I’ve ranted and raved about helmets and the odd fact that no helmet manufacture seems to advertise their testing strategies. I always found it odd that auto manufactures will show somewhat gruesome footage of crash test studies to show how safe their cars are, while helmet advertising never seems to even mention the word “safety.” Instead, we get sold $100 upgrades for improved cooling, better looks and lighter weight.

Well, now those crazy Swedes have proven me wrong.Forget IKEA, we’re talking Hövding.

It was actually a few years ago when I first talked about Hövding and their “air bag for your head” product. Every once in awhile I catch someone else posting a story about the device, but it seems to have been mostly quiet.

But now you can find videos on YouTube of these things in action. And these aren’t crash test dummies here. These are real live humans putting their heads on the line, trusting the devices to protect them.

Love riding a bicycle but hate the helmet preventing the wind from ruffling your hair? Here’s a solution by two Swedish students.

— https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOolESrCcBw

Ever since Hövding was launched, we have received thousands of questions from keen cyclists all over the world, such as whether Hövding will ”pop” or not depending on the body movements in various situations. So now we are proud to present a number of short movies on the theme ”Will it pop?”. And while we´re at it, why not twist the scenarios a little…

— https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikYFfxpu3I0

For as many times as I’ve rambled, made fun of, attacked, or complained about helmets, you’d think I’d have come across this before. Ironically, it was a coworker that pointed this cultural phenomenon to me.

When inflatable neck wear doesn’t do it for you, it is time to don the hair-helmet. Brought to you by that fantastic folk duo Flight of the Conchords and presented without comment:

So we take the worry about helmet hair and replace it with a hair helmet. That’s what you call turning a frown upside down.

I was leaving work – late – the other night in what seemed a normal manner. It was dry and clear, but dark as I’d stayed at work solving a problem (funny how you can be most productive in an office environment when 80% of the rest of the company has already left.) I grabbed my bike off the rack, flicked on the lights (they are nice and bright) and roll out the door.

About halfway home from the office I’ve got this strange feeling something isn’t right. I’m riding on lit streets, but on a whim I put my hand in front of the Planet Bike Blaze 1/2w Headlight mounted on my handlebars. It barely illuminates my palm at 4 inches.  Damn. Dead batteries. While I’m at it I stop and check the tail light. Completely dead. I try to turn it on. Dim light then nothing. Damn. More dead batteries.

Not to worry – I have spares in my backpack.  Hmmm….. my backpack. That would be helpful if I actually had my backpack instead of my messenger bag. Which also means I don’t have a lock for my bike. I’m disinclined to leave my bike sitting outside a gas station store unlocked while I grab batteries, and since I’m about half way home anyhow I decided to just pedal on and get fresh batteries at home.

As I head out, knowing I don’t have any lights seems to created a heightened state of awareness. I look both ways at intersections – about 5 times. I find myself looking over my shoulder a lot more. My hearing seems more acute – I’m conscious of hearing cars approaching from side streets. But then I remember something that I said myself, in a different context, that makes me immediately feel like hypocrite:

If you find yourself riding differently when you are not wearing a helmet then when you are, then you are doing something wrong. If you are more careful, or imagine that you would be, when you are riding without a helmet then you are putting far too much stock in the idea that the helmet will protect you. You should ride with just as much care regardless of what you have strapped on your head. Not only are helmets not shown to offer any real protection statistically, that plastic hat isn’t going to provide any protection against the more common injuries in bike crashes – road rash, broken collar bones, wrists and ribs. Don’t assume your safety equipment will protect you – always operate as if you have no safety equipment. To do otherwise is folly.

At the time I was talking more about bicycle helmets. But here I was, relying on my safety equipment. My 1/2w headlight doesn’t really provide any significant illumination of the rode in front of me as I pedal along at 15-20 MPH. It is there more to make me more visible than to make the road more visible to me.

So why was I riding differently now that I was conscious I didn’t have my bike lights. Why was I paying more attention to the road than the night before when my lights and been (presumably) shining brightly?

Well, frankly, because I was doing the exact same thing I’d advised others not to in my quote above. I was presuming that my safety equipment would protect me in a way that allowed me to relax – lower my defenses slightly.

Shame on me. I’m glad my batteries died that night. I reminded me not to let my awareness dim like my lights did – ever…

Cycling helmets seem to be a recurring theme here on JustAnotherCyclist as of late.  To wear or not to wear.  To promote or not to promote. Blah blah blah…  There has got to be some way to resolve the issue.  Perhaps with better technology?

