I’m going to comment with what seems to be the common sentiment here. It’s really hard to tell how effective a helmet is at preventing concussions in real life. So we/they design a test of some hypothetical concussion cause, and lo and behold, their helmet is very effective in that test. Note that this is a different test than the ones used to prove that MIPS was better than a styrofoam helmet.
The real story is that marketing probably has a bigger influence than science in this case. Several years ago helmet manufacturers hit the practical weight limit for helmets with styrofoam and carbon fiber shells. I bought a Giro Atmos over a decade ago and never needed to upgrade because the top of the line helmets were only a couple grams lighter, after a decade of “improvement.” The manufacturers noticed that helmet sales were declining, and all of a sudden “new science” appeared with a theory about concussions being caused by brain rotation and MIPS technology helps prevent that. How convenient that this appeared.
The dirty secret is that literally nobody has ever seen a brain rotate inside a skull and result in concussion. It’s really hard to image a brain in motion (impossible with off the shelf equipment), so the brain rotation theory is just a hypothetical mechanism. There isn’t an ethical test for blunt force trauma in real life conditions, and bike crashes are very rarely reported if they don’t send the rider to the hospital. So the leading authority on product safety, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, doesn’t even have good numbers on concussion rates for cyclists.
The bottom line is that MIPS and this new gel layer came at way too good of a time for the helmet industry for us not to be wary of the science. They can get away with it because it’s such an easy marketing sell- most people think their life is worth more than $250, so any helmet tech is a bet on the order of Pascal’s wager. If it’s snake oil I’m just out $250, but if it really is better then I just saved my life in a crash.
I agree. I've raced on road, off road, been a bicycle messenger, and commuted on bike to work every working day since 1994. Accidents happen and helmets help. The most dangerous thing about a bike accident is generally the vertical distance. Try laying down on concrete, lift your head up an inch, and drop it. Keep in mind that when falling your acceleration is 9.8 m/sec/sec, so a 10 inch fall is worse than 10 times as bad as one inch.
The MIPS and Wavecell seem to assume that helmets grab the road with great traction and then snap your skull producing a large rotational acceleration so great that your brain falls behind. In my experience helmets (which are at first approximation spherical) hit in the center, easily skid, and induce approximately zero rotation in your skull.
I do recall in the 1990s or so that as brands switched from a heavier plastic shell (like the ancient bell helmets) to the then common nylon sleeve over the styrofoam that one manufacturer picked a particularly high friction material which did cause additional injuries. Once that was fixed everyone was happy again.
So absorbing energy from the fall is great. Playing games with additional layers with low internal friction or fancy ways to collapse is useless. I'm not completely against the idea, but seems laughable to pay 3-6X for something unlikely to help. Bike helmets that meet the toughest impact standards are available for $50 or so.
I personally have fallen many times, had my helmet skip many times (the longest was more than 10 feet) and never noticed my helmet gripping the ground and trying to torque my head.
> Keep in mind that when falling your acceleration is 9.8 m/sec/sec, so a 10 inch fall is worse than 10 times as bad as one inch.
Shouldn't that be sqrt(10) times as bad?
The distance fallen under constant acceleration g for t seconds is 1/2 g t^2, so it takes sqrt(10) times as long to fall 10 times as far. The velocity after falling t seconds is g t, so falling sqrt(10) times as long gives a velocity of sqrt(10) times as much.
It also depends on whether 'badness' is a property of energy or velocity. Velocity goes with sqrt(distance) as you've demonstrated, but energy is directly proportional to distance in this case.
You're right about the velocity, but the impact force really depends on the properties of the material one lands on.
First consider that our kinetic energy is
K = mv^2/2
Additionally is the material has a spring constant k, then the force that results when the material deforms by x amount is
F(x) = kx
If we let d be the max distance the material, then we can integrate over the force to get the energy absorbed, which is equal to the kinetic energy.
int_0^d F(x) dx = K
kd^2/2 = mv^2/2
Now there are two ways the impact could work. Imagine we have a really thick crash pad, then we consider it to deform without limit and have a constant k, giving
d = sqrt(mv^2/k)
F_max = F(d) = v sqrt(mk)
But what about a helmet? It can only over it's thickness, at which point your head is basically in contact with the concrete. Thus, we have a constant deformation distance d, and get
k = mv^2/d^2
F(d) = mv^2/d
As we can see, depending on how we consider it we get either a force of sqrt(10) or 10 times the original amount. I probably failed to take into account something that someone who knew more about materials could point out.
tl;dr it's complicated because impact force does not necessarily scale linearly with velocity.
update: so after some conversation with others. It seems that head on concrete is better modeled by a constant d. So a drop of 10 times the height results in 10 times the force.
Well, it's still worse than 10 times as bad because there are elasticity effects. You can see this on your nose. There is a force you can use to squeeze it that won't do anything but much more and you can break the blood vessels in it and give you a bruise. You could do that first thing many times but there's a threshold effect.
Or a balloon. It recovers from lots of pressing, even repeatedly. But there's a pressure from which it's never going to recover and crossing that threshold has binary outcome.
>>but seems laughable to pay 3-6X for something unlikely to help.
I just bought a new helmet and the one with MIPS was among the cheapest options at the bike store I went to. There were many many other helmets without it that were vastly more expensive. I paid £50 for a Scott helmet that had MIPS, most other helmets were in the £80-150 range and most of them didn't have it. So I don't exactly feel like I paid extra for this technology, it just happened to be included with the helmet that was 1) within my budget 2) fit comfortably.
I recall an American football study looking for concussion symptoms and impairment.
They found people with a history of repeated concussions, and then as what they thought might be a group to compare to some American football linemen with no history of concussions to compare with.
They found linemen with the same issues despite no concussion history.
This raised the possibility that worrying about severe hits that result in a concussion was possibly missing a larger issue.
It seems our understanding of brain injury and even how it comes about may be inaccurate.
American football involves constant collisions. That type of research suggests that even without a “concussion” the same type of damage can occur from repeated, more mild collisions.
Cycling seems like a different order entirely, it’s extremely unusual for a cyclist’s head to hit anything and only happens during an accident or mishap.
Soccer is a good example. You are rarely concussed from heading a soccer ball, but there is some evidence that players may suffer brain damage from from repeatedly heading the ball.
45 headers in two weeks were enough. Holy Jesus! Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I probably won't heal but maybe I'll protect from damage.
Reported can mean many things. If I was asked in such a study I would bring up the 7 our situations I know of where I even suspected I might have had a concussion, mostly snowboarding related actually (with helmet), odd given I also played 9 years of football and 9 of Aussie rules. None of them with concussion effects other than maybe I'm done for the day (you tend to take bigger falls when you are tired).
Also seen enough concussions and evaluations to be able to identify those exhibiting obvious symptoms tho I'm not trained in it.
I would let the people running the study decide how to classify them.
Its also not like there is a standard "reporting" form for concussions. Especially further back and esp if you had a team doctor.
I think the parent is implying that all experienced american football linemen have had many concussion situations, so the whole idea of splitting them in to "concussion history" and "no concussion history" can only reflect how the events are reported, and not whether their heads have been smashed repeatedly.
It depends on the definition of concussion used. If you go broad enough everyone likely has had multiple minor ones if they were ever on a playground or ambulatory (walk into wall, accidentally hit in head, fell, etc).
> They can get away with it because it’s such an easy marketing sell- most people think their life is worth more than $250, so any helmet tech is a bet on the order of Pascal’s wager.
I think this is basically accurate. Even if you have zero expectation that either this or MIPS or whatever works, I don't see how anyone who has seen Crash Reel or any of the football-related concussion documentaries could possibly not spring the extra few bucks.
Someone should put together a list of the cheapest or highest expected-value Pascal's wagers. Even things like flossing your teeth are a good example, where it's clearly good for your gum health even though the Cochrane research is equivocal. (Although using a WaterPik is probably better, especially if you do so in addition to flossing.)
MIPS (you seem to know this, but many might not) is an internal layer in the helmet, usually a very thin rigid plastic layer, that has some elastic nubbins/supports between it and the outer helmet styrofoam shell. This means that the inner shell is free to stay put while the outer styrofoam shell rotates.
This would be different than a cap in that the elastic nubbins should dissipate some of the energy. All this is a bit speculative, but that's what I'd go with.
Interesting take-away from having watched football-related concussion documentaries.
