head from 2 to 40
tonne sledgehammers wielded at high speed.

p.s. And actually, not even seatbelts for cars are as 'sensible as
seatbelts for cars'... Due to risk compensation, drivers wearing
seatbelts have a strong tendency to drive slightly faster, and brake
slightly later, than when they do not wear seatbelts, and so they
have more accidents, and worse accidents, than when they do not wear
seatbelts. Injury rates for drivers are not much worse, but the
injury rates for the folk they hit are much worse, so the death rate
went /up/ when mandatory seat belts were introduced...)

--
Cheers,
Euan
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On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 08:30:10 +0100, "Steve Almond"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

The former. Risk compensation.

Quoted message said:

Do you know how many were wearing helmets?

Cycle helmets are essentially irrelevant for crashes involving motor
vehicles.

Seems like a rather extreme position.
Surely there must be some accidents in which they help?

Practically none. They are designed for protecting against a fall to
the ground while cycling at up to 7mph. (i.e. soak up one hundred and
ten Joules)

The typical energies involved in motor vehicle collisions are hundreds
of times as high as this.

Quoted message said:

Are you sure the accident you may have will involve a motor vehicle?

Few accidents which do not involve a motor vehicle are likely to cause
serious injury.

Quoted message said:

Would you be quite happy to send out your children without cycling helmets?

Absolutely.

In fact, there are at least two reasons to /promote/ helmet avoidance.

--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
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On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 09:35:00 +0100, Peter Clinch
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

....

Quoted message said:

We /did/ spend a lot of time on bikes
which were a lot worse than what you can get today (grotty sidepull
brakes on steel rims, anyone?).

Not since the last time I failed to stop in the wet and a car drove
into me...

--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
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On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 10:01:07 +0100, David Martin
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Steve Almond said:

Seems like a rather extreme position.
Surely there must be some accidents in which they help?

There are, but there are also accidents in which they hinder. Helemts are
designed to absorb direct linear impacts. Unfortunately they can quite
easily cause impacts where there wouldn't have been one (our bodies train
themselves to just not hit our heads in falls.. a bigger head will be hit)

IIRC a neck needs to be lifted by 22degrees when wearing a helmet to
avoid an impact, compared to 7 degrees without a helmet. (when landing
on your back)

Quoted message said:

and can exacerbate the rotational impacts (which are 50 times more dangerous
than linear ones).
basically, if you are moving at speed you are more likely to have a
rotational component in any crash.

The moment arm is is increased by 40-60% with typical helmets, making
it that much easier to be given a rotation compared to when not
wearing a helmet.

--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
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On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 10:29:21 +0000 (UTC), "davek"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Steve Almond:

Quoted message said:

Would you be quite happy to send out your children without cycling

helmets?

Whether or not my child wears a helmet when out on his bike comes very low
down on my list of concerns, behind, for example, concerns about his bike
being safe to ride (brakes working, stem bolts tightened, etc) and him being
a competent and safe cyclist (able to control his bike, signal
appropriately, follow the highway code, etc).

This is an important point to make. Recently, a cycle proficiency
trainer (who occasionally posts to this list) had a child arrive at a
training session with the bike's front brake disconnected. The parent
had disconnected it because thge brake was rubbing slightly, and told
the child it was perfectly safe as long as s/he wore their helmet...

Not long before this, a child rode quickly off the pavement onto the
road without a functioning front brake and was killed by a car on the
road.

The local paper has turned this last tragedy into a 'wear a helmet'
campaign.

Despite the facts that

a) brakes are much more important than helmets in all situations.

b) helmets are nearly /entirely/ useless in collisions with motor
vehicles.

--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
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Gawnsoft said:

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 08:30:10 +0100, "Steve Almond"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

The former. Risk compensation.

>Do you know how many were wearing helmets?

Cycle helmets are essentially irrelevant for crashes involving motor
vehicles.

Seems like a rather extreme position.
Surely there must be some accidents in which they help?

Practically none. They are designed for protecting against a fall to
the ground while cycling at up to 7mph. (i.e. soak up one hundred and
ten Joules)

This is misleading - it assumes a worst case scenario. The best-case
scenario would be to fall on an ice rink. In this case a helmet would
protect you at whatever speed you were cycling at when you fell, provided
there was nothing to slide into. In practice most accidents will be
somewhere in between.

Even if your helmet always protected you in collisions below 7mph, the
braindamage you got in a 10mph accident might be less significant if you
were wearing a helmet.