Folks seem pretty happy with the air bags in their cars.  This probably has a lot to do with the reams and reams of evidence for their collective benefits.  Unfortunately the same concept does not apply to bicycles.  First off there is simply no practical way to mount an airbag on the handlebars of any but the most heavily customized bikes.  More importantly is the fact that it is usually the ground or a car – and not the handlebars – that you smack into if you are injured in a cycling crash.  If only there were some way to get that same level of passive protection on a bicycle…

Maybe there is.

Swedish company Hövding has apparently achieved this for us in the form of a helmet-shaped, wearable airbag.

Hövding is a collar for bicyclists, worn around the neck. The collar contains a folded up airbag that you’ll only see if you happen to have an accident. The airbag is shaped like a hood, surrounding and protecting the bicyclist’s head. The trigger mechanism is controlled by sensors which pick up the abnormal movements of a bicyclist in an accident.

There you have it folks.  The people that brought us Ikea – saving thousands of dorm rooms from the injustice of cinder-block book shelves – have now apparently saved us from the drone of the bicycle helmet debate.

(Special thanks to VeloReviews.com member skrapn for bringing this to my attention)

I’ve said it many many times, I’m neither pro- nor anti- helmet.  My statements on the subject have been very accurately described by others as ambivalent.

I may, however, be changing my mind.  And you, dear reader, get to come along for the ride.

So to stop skirting the issue, I’ll state my opinion, as it exists today:

I don’t really mind wearing a helmet, but I really don’t think they do squat to protect me.  The risks the helmet protect me from are the same risks I experience when walking down the street.  I’m just as comfortable riding my bike without a helmet as I am walking across my living room without a helmet.

And that is when the “Say what” and “this guy’s nuts” comments come on.  “Clearly you’re safer with a helmet on.   It’s obvious.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is a moron,” is another possible retort to my sentiment.

In truth, bicycle helmets are designed for low speed impacts only.  Bob Mionske also talked about this in his recent article for Bicycling:

The fact is, many cyclists wear helmets because they perceive that any potential for increased discomfort is outweighed by the safety benefits gained. But if safety standards only require that helmets withstand a low-speed impact, are there really safety benefits to wearing a helmet? Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is a qualified yes. In a low-speed fall from your bike, a bicycle helmet may protect you from sustaining a head injury, and considering the fact that the majority of bicycle accidents are solo crashes, helmet impact standards do address the types of impacts associated with the majority of bicycle accidents. From that perspective, there is some safety benefit to be derived from wearing a bicycle helmet.

The problem, however, is that nobody straps on a helmet because they’re afraid that they might have a low-speed solo fall from their bike. Nobody driving by a cyclist who is riding sans headgear yells “wear a helmet” because they’re afraid that cyclist might have a low-speed solo crash. Nobody passes mandatory helmet laws because they want to protect cyclists from themselves. No, the reason helmet use is considered de rigeur is because people believe that a helmet will protect the cyclist from the head injuries associated with the high-speed impact of a collision with an automobile.

In other words, there is a disconnect between what helmets actually can do, and what most people think helmets should do.

And then we come to where a great many helmet discussions end.  The inevitable stalemate of “Well, we can argue about how much they help.  But in the end they can’t hurt anything, so we’re better safe than sorry.”

Not so fast…

There actually is the potential for harm from all of this pro-helmet advocacy, and the particular harm I want to discuss here is one of PR more than anything.  Encouraging folks to wear helmets on their bikes has an underlying implication – and that message is that bikes are inherently dangerous. I’m still working on the research to discuss this particular implication intelligently and rationally.  I’d like to really understand how, statistically, the risks of riding a bike compare to driving a car or walking.  But this idea of the inherent danger of cycling can do us no good in encouraging folks to get out and ride. Mikael Colville-Andersen talked about this very subject at length recently.

The other problem is that this overwhelming public opinion provides an impression of fault should a rider not wearing a helmet get into an accident and injured or killed.  I’m sure you’ve all seen the stories online or in newspapers that read like:

Cyclist killed in collision at dangerous intersection when a motorist, traveling at 55 mph in a 35 mph zone, failed to stop at a stop sign.  The cyclist was transported to a near by hospital where he later died of head trauma.  The cyclist was not wearing a helmet at the time.