For a long period of time football players were told that if they wore helmets they were protecting their head. So they were lured into dangerous behaviors. If cycling is a dangerous as playing football (it's not) then bicycle helmets would fulfill the same misleading role as football helmets. As it is cycling is relatively safe and helmets are observed to make no measurable difference in outcomes[1]
Wearing a helmet is always better than no helmet. Any helmet.
That doesn't mean the technology can't be improved, and there's actual science being done. Brains are being imaged. There are peer reviewed articles published every year that details the challenges of how to model brain damages. It's not fair to brush them off as just an invention in marketing.
So far it does seem that measuring impacts at an angle matches real world brain damages better than the older standards of measuring dead-on impacts. That's what "rotational acceleration" means. Acceleration is just another word for impact. It doesn't mean your skull should rotate freely.
There are enough indications that this translates to helmet improvements that most consumer organizations have started to recommend them should you buy a new one. That doesn't mean you should throw away your old helmet but it should be enough to disqualify it as "snake oil".
This new Wavecel system hasn't been reproduced yet, two testing institutes has so far failed, but it is similar enough to existing cell and slip systems that performance is not likely to be worse.
> Wearing a helmet is always better than no helmet. Any helmet.
This isn't true when wearing a helmet alters behaviour of the user or other road users. In the UK it has been found that motorists leave less space for cyclists who are wearing a helmet, and that helmets increase risk-taking behaviour.
Bicycle helmets are not designed for "30mph" "hits". They are designed for exactly the same sort of situation that you experience when falling in the shower or falling downstairs or off a step-ladder:
2 meter drops that achieve about 14 miles per hour (22.5 kph) on the flat anvil. In Europe the drop height is only 1.5 meters. Why so low, when bicyclists frequently exceed 14 mph in forward speed?
The typical road or trail bike crash involves a drop to pavement. The important energy in that crash is supplied by gravity, not by forward speed. Although forward speed can contribute some additional energy, the main force is the attraction of gravity, and the impact severity is determined by the height of your head above the pavement when the fall begins. It is gravity that determines how fast your helmet closes with the pavement. Some of the crash energy is often "scrubbed off" by hitting first with other body parts. The typical bicycle crash impact occurs at a force level equating to about 1 meter (3 feet) of drop, or a falling speed of 10 MPH. The rider's forward speed before the crash may be considerably higher than that, but the speed of the head closing with the ground, plus a component of the forward speed, less any energy "scrubbed off" in other ways, normally average out at about 10 MPH.
So bike helmets are tested with a 2 meter (6.56 feet) drop. Motorcycle helmets are tested at 3 meters, about 17 mph. A really good bicycle helmet can handle
>The dirty secret is that literally nobody has ever seen a brain rotate inside a skull and result in concussion.
Are you sure?. We have a thing called tomography with things like xrays, magnetic resonance that let's us look inside bodies.
Experiments were done in the past with animals that have a similar brain to us, specially aviation military, that were extremely interested on concussions.
At least they have x-rays photography of impacts. By the way all this research led to car's seatbelts.
Thousands of brain surgical procedures are done each year, there are experts in the anatomical features of the brain, and we have detailed maps of sliced brains and complete heads.
Tens of thousands of people die in car accidents and hundred of thousands are injured. Insurance companies have extensive documentation on those.
We know the physical properties of those things and we have things called computers that let us do very complex models about the brain with finite elements or just analog 3d printed models with gelatin and plastics.
To say that nobody can imagine a brain in motion, so everything is a hypothetical mechanism is quite unfortunate.
We know a lot about what happens more or less. Things have improved dramatically for people like motorbike racers because we actually know a lot and lots of lives had been saved because of that.
Literally all those things you mentioned happen in static environments. Note that I said we can’t image a brain in motion, all we have for that are computer models. Sure, they’re plausible, but we can’t even agree on what crashing forces applied to the cranium look like, let alone the resultant brain movement and pressures induced. You can’t CT a brain as the head is falling. Nobody has ever drilled holes in someone’s skull and mounted pressure transducers inside the skull to truly validate the pressures during impact. All the “validation” has happened in lower fidelity domains (particularly the time domain), this is a bit like claiming that you know calculus because you can do addition really good. Every mechanical engineering student will tell you that dynamics is a different beast than statics. Fancy computer images does not the truth make.
Note that I’m not saying that a MIPS or WaveCel helmet is worse than the previous generation, I’m just pointing out that the timing in which these features appeared on the market is suspect, which causes me to suspect the “science” behind it. It is most likely that these antirotation features don’t make the helmets worse but also not any better.
It'd be hard to miss the potential for that to be marketing-speak for "buy more helmets more often", especially given the context of the comment you replied to.
And your mattress doubles in weight every eight years....
That is just a way to sell more product by shaming people into "being safe".
Uncrashed styrofoam doesn't stop being effective and turn into a pumpkin after two years. But you can double revenue if you can halve the replacement cycle.
As the plasticizer leaves plastics, it becomes embrittled.
You want the EPS to crush smoothly -- if it cracks and displaces, it will not be in place to absorb energy and cushion the impact further.
We replace our bike helmets every ~6 yr.
Source: Have listened to the crackle of decade-old plastic kayaking helmets under tensile/compressive stress and watched them shatter like glass after impact with a concrete floor. New helmets from the same manufacturer did neither.
> That is just a way to sell more product by shaming people into "being safe".
The cynic part of me agrees, but is it though?
Some plastics seem to get "stressed" over time, especially if under sunlight (not sure if it's the temperature or UV that's the issue) - I wonder if that's part of the concern here?
I've raced for about 6 years now and have not replaced my tri helmet, but have replaced the one I use when I'm on my road bike (only because it broke in a crash), where did you hear that you should replace the helmet that frequently?
Any safety equipment made from plastic needs to be replaced every 3 - 5 years because it's weakened by light and air. Same for rock climbing ropes, life jackets, children's car seats, etc.
For bike helmets, independent safety labs have actually done the science and found no measurable deterioration in impact testing nor material properties with helmets as much as 26 years old. (Link to journal paper at end of summary linked below.)
Rock climbing ropes have very clear performance metrics. "Hard hat" style helmets are similar, they are made to protect from falling projectiles like tools or rocks and must not break.
Bicycle helmets just add a few mm of valuable deceleration distance in the best case, that's all they do apart from protecting from purely cosmetical abrasions. The maximum amount of extra deceleration distance is provided at one very specific kind of impact. When the material properties change, the maximum will be achieved at a different impact. But you cannot predict which one you will have that one time when you actually use the helmet. The old one might be better or worse, nobody knows.
If manufacturers knew exactly what would eventually hit you, lots of engineering could be applied to precisely tune the helmet to that impact, but they don't know so they cannot do that. So all the engineering goes into achieving comfort while hitting regulation targets and into marketing features that only need to appeal to "common sense". There is no engineering at all going into the main purpose. Even aerodynamics, a clearly defined performance metric orthogonal to protection, is just barely starting to move on from hand-wavey "fast looks" to actual engineering.
Motorcycle helmets generally have a thicker, smooth exterior shell that better protects the foamed plastic under it from UV and O2 degradation. With cheaper bike helmets, they often have more ventilation holes, and you can usually see the formed EPS.
That said, you could just put zinc oxide sunblock on your helmet and then protect the UV-blocking layer with a spray urethane top-coat, and thereby extend the useful lifespan of your helmet by years.
Can't really do much about O2 damage or migration of plasticizers, though, unless you want to freeze your helmet any time you're not wearing it. Keeping it in an air-conditioned interior room rather than a hot garage or bike locker might help.
EPS can last quite a while when buried, where it is protected from UV, excessive O2, or heat extremes, but I wouldn't entirely trust an EPS helmet beyond 10 years. It's not so much that EPS can't last that long, but that you can't guarantee that it hasn't encountered environmental conditions that would result in degradation over longer time spans. Better a 10-year-old helmet than no helmet, though. There's no excuse for doing that when municipalities sometimes just give away free (to the recipient) bicycle helmets, maybe with sponsorship by an insurer or National Safety Council or similar organization.
> That said, you could just put zinc oxide sunblock on your helmet and then protect the UV-blocking layer with a spray urethane top-coat, and thereby extend the useful lifespan of your helmet by years.
Please don't fuck about with safety critical equipment.
I do not accept as axiomatic that bike helmets are "safety critical". They may be safety-improving, but I have no evidence available as to how much.
While following up, I discovered that what I suggested is patented. US 6884501.
