Talk:Bicycle helmet

Please can we split this article

Seriously, what is going with this article? The section Science: measuring helmet effectiveness is out of control and far too detailed compared to the rest of the article. Readers coming to this page want to know about bicycle helmets; the various types, their history, etc. They don't want to be swamped by mass of argument/counter-argument on what this or that report has to say about their effectiveness. I'd like to see all that moved out of this article, into one that's dedicated to that subject alone. In it's place we should have e a 'main article link' and a short summary which acknowledges the various positions without going into unnecessary detail. Obscurasky (talk) 13:32, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Agree with the diagnosis. I think a better solution though is to confront the problem head-on a slim the 'scientific' discussions right down. There is waaay too much reproduction/interpretation of primary material here. All that needs to be relayed is a few views of reliable/secondary sources (broadly: wearing a helmet is safer than not). Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 13:37, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. This article has indeed become unreadable and this is because it is swamped with primary material / argumentation, stuff that doesn't need an article of its own because it doesn't belong in Wikipedia at all. There are several things that Wikipedia is not and it should not try to be a list of the primary arguments in a deeply contentious area. I, and I suspect others, have been leaving this alone in the hope that those presently engaged in adding primary arguments will decide instead to try for a neutral summary of the secondary sources. We had a much better (though imperfect) article some months ago, back in January for example. I don't have time to work on this for a few days, but in a week or so it may claw its way to the top of my priority list. I'd really welcome help. Richard Keatinge (talk) 21:51, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I have to say that in my opinion in January 2013 the article was hopelessly biassed against helmets - reading it as it was then, an otherwise uninformed reader would get the distinct impression that helmets were not effective and were positively dangerous, and that there was no evidence that helmet laws had any effect on head injuries - impressions which on the available scientific evidence would be erroneous. Have a look at the version of the article as it was in Dec 2012 (no edits were made in Jan 2013, so this is the same as it was in Jan 2013): http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Bicycle_helmet&oldid=528336521 The article is still full of probably unnecessary material and details, but have a look at the section on "Science: measuring helmet effectiveness". Compare that to the current version of the article. Yes, the current version is way too detailed, but at least it much better reflects the full range of scientific evidence on the issue, and the descriptions of the studies are much more accurate. A lot of effort has gone into reading many of the older sources cited, and correcting the descriptions of their findings, many of which used selective quotes which misrepresented or selectively represented the findings of those studies. Tim C (talk) 22:56, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I've had a go at removing some of the improperly used primary material and inserting some medical institution views, but much still remains to be done. Some of this article is almost comically bad - e.g. " ... by the straps of their bicycle helmets.[101][Q 4] [102][103][104][105][Q 5] [106][Q 6] [107][108][109][110][111][112][113][Q 7]". Yes, that's 17 references for a statement! Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 10:48, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

I support much of your good work here and agree that much more pruning needs to be done, but I have reverted the removal of valuable references to the hangings. We do need references to the actual problem, and these are, while primary, the best available. As they're only presented as references they don't affect readability in the way that excessive argumentation does. Richard Keatinge (talk) 09:54, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's of any value, really. That a standard was developed for the problem is evidence enough that there was obviously a problem that needed solving. Having so much material on this topic here is a bit WP:UNDUE and perhaps even sensational – and having the references is an extreme case of WP:OVERCITE! Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 10:09, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

These are still the best references available for the original problem. I'd be happy to find other ways of presenting the facts - is there any good way of aggregating references? - but the idea of omitting them strikes me as ... odd. Richard Keatinge (talk) 10:28, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

We could aggregate, but that wouldn't solve the undue/sensationalism/WP:PRIMARY issues. What we want - if the point needs reinforcing - is one good strong secondary source (perhaps this) making the point that children face a strangulation/entrapment hazard from helmets when worn away from cycling. Then the raft of refs can go since we don't want to base an article on primary material. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 11:03, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree with a comment by User:Obscurasky (some weeks ago) that this type of thing seems to be an attempt to fill the article with as much anti-helmet bias as is physically possible. Linda.m.ward (talk) 11:39, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually it's an attempt to write a clear, comprehensive, and neutral article. A string of un-aggregated references may not be quite the best way to present this rare hazard, but it is certainly a good way to do it. Alex, what would be your favourite way to aggregate references? Richard Keatinge (talk) 15:37, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

