Cycle helmet (again)

I had a mishap today while dismounting. I think I caught my foot on the saddle or saddle bag while throwing my leg over and went over backwards with the bike on top of me. I went down very quickly and the back of my head struck the tarmac road with some force. Fortunately, as usual, I was wearing my helmet so suffered no head injury. I was dazed for some time and sore in other places but no lasting damage. (My bike was unscathed which was my main concern.) It brought home to me the advantage of wearing a helmet. Just for info.

Yeah - you really don't want a bad knock on the head. I ride motorbikes more than I ride my electric bike and every year, I dread coming off them more and more. I've pretty much given up riding the busy A roads unless I have to, and prefer riding my new Royal Enfield 350 around absolutely empty country roads at pretty sedate speeds. You still never know when a speeding DPD van will come tearing around a blind bend on a single track road though. A couple of years back i had to ride onto the verge as a DPD van skidded past where I was with all his tyres smoking. I'd have been hit if I had not been going slow enough to ride onto the verge without coming a cropper. It was also a light 125cc bike that I was on at the time, which made the rapid leaving of the road a safe way out. The RE 350 is twice the weight of that bike almost.

It is a good thing you get your priorities right and made sure bike had soft landing.

Good to hear the lid did it's job.

You might want to consider replacing the helmet now, it'll not protect you in the same area of the helmet if the structure has been compressed as a result of the impact on the helmet

 

tho if it was hit that hard you prob need a new splat hat

Echoing some other comments about replacements. If it was a hard knock, consider replacing the helmet even if there's no visible damage. They are designed to protect a single strike and there's no way to tell if the internal structure has been compromised.

It's funny how the baseball cap/hair/shower cap/bald skin etc. wearing crowd never write about their happiness at having avoided serious head, facial and dental injuries because they weren't wearing a helmet... possibly because they're regretful, too paralysed to type, in a coma, or dead.

Edited March 23, 20242 yr by guerney

It's funny how the baseball cap/hair/shower cap/bald skin etc. wearing crowd never write about their happiness at having avoided serious head, facial and dental injuries because they weren't wearing a helmet... possibly because they're regretful, too paralysed to type, in a coma, or dead.

 

I have done many times in this forum, saying how I've ridden bicycles for well over 70 years, never wearing a helmet and never banging my head doing it.

 

There are some things helmet wearing promoters should be aware of:

 

Bicycles have been around since the first one in 1817, yet a cycle helmet wasn't invented until 1980. Obviously they weren't very necessary for 163 years and even now after 206 years hardly any in the cycling intensive countries think they are.

 

How can that be? The answer is very simple, riding sensibly.

 

In the most cycling intensive country of all, The Netherlands, they ride without helmets, slowly.

 

In the world's most population dense countries, India, China and Japan, cycling without helmets is the norm, slowly.

 

Throughout the rest of the third world where cycling without helmets is the norm, it's also done slowly.

 

But in Britain we've stupidly made helmets necessary by riding at inappropriate cycling speeds. We didn't use to, for most of two centuries we commonly rode at up to to about 10mph and a rare 12 mph was getting a move on, so we didn't hurt ourselves or anyone else.

 

But by the 1960s with increasing affluence we adults increasingly gave up cycling for driving, leaving cycling only to kids on chopper bikes and the like. When we adults finally returned to cycling during the 1980s on, it was as a leisure pursuit, sporting in nature like mountain biking and club style road biking. Thus the silly speeds of 20mph or more became common with riders often wearing Lycra and Helmets like Tour de France wannabees and too often looking faintly ridiculous.

 

Inevitably that resulted in large numbers unable to stop or slow quickly, riders going over the bars getting serious head injuries and even broken limbs. Madness.

 

Helmets are not the answer, the majority of cyclists killed in London each year have been shown to be wearing helmets, showing how ineffective they are.