Anyway, please don't ask people not to hack on a site with "Hacker" in the title. You are free to replace your own expanded-polystyrene bike helmets on a schedule set by helmet manufacturers and cyclist-targeting publications, if you choose. I believe that if a helmet shows no outward signs of degradation or damage, and no known incidences of impacts, there is no particular need to replace it. Just use it until it's dirty, damaged, or unfashionable, and replace it then.
There aren't a lot of studies on the real-world effectiveness of factory-new bike helmets, and as far as I know, none that actually support any particular expiration date for them. Even Snell admits that their 5-year guideline is based on "consensus" and "prudence", and not any actual evidence [0]. And one of the arguments is literally that "we will probably have better helmets available five years from now". Having been around longer than that, it just isn't true (at the price point where I buy helmets). The bike helmet I have now is largely the same as the one I had as a kid. More holes. More fashionable. More comfortable. Functionally the same. Wrap skull in 2" shell of expanded polystyrene, and put a cover over it.
Keep your helmet cool, clean, and out of direct sunlight, and it will last longer than five years. Prophylactically treating one of the well-known causes of failure in expanded polystyrene, immediately after purchase, will help.
Anyone who cycles frequently will likely replace more often based on acquired grime or stink, anyway.
> The manufacturers noticed that helmet sales were declining, and all of a sudden “new science” appeared with a theory about concussions being caused by brain rotation and MIPS technology helps prevent that.
> There isn’t an ethical test for blunt force trauma in real life conditions, and bike crashes are very rarely reported if they don’t send the rider to the hospital.
There's one ethical source of data - televised bike races. Surely there are enough crashes recorded in publicly accessible videos to provide a fairly representative sample of how a human head moves when the helmet it's wearing hits the road.
> They can get away with it because it’s such an easy marketing sell- most people think their life is worth more than $250, so any helmet tech is a bet on the order of Pascal’s wager.
It's exactly the same with motorcycle helmets. You can get a DOT approved helmet for $150, but the general perception in the community is "if you have a $150 head, wear a $150 helmet". Then everyone pays $800 for helmets designed to European standards which are meant for racing, and give dubious benefit if any at normal road-going speeds (eg. see https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/automobiles/27SNELL.html).
> You can get a DOT approved helmet for $150, but the general perception in the community is "if you have a $150 head, wear a $150 helmet".
This is absolutely not the modern perception. The modern perception is that DOT is a joke and that a $120 SNELL or ECE helmet is better than a $500 DOT helmet.
Also, your statement about "european standards meant for racing" is nonsense. ECE is a standard for street use, and SNELL is an American standard.
I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere the argument that because Snell standards involve a higher speed impact, that there might be a tradeoff and they would be less cushiony for a lower speed one. So maybe more stringent standards are not necessarily better; it depends on what standard is the most realistic wrt the average crash.
Most of the crashes I've seen in televised pro races were shot from only a single angle some distance away, and often with obstructed sight lines. So I'm skeptical that those videos will give us useful data on head movement.
Also, pros crash differently than your typical bike commuter or recreational cyclist. For one, there's a large difference in speed (45+ kph for pros, half of that or less for your typical commuter - somewhat negated by the e-bike boom). Next, pros in televised races don't have to deal with oncoming traffic, so head-on collisions are a non-factor. And lastly, pros know how to crash (tuck in, roll over, dissipate energy over a distance), while non-pros tend to tense up in a crash situation.
There's probably other ways in which pros crash differently, making them a less than ideal sample of the overall cycling population.
True, but it'd at least help to verify what sort of helmet would best protect pros and semi-pros. I'm sure there are plenty of keen amateur cyclists who often ride in similar conditions.
And, on the other hand, cyclists who are casual enough to crash very differently to the pros probably wouldn't be looking up in-depth analyses of bike crashes when choosing a helmet either. They'll just buy the second cheapest one.
It's the other way around. ECE standards are meant for lower speed crashes than the American standards. SNELL is the racing standard.
Nevertheless, then comes along someone like (SHARP)[https://sharp.dft.gov.uk/] and performs helmet tests with objective ratings and you see that all helmets vary, regardless of standards.
Because there's no one way to crash, there's hardly one way to test. Buy the most expensive helmet you can afford, more likely than not that it's a better product.
And then you have companies like Arai that have internal standards that arguably exceed SNELL but score low on SHARP due to differences in design criteria.
> most people think their life is worth more than $250
FYI, I just bought the Bontrager wavecell last weekend for $150 at REI. It was a no-brainer, so to speak.
[I just had the worst crash of my life 2 weeks ago. I incurred nothing worse than scrapes and bruises, mostly because the helmet did its job, but needed to replace it after the crash.]
Congratulations! Any bike accident that you walk away from was a good one. I had one that I definitely did not walk away from and it's been a real joy to this day, every day.
Can you describe what happened? Always interested in learning from other cyclists what to watch out for.
It's often not clear whether the energy went into the helmet. It could have cracked something internally or substantially weakened the EPS under the plastic shell without it being super visible.
Better to not risk it: serious crash, replace helmet.
> If the helmet wasn't damaged in the crash it meant the energy was harmlessly transferred into your head.
Foam can and does distribute and absorb shock without being significantly damaged or destroyed in less severe collisions, crashes that can still put you in the hospital without a helmet.
I would maybe describe how helmets work as having a shock-absorbing cushion that slows deceleration of it’s contents. Talking about “energy” is bound to be misleading or confusing, since from a given speed, you always transfer the same amount of energy no matter how you stop, whether it’s a sudden strike against concrete or a slow gentle braking, or even waiting several minutes for air and tire friction to wear out all your kinetic energy.
I don’t want the helmet to be damaged or destroyed only because that means the crash is bad or severe.
There's much in this thread about the helmet absorbing the energy of the impact, but that's far from the whole benefit of wearing one.
The helmet, by conforming to the shape of your head, distributes the energy from the point of impact to a much larger area. So instead of having your head cracked open at the point it hits the tarmac, or pierced by a pointy rock, the force will be evenly distributed across your head.
The helmet also has a low-friction shell that will slide across a surface, which helps avoid head rotation, snapping your neck or getting whiplash, and will protect you from cuts and abrasions.
When I was a kid, I put an egg in a container of honey and dropped it from a 2nd-story balcony onto a hard surface. The egg remained unbroken. The honey was undamaged.
The kinetic energy represented by the difference in height was still added to the egg, but the honey slowed the transfer down, and spread it out to the whole object, in the same way that walking the egg down the stairs, instead of dropping it off the balcony, would have slowed it down.
You don't always want the helmet to be damaged. I wouldn't want my helmet to be constantly denting, cracking, spalling, and ablating every time it touched something. You really want it to be damaged only when the kinetic energy is coming in too quickly to safely (slowly, widely) transfer it all to the protected head, and permanent deformation is the fastest way to bleed off that excess. In theory, the helmet could also heat up when it gets hit, but that's more expensive than just wrapping EPS around whatever you want to protect.
My understanding of MIPS was that it was meant to redirect linear force against the head, such as banging your head against a car in a relatively straight line, into a rotational force that would let the helmet slip off the head and that would reduce the amount of trauma to the skull. I never heard of anything about "brain rotation"
Wow, given that they're talking about something that invariably has a significant linear acceleration factor, that's a pretty... confident... way to put it.
I believe all the current Giro helmets are MIPS now, even the cheap ones. In fact I was contemplating of getting one myself, not necessarily because of MIPS but if it's safer and also looks good, cool.
Because diagnosing an animal concussion is harder than diagnosing a human concussion. Animals can’t tell you if they have a headache, light sensitivity, nausea, etc. You would only be able to diagnose the worst class 3 concussions where the animal can’t even walk straight. It’s probably not ethical to subject animals to that much pain if you can’t even confirm half of the injuries.
Cancers are regularly induced in mice and rats. Almost every single medicine has been tested on animals before they're used on humans. Modern medicine is built on animal models. It's unfortunate, but a sufficient tradeoff a vast majority of people are willing to make.
Blah blah blah. While I appreciate the skepticism, this is BS only for the sake of it (as so many HN comments are).
You instantly lose credibility with this line:
"I bought a Giro Atmos over a decade ago and never needed to upgrade because the top of the line helmets were only a couple grams lighter, after a decade of “improvement.”
I hope you've since replaced it. General guidelines are to replace a helmet every three years due to material degradation and UV damage.
Yes, you are correct that there is a marketing element. Likewise, you are correct that people value their lives over $250 price tag.