For this article's reference style, I'd use a bullet list inside a <ref> - however this is generally only necessary when the material being supported is contentious and needs further support and explanation. AFAICS this strangulation problem with helmets is not disputed, so the only purpose of having all these references is as a kind of sub-article ("A compendium of helmet-caused child deaths") here which is, as I've written above, probably undue/sensational. The pertinent fact (for the topic of this article) is clearly stated by the secondary source we have, and the one I suggest above; the primary sources need to come out I think. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 16:10, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

In view of various attempts to minimize/omit the issue I think we do need the references. They make clear that the problem is real, serious, rare, and only occurs off bikes. I'll have a go at a bullet list inside a reference. Richard Keatinge (talk) 17:02, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Eliminate or improve "Reduction in fatalities" subsection

The subsection "Reduction in fatalities" should be removed or improved. It is currently one sentence, and cites to a single study with little context. That certainly doesn't warrant a whole section, and given previous discussions, the meta-analysis section is sufficient. -- Carleas (talk) 15:40, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Seeing no objection, I have removed this subsection. Carleas (talk) 15:34, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

This is probably a good thing, one "study" (explicitly describing itself as guesswork) was not a good thing to have here. I would prefer to see a rather longer section reinstated, giving a more thorough account of the current literature. It will inevitably be contentious, which is why I've left it alone for the moment. Richard Keatinge (talk) 16:35, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree there should be a longer dicussion; the bicycle safety article seems to assume that this article contains more discussion than it does, and IIRC there once was such a discussion here (Robin Hanson blogged about it a few years ago). But I think a better approach would be to move the discussion to its own page, included as a 'See also' at the top of the Effectiveness section. Doing it justice here would overwhelm what seems to be the purpose of this page, i.e. describing bicycle helmets. Carleas (talk) 15:26, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

You may have a point, though it's one that I've generally not been in favour of. Maybe its time has come. What title would you suggest for the new page? "Effects of bicycle helmets", perhaps?Richard Keatinge (talk) 15:50, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Reversion of opening image

The opening image on the page was removed some revisions back, it looks like this may have been accidental - some lines before the image were deleted and the edit itself did not refer to the image being removed. User:Kencf0618 has added a new image in its place, a good thing, but the image does not show the helmet as well and contains extraneous information in the label, e.g. "Bern Alston", "Oregon Trail". I've therefore dug back through the history and reverted to the previous image. Kiwikiped (talk) 21:00, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Bern is the brand of the helmet, and Alston the model. Bern Unlimited needs an article itself à la Bell, but I haven't gotten a round tuit. kencf0618 (talk)

The Earth is flat, HIV does not cause AIDS and helmets decrease bicycle safety.

This article is the Flat-Earth treatise of Wikipedia! It is so false, one does not even need to climb to the top of the mast to see its falseness.

Soldiers were not routinely wearing helmets before WWI. By the end of hostilities, all of them had steel pots. In-between, some 10 million G. I. never got up from the mud, that why general staffs quickly wizened up. Now they have kevlar pots. Construction workers were not routinely wearing helmets before the Hoover Dam. Nowadays not wearing one makes a blue-collar guy unemployable. But, of course, cyclists are different, laws physics do not apply to them! (Pugilists recently choose that route, as well. Although not many are able to speak coherently by the end of their sporting carrers...)

Anyhow, modern medical science can mend or at least replace any part of a human, except the head. Therefore, discouraging people from wearing bicycle helmets only serves the secretive interest of organ transplant surgeons, ensuring a steady stream of young adults, who have healthy bodies, but are flat out brain-dead. Each such youngster's corpse can be cut up, to save six or seven, older and well-established and societally more useful ill people. Guess how many top managers, laurate scientists, politicians, bishops, etc. are desperately awaiting medical organ transplants?

(Motorcycle accidents usually also crush the body, because the engine block is hard and heavy. Such riders are also often already worn 50+ aged people, buying their Harleys to re-live juvenile dreams. Therefore bicycle brain-deads are in the best condition and they are the utmost prized corpses.) 82.131.146.70 (talk) 22:35, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Can you produce statistically sound evidence in favour of bicycle helmets? Murray Langton (talk) 07:38, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

- --88.177.158.231 (talk) 20:41, 11 April 2014 (UTC) here, more than half of this article should be called "Current debate regarding helmet laws and helmet effectiveness", it's listing everything and the kitchen sink, like a toolbox to anyone wishing to rant about helmet law projects.

