Do you wear a Bike Helmet?
- Thread starter JEFF247
- Start date
I do, hAve for the last 20yrs. I used to ride a lot, many miles, often attaining speeds that cars do, and often riding in busy busy urban conditions. Cant trust other drivers when driving a car, but on a bike you are invisible to them, when they are truning, opening dooors etc ..... Gotta look after yourself. Hurt your brain, and you life will never be the same. Modern helmets are comfy, light and easy to wear.
As for having a pretty nurse cut you steak, how bout instead imagine that nurse hooking up your feeding tube to a bag of ensure, cuz yOu cant swallow, and severalhours later changing your depends, after you have been sitting in your own excrement for the last several hrs. Ive seen it Anything i can do to minimize this possibility while still livIng and enjoying myself i will do. Btw i dont climb tall ladders to clean my eavestroughs etc. Ill gladly pay a pro a hundred bucks to avoid this too.
As for having a pretty nurse cut you steak, how bout instead imagine that nurse hooking up your feeding tube to a bag of ensure, cuz yOu cant swallow, and severalhours later changing your depends, after you have been sitting in your own excrement for the last several hrs. Ive seen it Anything i can do to minimize this possibility while still livIng and enjoying myself i will do. Btw i dont climb tall ladders to clean my eavestroughs etc. Ill gladly pay a pro a hundred bucks to avoid this too.
I once met a 20 year old kid on the ski lift - while we're going up, he told me his girlfriend had died from snowboarding. She was going too fast and hit a tree.
Too fast...for the human body means >20 km/h. If you're routinely hitting that speed on the bike, then do consider wearing a bike helmet. Really, looking cool is totally overrated.
Too fast...for the human body means >20 km/h. If you're routinely hitting that speed on the bike, then do consider wearing a bike helmet. Really, looking cool is totally overrated.
I ride a bike and a motorcycle and wear a helmet on both, my brain isn't the brightest on this earth but it's the only one I have so I'll try to keep it as long as I can! lol
B
burt-oh-my!
This reminds me of the snow tires thread. The question for me is, statistically speaking, what are the odds of a serious head injury while riding a bike?
If we are talking about say 10 deaths in the whole country for a whole year for instance, then I would say that one is better off wearing a helmet as a pedestrian.
If we are talking about say 10 deaths in the whole country for a whole year for instance, then I would say that one is better off wearing a helmet as a pedestrian.
B
burt-oh-my!
Well, of course. When we say 'risk' the risk is always of something hapenning, so I don't really see what your point is other than stating the supremely obvious. But if I have a better chance of being hit by lightning than having THAT happen to me, I don't see it as very risky at all.
I know its unusual to actually want to have some accurate FACTS, but what can I say, I am old school.
What are the risks in terms of LIKEKIHOOD of this hapenning (if I must spell it out)
B
burt-oh-my!
Well listen, you could certainly dramatically decrease your chances of dying in a car accident by wearing a helmet. And it ISN"T a crazy idea - after all reace car drivers do so. I guarantee you that hundreds of lives would be saved by wearing them. Yet you dont pile scorn on helmetless drivers. I presume you don't wear a helmet in a car. Why not? Because you perceive the risk to be small.
So understanding the risks are CRUCIAL to making this decision, as in fact it is to a zillion other things we do every day.
Case closed.
I never wore a helmet on my bike when I was a kid, nobody did back then. Today, I always were a helmet. You can get a serious head injury from striking your head on the ground by simply falling from a standing position. No, that's not likely to happen but the chances of receiving a head injury while cycling are certainly greater.
I was riding on a paved path about to pass the rider in front of me. Just as I did my shoulder check before I pulled out to pass (so to speak), the rider applied his brakes for no reason without signaling. I clipped his back wheel and went flying over the handle bars. I had bumps and bruises, cuts and scraped but my helmet did it's job and saved my head. Helmet was cracked but my noggin wasn't.
I see families cycling, the kids are wearing helmets but the parents aren't. Do the adults not understand how dependent their kids are on them? One fall/crash and it could change their lives forever. I'm not trying to be dramatic but wearing a helmet should be a no brainer for anyone with half a brain.
I was riding on a paved path about to pass the rider in front of me. Just as I did my shoulder check before I pulled out to pass (so to speak), the rider applied his brakes for no reason without signaling. I clipped his back wheel and went flying over the handle bars. I had bumps and bruises, cuts and scraped but my helmet did it's job and saved my head. Helmet was cracked but my noggin wasn't.
I see families cycling, the kids are wearing helmets but the parents aren't. Do the adults not understand how dependent their kids are on them? One fall/crash and it could change their lives forever. I'm not trying to be dramatic but wearing a helmet should be a no brainer for anyone with half a brain.
I'm curious - for those of you who have responded that you don't wear a bike helmet, how do you feel about seat belts? Do you not wear a seat belt when in a vehicle, or do so begrudgingly because it's the law?
B
burt-oh-my!
I wear a seatbelt 1) because it is the law, 2) because it doesn't bother me at all ( in fact I have grown to feel more comfortable with it), and 3) I feel that there are enough accidents to warrant not takng the risk.
Why don't you wear a helmet in the car? I am curious.
Why don't you wear a helmet in the car? I am curious.
B
burt-oh-my!
It was a question, not an argument.
What's all this first level nonsense? I am (as usual) all about consistency. So if you wear a bicycle helmet because of a perceived risk, why not in a car? I am not saying whether you should or should not wear a helmet in a car, I just want to know why.
how ironic aint it. This can easily be a bicyclist. If your dumb enuf not to wear a helmet and get seriously hurt or kill than my tax dollars shouldn't be paying for their stupidity.