 

The answer is to get back to cycling as it always used to be done here and still is in most of the world, sensibly at up to 10mph from which speed slowing or stopping almost completely avoids such accidents. By all means wear a helmet as well if wished, since like the OP, it can protect you even before you get onto your bike. But don't try to tell others that helmet wearing is the way to cycling safety because it isn't. Cycling at sensible speeds is the most certain way.

.

Edited March 23, 20242 yr by flecc

You're mixing primary and secondary safety. Primary safety - lights, reflectors, dual brakes, slower riding (within the limits on your observation etc.) - makes perfect sense and lowers the risk at population level. Secondary safety - helmets, gloves, shatterproof glasses, low standover height - lessens the eventual risk of harm to individuals. A person's overall risk is affected by both.

 

Some would see riding forever at commuting speeds as uniquely limiting among the primary safety measures. Need we have done away with the spoon brake?

 

When skating outdoors we wore helmets but indoors the risk was lower and it wasn't cool. So yes, I fell helmet-less at about 6mph and spent 18 months getting over severe concussion. On the plus side I feel I've an excuse for some of my less successful posts, but while wearing a bike helmet is an individual choice I don't think a 10mph limit would be a good reason to choose not to.

You're mixing primary and secondary safety.

 

I don't do that since for me primary safety is everything, never having the accident. I believe our excessive British emphasis on secondary safety and the resultant feeling of security leads to many more accidents, while an ever present knowledge of vulnerability leads to more care and far fewer. There's plenty of data on this.

 

while wearing a bike helmet is an individual choice I don't think a 10mph limit would be a good reason to choose not to.

 

It's one reason, but there are a number of much better reasons not to. The main reason for so many worldwide naturally riding slowly (circa 10mph on the flat) is not safety or any realised reason, It naturally makes the best advantage of the genius of the bicycle's invention, expending only the same effort as walking but cutting journey time by around two thirds. Those who ride at twice the speed with considerable extra effort expended thow away all the bicycle's inherent efficiency gain.

 

For the same reason, wherever this is common practice, as it used to be here until circa 1960, they get off for hills and walk up. Even as a fit youngster in the 1940s and '50s I always joined others of all ages in doing this, most of our bikes being single gear only as they still are worldwide.

.

Edited March 23, 20242 yr by flecc

 

see no crash helmet

 

see no crash helmet

 

Hindsight is 20/20 if you can turn your neck. I faceplanted and cracked a front tooth after my chain broke while struggling slowly uphill in 1988, wish I'd been wearing a jawguarded helmet then.

 

 

Accept no substitute.

 

I blame you and [mention=28182]mt247[/mention] (for the helmet - I already had my face and leather jacket).

 

That helmet protected my head twice and my jaw three times - once was when I fell over in dense woodland while pushing my bike and fully loaded trailer. I was also bitten by something shortly before, thought it was a snake but it may have been a rat. Kevlar trousers? I'm not rabid.

Edited March 24, 20242 yr by guerney

Tarmac(soft usually) + lid, you'll be fine.

 

Me

Blootered on vodka. rides at full pelt into a concrete barrier and off over the front to land directly on my un-lidded head.

Whiplash that lasted 4 or so years, but other than that pretty much ok

 

Lessons learned - DON'T tank a ltr of vodka with a mate in the space of about an hour, then ride off home.

I landed on my head after my bike collided with a badger. Without my hard hat, I would have ended up with a broken head as well as the broken wrist. Happened at only 12mph. You'll have to guess the badger's speed.

 

I don't do that since for me primary safety is everything, never having the accident. I believe our excessive British emphasis on secondary safety and the resultant feeling of security leads to many more accidents, while an ever present knowledge of vulnerability leads to more care and far fewer. There's plenty of data on this.

 

 

 

It's one reason, but there are a number of much better reasons not to. The main reason for so many worldwide naturally riding slowly (circa 10mph on the flat) is not safety or any realised reason, It naturally makes the best advantage of the genius of the bicycle's invention, expending only the same effort as walking but cutting journey time by around two thirds. Those who ride at twice the speed with considerable extra effort expended thow away all the bicycle's inherent efficiency gain.

