No helmet at 60mph

I think there's no real world evidence that helmets actually protect you from serious head injuries. Minor cuts and scrapes, sure, but those are not what I'm worried about. This article is quite well balanced and shows both sides of the coin reasonably well:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/msp/crossPartyGroups/groups/cpg-cycle.htm

skareb said:

Just wanna point out funny how cyclist react, when someone post about riding without helmet on everybody would jump on the guy and condemn him to the pits ... when the same person announce how he rode downhill at 60mph suddenly he is a hero...

Why the double standards? isn't both suicide?

Maybe you didn't see how badly I got flamed for saying I rode 60mph down a hill through a residential area, speed limit of 25.

velomanct said:

Maybe you didn't see how badly I got flamed for saying I rode 60mph down a hill through a residential area, speed limit of 25.

You have to admit that doesn't sound like a particularly sensible thing to do. I won't comment since I haven't seen the actual road and situation, but it's probably not something I'd do myself. Not that I've ever done 60mph on a bicycle either, mind.

velomanct said:

Maybe you didn't see how badly I got flamed for saying I rode 60mph down a hill through a residential area, speed limit of 25.

Wearing your helment and ringing your bell, no doubt🙂

KakenBetaal said:

You have to admit that doesn't sound like a particularly sensible thing to do. I won't comment since I haven't seen the actual road and situation, but it's probably not something I'd do myself. Not that I've ever done 60mph on a bicycle either, mind.

honestly, when I am on my road bike, I could care less what the speed limit is. I go as fast as I possibly can. It's what makes road biking so much fun. Of course there are some situations where I have to slow down, but most of the time it's safe to go all out.
(I am not going to go 60mph when there are children playing near the road.)

Plus, 60mph is not that fast, it just feels really fast cause of all the wind. You still have a lot of control and manueverabilty. It's not like I am tearing down the road at over 100mph on a motorcycle.
I always wear a helmet too. I'm 19, in case you were wondering.

Off topic but anybody else hear about the guy who got a speeding ticket for going 205 mph (~320 kph) on his motorcycle? That's pretty fast. At least he was wearing a helmet...although I wonder how much that would help if he crashed at that speed.

keydates said:

Off topic but anybody else hear about the guy who got a speeding ticket for going 205 mph (~320 kph) on his motorcycle? That's pretty fast. At least he was wearing a helmet...although I wonder how much that would help if he crashed at that speed.

I was watching a show where some guy was attempting a high speed record on a motorcycle. He crashed at some really high speed 150mph+. Then got up and was okay. Of course he was wearing some serious protective gear.

i'm an avid motorcyclist...i was going to post this big long rant about the whole subject, but then i realized i could boil it down to this:

if you're not going to wear a full faced helmet, then what's the point?

Any motorcyclist can tell you the huge difference between wearing the two.

Wearing a helmet (to me) on a road bike just seems rediculous, they provide such little protection for the type of crashes that are truely threatening to your well being.

I crashed the other day going around 8-10mph and my helmet saved my life. I fell sideways, obviously, and since my feet were still attached to the bike, the momentum that I had going rolled me on my back and tried to use my shoulder as a pivot. What ultimately stopped the momentum was my head/helmet hitting the pavement. It happened so fast I didnt have time to respond. thank god for my helmet.

I see guys not wearing helmets all the time, and I just laugh at them. If they dont realize how dangerous it is to ride without one, then they probably dont have anything to protect.

Man- if I am going to go 60mph on my bicycle, the helmet has got to go...it's too hard to get my head between my legs to kiss my ass goodbye with it on!🙂
OK- I'm chicken...43mph top speed so far.
As for the motorcycle guy- the reason for the half helmet is simple. The guys that wear them want to see and hear. I rode for ten years without one (and now with one- helmet laws) And I have to ask, how many times have you gone down? Now, how many have you hit your head?
The only person I ever knew who hit his head in a motorcycle accident...even in a full face helmet...well, I threw his ashes off a cliff into the ocean a week later (and his Ducati into a dumpster).
Not that I don't wear one- wife says no two wheeled activities without it and she's the boss round here.

Telegram Sam said:

As for the motorcycle guy- the reason for the half helmet is simple. The guys that wear them want to see and hear. I rode for ten years without one (and now with one- helmet laws) And I have to ask, how many times have you gone down? Now, how many have you hit your head?
The only person I ever knew who hit his head in a motorcycle accident...even in a full face helmet...well, I threw his ashes off a cliff into the ocean a week later (and his Ducati into a dumpster).
Not that I don't wear one- wife says no two wheeled activities without it and she's the boss round here.

I've been down once myself at the track doing 80mph, and been 15 feet away from probably 10 wreaks...so not so bad, some really bad. Full helmets save lives, your face and chin are protected from abrasion, and your entire brain stem from impact, not to mention your temporal-mandibular areas...including your ears. Don't give me the hog wash about using a half helmet for hearing. Full face helmets do not noticably deminish your hearing, they even teach that in the MSF course if you've taken one.

I've seen plenty of ppl who have the skin still on their face because of a helmet, and a few who owe the fact that their brain is still inside their skull to a helmet. I'm not gonna say a helmet will save your life. Obviously there are limits on any device, which you've tragically learned.

The jist of my prior post is simply the added protection a bicycle helmet is negligible, to that of a motorcycle helmet, and shouldn't be compared to one.

crashtd said:

I've been down once myself at the track doing 80mph, and been 15 feet away from probably 10 wreaks...so not so bad, some really bad. Full helmets save lives, your face and chin are protected from abrasion, and your entire brain stem from impact, not to mention your temporal-mandibular areas...including your ears. Don't give me the hog wash about using a half helmet for hearing. Full face helmets do not noticably deminish your hearing, they even teach that in the MSF course if you've taken one.

I've seen plenty of ppl who have the skin still on their face because of a helmet, and a few who owe the fact that their brain is still inside their skull to a helmet. I'm not gonna say a helmet will save your life. Obviously there are limits on any device, which you've tragically learned.

The jist of my prior post is simply the added protection a bicycle helmet is negligible, to that of a motorcycle helmet, and shouldn't be compared to one.

Absolutely. I don't ride a motorbike personally (must get a bike license one day) but I recall picking up my friend's helmet after he'd dropped his bike. There was a VERY nasty gouge along the right hand side of the lower front of the helmet. If he'd had an open face helmet, that would have been his jaw, most likely down to the bone. My mother has also told me some fairly gruesome stories from when she worked in casualty whilst training as a nursing sister in the 60s prior to helmet laws.

Telegram Sam said:

Man- if I am going to go 60mph on my bicycle, the helmet has got to go...it's too hard to get my head between my legs to kiss my ass goodbye with it on!🙂
OK- I'm chicken...43mph top speed so far.
As for the motorcycle guy- the reason for the half helmet is simple. The guys that wear them want to see and hear. I rode for ten years without one (and now with one- helmet laws) And I have to ask, how many times have you gone down? Now, how many have you hit your head?
The only person I ever knew who hit his head in a motorcycle accident...even in a full face helmet...well, I threw his ashes off a cliff into the ocean a week later (and his Ducati into a dumpster).
Not that I don't wear one- wife says no two wheeled activities without it and she's the boss round here.

I don't ride a motor bike, but a good friend of mine (who is unfortunatly in Iraq right now, but that is another story), had a relativly minor wreck a few years ago, he just layed the bike down on a corner, only doing about 40mph.

His full face probably saved his life in that crash, it at least saved him from years of reconstructive surgury. After he slid across the road, he wound up hitting the edge of a road sign face first, . He was able to pick up the bike and ride home