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Building a Better Bike Helmet Out of Paper
An anonymous reader writes "Inspired by nature, a London man believes the solution to safer bike helmets is to build them out of paper. '"The animal that stood out was the woodpecker. It pecks at about ten times per second and every time it pecks it sustains the same amount of force as us crashing at 50 miles per hour," says Surabhi. "It's the only bird in the world where the skull and the beak are completely disjointed, and there's a soft corrugated cartilage in the middle that absorbs all the impact and stops it from getting a headache." In order to mimic the woodpecker's crumple zone, Anirudha turned to a cheap and easily accessible source — paper. He engineered it into a double-layer of honeycomb that could then be cut and constructed into a functioning helmet. "What you end up with is with tiny little airbags throughout the helmet," he says.'"
I'd say it's the article at fault not the designer, but the reason polystyrene foam is already used in bike helmets is exactly the same - "tiny little airbags throughout the helmet".
I wonder how this compares? Does this absorb more energy?
And most of you survived to adulthood -- although, as your post illustrates, some did suffer lasting cognitive issues.
I'll tell that to my brother who is now permanently disabled due to brain damage, as a result of not wearing a bike helmet and hitting a rock going down a hill at high speed.
Thanks, jerk.
Paper had one characteristic that might make it less than suitable for use in rain. One foam helmet might be cheaper in the long run than a bunch of soggy paper helmets.
Sometimes it`s not your fault.
The name is Hövding and it's an "Airbag bicycle helmet". It's developed by some team in Skåne, Sweden. Looks really cool.
This. Years ago now I was riding to school and was clipped by a car - in a bike lane (we aren't allowed to ride on the footpaths over here) - and the doctor said that if I hadn't been wearing the helmet I wouldn't be here now. You might be slightly uncomfortable wearing a helmet, and some people might joke about how it looks but it really can save a life.
Just like you teach your kids not to run with scissors, you should wear a helmet when riding a bike and you should teach your kids to do so as well.
As has been posted to Slashdot before, the data on helmet protection is equivocal. In many large scale studies, increase in helmet use does not reduce severe brain injuries, and could possibly increase the rate.
Why? 1) Helmets might make bikers less cautious; 2) helmets might make car drivers less cautious; 3) a helmet can only absorb so much energy, and in many categories of severe crashes you're going to cross the threshold of severe brain injury regardless of a helmet (in other words the range of energies a helmet can protect you from might not overlap well with the kinds of crashes you need to worry about).
Also, 4) many severe head injuries from cycling crashes are caused by rotational forces, which helmets can exacerbate. 5) helmet requirements almost universally reduce the number of cyclists (or reduce the growth in cycling), leaving the cycling pool with more adventurous and risk-prone bikers; 6) corollary of #5, fewer cyclists means less road time experience between cyclists and car drivers.
See http://cyclehelmets.org/.
A second word negates your first word.
Waterproofing.
None of the reasons you post support your suggestion that helmet use does not reduce severe brain injuries or actually increase it. They are ludicrous at best.
In 30 years on a bike, I've never ever seen someone say, oh, I have this helmet, lets see if I can skid right under that semi and out the other side. People who take ridiculous risks will take them without helmets just as often as with.
The research only supports one assertion about increased injuries caused by helmets, and that is a marginal increase in neck injuries from the helmet catching on the roadway surface as you go sliding along. However, even this research recognizes this increase in neck injuries is a trade off compared to abraded to the bone head road-rash that would otherwise occur in the identical crash.
That being said, when broadsided by a semi, a helmet won't help you. And its probably pointless to require them by law.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I hate to say it, but my impression is that linking to http://cyclehelmets.org/ for issues of helmets is like linking to WUWT for issues on climate change. It has a particular position, and runs with it (whether that is intentional or not). They are by no means unique in this, and are also not the only position in the discussion to do it.