That last statement almost implies that the fact that the motorist was speeding or blew a stop sign is irrelevant compared to the “reckless behavior” of the non-helmet wearing cyclist.  The fact that a helmet is not even designed to provide protection in a situation such as this is, apparently, lost on many a reporter and reader.  That one little sentence has shifted at least part of the blame from the reckless driver and landed it squarely “on the head” of our cyclist.

Unfortunately, the “We should all wear helmets” camp has it really easy.  Wearing a helmet while you ride just seems so obvious to so many folks.  Statements like “Riding a bike without a helmet significantly increases the risk of brain injury if you get into an accident” just seem right for a lot of people, and thus data isn’t necessary in their minds.  It makes it very difficult to have rational, sane and controlled dialog if you particular view happens to lean to the contrary of popular opinion.

And I must say that my opinion is starting to lean that way.

This time around

Ah bicycle helmets.  The topic that I just can’t leave alone.  While I try to remain non-judgmental to the choices of others, and personally can take it or leave it, I still remain decidedly against helmet laws.

Unfortunately, the folks that support helmet laws often throw out statistics without saying where they come from.

These types of issues are never as cut-n-dry as they appear.  The bicycle helmet debate even more so for two major reasons:

1) The fact that wearing a helmet prevents injury just seems “obviously right.” to many folks.  So did the fact that the earth was flat at one point.

2) There is precious little actual data – thus we tend to fall back on what seems “obviously right”

What does it take to get some real data into this discussion?

Bicycle helmets.  They are the subject that I just can’t seem to leave alone.  As my daily commute has significantly changed, so as my approach to that commute.  One of those changes – without any specific intent that I am aware of – is the fact that I’ve shed the helmet for more of my commutes than not.  Perhaps it is the influence of all of the urbanite riders I come across.  Whatever the reason, I’ve mostly been without ye ol’ brain bucket lately.

My wife, on the other hand, is a stanch helmetarian.  She is often gently (or not so gently) ribbing me about my cycling-cap-only head.  I was this ribbing that prompted me to put on the helmet before I left for work the other morning.  As I’ve said before, I’m not against helmets, so riding with it is not something that really has to be forced on me.  This wasn’t a big deal.  Grab it, throw it on my head, strap it around the chin and forget about it.

The ride to work was uneventful.  It was on the ride home from work that things got interesting.  I was cruising with traffic down 19th street.  This route has stop lights nearly every block, so I’m usually able to ride at about the same speed as the cars during the evening commute.  The car on my left had passed me, and a large truck was slowly passing by me.  I could hear the engine. Then I could see the front tire rolling by.  Then…

I honestly don’t know how I reacted so fast.  It was clearly one of those instinctive reactions done without conscious thought.  No, the truck didn’t veer into the bike lane I was in.  It did, however, manage to somehow toss a rock out from under its tire at high speed, bounce it off of the parked car on my right, and ricochet straight at my face.  I quickly ducked my head and heard the smack of the rock against my helmet.  I could feel the impact through the helmet.  Wow.

Now clearly this was not a life or death type scenario.  I doubt the rock would have even broke the skin if I hadn’t had my helmet on.  I’m betting it would have stung like hell though.  I’d say that helmet probably saved me a significant amount of head rubbing and distraction as I weaved through the cars.

Warning – Just Another Cyclist is about to jump into the cycling helmet debate.  If you’ve had about all you can stand of the endless arguing on this issue (and who can blame you really?) then perhaps you’ll find one of my other articles more to your taste.

I also want to point out that you will likely not walk away with a clear impression that I’m on one side of the issue or the other.  I’m decidedly neither pro nor anti helmet.  I wear a helmet when I ride if I feel like it.  I generally always wear it on group rides more out of peer pressure (everybody’s wearing one!) or habit than anything else.  I almost always wear gloves when I ride to protect my hands if (or should I say when) I happen to hit the pavement, and the helmet is kinda in the same category.  On the other hand, I do not ride any differently if I don’t have my helmet on than when I do.

The main reason for my indecision is that I’ve not seen anything that would make me think that one side of the argument or the other is correct.  I decided to do a little more digging into the issue and see what I could come up with.

I started this exercise by doing an online survey to try and get a sense of what my readers and associates actually think about helmets.  If you are the data-hungry type, ou can read the raw results of the September 2010 Bicycle Helmet Survey here in pdf format.  The helmet debate is like many things in human society – you tend to only hear the opinions of the folks on the far extremes of either side of the debate.  I wanted to know what “average folk” thought.  The results were some questions posed to readers.