As a bit of antidotal evidence, I had a fall this weekend on Evolution trail on Galbraith MTN in Bellingham, WA. I fell from about 6-7 feet up on a feature called the Stinger, a long, super fun north shore style bridge (watch some youtube videos if you want to see it). My face and head were impacted in the fall and I suffered, what I think is, a very mild concussion. I replaced my helmet afterwards as per the recommendations. I also have a history of TBI caused by a cycling accident where wearing a helmet saved my life. I am absolutely going to buy something that even vaguely suggests an advantage for injury prevention. Mountain Biking is, after all, and inherently dangerous sport.
As you suggest, any progress is good progress when it comes to saving lives. But I absolutely disagree that it "is a bet on the order of Pascals wager," especially when it seems I myself have made that wager and come out ahead. So, with the utmost respect, unless you are a leading researcher in this field, STFU.
This reply doesn't seem to be in line with HN guidelines. "Be kind. Don't be snarky." and "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3.'" https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The study cited is questionable. The best independent source for helmet testing IMHO is virginia tech's, which show that these are about as effective as MIPS, not 98% better as the headline suggests:
I got hit by a truck earlier this year while wearing a WaveCel helmet. The outer foam cracked in two places and the cell structure on the inside collapsed in several places. The CT scan of my head came out clean and the ER physician discharged me within the hour. I think my post-incident symptoms were more indicative of shock than concussion, since I did sustain several fractures in my hand.
Keep in mind that helmets are designed to absorb energy. In your accident it's clear that neither you, the bike, or your helmet had much traction. So instead of tumbling (caused by rotational acceleration) you just slide. I'd expect any good helmet to absorb that energy.
The unique claim WaveCell/MIPS is making is that they can absorb the energy that's trying to rotate your head. I've seen no indications that this is a problem. Tires have great traction, pretty much anything else (you, skin, bike, backpack, helmet, bike gloves, etc) have very poor traction so accidents rarely impart large rotational forces. Even if they did the WaveCell is only going to absorb a minimal amount since the helmet is strapped to your head.
Mips and WaveCel are claiming "Rotation causes injuries", engineering a solution to it, not proving it exists, and claiming they are safer because it.
Neither MIPS or WaveCel are claiming they absorb normal impacts better than normal helmets. Generally both ANSI and SNELL have picked an acceleration and penetration standard that's a compromise between rider comfort and safety. Helmets are tested against those standards.
MIPS and WaveCel have failed to prove any additional safety and instead of working with the safety standard folks are appealing directly to consumers to justify their 3-6 times price increase over other ANSI and SNELL approved helmets.
> In your accident it's clear that neither you, the bike, or your helmet had much traction.
The impact that you can't see in the video that damaged the helmet was in the collision with the side of the truck after it hit my left arm, rotating my handlebars to the right. This caused the counter-steer that slammed me into the side of the truck. The truck was moving faster than I was, so that was the source of the rotational acceleration.
Helmets are usually worn pretty loosely, after all you don't want your jaw forced close by an overly tight helmet strap. As such you can typically move a helmet around on the top of your head, especially with say the force of a truck hitting you.
So both WaveCel and non-WaveCel helmets help absorb impacts and reduce the peak acceleration of your brain. Imparting dangerous levels of rotational acceleration seems wildly improbable. Maybe if your helmet strap got caught on the trucks lugnuts? Even then the MIPS or WaveCel would absorb maybe 30 degrees of rotation?
I'm actually curious if you still have a working WaveCel. If you try to rotate your helmet for a normal helmet how much extra rotation do you get? Is it damped as you rotate, or rotating freely within the range available?
For the Wavecel to make a difference you'd need a very high traction to allow high torque which is required to reach a high peak rotational acceleration AND a very low total rotation. Even then I'd expect a normal helmet to rotate just as far.
Antanomically I just can't see it working. I've had my chin forced into my chest, landed on the wide of my head (forcing head onto the opposite shoulder), crushed the back my helmet. But generally there's not much friction between my hair and the helmet, or the helmet and the ground. So to transfer much energy requires an impact not a shear force or torque of any kind.
Can you propose an accident that would impact a sudden large torque to a normal helmet, but a low total rotation (compatible with keeping ones head attached)? Or really anything that allows a slippery layer inside the helmet to make a meaningful difference?
If WaveCel was actually better at absorbing impacts (which they show in their animation) than styrofoam I wouldn't expect them to make their helmet out of mostly styrofoam. If the WaveCel material is worse than the helmet is actually less good at absorbing impacts than a helmet of similar thickness and weight.
Seems safest to just buy the best styrofoam helmet you can buy and don't add cost, weight, and complexity to try to offset this theorized danger of peak rotational acceleration causing concussions that is somehow mitigated by Mips or WaveCel and not by a normal helmet worn normally.
It all happens during a split second of the impact, thr helmet won't be slipping while it is being pressed against your skull by the impact, hence the slip mechanisms. The strap is to make sure your helmet is still in the right place at the moment of impact and subsequent impacts not to stop it from moving during the impact.
Whether or not it's a marketing gimmick, it's the only good indicator we have as the research is inconclusive and I certainly don't have any better idea than the people making the helmets.
That said, what I typically look to for advice on what is a safe helmet is downhill mountain biking competition standards. If they think it will make the sport safer, and their insurance lower, then it's a good indicator that it is probably a good standard to have for my own head.
That gif made my stomach sink. I've taken spills like that, but not in traffic. Super glad you walked away with only some hand fractures. Be safe, friend.
Thank you for sharing your experience and I'm glad that you are OK. I currently have a MIPS helmet and was thinking about "upgrading" to the WaveCel. The one concern I have is that the WaveCel design looks like (I can't find a local store carry them to actually try them out) it will cause a lot more sweat on my head, and I'm a pretty sweaty person. Do you find it more sweaty than traditional helmets?
Also, some people argue that MIPS is probably not as effective in real life as in tests because people simply don't fasten helmets tight enough for it to matter (and the same may apply to these helmets with respect to shear forces), but I don't know if this has been scientifically tested.
While the topic of discussion is concussion, there is some evidence that both fasting and ketosis are neuroprotective to some degree after traumatic brain injury.
The funny thing about helmets, any bike helmet, is that the don't protect against EVERY accident, but they do help protect sometimes. I raced for a few years and my helmet saved me some serious injuries at least twice that I know of.
They aren't perfect, and they don't need to be. They help sometimes and almost never make things worse, that's about all we can hope for. If someone made a helmet that's better sometimes, then that's a good thing. It'll help someone at some point.
I used to road race in my 20s. I never crashed in the handful of races I did as a Cat 5 amateur, though I had a few close calls like having to bunny hop onto a sidewalk to avoid someone that didn't hold their line through a corner (almost won that race, came in second) and facing terrible, rutted roads in the Chicago criterium with the prospect of around a 15 foot drop over a wall into grant park garage ramp.
That said, I've crashed innumerable time over the years, often at speed. As a teen, crashed several times on a dirt road at over 45 miles an hour without wearing a helmet. Been over the handle bars at least 6 times. Been T-boned by a car on a training ride.
Through all that, Ive managed to never hit my head. How? No clue. Just luck I guess. Didnt wear a helmet as a kid, but as an adult I wont get on a bike without on. Only injury above my knock I've had was when I dumped my road bike at 25 mph when I lost the rear end in a corner. Landed on my side, rolled onto my stomach and dragged my chin on the pavement for a bit. Broke my left hand and burnt my finger tips from that one, too. Got up and rode 5 miles home...
If I were still riding, I would definitely get one of these helmets. A lot of my gear is already Bontrager (helmet and 2 pairs of cycling shoes), and all 3 of my bikes are Trek (Bontrager is a Trek subsidiary).
My 15-year-old carbon fiber fork had a catastrophic failure two weeks ago. I’ve no idea what happened exactly but I came to in the emergency room a few hours later with road rash and a concussion. It took me almost two weeks for my brain to feel 100% again.
My helmet cracked where I hit my head. Who knows where I would have been without it.
I fell numerous times both on bike (worst at 40mph) and skis (worst at 60mph), and started with both at around age 3, so I might have the same automated instincts as you do. Never anything more serious than scratches on the sides of my body. Recently hit by a (slow) car that didn't yield, again the fall was automatic and both me and bike were more-less OK (bent front wheel only). I still don't wear helmet for either biking nor skiing, only for bike downhills I get an F1 helmet and full-body armor.