Quoted message said:

The typical energies involved in motor vehicle collisions are hundreds
of times as high as this.

I have been in 2 such collisions and I have not hit either my head or
helmet. If your reasoning were correct, I should have suffered braindamage
because the energies involved in the collision were far above what a
helmet could have absorbed.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Are you sure the accident you may have will involve a motor vehicle?

Few accidents which do not involve a motor vehicle are likely to cause
serious injury.

Quoted message said:

Would you be quite happy to send out your children without cycling
helmets?

Absolutely.

In fact, there are at least two reasons to /promote/ helmet avoidance.

Also, a few kids have been killed whilst climbing on climbing frames
whilst wearing their cycle helmets. Their helmets got caught up, and
they were strangled.

OTOH I think some people reckon cycling helmets make sense for children
but not for adults. For example children are lighter than adults so the
energies in any collision are lower, and their heads are lower so
they don't have as far to fall.

AC

On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 09:49:54 +0100, "Steve Almond"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

"David Martin" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On 24/7/04 3:41 pm, in article [email hidden], "Steve

Almond"

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> I will wear my helmet in icy conditions, simply because I have
> experienced how fast a bike on ice can have you on the ground.
>

But it couldn't be as fast on a rain soaked diesel spill? or a
broken/collapsed front fork or wheel?

No. Diesel on tarmac is absolutely no way as slippery as a few mm of

powder

Quoted message said:

snow on steel smooth ice at -10C. Been there, done that, including the two
wheel slide on a diesel slick. Scary but no banana there. The ice one is

in

Quoted message said:

a league of it's own..

Very convincing argument. I cannot refute this, having never ridden in -10c.
I HAVE come off a motorcycle on rain slicked diesel (at only about 30 mph,
on a straight road). Believe me, I had NO say in which part of my body hit
the ground.
Of course, I don't have the remarkable level of skill implied by some of the
responses in this thread...

You were travelling at 'about' 30mph. Let's say 33mph.

So the energy your muscles had to control, relative to the energies a
cyclist has to control at the 7mph a bike helmet is good for were more
than 20 times as great. Think of it as the difference between
controlling a 20kg barbell and controlling a 450kg barbell.

Plus the reaction time you had available to respond to the handling
problem was 4 times shorter.

--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
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On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 22:49:50 +0100, "Steve Almond"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

"Simon Brooke" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Steve Almond

(') said:

> I will wear my helmet in icy conditions, simply because I have
> experienced how fast a bike on ice can have you on the ground.

But it couldn't be as fast on a rain soaked diesel spill? or a
broken/collapsed front fork or wheel?

This is fantasy. An experienced road cyclist is most unlikely to just
fall off even if there is diesel on the road (it's thirty something
years since last I fell off on the road)

Congratulations, you should be OK for the rest of your life, then.
I rode motorcycles for 37 years and had my first significant accident last
year. So I'm quite experienced and did "just fall off", braking on a
straight road at ~30mph. I was subsequently told the road had diesel on it,
and it had started to rain very slightly.

I wish I hadn't mentioned the broken fork/wheel thing. I just meant to
suggest some unforeseen breakage. Surely they happen on bicycles?

Not generally during A to B cycling.

(competion mpountain biking is a different matter, I expect, just as
the Superbike Grand Prix is not the same as on-road motorbiking)

--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
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On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 05:49:56 +0100, anonymous coward
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Gawnsoft said:

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 08:30:10 +0100, "Steve Almond"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

> The former. Risk compensation.
>
> >Do you know how many were wearing helmets?
>
> Cycle helmets are essentially irrelevant for crashes involving motor
> vehicles.
>
Seems like a rather extreme position.
Surely there must be some accidents in which they help?

Practically none. They are designed for protecting against a fall to
the ground while cycling at up to 7mph. (i.e. soak up one hundred and
ten Joules)

This is misleading - it assumes a worst case scenario. The best-case
scenario would be to fall on an ice rink. In this case a helmet would
protect you at whatever speed you were cycling at when you fell, provided
there was nothing to slide into. In practice most accidents will be
somewhere in between.

Even if your helmet always protected you in collisions below 7mph, the
braindamage you got in a 10mph accident might be less significant if you
were wearing a helmet.

To an extent, it's even worse than I stated. The 7mph assumes that
the only weight contributing to teh impact is the weight of the head
itself - i.e. the mass of the rest of the body does not contribute to
the collision beytween head and ground.

If you landed vertically, head first, even from stationary, this would
exceed the helmet's capabilites many times over....

....
--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
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