Bicycling

Last edited Sun Dec 7, 2014, 01:58 AM - Edit history (1)

I had a brother in law who rode a motorcycle hit a retread on the road, lost control of his bike and died for he rode without a helmet. I had a similar accident, but because I had a helmet I walked away.

Your head is the most sensitive part of your body. During WWI, a French General was talking to his men and found one man putting his mess kit under his cap, when asked the soldier told the General, the Soldier put his mess kit in his helmet to provide additional protection from head injury. Subsequent studies showed that the Soldier was right, a helmet prevented serious head injury, thus by the middle of WWI every country had given their soldiers helmets. During the building of the Hoover dam in the 1930s, the men, many of them WWI Vets, started to put things in their caps for the same reason it was done in WWI, to reduce the injury caused when things hit their head,. Such protection was cheap AND effective. This lead to today's practice (Adopted doing WWII) of providing and requiring workers in areas where objects fall to wear such helmets. This started the movement to require helmets where head injuries can be expected.

Head injuries can be fatal, and in many cases hard to treat, thus helmets preventing such injuries is the best way to protect yourself. As to other forms of protections in accidents, your body can take a lot of abuse but as long as the brain is working you will generally come out OK. BY OK I do NOT mean 100% but well enough to get to be taken to a hospital for treatment IF the injuries require any treatment (Most bicycle accidents result in scratches and other minor injuries that can be treated at home, broken bones and internal bleeding are possible, but those are best treated at a hospital). If you are wearing a helmet and are in a Serious accident, you have a 99% chance of surviving the accident if you are NOT wearing a helmet, the rates are much lower.

The other ways to protect your body do NOT provide the improvement in protection a helmet does. Knee pads prevent skin breaks, but so does wears pants (Through to a lesser degree). If you do fall and hit your knee, the pad will provide some protection, but if you hit the knee to a level that causes more damage then skin abrasions, the Knee Pad will NOT provide that much more protection. Normal clothing (unless for some reason you think "Normal Clothing" Includes string bikinis) are generally all the protection you need when biking.

Bicycle helmets started in the 1960s for the same reasons. Head injuries can kill. Helmets are the best way to avoid them. Most head injuries are rarely the fault of the cyclist, but you are on two wheel going a good pace, so often you end up in a situation that you have no control over before you even see the problem with the road. The Helmet prevents serious injuries when such accidents occur.

Now, there is a debate as to Helmet, there are three positions:

1. No Mandatory Helmets, for the benefits of biking outweighs stopping people from biking if there do not have a helmet. Helmets use should be encouraged, but not required.

2. Mandatory Helmets, even if it means banning people who do not have helmets from biking. Head injuries lead to tremendous injuries and occurs often enough when riding a bike to make wearing a helmet mandatory (and such helmets are CHEAP).

http://www.bhsi.org/negativs.htm

3. People who like full face helmets.

40% of all head injuries are to the jaws. Conventional bike helmets do NOT prevent such injures, but full face do. On the other hand the injuries that KILL are injuries to the brain and a conventional helmet provides almost all the the protection needed to protect the brain. It is the BRAIN that needs protection not the head. Thus a conventional helmet is sufficient (and this is from a person who DOES use a full face helmet).

Full face helmets have some draw backs. First during winter it forces breath onto one's glasses fogging them up in cold weather. Second there are expensive when compared to conventional helmets. Third, there are tighter fit on the head. Thus it is rare for someone to wear a full face helmet, it is marginal additional protect compared to regular helmets. I switch between the two all the time for various reasons but I have NOT had an accident where the helmet was a factor.

Snell

Under Federal Consumer Protection Safety Law, the Federal Safety Protection Commission (CPSC) will NOT set safety standards if a private group is already doing so. Snell was such a private group whose job covered Helmets. There had an excellent reputation for providing such Standards (and still do). This law was passed by Congress to make sure the CPSC did NOT issue regulations when safety standards were already adequate and done by a non-profit group like SNELL.

Now, Snell had one requirement that makers of helmet objected to. Snell insisted of actually TESTING helmets NOT just setting standards. Bike helmet makers objected to this and managed to get the Federal Consumer Protection Commission (CPSC) to issue there own regulations that did NOT include independent testing (The law forbidding such regulations were ignored). Most Helmet makers only follow the Federal Specs (all helmet makers MUST meet those specs) but SOME still apply for a SNELL approval. The SNELL standards were considered superior to the Federal Regulations when the Federal Standards were issued (and today SNELL has made its standards to be the same or superior to those Federal Standards where the two Standards differed).

More on SNELL:

http://www.smf.org/

All of their Standards:

http://www.smf.org/stds

The SNELL Bicycle Standards:

http://www.smf.org/standards/b/b95std

The key is seeing the SNELL label on the Helmet. The Helmet should have a Label saying it meets the Federal Specs (Such Specs are issued by the Consumer Protection Safety Commission, or CPSC). A SNELL Label would be a rarely seen Label on a biocycle helmet today, the CPSC should always be seen.

Helmets with SNELL labels tend to be high end helmets, but a high price does NOT mean it is superior to a cheap helmet. The CPSC tracked the previous SNELL standards EXCEPT for the requirement of actual testing (SNELL test helmets, bought off the shelf NOT what makers supply them whenever it is possible). Thus any Helmet with a CPSC is as good as the next one when it comes to safety even if one is just $10 and the other $100 in price. Price has NOTHING to do with HOW the helmet protects you, the high price ones protects you no better then the cheapest helmets with meet CPSC specs.

The SNELL Label only means SNELL has done independent testing on that helmet. SNELL tries to do all testing with off the Shelf, but when it comes to helmets new on the market it will test one supplied to it by the helmet maker. I like the idea of independent testing, but I admit I do NOT have a SNELL Helmet at the present time.

List of SNELL Approved Helmets

http://www.smf.org/cert

Three makers of FULL FACE Bike Helmets have SNELL Labels.

Only Two Makers of all other Bicycle Helmets seek SNELL Labels.

If you can get a helmet with a SNELL Label, but given the above numbers it is HARD to find one, today there are HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of Helmet makers and only FIVE seek a SNELL Label.