Yeah, happened to me once (steering stem broke) and twice (saddle screw broke). Instantly on the ground. Again, lucky, nothing serious, just bruises. I can imagine during a downhill at 60mph I could be easily killed...
You're good at wiping out, it's a reflexive skill, like a trained boxer blocking or dodging a punch. There's maybe a split second between when you recognize a crash is inevitable, and when you actually hit something, and the decision you make in that moment is critical. Those who haven't cultivated the skills might panic, or freeze up, or just exercise poor body mechanics and then they have a story afterwards about how their helmet saved them from something worse. Or not.
I remember when I was younger doing an x-up (turning the handlebars backwards in the air so your arms make an x) over a pretty big jump. This was something I'd done many times before, but this time, while trying to straighten out before landing, my handlebars got tangled in my shirt and stuck at a 90 degree angle. Somehow, instead of landing in that very unfortunate position, I managed to stuff my bike down between my legs and behind me before, reasonably gracefully, sliding down the landing on my knees. I was completely unscathed, but a little baffled as to how.
I ride a lot more conservatively now and a lot less regularly so I don't fall very often, but it seems like when I do, that lack of practice shows. I don't seem to get as lucky any more.
There is a whole country of serious bike riders who don’t use bike helmets (the Netherlands). It turns out that if you design your biking infrastructure well enough, it isn’t really a problem.
Two hundred deaths a year and more than ten thousand injuries for bicyclists in the Netherlands... Not going to debate whether it’s a “problem”, only assert that the belief that helmets aren’t necessary is causing some unnecessary loss of life. A few of those people in the Netherlands know that even with their well designed infrastructure and slow biking speeds, as many as 80-90 Nederlanders are dying unnecessarily every year and would live if they’d only wear helmets...
Firstly, it's certainly not 80-90 of those 200, that's preposterous if you look at more detailed analyses of the results. About 70 of those 200 deaths are from irresponsible use of ebikes by old people!
Furthermore, bikes are the primary mode of transportation for most people I know here - elderly, young, weak, strong, you name it. The USA's main mode of transportation is cars (unnecessarily large ones!), which (aside from killing over 40,000 people a year directly) also kill the environment, the bodies of those inside, and a truly horrifying number of other people by proxy of countless wars waged over oil. If you count the 40,000 direct deaths alone, you get 129 deaths per 1M Americans per year and 11 deaths per 1M Dutch people per year. Take into account the other issues involved in driving and I'm sure that number will increase by (at absolute minimum) a factor of 10.
Helmets may make sense in America, where biking is a sport dominated by 30-55 year old men on $1000+ bikes wearing criminally tight pants, sunglasses, and aerodynamic helmets. But in the Netherlands they are a preposterous idea. Wearing helmets decreases bike use, which kills in far greater numbers.
> Ah, found the American [...] it’s certainly not 80-90 of those 200, that’s preposterous
Right, yes, I’m on the only American here, and only Americans believe that bike helmets make you safe.
I didn’t make the claim, it was made by SWOV of The Hague in the Netherlands, and republished by DutchNews. Since you’re there, maybe take this up with them? They did look at the detailed analysis, and they said helmets would save 85 Netherlanders per year, not me.
> The USA’s main mode of transportation is cars [...] killing over 40,000 people a year directly
Why did you turn this into a death competition? What does this have to do with cars? The discussion was over whether bike helmets make you safer or not.
I’m fully aware of how bad cars are. Your nationalistic slight aside, not all Americans want cars and the deaths that come with them. I can’t control that. But I can wear a helmet.
> Wearing helmets decreases bike use, which kills in far greater numbers.
That’s a strong claim. Please put a magnitude on it and some evidence and sources behind it.
Look, I'm not going to start the entire helmet debate here on HN, especially since you clearly have not done your research. But to specifically address your points:
1) SWOV has published multiple analyses of this issue. They explicitly noted that the analysis you're referring to was unusual in that it said up to 85 people would be saved per year by wearing helmets. Their other analyses, which use different modes of calculation, arrived at far lower numbers.
2) It's not "a death competition" (but don't worry, America is #1 regardless.) However, every mode of transportation has a cost in lives in many forms. Aside from direct deaths, there are also many indirect deaths from various modes of transportation. If you're going to criticize a possible safety problem in a mode of transportation, keep in mind the broader context. In the Netherlands, where trains are a critical part of the transportation infrastructure, there are more suicides by train than bike deaths (although both are around 200/yr.) You could argue for, perhaps, airport-train-style doors in front of platforms. But that too has an associated cost, and a benefit.
3) You need to consider the consequences of every action, no matter how obscure or strange they may possibly be. Anti-child labor laws sound like a good thing, right? Well, read up on the Child Labor Deterrence Act. Harkin simply introducing the act in Congress was enough to scare manufacturers around the world into action, firing their enormous sweatshops of children. Good, huh? Well, the children were at the sweatshops for a reason. Turns out that without the sweatshops, enormous numbers of children went into prostitution, theft, and rock crushing (which might not sound bad, but it guarantees the destruction of your lungs if you're not killed in a number of other ways.) Every action can have first order, second order, third order consequences...
Finally: 200 deaths a year is an extremely, extremely small number for a system with nearly 20 million users, operating carbon-free, smog-free, at extremely low cost (~20 eur/year.) And it manages to provide fresh air and exercise to all participants! There's basically nothing like it; it's a wonder of the modern world. Risking damaging this system by adding helmets... The payoff is tiny, the risk is enormous.
While I appreciate the response and attempt to address my question, all three of those links are from cyclehelmets.org, and the site is helmet skeptic. That’s not my opinion, it says right on the site that most of their material is anti-helmets. I find it incredibly biased, it tends to use emotional arguments and tries to magnify every scrap of anti-helmet evidence. I dislike how cyclehelmets.org attempts to draw causal lines from correlations at practically every opportunity. Just read your link and see how often they use words like “seem” and “suggest”, then try to imagine some of the many other possible explanations.
BTW, did you notice what the 10-year Canada study concluded? “In general the rate of head injuries is declining, but this is not consistent across the country, nor is it attributable to legislation as some provinces with legislation experienced a decline while others did not.” So there is evidence that helmet laws did not cause the supposed changes in ridership.
Do you believe that having to use seat belts prevents people from driving cars? If not, why not? Do you think seat belts make drivers more aggressive? Do you believe that helmets prevent people from participating in other sports? I live near a lot of ski resorts, and nearly 100% of skiers here are voluntarily wearing helmets, and the number of skiers is rising every year. Same goes for bikes, there are no helmet laws where I live and yet most people wear them, and more people are riding than ever. I don’t buy for a second that helmets are so offputting it drives away half of all people, there are a million possible explanations for whatever data points they found in Alberta. For example, the injury rates presented are absolute numbers, not per-capita like they should be. More injuries is expected when there are more people, and between 2000 and 2006, Alberta got more people.
That's not entirely true; slow (< 30 km/h) cyclists using the bike as utility to get somewhere almost never wear a helmet here. Spandex wearing speed cyclists almost always do though.
True, but that casual use is huge. If helmets were required, bike use in the Netherlands would plummet to UK or even American levels. Is that healthier for society?
But if you are serious about biking, not just casually using a bike to get to work or school, a helmet isn’t really a big deal and probably much more useful.
I disagree. Its probably more about lower speeds associated with casual riders.
But, people, especially kids, are unpredictable. I once literally ran over a boy around 12 years old on a bike path in the US. He was riding with a younger sibling and his father riding head on at me. They were riding inline on the right side (their right), with the kid I ran over in front. Just seconds before we were going to ride past each other (I was also on my right side of the path), the kid swerved directly across me, and dumped his bike. I literally had no time to respond, and rode right over him. I was on my mountain bike at the time, and the bike just thought it was a bump.
Kid was fine, maybe a bit of road rash, dad was pissed at me. Something along the likes of "WTF are you doing riding recklessly and hitting my kid?". The real WTF was like "did you not see what I saw? You kid swerved in front of me and dumped his bike." Dad was so irate I got to the point quickly of: I'm done talking with about this, whats your insurance amd I'm going to call the police to sort this out (my bike had a little bit of damage like a dinged wheel and a bent pedal from it). To this day, dont know if he was running a scam or just had a moron for a son, but as soon as I threatened to bring the cops in, the dad dropped it and went on their way.
I had a Chinese driver's license for a while, and did a little driving there over about a month.