B
burt-oh-my!
Never mind all th elong lists of equipment, STATISTICALLY wearing a helmet would dramatically improve your safety. Obviously, the likelihood of it being needed is too small for everyone, so they don't wear helmets in cars. Fair enough.
My point is, do people have an accurate estimate of the likelihood of the same things happening on a bike? Don't give me situations, explanations as to WHY it is dangerous - what do the STATISTICS say? In the US I read that there were 600 fatalaties on bikes in I think it was 2007. That's one per 500,000 of population. In 2010 ther were 32,000 traffic fatalities. That's one per 9,300. That's a factual starting point. Are there as many bikers? No, of course not.
People used to do (and maybe still do) take out insurance to cover them on flights, even though the risk was incredibly small compared to their drive to the airport. Waaaay overestimated the risks.
I just am interested in the FACTS as to how risky it is.
Apparently swimming is more dangerous than cycling, so maybe there should be a law making it mandatory that all kids wear a lifejacket while swimming. It seems to me that the logic used for bike helmets would apply here.
"""
Bernard Cohen, now a retired professor of physics from Carnegie Mellon University, created two tables to illustrate the relative risk of various activities. For the first list, he used the best known risk estimates, along with the linear hypothesis, to estimate how much of various activities it would take to increase your risk of premature death by 1 part in a million. Here is his list. Everything on this first list has the same risk. So if you are worried about dying from an airplane crash (for a 1000 miles trip), then you can reduce your risk of premature death by travelling 10 miles less by bicycle. Put another way: if you don't worry about going 10 miles on a bicycle, then you shoudn't worry about anything else on the list either. The list also shows that if you are worried about radiation, it is much safer to live near a nuclear power plant than to live far from such a plant but be in Denver Colorado. (Denver has high radiation because of the presence of large amounts of granite and other similar rock, which has high uranium content.)
Activities that increase chance of premature death
by 1 in a million
smoke 1.4 cigarettes (not per day -- total!)
spend 2 days NYC (from air pollution, 1976)
spend 3 hours in a coal mine (accident)
travel 10 miles by bicycle (accident)
travel 300 miles car (accident)
travel 1000 miles by jet airplane (accident)
travel 6000 miles by jet airplane (cancer from cosmic rays)
Live 2 months in Denver (cancer from high average radiation)
live 2 months in stone or brick building (cancer from high average radiation)
take 1 chest x-ray (not counting the benefit of catching a disease)
eat 40 tablespoons Peanut Butter (cancer from aflatoxin)
live 2 months with a smoker
eat 100 charcoal-broiled steaks
drink 1 yr Miami water (chloroform H2O)
30 cans sacharine soda
live 5 years at boundary of US nuclear power plant (cancer from radiation)
live 20 years near PVC plant (cancer from vinyl chloride)
live 150 years at 20 miles from a nuclear power plant
live 5 miles from nuclear plant for 50 years (nuclear accident)
My point is, do people have an accurate estimate of the likelihood of the same things happening on a bike? Don't give me situations, explanations as to WHY it is dangerous - what do the STATISTICS say? In the US I read that there were 600 fatalaties on bikes in I think it was 2007. That's one per 500,000 of population. In 2010 ther were 32,000 traffic fatalities. That's one per 9,300. That's a factual starting point. Are there as many bikers? No, of course not.
People used to do (and maybe still do) take out insurance to cover them on flights, even though the risk was incredibly small compared to their drive to the airport. Waaaay overestimated the risks.
I just am interested in the FACTS as to how risky it is.
Apparently swimming is more dangerous than cycling, so maybe there should be a law making it mandatory that all kids wear a lifejacket while swimming. It seems to me that the logic used for bike helmets would apply here.
"""
Bernard Cohen, now a retired professor of physics from Carnegie Mellon University, created two tables to illustrate the relative risk of various activities. For the first list, he used the best known risk estimates, along with the linear hypothesis, to estimate how much of various activities it would take to increase your risk of premature death by 1 part in a million. Here is his list. Everything on this first list has the same risk. So if you are worried about dying from an airplane crash (for a 1000 miles trip), then you can reduce your risk of premature death by travelling 10 miles less by bicycle. Put another way: if you don't worry about going 10 miles on a bicycle, then you shoudn't worry about anything else on the list either. The list also shows that if you are worried about radiation, it is much safer to live near a nuclear power plant than to live far from such a plant but be in Denver Colorado. (Denver has high radiation because of the presence of large amounts of granite and other similar rock, which has high uranium content.)
Activities that increase chance of premature death
by 1 in a million
smoke 1.4 cigarettes (not per day -- total!)
spend 2 days NYC (from air pollution, 1976)
spend 3 hours in a coal mine (accident)
travel 10 miles by bicycle (accident)
travel 300 miles car (accident)
travel 1000 miles by jet airplane (accident)
travel 6000 miles by jet airplane (cancer from cosmic rays)
Live 2 months in Denver (cancer from high average radiation)
live 2 months in stone or brick building (cancer from high average radiation)
take 1 chest x-ray (not counting the benefit of catching a disease)
eat 40 tablespoons Peanut Butter (cancer from aflatoxin)
live 2 months with a smoker
eat 100 charcoal-broiled steaks
drink 1 yr Miami water (chloroform H2O)
30 cans sacharine soda
live 5 years at boundary of US nuclear power plant (cancer from radiation)
live 20 years near PVC plant (cancer from vinyl chloride)
live 150 years at 20 miles from a nuclear power plant
live 5 miles from nuclear plant for 50 years (nuclear accident)