That said:
1. Dumb cyclists will be dumb, and if someone rides less cautiously because they think a helmet will protect them they are dumb
2. Dumb drivers will be dumb, and if a driver is really driving less cautiously around a cyclist on the basis that a helmet will protect the cyclist they are not only dumb but outright dangeous
3. Crossing the threshold with 100% of the force is still probably going to be more damaging than crossing it with 50% of the force (if 50% is absorbed by the helmet)
4. And many are caused by non-rotational impacts, which helmets reduce
5. Dumb cyclists are dumb, and if the pool of cyclists is largely made up of dumb cyclists then that doesn't mean helmets reduce safety, just that if a bunch of less dumb cyclists were added to the pool they would dilute the apparent stupidity of the group overall. Not saying cyclists are stupid, but rather that the number of stupid cyclists is the same irrespective of whether it is 100 stupid cyclists in 101 total cyclists, or 100 stupid cyclists in 1000 total cyclists.
6. If #5 is in fact true (and there is little agreement on it) then this is true, and indeed having more cyclists on the road very likely does make it safer for all cyclists.
There in another arguments for not requiring helmets, also based on the idea that requiring helmets reduces the number of cyclists: even if helmets do reduce the likelihood of death or brain injury in an accident, the advantage of improvement in overall community health as a result of more cyclists offsets the disadvantage of a subset of these being dead or brain injured.
The science is not a slam dunk for helmets. In many studies--including more recent studies, and meta-studies--helmets increase the injury rate. But even assuming that helmets provide a significant net benefit for cyclists, the reduction in cyclists caused by helmet laws definitely outweighs the benefits of helmets, because the injury rate is so low even without helmets that you're better off having a bunch of helmet-less cyclists losing weight and increasing their cardiovascular health.
Once again intuition and anecdote provide the wrong answer.
People eschewed seat belts for similar reasons--intuitively everybody thought that a seat belt would increase injury by preventing you from escaping from a wreckage, or by keeping you in a poor position.
People: stop using your intuition for this kind of stuff, and read up on real science. And also be critical of the science, because too often even scientists inadvertently seek to prove their intuition, rather than asking the hard questions. In the case of helmets, the emerging, qualitatively better science casts serious doubt on the overall benefits of helmets from an epidemiological perspective.
Helmets will help prevent cuts and mild concussions, but not serious head injuries with permanent damage, which they might even exacerbate. And helmet requirements disincentivize cycling to an extent that they often cause a negative net health outcome in the population.
Takeaway: helmet laws are definitely a bad idea. If you wear a helmet, good for you, but don't judge others who don't.
I think you have to read between the lines carefully to find the real value in the article. I think it can be equally valid to build a bicycle helmet from corrugated or expanded cardboard as is is with styrofoam + shell. (OK, styrofoam is a trademart for Expanded Polystyrene.) As others have commented, cardboard is suseptible to damage from moisture, so it has to be sealed against it. In addition, I'm not convinced that the cardboard design is cheaper to manufacture than the styrofoam designs.
To me, the relevant signal is the reduction in maximum G force. The article suggests that the design limit is 300G, and conventional helmets achieve 225G - while his design gets to 70G. Presumably, the mechanism for doing that is to absorb the impact energy over a significant period of time before transmitting the forces to the wearer. Given the velocity of the collision, this means that the helment has to be built with a greater distance between the outside and inside of the helment than existing designs. If people are willing to wear thicker helmets (appropriately designed), such helmets could be reasonably expected to perform better - I'd think comparable designs could be easily built from the styrofoam + shell technology that's commonly in use.
Finally, the inventor says he was inspired by observing that his helmet was broken in the collision. THAT'S WHAT THEY ARE MEANT TO DO. In absorbing the forces of the collision, the helmet is permanently deformed. If your head is saved from destruction by a helment - buy a new helment to replace it.
Also, 4) many severe head injuries from cycling crashes are caused by rotational forces, which helmets can exacerbate. 5) helmet requirements almost universally reduce the number of cyclists (or reduce the growth in cycling), leaving the cycling pool with more adventurous and risk-prone bikers; 6) corollary of #5, fewer cyclists means less road time experience between cyclists and car drivers.
See http://cyclehelmets.org/.