I had a simple rule when driving. At every moment in time, imagine the most asinine/ignorant thing every driver around you could possibly do. And that is what they will do.
But.
They will do it slowly. So when somebody just merges straight into you while you're in the straight lane, they'll just ease it over slow enough that you can react.
They'll cut directly across from the left lane to the right lane, ignoring the lights, to make the turn they feel like making. And run over a little old lady in the process, and scream at her body.
I was all like "I know the rules, I'll follow the rules", and I'd do batshit insane things like stop for pedestrians because they had the right of way. They'd look at me like I was a serial killer just waiting for my chance, usually until they noticed I wasn't from around there. Then they'd laugh at me and walk.
China has great rules of the road. Nobody follows them.
That is bad advice. It remains advisable to wear a helmet. What you are saying is roughly equivalent to, "If car infrastructure is sufficient, we will no longer need helmets." At best the need is reduced.
Does the fact that they don't mean that they shouldn't? Researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia did a study and concluded that wearing helmets in cars would prevent many serious injuries: http://www.copenhagenize.com/2009/10/australian-helmet-scien...
That’s a straw man. Most motorists wear seat belts, because seat belts prevent the most common injuries (including head injury) in small to medium crashes. Helmets don’t protect motorists from common injuries, while they do protect bicyclists from common injuries.
Most of the Dutch cycle at 15 mph on upright bicycles. No wonder they don't need helmets. For bicycle sports or even fitness rides I would say the helmet helps a lot. I was lucky to wear one two times.
I'm Dutch, you're almost right. Most people won't even reach 15 mph. Speeds around 10 mph are more common.
Funny thing: wearing helmets is much more common in Germany. If you see adult cyclists wearing a helmets on upright bikes they'll speak German most of the time :)
Generally I wear a helmet if I'll be doing more than 15 mph, or riding through a city.
I've never hit my head in a cycling wreck, but just a week ago, this past Monday, I tripped over my dog that darted in front of me, fell and hit my head on the hardwood floors in our living room. No concussion, but did require 3 or 4 stiches over an eye. Even in a fall like that, had I been wearing a bike helmet, it wouldnt have offered any protection.
Like I said, as an adult, I believe in helmets and religiously wear them while riding since I was about 20 (now 38).
Likewise, I said I was incredibly lucky. When I got hit by the car, by all rights, I should have slammed my head on the ground, but didn't. Not a dent or scratch on my helmet. After getting hit, I saw ground, sky then ground again before impact and my bike landed on the opposite side of the Street's sidewalk. Trashed about a $3500 carbon race bike and faced close to $40k in medical bills between ambulance and ER treatment (this was in the US in 2008). I never saw a bill, though because I wasn't at fault as the guy that hit me ran a stop sign and his insurance immediately accepted fault.
The most frequent pieces of gear I've trashed during accidents: gloves and shorts. Neither hold up well to sliding across dirt roads or asphalt.
I did by crashing into another person on a bicycle when I was riding and hit the back of my head on the road. I felt a bit nauseous and spent about 10 minutes lying down in someone's back yard. After that, I walked home. That was close to 40 years ago and I'm still fine. For what it's worth, I still ride about 300 to 400 miles per month without a helmet.
They increase risk of some more serious injuries. Also, with helmet mounted cameras which are very popular they are pretty much accidental killers if hit at the right angle/force.
Amazing, now we just need to make a full body suit of this material so it works with the main type of urban collision, which is being killed by a reckless SUV driver, or pulled under a box truck and crushed under the back wheels.
I wonder how’s the Swedish “airbag helmet” doing these days. It sounds like a superior solution to any regular bike helmet, but perhaps the price and/or convenience just isn’t there for the mass market.
Not to detract from how amazing WaveCel might be. Any safety material advancement is great news. But this is assumes we need new head protection to fit the old moulds, so to speak.
OTOH, there are or will soon be options to replace our foam brain buckets with high-tech collars/airbags that may (?) be less sweaty and may (?) provide more coverage in a crash (chin, back, sides, etc.)
The only reason I don't currently own one is that they say it's not as ergonomic for those using road/drop bar bikes. Presumably this is due to the weight of the air canister and battery in the pod that sits behind your neck, since the riding position is less upright.
If any road bike users wear Hövding, I'd be interested to hear about your experience.
That airbag "helmet" seems susceptible to pointy objects and edges, like the edge of a sidewalk. Also it's not designed for MTB use, which is understandable but quite limiting.
But it's a tradeoff. Full-faced helmets give the helmet another point of leverage on which to break your neck. On the other hand they won't erase your face, which is nice.
Motorcycle helmets are just not ever to be worn while biking. They are designed for vastly different forces at vastly different speeds than a bike helmet.
Not to mention that they will breathe very very very poorly, though I'm a little unsure how these wavecell helmets will breathe. Like the Scott helmets, lots of tiny holes seems like not as good as big holes for airflow.
That seems like a bad take to me. There is a lot of overlap between motorcycle sports events speeds and bicycle event speeds. A bicycle downhill racer will be going a lot faster than a motorcycle enduro rider. That is why, as an example, Bell helmets marketed to enduro riders and downhillers are the same helmet.
This is incorrect. Most cyclists rarely sustain speeds beyond 20mph and will not regularly see speeds beyond 30-35mph. If going downhill on a road bike, amateur cyclists hit mid 40s occasionally on weekend rides. For reference the maximum speed I have ever seen (I have biked >1,100 miles this year) is 55.7mph for one brief moment.
Motorcycles on the other hand consistently travel at 30+mph and regularly see sustained 55-80mph on the highway. It's not the same problem at all.
If your helmet is likely to encounter a 60mph impact you will design for that. Most likely that means your helmet will be stronger, which means it won't break away as easily at lower speeds. This means when your head will take more of the kinetic energy in a 15mph crash than it otherwise would. Not to mention that the helmet will be heavier, which means there's more momentum on impact which may affect the way forces get dissipated.
If you compare with downhill mountain biking that's a very tiny segment of the population. It's true that some downhill mountain bikers may use motocross helmets. That's not what the average bike helmet is for, and it's not what the average bike rider should be using.
I don't know why you keep arguing this. You said that motorcycle helmets are "never" to be worn by bicyclists. I point out that there is not just one but -several- different companies cross-marketing DOT-approved motorcycle helmets for bicycle sports. Now you are talking about the "average" bike rider. I think you just have a narrow, inaccurate conception of the universe of all cycle sports and you've probably never been anywhere near a motorcycle. Look at these BMX kids, then look at the motocross kids.
I have in fact ridden motorcycles, you’re still arguing a niche case. Fine, there exists some cyclist who wears a motorcycle helmet. It’s a bad idea for the vast majority of cyclists.
> and of course you can always just wear a motorcycle helmet.
That'd be a miserable experience, motorcycle helmets aren't significantly vented and in my experience have substantial sweat-absorbing padding. They prioritize minimizing wind noise and expect much higher speeds than most bicycles encounter...
I wear a full-face MIPS cycling helmet by Bell [0], it's a mountain biking helmet.
And I agree, the lack of face/chin protection is absurd in bicycle helmets. I know personally of two folks who injured their jaw or teeth in bicycle crashes wearing minimal helmets. I'm not even a particularly social person with lots of friends let alone ones who ride.
One needed an implant to replace a cracked tooth that had barely touched the pavement in a crash that also tore his chin up enough to need stitches. The other broke his jaw and was eating cheeseburgers through a straw for months while it was wired shut.
Both bad outcomes would have been trivially prevented by a full-face helmet.
I haven't found a down side to riding w/full-face, the modern ones are light enough and it's sufficiently ventilated to not be a heat issue.
Full face helmets do exist for bikes, for downhillers. There's big downsides in weight, cost, and less airflow (they are hot). But for downhill folks, especially those that race it's worth it. For pretty much close to 100% of non-downhill bikers, it's not.
The chin is not a particularly common injury for bicyclist.
While the direction of the responses went to "full face" bmx/motorcycle helmets, I was thinking more of a chin strap/protector like football helmets sometimes have:
They make BMX helmets that protect your chin. They're basically just dirt bike helmets. Nobody wears them probably for aesthetic and convenience reasons (unless they're Mountain biking).
They make dirt bike helmets if you need that kind of protection. If you're road biking and just want a bit more, you could always wear a bike helmet and a mouth piece. I've found the real danger of having your chin hit something is when it slams your mouth closed.