So let us begin our look at the issue.   The results of the survey are probably no surprise to anyone living and riding a bike in the United States.  The overwhelming majority – over 80% of respondents – are wearing their helmets pretty much all the time.  It is interesting to note that 89.4% feel that bike helmets make them safer, while slightly less (80.9%) feel that a bike helmet will actually protect them in a crash.  There was also a small but significant percentage (14.9%) that were undecided on the protection offered by a helmet in the event of a crash.

I’m sure there are some of you that are surprised that only about 80% seem to think a helmet will protect them.  “Isn’t it obvious that a helmet would protect you in a crash?” you may ask.  “That’s just common sense!” Well in fact, from a purely objective standpoint, it is not so obvious.  Wearing a helmet is one of those things that just feels intuitively like the right answer.  If I put something on my head, then my head is protected if I smack into something.  It is, in fact, apparent that helmets can help from things like skull lacerations – nicks and cuts in the skin when you bump your head into a tree branch, or another bike, or the road.  But that is generally not what helmets are supposed to protect us against.  Rather, helmets are perceived to help protect from catastrophic injuries – concussions, skull fractures and the like.  And here is where the issue gets decisive: there actually is absolutely no evidence that a helmet provides any meaningful protection from concussions or skull fractures. In fact there is some evidence to the contrary – that perhaps wearing a helmet makes you actually more likely to sustain a significant head injury.  But before we get into the details of making things potentially more dangerous, lets dive a little more into the protection factor.

Indeed, regarding concussions specifically, an article published by the Bicycle Helmet Saftey Institute (BHSI) states:

The vast majority of consumers assume that a helmet should prevent concussion in even the heaviest hits, and that if the helmet protects against severe blows it must surely be easily protective in lesser ones. But in fact the helmets built to our standards are in many cases too hard to protect against a mild concussion in either a low speed hit where foam fails to crush or a much harder hit where clinically evident permanent injury is avoided, but a lesser concussion still results even though the helmet has not crushed completely and bottomed out.

For some the idea of needing a “softer” helmet may seem counter intuitive.  In the context of concussions, though, it is absolutely critical.  To understand concussions, let’s consider what happens to our bodies in an automobile crash.  Most of us have probably seen the slow-motion crash test dummy videos of car crash tests, so you’ll understand how, when the car stops suddenly due to striking something, the driver can continue forward and slam into the dash board.  This is why seatbelts are effective – they help restrain the driver and reduce the force with which the strike other objects in the car.  It is also why cars are now constructed with crumble zones – areas of the chassis of the car that are specifically designed to absorb the energy of the moving car and slow the deceleration of a vehicle when it hits another object.

A concussion occurs when our brain impacts the inside of our skull due to the same mechanics.  In other words, using our car and driver example above, the car is our skull and the driver is our brain.  To reduce or eliminate concussion injuries, we need to prevent the brain from slamming against the inside of our skulls when our skulls unfortunately slam into something else at high speed.  Since we obviously can not strap our brains in with a seatbelt, we are left with the option of creating a “crumple zone” around our skull to absorb some of the impact.  Helmets theoretically provide that crumple zone for us.

In my survey, just over half of the respondents agreed with the statement “Helmets clearly protect you in a crash”, while only a single respondent agreed with the statement “There is no evidence that helmets will protect you in a crash.”  The citation above (from BHSI) was from a report targeting making helmets safer, and itself raised questions about the effectiveness of helmets as the standards currently dictate their design.  The fact that just less than half of respondents to the JustAnotherCyclist survey did not select “Helmets clearly protect you…” would seem to indicate a general ambiguity about what, if any, protection is provided among the survey takers as well.

This kind of gets us to the issue – the actual, subjective data is lacking.  Further more, that lack of data combined with human behavior naturally skews our impressions in one direction, in favor of helmets.  Consider the situation where a cyclist gets critically injured or even killed and isn’t wearing a helmet at the time.  It is very easy to claim “If only he’d been wearing a helmet…”  Furthermore, when a serious head injury happens and the cyclist was wearing a helmet, the natural inclination is to think “The helmet saved her life.  Imagine what would have happened if she hadn’t been wearing it…”

You see, we can’t derive real, actual data from specific crashes because we can’t test both sides of the hypothesis.  We can’t see the outcome of a crash without a helmet, and then take the cyclist, put a helmet on them and completely recreate the same exact crash and compare the results.  What we can do, however, is look at overall statistics and see if the rate of serious head injuries among cyclists is higher in areas where helmets are either mandated by law, or commonly used by convention.