 

For the same reason, wherever this is common practice, as it used to be here until circa 1960, they get off for hills and walk up. Even as a fit youngster in the 1940s and '50s I always joined others of all ages in doing this, most of our bikes being single gear only as they still are worldwide.

.

I like what you say here in many ways, but these days, I generally do wear a helmet, though I never did until my mid 60s, except on motorbikes. This next point is so vague that it is almost anecdotal, but I do remember reading of some research which made it clear that motorists passed by closer to cyclists who had helmets and looked more competent. I think there was a gender bias in favour of giving more space to women too. Sorry I can't summon up the chapter and verse on that, but it might be taken as support for your point about primary and secondary safety. It is also said to be true that people driving without seatbelts are more cautious. Having a sense of ones vulnerability encourages more caution.... That's pretty obvious probably.

I do remember reading of some research which made it clear that motorists passed by closer to cyclists who had helmets and looked more competent.

 

That doesn't happen to me anymore - where there's a will, there's a way

 

Edited March 25, 20242 yr by guerney

I landed on my head after my bike collided with a badger. Without my hard hat, I would have ended up with a broken head as well as the broken wrist. Happened at only 12mph. You'll have to guess the badger's speed.

 

Ahh i see the missing part of the equation that led to you breaking bones. You simply werent drunk enough.

Ahh i see the missing part of the equation that led to you breaking bones. You simply werent drunk enough.

 

For sure, I'd have preferred rubber bones!

I do remember reading of some research which made it clear that motorists passed by closer to cyclists who had helmets and looked more competent. I think there was a gender bias in favour of giving more space to women too.

 

I know of it too, the last time I saw it published was in A to B magazine.

 

The male researcher was very thorough, even in his gender bias research to the extent of experimentally wearing a long blonde wig and suitable apparel to appear to drivers as a female cyclist.

.

I know of it too, the last time I saw it published was in A to B magazine.

 

The male researcher was very thorough, even in his gender bias research to the extent of experimentally wearing a long blonde wig and suitable apparel to appear to drivers as a female cyclist.

.

I`ll get myself a long blonde wig that will fit over my "crash" helmet.

I`ll get myself a long blonde wig that will fit over my "crash" helmet.

 

Would increased drag resulting from a very hairy helmet slow you down, reduce ebike range? Would a substantially bigger looking blonde head make drivers assume they're closer than the rest of your bike appears, making them allow you more room, or would it give cyclist hating drivers a bigger target to aim for? I look forward to reading about your findings.

Edited March 25, 20242 yr by guerney

Would increased drag resulting from a very hairy helmet slow you down, reduce ebike range? Would a substantially bigger looking blonde head make drivers assume they're close than the rest of your bike appears, making them allow you more room, or would it give cyclist hating drivers a bigger target to aim for? I look forward to reading about your findings.

I scratch my chin today having gone over the handlebars.

Another bike came across the road and turned towards on cycle path, so I hit the front brake too hard and over I went.

I'm going to get a full faced helmet I've decided.

No Idea what to buy or where from?

On I side note.

I run rim breaks. I thought they weren't that great. I was wrong..

 

Bashed elbow and toe hurts. I'll be fine though.

https://foxracing.co.uk/product/rampage-pro-carbon-mips-fuel-helmet/29346.html?dwvar_29346_color=001&dwvar_29346_size=S&cgid=mtb-helmets-rampage-pro-carbon

 

same one i have and on offer atm tho if a m size get a large or it wont fit.

I scratch my chin today having gone over the handlebars.

Another bike came across the road and turned towards on cycle path, so I hit the front brake too hard and over I went.

I'm going to get a full faced helmet I've decided.

No Idea what to buy or where from?

On I side note.

I run rim breaks. I thought they weren't that great. I was wrong..

 

Bashed elbow and toe hurts. I'll be fine though.

Glad you didnt break your teeth or get even more hurt.