In some cities in the US, which is just plain wrong. For example, in Portland OR you cannot lawfully ride a bicycle on the sidewalk unless you're avoiding some road hazard (cars do not count, unless it's on fire or something).
You are weighing the tentative results of one study equally against many others saying helmets reduce injury.
The study is also weird in that in the course of being passed by 2500 vehicles, he was struck twice. That is an astronomical accident rate that leads me to think his test was abnormal in some way.
This only relates to cyclist/vehicle strikes and not to solo accident due to handling, road conditions, weather etc.
Additionally (without having checked any statistics) i believe most vehicle strikes where i live are due to the driver not seeing the cyclist at all, because they do not orientate properly on right turns or the cyclist is riding too aggressively.
Depending on where you live, it might be illegal to ride without a helmet.
Personally, I would ignore both this study and the WaveCel marketing material, and look at results of actual outcomes in collisions. Boston and New York both, just for example (many cities & states do this, and so does the NTSB), publish data on how often helmets prevent brain injury, statistically speaking. [1][2][3] (Note that NYC is so sure helmets save lives, they’re spending millions to distribute them for free. There’s a decent chance it’s saving money overall.)
> Or don’t buy a helmet at all, and trust that you won’t get in an accident?
Well, do what makes you feel safer and obeys the laws. But trusting that you won’t get in an accident because of that study you cited would be a dramatic, and possibly dangerous mis-interpretation and mis-understanding of that study’s results.
While there’s some controversy over that study admitted by the author, even if you take it a face value, it’s saying that without a helmet cars pass 4.4 feet from him, and with a helmet, they pass 4.1 feet from him on average. That might be a bit more dangerous, but what’s the actual accident rate? You can’t conclude anything about that from his 2 accidents, and the U.S. standard for vehicles passing bikes is 3 feet, so he’s demonstrating that with or without helmets, drivers are on average passing safely.
If you want to take the studies at face value, then try to calculate the expected value, which is risk multiplied by cost. It’s wrong to suggest that it’s a toss up just because there exists evidence in both directions, when the magnitude of the evidence may be overwhelmingly unidirectional. Clearly many people here don’t believe the 98% improvement WaveCel claims, but suppose you take it at face value. To decide what do to about it, you need to know what the increase in concussion risk is due to vehicles passing you more closely. Don’t call it a conundrum, find out. How often does an average of 4.1 feet of room result in concussion over 4.4 feet of room?
(BTW, do note the 98% number that WaveCel is advertising is relative to other kinds of helmets, not relative to the unprotected skull. Statistics on outcomes seem to consistently show 80%-90% effectiveness for wearing any kind of helmet, but don’t take my word for it...)
I've looked at MIPS and Wavecell helmets for bicycling. When I looked at the analysis and research, it seemed that MIPS makes more sense for snow sports, where your helmet can get stuck in snow and twist. On asphalt, or when colliding with a car, this is less likely. So I passed on getting a MIPS helmet for biking (though I should probably get one for snowboarding).
When I looked at the literature on Wavecell, it seemed to be of the "up to 40x better" variety. To a lay person like myself, that seemed suspicious because I have no idea what the common accident types are, and the literature didn't seem to indicate that it was more protective in the common scenarios. The article linked here does seem to make that case, but as others have noted it reads a bit like an advertisement.
I am actually planning on getting on getting one of these helmets simply because its shape fits my head very well, and in talking with cyclists I've been told that having a shape that fits your head (mine is apparently more "circular" than "oblong") is the most important thing.
I was in a cycling crash earlier this year while wearing a new (2 week old) MIPS helmet. The helmet (with my head in it) hit the road pretty hard causing an indentation and deep scratches. The location of the indentation leads me to believe that the initial impact 'stuck' to the asphalt then slid as the coefficient of friction was quickly surpassed. I had absolutely no injuries to my head or neck (with that could be said about my elbow, which I apparently landed on full-force). I have since replaced that helmet with another MIPs one, but I haven't heard of the Wavecell helmets until now. I'll have to consider those the next time I'm shopping around for a new helmet, hopefully this time it'll be after the current one has 'expired' naturally.
> On asphalt, or when colliding with a car, this is less likely
Unless you have one of those textile covered urban fashion helmets which do not slide on asphalt and also risk breaking intervertebral disks or neck bones.
Bike helmets are sold on the basis of look, feel, and most importantly weight. Nobody is touting real safety. Compare motorcycle helmets, which come in two radically different safety standards: DOT, for harley riders who want something that is barely legal. And SNELL, for sportbike riders who actually want to keep their face on their heads after a crash. I have never seen a bicyclist with a full face helmet on the road. Bicyclists, like the harley riders, care far more about comfort and style than actual safety. At 50kph the asphalt doesn't care whether you just fell off a bicycle or a motorcycle. Please prove me wrong. Please find me a pic of someone riding a bicycle on a road in a snell motorcycle helmet. I have seen plenty of them in the downhill community, never among commuters.
My point is that this new material will not be used to make safer helmets. It will be used to make lighter and more stylish helmets that, like all the others, remain only slightly above the absolute minimum legal standards. That's the market.
Speed is a factor. A motorcycle can easily travel 60km/h - 120km/h. A bicycle is likely to be travel at 20km/h - 40km/h. 40km/h is pretty damn fast on a bike. Maybe the enthusiast guys riding the beach in the morning get up to 60km/h but that's a pretty small percentage riders.
An impact above 60kph is beyond the design of even a motorcycle helmet. They are primarily meant to protect the head falling onto the road surface and then sliding, an impact that it similar no matter the speed. Even when standing still, a head freefalling from 2 meters (ie bicyclist/motorcyclist tipping over) strikes the ground at 22.5 kph. That single impact is the US/DOT standard for bicycle helms. They don't accommodate sliding or repeated impacts.
Not true. Look at MotoGP crashes. They’ll hit the deck at 150mph, slide off into gravel, slide to a stop, and pop right up with nothing more than a few scuffs on their leathers.
I disagree. I'm a daily bike rider and I'm all for safer helmets. However I do need to be able to breath and not overheat. It's the realities of my commute that sometimes it's over 100F, like it was last week here.
I think there's a market for safer helmets and I own a bike helmet made to SNELL standards (for bike helmets not road). I just checked, I have a Specialized helmet with a Snell sticker inside that says "B90A". I'd buy a safer helmet, but I'm not willing to buy a full face helmet to offset the rare case of falling on my chin. Nor am I willing to pay 3-6x the price for some marketing campaign which claims that peak rotational acceleration is a major menace for bicyclists.
Sure Snell motorcycle helmets are more durable than bike helmets, but they have similar styrofoam of a similar thickness for lowering the peak acceleration. Sure my bike helmet would likely shatter into a million pieces in a major accident at 100 mph, but I don't bike at 100 mph.
There’s a bunch of helmet technology in mountain biking in the recent years. MIPS is one, 6D ODS is another (I have helmets with both). I wish I could see them compared.
Wasn't there an increase in serious head/neck injuries when Australia made helmets mandatory? I thought the only working protection was the Hövding airbag, which is quite expensive for one-time use.
Last time this was posted someone pointed out that this could be because when someone dies they don't bother to report "they died but they also got neck injurys which would have caused long term damage" so since less people died, the more minor reports could have been made.
Basilar/basal skull fracture is what makes helmets dangerous in general, i.e. landing face-first on motorbikes often led to cracked bones at the bottom of the skull, often fatally. There were reports about increased rates among cyclists when helmets were made mandatory. I consider that pretty serious and not minor. Nothing is without risks it seems.
There is no consensus amongst researchers on whether mandatory helmet laws reduce injuries. I, for one, will continue wearing one and forcing my kids to wear them. As steelframe [1] posted on here, when someone else hits me, I want to survive.
There were reports of increased rates of basal skull injury, i.e. the same injury many race car drivers suffered (Dale Earnhard) and for which HANS device was invented. So on one hand you would be protected in simple accidents but on the other hand exposed to more serious ones.
Knocked myself out back in the 90s on a road bike not wearing a helmet. Stitches in head. Concussion for a month.
Knocked myself out 2 years ago on a mountain bike wearing a MIPS helmet. No stitches in head. No concussion.
Last year wife went over the bars at whistler and took it on the face with the best carbon fiber full face downhill helmet money can buy. Pressure on her face was so much she had lines of blood under her eyes just from the pressure. Big scratches on the face-guard. But she was totally fine, not knocked out, walked it off and laughed about it later.