And guess what – on the surface helmet usage seems to actually increase your liklihood of a head injury -purely by the numbers.  The Netherlands is often used in these comparisons.  They have an extremely high percentage of trips taken by bicycle – the highest in the world.  They also, as a cultural norm, pretty much never wear helmets.  In contrast, the United States has a much lower percentage of trips taken by bike, with almost ubiquitous helmet usage.  In stark contrast to what common sense might tell us, the United States has a significantly higher percentage of head injuries per cyclist than the Netherlands.  We must also take into account, however, the environment of each country.  In a country where bicycles are the predominate form of transportation, it is possible that folks are just better and safer riders.  It is possible that cars are more aware of cyclists and don’t hit them as much.  It is also entirely possible that the Netherlands has more “casual” cycling – i.e. cycling at slow speeds – and thus has an overall reduced risk of serious head injury.  Or it could just be that helmets somehow elevate our risk of head injuries.

Further muddying the waters are studies that demonstrate the opposite.  For example, you can find the following chart in a 2008 publication of the Insurance Institute for Highway Saftey

Bicyclist deaths by helmet use, 1998-2008
Year	No helmet use		Helmet use		Total*
	Num	%	Num	%	Num
1998	741	98	16	2	757
1999	698	93	42	6	750
2000	622	90	50	7	689
2001	616	84	60	8	729
2002	589	89	54	8	663
2003	535	85	58	9	626
2004	602	83	87	12	722
2005	676	86	77	10	784
2006	730	95	37	5	769
2007	646	92	50	7	699
2008	653	91	58	8	714
*Total includes other and/or unknowns

And there is what is often cited as the most definitive study, A case-control study of the effectiveness of bicycle safety helmets. (Thompson RS, Rivara FP, Thompson DC.)  This study claims as much as an 85% reduction in head injuries by wearing a helmet.  The study does have its detractors, however.  It was at least partially funded by a helmet manufacturer (Snell) which presents a potential conflict of interests.  For example, the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation goes into some details in their counterargument to the study.

At this point – let’s take a leap and conceed that “OK – so we don’t have any idea if helmets help or not.  Clearly they can not hurt, right?”

Wrong.  Or at least according to Dr. Ian Walker.  His research  – conducted in the UK in 2006 – seems to indicated that motorists may actually drive closer to cyclists wearing helmets compared to non-helmeted cyclists.  Or, said another way, there may actually be more likelihood of a collision with a motor vehicle when you are wearing your helmet than when you are not.  There is also an often cited human behavior where, on the whole, folks are more apt to engage in risky behavior when using safety equipment than when not.  There was a question in the JustAnotherCyclist study that was intended to capture this latter point explicitly – and in fact 17.9% selected the statement “I change my riding (slower, different routes) if I don’t have my helmet” as a statement that fit them.  This would seem to agree with the idea that people do not necessarily show the same level of caution when they use safety equipment (such as helmets), presumably assuming that the safety equipment mitigates the increased risk.

I invite you to look over the data – from the JustAnotherCyclist survey and other sources – and draw your own conclusions.  I will not put forth a particular opinion one way or the other.  I believe that, in the lack of subjective data supporting either position, wearing a helmet or not is an entirely personal choice.

I do, however, encourage tolerance and acceptance in the cycling community.  Stop the peer pressure and divisive comments between wearers and non-wearers.  Instead, let’s all unite to help make cycling safer over all.  Avoiding a crash entirely is undeniably more effective at prevent injury than any safety equipment imaginable.  Let’s work to make the roads safer for all non-auto users and not alienate cyclists into “helmet” and “no-helmet” camps.  Us cyclists already spend too much time dividing ourselves up into subgroups.  Let’s leave this debate to the scientific community to sort out and just keep pedaling, eh?

Update: The survey has ended.  Watch for the results here soon.

I’ve had a survey running that is an attempt to gather general opinions on bicycle helmet usage from my readers and others.  I’ll be closing out this survey tonight to allow me to compile the data and present an article on the findings – hopefully this Friday.

For those of you that have taken the time to express your opinions – thanks!  If you haven’t yet done so, it only takes just a few short moments.  Please go here and take the survey.

Thanks!