You're just trying to rationalize your personal dislike for helmets.
Saying helmets don't protect your head is like saying water isn't wet. It's fucking risible. Trying to prove helmets don't protect by using statistics from different groups (cyclists who wear helmets are a different type of rider from cyclists who don't) smacks of desperation.
Tell you what. I get to smack you upside your granite skull with a car door. You can put on a helmet or not. Your choice.
But the brain damage has already been done.
Your post is based on the assumption that car-cyclist collisions are the only significant kind of accident.
I've gone down because of ice (x2), rain, and recklessness. If you'll look up the statistics, you'll see that borne out in the larger numbers as well.
And human-caused climate change is real. Watch insurance prices rather than listening to politicians that are owned by the oil and coal industries.
I actually thought about that. However, there are very few cost effective methods of waterproofing paper that work. Think of the waterproof corrugated paper packaging you have seen. It is fine for short exposure; but, it does not hold up to prolonged immersion and exposure.
A bike helmet will sit in puddles; it will spend hours in downpours. If you waterproof for the exposure conditions that bicycle helmets see, at some point it ceases to be paper.
Why do these arguments sound so familiar? Probably because they're so similar to the arguments people used to make against seat belts.
"They'll increase accidents because they make it harder for drivers to stretch and look around!"
"They'll trap me in a burning or sinking car!"
And, my all-time personal favorite (yes, I've actually heard people say this):
"They'll prevent me from being thrown clear of the collision!"
People will persistently find the very stupidest reasons for not doing something that bugs them. Yes, each of these eventualities might have killed a few drivers who would've been spared if not for their safety belts. But those numbers are absolutely dwarfed by the number of lives saved and serious injuries prevented.
I've only been in one significant bike accident, and I was lucky enough in that one that my helmet didn't come into play. But looking back at the accident and the pattern of my injuries, I can't explain how the helmet was spared. I sure as hell am not tempted at this point to ride out without it.
After RTFA, it seems that the most obvious material to make the helmet from is woodpecker skulls. Didn't anyone else get that?
Helmets will help prevent cuts and mild concussions, but not serious head injuries with permanent damage, which they might even exacerbate.
The level of protection depends on the helmet.
Full face motorcycle helmets really work. Bicycle helmets range from subpar to a joke. Equestrian helmets are a ridiculous farce (worse or similar protection to bicycle helmets but you're higher up on an easily spooked animal).
Nobody wants to cycle/ride with full face helmets, but I believe there's still room somewhere in between for better helmets.
Okay, I didn't see this post before my mocking response about anti-seat-belt arguments.
I am very skeptical of meta-studies that claim helmets increase injury rates (in fact, I'm somewhat skeptical of meta-studies in general -- they smack of running the results repeatedly through the blender until you get the consistency you want). But I haven't done extensive homework, so I can't actually dismiss what you say.
I do take issue with one detail, though: the assumption that helmet laws will disincentivize cycling. You're assuming that uneducated and unreasonable attitudes about helmets can't be changed. They were changed for safety belts, and (to a large degree) for cigarettes; why not for helmets?
I'm not sure I communicated my position. I don't trust cyclehelmets.org, which I think is anti-mandatory-helmet-wearing, to present balanced information, in the same way I don't trust WUWT, which variously seems to deny either climate change or the anthropogenic aspect of climate change, depending on the line de jour.
I absolutely acknowledge that car-cyclist collisions are only one of many types of serious accidents. I personally do wear a bicycle helmet, and have smashed up several helmets through: being hit by a car (x1), sliding on oil on the road (x2), catching on tram tracks (x2).
Mainly, what I was saying is that many of the arguments levelled against having mandatory helmet wearing (or indeed helmet-wearing at all) are not actually about the effectiveness of helmets per se, but about the supposed broader effects of wearing helmets. I also think they're mostly, though not universally, bullshit arguments.
I should point out: I'm in Victoria, Australia, which has both mandatory helmet wearing and mandatory seatbelt wearing. There is a bit of a movement in Victoria to eliminate the requirement to wear helmets, but it isn't one I care about either way.