Completely unscientific data above, but when it comes to my budget distribution these days, it goes into helmet, then pads (D3O for downhill and cross country), then bike, camelbak and rest of gear.
I'll also add that I'm not a fan of Bell's Super 3R helmet with the removable face. It's MIPS these days, but I don't feel the chin guard provides enough space in case you actually take a face hit. The more DH specific helmets have more clearance. I guess now that I've seen one work and save someone, I'm a little more picky. Thisis the Super 3R I'm referring to: https://www.bellhelmets.com/bike/p/super-3r-mips-mountain-bi...
I'm sure there are tons of cyclists, XC and downhill folks on HN and we all have our opinions and experience. Would love to hear from others. YMMV considerably from mine. Stay safe!!
Preach.
I bought an e-bike a few years ago, and I ride 20mph _everywhere_ now. I might upgrade to a 26mph speed pedelec, at which point a full-face may be prudent.
I'd recommend a white helmet, with stick-on reflective tape, to maximize visibility. And CINCH IT DOWN TIGHT.
Fun times we live in -- I expect in 5 years we (in the US) will be able to buy a 45mph, 50kg e-bike (e-motorcycle?) for $3,000-$6,000. We'll need better helmets, gloves, shoes, and pads for that, but hopefully stil shy of full motorcycle regalia (known as "ATGATT", all the gear, all the time).
And I like my current Troy Lee Designs helmet simply because it fits so well.
I crashed at Whistler last year, into several large rocks, going fast, wearing a full face and a neck brace and full body armor. I remember hitting the rock with the back of my head and wondering while it was happening how serious it was going to be. I’m certain that without the protection, I’d have been in the hospital at the very least. Walked away with no head injury, no broken bones, only some torn shoulder soft tissue and a really ugly hematoma on my hip where it was exposed in between two body armor pads.
Would you have put yourself in the same situation if you didn’t have all that protective gear on?
iirc this is one of the theories about injury being higher in American Football vs. Rugby, the increased safety equipment leads to a cycle of increased hitting force which leads to increased equipment, etc.
I do put myself in similar situations with less gear, just for shorter periods of time, and when I’m closer to home. I don’t wear all that gear when riding in traffic, and arguably the consequences can be much higher when hitting or being hit by a car.
The gear helps when I have much greater exposure (i.e. longer periods of time) to the risks, and part of the idea is when I’m taking a vacation and spending a lot of money to go up to Whistler for a week, fewer small problems will end my vacation early. The gear also helps when I run the risk of exhaustion, which is a major cause of mountain bike crashes.
BTW, I actually do think there’s some truth to the idea that gear increases risk taking. That doesn’t mean that overall safety goes down though, so you have to be careful how you think and talk about it. If injury outcomes are on average lower when wearing gear, then that’s that, it doesn’t matter if people are taking larger chances, the protection is still outweighing the risk.
Off-topic but it's really annoying to try to read an article with 30% of my mobile screen taken up by a sticky ego title. Please fight back against marketdroids who ask you to do this.
I submitted this because I bought one of these today. Obviously I have no way of independently verifying whether or not they work as advertised. What I will say though is that if you get even a minor concussion, that means you can't look at any electronic device for 3+ months, which means that if you're a tech consultant or run a startup then you're basically out of a job. So in comparison paying $150 for something that lasts 3 years seems conceptually like a very good bet.
My general outlook, which is why I like this, is that it's relatively rare in life to find things where you can improve your health or increase your life expectancy just by swiping your credit card without needing to do any additional work or anything else unpleasant afterwards, so one should take advantage of these opportunities when possible. (Another good example is HEPA filters, where you just swipe your credit card and plug it in and that's it, and although there are limited studies on HEPA filters themselves there is a very clear link between air pollution and mortality risk.)
> if you get even a minor concussion, that means you can't look at any electronic device for 3+ months
I had a concussion recently and my doctor said nothing of that nature. I would love to have had a helmet which was better able to handle the impact though! Definitely the least fun altered state of consciousness that I have experienced.
I’ve had concussions and never been told to abstain from screens. So, I did some quick googling... by the looks of it, screens (and other bright light sources) can exacerbate post-concussion headaches, but I didn’t see anything that indicated screen use slows recovery or causes further damage.
The understanding I've gotten from reading about the topic and talking to a GP was that anything that makes symptoms worse will lengthen recovery time.
Removing screen time is new science and has not been widely propagated.
In fact, I am not even sure if it’s been published. I have been working with one of the Australian leaders in concussion (Perth based emergency doctor) who strongly advocates this, at most its 12 to 18 months old
Ditto this from the University of Pittsburgh Medical cEnter Sports Medicine concussion clinic. (They're one of the leading groups in the US on this topic, very likely because they treat the Pittsburgh Steelers. :-). Reducing screen time and other highly-stimulating visual inputs was key.
I don't know why I was downvoted so much, I am totally in agreement with you. I have owned MIPS helmets since they have come out.
I also read the article first and reached out to my bike shop about it. I think the tech is great, I do find percentages that big to be a bit questioning, so I will do more research on them. Meaning, how much is hype vs actual, it looks awesome though, and we need something like this.
I didn't make my comment until I noticed that it only took 9 minutes to get that article in the top of the top on here and was just curious how that happens. ie, actual people reading, how many people need to vote on it to get it to the top, vs pay to play top ranking. Was asking a serious question too, I have no idea I am pretty new to HN and I know that Reddit is pay to play,
Thanks for the post though, I am interested and if it makes sense will probably invest in one of these
>if you get even a minor concussion, that means you can't look at any electronic device for 3+ months
Anecdotal, but I got 2 concussions while playing lacrosse in highschool (not minor), and none of the nurses or doctors I spoke to said anything about looking at electronics
Given the frequency of articles from citylab and similar i tend to assume HN has a lot of cyclists. And given that it's HN, a lot of people who pin a large part of their lives, earning potential, and identity on their smarts, and thus who fear traumatic head injury.
I'll agree with you though -- I too tend to assume that everything on the internet is an advertisement.
I can't speak for others, but I'm not a bot. I saw it at the very top of the 'new' page just after it was submitted, scanned the article, and thought it was worthy of discussion. I haven't kept up with bicycle helmet tech, but thought others here might have opinions on whether this is advertising junk or an actual breakthrough. While it's possible there was simultaneously a spectacularly effective promotion campaign, I'm guessing most of the other early votes were similarly real.
That's what a bot would say :) I'm not sure how HN's ranking algorithm works, but it seems similar to Reddit where there is a velocity factor. So all you need to do to boost your submission on to the front page is a decent submission and a few upvotes in the first few minutes. Then it's on the front page and organic votes will keep it there. Of course they have systems in place to prevent it, but it's an arms race.
EDIT: can you remember how many upvotes it had when you voted?
It showed a score of 1 (no upvotes) when I clicked to read the article. Then after approximately 2-3 minutes of reading, I clicked back and upvoted without refreshing, so I don't know how many votes it had when I actually voted.
Per the article, the conclusion that the new product performs so well is based solely on a study performed by "Legacy Research Institute":
WaveCel inventors, Dr. Steve Madey and Dr. Michael Bottlang, are authors of the study, as well as founders and co-directors of the Legacy Research Institute.
The real story is that marketing probably has a bigger influence than science in this case. Several years ago helmet manufacturers hit the practical weight limit for helmets with styrofoam and carbon fiber shells. I bought a Giro Atmos over a decade ago and never needed to upgrade because the top of the line helmets were only a couple grams lighter, after a decade of “improvement.” The manufacturers noticed that helmet sales were declining, and all of a sudden “new science” appeared with a theory about concussions being caused by brain rotation and MIPS technology helps prevent that. How convenient that this appeared.
The dirty secret is that literally nobody has ever seen a brain rotate inside a skull and result in concussion. It’s really hard to image a brain in motion (impossible with off the shelf equipment), so the brain rotation theory is just a hypothetical mechanism. There isn’t an ethical test for blunt force trauma in real life conditions, and bike crashes are very rarely reported if they don’t send the rider to the hospital. So the leading authority on product safety, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, doesn’t even have good numbers on concussion rates for cyclists.
The bottom line is that MIPS and this new gel layer came at way too good of a time for the helmet industry for us not to be wary of the science. They can get away with it because it’s such an easy marketing sell- most people think their life is worth more than $250, so any helmet tech is a bet on the order of Pascal’s wager. If it’s snake oil I’m just out $250, but if it really is better then I just saved my life in a crash.