When I was in school, our trainer was ill, so he was replaced by a craft teacher, which was fresh from the army. He was a soviet paratrooper, so he told us that he knows nothing about training, but he sure that we will fall a lot during our life, so he will train us to fall properly. We did about a hundred of jumps and falls and rolls per lesson, up to 2 meter height, in military style for 2,5 months, up to 1000 falls in total.
When I'm falling, I'm rotating my body to fall flat on the back. I'm wearing a bicycle backpack with thick absorber and protective plate (Wolf Skin, Kite, etc.), so it absorbs energy and protects my back. Bad for backpack and notebook, but good for me.
FWIW, I had a whole skydiving career before I started biking seriously. Drop & roll is not really a viable head injury prevention plan. You’re prepped for a few kinds of accidents with a backpack and trying to roll if/when there’s time, if you’re really lucky, but you’re leaving a mile wide blind spot to many possible accidents that you don’t have control over. Good luck, I hope you don’t have any of those kind of collisions.
Obviously. I’m saying that your soviet paratrooper roll training isn’t going to save your head in a bike crash, I know because I’ve done a whole lot of both. Biking to work is the place where you’re most likely to be hit by a car, and thus not be able to roll and not be protected by a backpack.
Hey I’m not telling you what to do, only pointing out that assuming you have control over physics in an accident is a pretty bad assumption, and that telling new riders that a few falls prepares them for non-helmet riding is dangerous advice because it’s not true.
I don’t know where you live, but we all know the Netherlands is famous for having some of the best bike infrastructure in the world, and also for low helmet use. Still, the chances of TBI in an accident in the Netherlands is 2x higher without a helmet than with. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/neur.2020.0010
You do you, I’m just saying from my perspective, and from actual experience, the single best thing I can do to prevent a serious debilitating bike injury is wear a helmet. It’s by no stretch of the imagination the only thing I can do, and I like some of your other advice you gave. I just think if you care about slippery surfaces enough to lower your seat, or care about cars enough to wear a reflective vest, a helmet sure seems like a good idea.
I'm from Europe (Ukraine). Yes, I'm totally aware about risk of death in a road incident. After each incident, our bicyclist association does protest near to city administration, demanding more and safer bike lanes.
Our plan to fix it is to make the city safer for cyclist. We are heavily inspired by success of Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boi0XEm9-4E . Situation is improved in recent years. Currently, half of my path to work is safe, while the other half is not.
Helmet is a good idea (I recommend to wear helmet after all), but it has some downsides. We can discuss upsides and downsides of helmet a lot, but I recommend using my OKR instead, when you recommend biking to newbies: «use helmet until you will fall 10 times at least». It's simple, easy to understand, easy to remember, actionable, and leaves no room for doubt.
I see no breakdown of incident number by years of experience in your papers.
Newbies are like toddlers, so they will fall more often and will skew the statistic. Nobody says that walking is a dangerous activity, just because toddlers are falling multiple times per day.
Still, cycling is the safest mode of transportation per km, so, if you want to improve safety significantly, convince drivers and pedestrians to wear helmets first. Cyclist will follow.
When I'm falling, I'm rotating my body to fall flat on the back. I'm wearing a bicycle backpack with thick absorber and protective plate (Wolf Skin, Kite, etc.), so it absorbs energy and protects my back. Bad for backpack and notebook, but good for me.