Corrugated cardboard has been used for decades under high-altitude scientific balloon payloads to absorb the impact of landing from a parachute descent. You don't have to put too many of them under several thousand pounds of experiment and gondola. Here is a (not so good) picture of one example. The cardboard provides a very nice low-gee impact.
That looks pretty cool but what happens if you fall face first?
http://www.hovding.com/content/images/startpage/03_what_is_hovding/girl-helmet.jpg
Looking at the videos, I don't see why they don't airbag the whole head. What do you need to see when you're crashing? And even if you do need to see, why not extend nose and cheek pieces all the way around? Or just make a section of the airbag with clear plastic instead of white.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
There are actually helmets designed to reduce the rotational forces though. For example, I remember my own university trumpeting one helmet design in which a kind of inner helmet was allowed to slide inside an outer helmet on a low-friction liner. Simulations demonstrated a reduction maximum strain forces on the brain. There's a presentation on it here by the company which now manufactures them: http://mipshelmet.com/how-it-works/the_invention and since it's a simple design I suspect that it will be a component of the helmet of the future.
However, honeycombs make excellent single-use shock absorbers, so those surely have a place in helmets as well.
Even if the site you link to were reasonable there is every reason to believe that helmets can be made truly excellent and made to give incredible protection both against shocks and rotational forces.
I am a regular biker — At least three days a week, I cycle to work. Not a great distance, but I end up making ~1hr on the bike every day I use it.
Several years ago, a car hit laterally my rear tire. Quite slowly, fortunately, although it managed to bend the rim ~30 degrees. Of course, cycling at ~20Km/h (~12mph), I fell down to my left.
I stood up right away, scared but not hit. My pants were slightly torn over the pocket where I store my keys. Nothing happened to me, just a scare, right?
When I took my helmet off, it was split in two. Yes, helmets are (and are designed to be) quite more fragile than skulls. Still, I'm very happy I didn't have to land with the side of my head on the road. Were I to be lucky, I'd have an ugly scar on my front left side.
Wear a helmet. Always.
Responding to oneself is generally bad form, but:
http://www.badscience.net/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2013-12-13-17.12.05.png
In summary (and partially concordant with the person I initially criticised): On a community-wide level, requiring people wear helmets may not reduce head injuries, but on an individual level if you are cycling and can add a helmet to your cycling without changing your behaviour, you are probably safer with the helmet.
(This requires a bit of reading into the paper, and a couple of assumptions: Assumptions are: drivers don't suddenly start being dickheads around you because you're wearing a helmet, and you don't start being a dickhead because you put on a helmet. If those two hold, then the case-control rather than community-wide studies are more applicable to the individual choosing whether or not to wear a helmet).
Many urban planners are discussing the opposite - ban inefficient, private use vehicles from cities and provide better cycling infrastructure. Wins all round. Except for lazy people.
Looks like it has a fatal flaw or two.
It's no great trick to make a helmet which will absorb impact. The trick is to do it without too much weight and, unless you only ride in cold weather, without overheating your head. In general, the more you pay for a helmet, the less helmet and more hole you get. That thing is covered with a solid shell. No venting. It's a portable oven. It's also 535g -- about 1.2 pounds. It's a brick (and probably will contribute to neck injuries as a result).
Giro's cheapest MTB helmet has some vents and is 410g. Move up to a helmet you might actually wear in the heat, you've got almost as much vent as helmet and you're down to 316g. Go to one which costs as much as this one -- 80 pounds sterling -- and you're under 300g and have more holes than helmet.
If it was just unventilated it might still have its niche, but it's just too heavy.
Just like how banking laws would make bankers less cautious, causing the 2007 financial disaster. We should make banking safer by removing all banking laws...
Oh wait. NO! You are a FUCKING IDIOT if you claim helmets make bikers less cautious. Just like those idiots who claim seat belts causes more deaths.
They argued against it in the beginning. I remember reading about those idiots, and even now, there are people who'd use those arguments. They need to be loudly and derisively laughed at.
Because it's the law in civilised nations such as Australia and New Zealand.