• @ 82.131.146.70: The topic of bicycle helmet is "different" because there is people fighting against helmet laws, because wearing a helmet on your bicycle at all time is a burden and rather annoying at first. That's why some people will put much more emphasis on potential "risk compensation" and whatever the "anti-helmet" activists can find.
• Speed (kinetic energy): Another reason why bicycle helmet get that special treatment and not the motorcycle helmets or seat belts anymore (at least in the rich western world). These vehicles (cars and motorbikes) can have crashes at much higher speed resulting in the complete destruction of the human body, so the benefits of the helmet or seat belt proved they clearly outweigh any kind of "risk compensation" you could argue about.
• Workplace vs individual right: wearing a safety helmet on a construction site is a burden too. But in the case of a construction site, you're employed or paid as an external contractor to work on a particular task, you're not working at your home on your own projects. It would be understandable to make wearing a bicycle helmet mandatory if you're riding a bike as part of your job, or if the bike is paid and maintained by your company, but it would be a much more intrusive regulation if people were forced to wear a bicycle helmet at all time, even on their own private bike.
• Risk compensation change over time and heavily depends on each person (personality, age, etc) AND culture, pretending there's an universal response to risk situations is utterly foolish. I rode without a helmet for 14 years, never felt I was taking any risk. Started wearing a helmet a year ago, at first I felt no difference, nowadays if I don't wear a helmet it's like driving a car without wearing a seat belt: I'm terrified. In many countries, no one is wearing a helmet when riding a motorcycle, same in the 20s and 30s (or even the 50s-60s) in Europe ; nowadays, anyone riding without a helmet on public road in the EU makes everyone stunned and shocked.
• Riding a bike in a capital city is nothing like riding a bike at the countryside: it's not the same type and amounts of risks at all. These arguments regarding risk compensation, risk taking and the efficiency of helmets don't seem to be solid at all since they do not mention any of these elements in their conclusions or approaches.
• A fair compromise (in my opinion) would be getting the insurance companies to make you pay slightly more (through a balanced bonus-malus system -> helmet-wearing pay slightly less, helmet-less pay slightly more) if you were caught in a bike accident (as the bicycle) while not wearing a helmet. Cops wouldn't jump on you for not wearing a helmet, you could perfectly ride without a helmet, but if the shit hit the fan and you hit the pavement, you were told to have the proper gear, refused to listen, and will have to pay (a little) for your foolishness. Also, bundling municipal bike-sharing/bike-parking subscription with a helmet. A helmet should be a good and favored option given to people, not a reason to hand out tickets to peaceful cyclists.

PS: to the people thinking helmet are useless: start riding your bike every day, you'll quickly realize the decision to ride 'naked' is not worth it.

"But I never got in an accident where the helmet would have helped me !" - I've never been in a car accident, but I always wear my seat belt (even on an empty parking lot in the middle of nowhere) just like I always use the blinkers to turn. Safety is all about prevention, what happens after the accident is medical treatment and re-education (or funerals).

• I've been riding my bicycle on a daily basis (twice a day, 6 days per week = 12 trips per week = around 6 hours of bicycle in urban environment per week) for the last 15 years. I've been hit, pushed and slammed on the asphalt several times, either by car doing hit'n'run reckless driving (one being clearly drunk - my front teeth are very slightly misaligned because of that bastard, hit me just after leaving that roundabout (him driving straight through it)) or pedestrians suddenly crossing without looking at all (often talking on the phone) forcing me and incoming cars to slam the brakes, sometime resulting in nasty falls for me. I have a cicatrix less than an inch from my left eye from my first accident (back when I was a wee lad) where I loss consciousness and enough blood to fill a good jug. A helmet would have greatly reduced the physical damages I took from these falls.
• I finally bought myself a helmet one year ago, forced myself to wear it every single day (and yes, it sucks a lot at first, just like the seat belt). Four mouth ago, a teenager crossed the road while pushing her bike between two vehicle (one being a large van completely hiding her), while I was riding in the other lane. She didn't check the other lane and stormed through it. Hopefully for her, I wasn't a car. Sadly for me, I was caught by surprise. Flew right into the air and landed violently on the side. After 5 to 10 seconds, I crawled my way to the sidewalk. Head ? Intact, not knocked out, despite slamming the road. Pelvis ? started hurting like hell once the adrenaline went away, took 3 months to fully heal. Wearing a $30-$40 helmet ? So fucking worth it.
• If you don't ever care about yourself, care about the ER team that are going to pick up your body. Their job is difficult enough, give them a chance to stabilize you.