In the United Kingdom. HEAT suggests that a law making helmets compulsory for cyclists may result in an overall increase in 253 premature deaths – 265 extra deaths from reduced cycling less 12 deaths saved among the reduced pool of cyclists receiving fatal head injuries.
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1231.html
I for one am glad that I live in a rational nation, rather than one of the civilised ones which you mention!
Hitting something going downhill at high speed is going to cause brain damage or worse whether you have a helmet or not. Crashing on descents is very, very bad news.
Styrofoam will only protect you in low speed collisions. Somebody was killed in the Giro d'Italia last year descending from hitting his head on a siderail. He was wearing a helmet, of course.
This is the problem with these kind of anecdotes: If somebody crashes wearing a helmet, and is OK, it's just assumed that the helmet saved him. If somebody is hurt and was not wearing a helmet, it's assumed that he would have been ok if he was. In reality, this is a completely fallacious assumption, and is not borne out by the data.
Helmets probably have a positive impact on low speed crashes, but it is small. Motorists would have significantly reduced fatalities if they wore motorcycle helmets (which are much more effective but impractical for bicycles), like race car drivers do, but they don't. Pedestrians have higher fatalities per kilometer than cyclists (and pedestrian fatalities are often due to brain damage), but they don't wear helmets. Why is this one activity singled out to wear a bulky safety yarmulke?
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Cycling in Australia dropped 1/3 overnight when the helmet law was passed. This makes it more risky for existing cyclists, as there is safety in numbers.
The overriding public health effect is that the health benefits of cycling outweigh the risks in expected life by something like 30x. Thus, the 1/3 drop in cyclists results in many more premature deaths from lack of exercists.
Helmets may provide a small benefit in some crashes, but helmet laws are absolutely indefensible from a rational public health standpoint.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Don't confuse the questions of "should I wear a helmet" with "should helmets be compulsory".
Same with drugs - laws can make things worse, despite good intentions.
No it isn't. If somebody crashes wearing a helmet and the side of the helmet is smashed in but the rider is OK then it's assumed that the helmet saved them. That happens enough for it to be worth it.
I remember hearing this same stupid argument about motorcycle helmets, seatbelts and lawnmowers with naked blades. An easily complied with safety feature does not have to stop 100% of injuries to be worth it.
I do take issue with one detail, though: the assumption that helmet laws will disincentivize cycling.
It's no assumption -- it's a statistically demonstrated fact. In places where helmet laws are passed, cycling does decrease, whether or not there's a good reason that should necessarily happen.
But if you want to know why its different from seatbelt laws, note that seatbelt laws came about in two stages -- first, manufacturers were required to provide seatbelts in every vehicle sold. Then, after almost every vehicle on the road had seatbelts, drivers and passengers were required to use them. The first step, while slightly increasing the price of a new vehicle, didn't cause anyone any practical inconvenience -- anyone who didn't believe in them might grumble a bit about being forced to pay for them (it's not like one would actually refuse to buy a $xxxx car over a $x addition), but he didn't have to use them. And because of the first step, the second step had no up-front cost or inconvenience -- you did have to buckle up every time, but the seatbelt was right there, no need to run down to the garage and get one installed. (AIUI, there are/were exemptions from seatbelt wearing laws in any cars old enough to have legally been sold without seatbelts, and at any rate they were a tiny fraction of the fleet by then.) So neither step caused motorists to quit motoring, especially since most of them had no practical alternative for traveling the same distance.
In contrast, many cyclists who presently ride helmetless have no helmet, and if a mandatory helmet law were passed, they'd have to make time to get to the bike shop and buy one or quit riding -- and if, like many cyclists, you've already got a car that satisfies all your functional transportation requirements, quitting is by far the easier option.
No sure where you get that from. What's wrong with encouraging people to do more biking? You think that running a public bike transit system is expensive? If it makes, say, a hundred fewer cars off the road, you end up paying less for road maintenance, the people that use it spend less time at the hospital because they're healthier, it helps with air pollution in the city, the traffic flow will go a little bit faster and drivers get to be back home sooner after work, etc, etc, etc. I am sick and tired of hearing arguments that go along the lines of "If I don't use a service, I don't benefit from it, and I shouldn't have to pay for it.". It's hard to calculate the benefits of a public bicycle sharing system, but what I think is clear is that you can't say straight up that it is a clear negative from a driver's point of view, and you certainly haven't brought any data to draw that conclusion from. I think your opinion is narrow-minded at best.
Many urban planners are discussing the opposite - ban inefficient, private use vehicles from cities and provide better cycling infrastructure. Wins all round. Except for lazy people.
I think you are missing quite a few categories of people who would lose.
1: People who want/need to take more stuff with them when they travel than a bike can reasonablly carry. Plumbers, electricians, builders, many types of service technicians. People going shopping for large items or bulk groceries.
2: People who need to leave the metropolis and travel to rural areas where public transport sucks and will always suck. Maybe some kind of car club could work for this but the ones i've seen are hellishly expensive.
3: People who need to travel further than it's practical to bike at hours when public transport is poor or nonexistant.
4: People trying to travel distances further than it's practical to bike in directions other than the ones fast public transport runs in.
5: People in a hurry, while there are a handful of cities that are so congested that cars are slower than bikes or public transport they are by far the exception.
You could try and run a general car ban with exceptions for people who really needed a vehicle but I think you would find it very hard to do satisfactorily
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
As I said in my post, I think that were I not to have my helmet on, I'd have a nasty scar, the product of using my forehead as a brake. It was a fairly low speed hit, but my head did hit the pavement *in* the helmet. So, the helmet absorbed some of the impact — but it also put a good 2cm between my skin and the street.
Also, a helmet is coated in plastic to make it smooth, almost derrapant. It would not be impossible for my head, with a far higher friction, to get stuck while reducing the speed of my body - and could end up in spinal damage, maybe fatal.
Of course, I have no way to know if that would happen were I not wearing a helmet. But I won't take chances.
One time I was taking a jump on my bike at 25 km/h, but was off balance and landed on my side, including the side of my head, at the same speed in rocks and packed dirt. I still have my left ear because I was wearing a helmet.
Be relentless!
Well, given we know the forces and situations involved: Helmets are clearly only addressing the symptom of the bigger problem.
The solution is to correct the design flaw and build structures where the chest houses the brain instead of a ridiculous appendage.
If input lag was a problem then why put the visual cortex in the back of the skull, and motor cortex so far from the feet?
Let's upgrade to impact resistant brains and bodies that can survive in the vacuum of space while we're at it.
Intelligently Designed... Pah!
increase in helmet use does not reduce severe brain injuries
4) You're more likely to die than be brain damaged if you don't wear a helmet.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
My favourite of these arguments is the argument against speed-limiters on car:
"I may at some point need to go really fast to avoid an accident".
Often used by people who don't like the idea of limiting a car to 150 km/h despite the fact that their country doesn't allow travel faster than 120 km/h anywhere. Because of this, they come up with all sorts of extremely unlikely scenarios where travelling really fast may save them. They also try very hard to ignore other solutions than driving really fast.
I got stuck with the rear wheel in a rail track once and had a short and ugly flight over the handlebar. Thanks to the helmet, I was just dizzy for a couple of days. Without it it would have been a concussion.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I am working for the past ten years as a medical doctor in an Intensive Care Unit. We treat lots of trauma patients, especially due to motor vehicle accidents. I don't have any statistics in hand, but I am *absolutely* sure that there is a *vast* difference regarding the prevalence and the severity of brain injury amongst trauma patients after motorcycle accidents (patients having not used helmet have dramatically more often and more severe brain injury). According to my experience, I would never ride a motorbike.. :-) If I had to, I would definitely and absolutely use a helmet.
He was talking about helmet-vs-no-helmet, not trad-helmet-vs-paper-helmet.
If you're cycling at 30MPH, come off cornering on ice, and hit your head on a kerb, a helmet may well save your life.
I do have quite a lot of sympathy for the view that there are circumstances where a fall is so unlikely that a helmet is a waste of time -- cycling in light traffic, with warm dry weather and no recklessness.
I finally bought a comfortable helmet, and since it's comfortable I always wear it. It's easier to do that than to evaluate the conditions every morning.
I have a Request for Enhancement: please put my balls on the inside ;-)
See also the discussion section of that report:
Research suggests drivers tend to believe helmeted cyclists are more serious and less likely to make unexpected moves [2,3]; the helmet effect seen here is likely a behavioural manifestation of this belief.
Drivers expect helmeted cyclists to behave more predictably. What are the obvious conclusions?
1. As helmet use becomes more prevalent, drivers may be less likely to interpret it as a sign of competence.
2. If you want drivers to give you space, do your best to look and act like an incompetent idiot. Note: this works for motor vehicle operators as well.
As my dad always said, if you don't wear a helmet while biking, you've got nothing worth protecting anyway. Parent post does a pretty good job of demonstrating this.
Also, a lot of bike lanes are very poorly designed for cyclists. Lots of them here in the UK are dual purpose pedestrian/cyclist tracks which means that they're not suitable for a cyclist going 15mph or quicker. A lot of bike lanes have badly thought out exit points, so you can actually put yourself in more danger by using the lane and then being dumped into fast moving traffic at an inopportune point.
Cycle lanes (at least in the UK) are purely optional and as a UK tax payer, I pay more than my fair share towards roads and definitely have the right to use them. Demanding that cyclist use a cycle lane whenever possible is like demanding that motorists have to use motorways (interstates) whenever possible.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
So what? If the argument is invalid then point out the flaws in the argument/numbers, not the flaws in the presenter of the argument.
I have ridden mine several times this winter through the snow on the roads going uphill. Worked just fine with minimal wheel spin (which happens to be in the same places a car would have problems). They make studded tires for ice which do a great job as well.
The one day I had to drive my car for errands is the only day this winter I froze my butt off all the way home in it.
"Assumptions are: drivers don't suddenly start being dickheads around you because you're wearing a helmet,"
Your assumption is incorrect, study has shown that drivers drive worse around cyclists that wear helmets, so much so that it could well be safer not to wear one. The theory is that the safer you look, the more risk drivers take around you.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
And has been pointed out time and time again: Your freedom of choice ends when you demand someone else (hospital, insurance company) pay for treating your injuries should you survive a helmetless crash.
Get over yourself, already.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The issue is that your choice is not in isolation. I'd love for you to have the choice to wear a helmet or not but the reality is post-accident resources will be on your survival and additional insurance liabilities related to your death. That is a cost the rest of us have to bear. Obviously this is not unique to helmets, we see this same conversation in the healthcare space with regards to smoking and obesity as well. The question being "why should society cover the added costs of high risk individuals?" I fall on the side of individual choice but to assume your actions (and mine as well) don't have an impact on everyone else is ignorant at best. I believe the statistics have spoken and you are at greater risk of injury without a helmet though I don't have a citation to back that up.
I HAVE gone down at 25+ MPH, being a former competitive cyclist. I've also smacked my head and face off stuff, and I've got the ugly mug (stitches and dental work and scars) to prove it. And you know what? The primary cause of crashing is: lack of attention/recklessness. There have been virtually no situations in my lifetime where being more observant/less reckless would not have prevented the crash. I've yet to mangle a helmet, but I've sure crashed a lot. The real point of impact in most crashes, at reasonable speeds, on a bicycle, is your hands and elbows, not your head. I've also seen a guy wearing a helmet go off the side of a course; I've seen a guy slide under a guardrail. Both wore helmets. I think the guy who slid under the guard rail (40+ MPH downhill, in the rain, at Green Mountain Stage Race) died. I was too busy trying to keep up with the rest of the pack. The other guy, last I recall, he was being backboarded and medevac'd.
Moral of the story: a helmet does not eliminate your obligation to maintain situational awareness. A helmet will not magically save your life. Prudence and awareness will save your life more often than a helmet.