--88.177.158.231 (talk) 20:41, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Gosh we've never heard those arguments ten thousand times before. Just one small question: why is it that no country anywhere in the world can show an improvement in cyclist safety that is due to increases in helmet wearing? OK, two questions: how come the Germans just calculated that a helmet law would cost more than it saved? Guy (Help!) 21:52, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

* You haven't read what I posted and the article, right ? Is there a place where I said it should be illegal to not wear a helmet ? Haven't you noticed how I completely reject the idea of "helmet laws" ? Do I need to repeat what the dutch Fietsersbond very accurately said "Helmet laws save a few brains, but destroy a lot of hearts"? My post was responding to 82.131.146.70 and regarding the bullshit (risk compensation when wearing a helmet - because obviously risk tasking is perfectly rational and limited to a single plastic item...) found in the article (not backed by any serious study), it was NOT about these freaking helmet law (that are the dumbest thing ever).

* And to answer your question about "proving" cyclist safety improvement: to prove anything (and I mean PROVE, not "look at the graph, there seem to be some kind of correlation, BINGO we're done here!" like in almost all these studies) regarding any measure/device/vehicle, you would need a massive budget to properly cover all major countries, areas (city, residential area, countryside) over at least 10 years, with people specialized in the medical field, the vehicle engineering field, psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, urbanization, transport, law enforcement working full-time on the study. Such thing was progressively done with the many different type of airbags because the manufacturers paid and provided all the expertise for that, because they could be sued if their airbag system was killing more people than saving them.

* Now are you seriously expecting any country to fund such study, when it's just about cyclists wearing a helmet or not ? The only places where there's a lot of bicycle users (the only place who would fund such researches) have a much different culture/urbanization/transport system and apparently a much better cyclist safety (try to prove the correlation/causality between all these elements, it's a chicken or the egg or both problem).

* Simply because there isn't a way to prove anything (financially speaking - economically it's not worth it at all) doesn't mean anyone can write anything in "advantage/disadvantage" because a professor once sampled 200 or 300 bicycle users or a local ER service record and wrote a quick paper on it in under 6 months to get a +1 to his publication counter. The current article is written like a FoxNews show "You can't explain that ! Therefore it's probable enough because my terrible study says so, prove me wrong !". That's the whole point of my previous post: I don't care if it's not proven that wearing a helmet increase safety (you make your choice, as a grownup), what worries me is people shoving some complete bollocks into the article with completely inconclusive and unproven hypothesis drawn from terribly weak studies.

* "A study found that people wearing helmet were more likely to have an accident" -> what about the reason why people wear the helmets in the first place ? Something like a riskier area/route, and/or a riskier schedule (when commuting), and/or a specific road-sharing culture, and/or a cyclist riding much more often than others (even during rain), etc. "Must be risk compensation". Bravissimo, that's some clever scientific method ! All the fucking time in these studies, all the fucking time, no matter what is their prior opinion (aka bias) on the subject. See what I'm concerned about ? The complete lack of seriousness of these studies, not your freedom to refuse to wear a ridiculous plastic hat. --88.177.158.231 (talk) 17:44, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

More importantly, we aren't here to save the world, "Please god, save the children!" or persuade anyone. It is an encyclopedia article, and as such, should focus on summarizing the facts of a topic in a way that is reflective of the sources that are available. Not the "truth", but verifiable facts. If "thinking about people in the ER" is your motivation, you shouldn't be editing the article. We all have topics that we should not edit, myself included, due to having too strong of emotion on the topic. Dennis Brown | 2¢ | WER 00:47, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

* Ha ha, you're a funny one. The article is a complete joke, citing completely lacking studies who failed to take basic factors into accounts just to put these extra bullet-points the anti- or pro- helmet law activists repeat everywhere (already talked about that above).

Seriously, doing stats comparison between Netherlands and completely different countries, with vastly different urbanization, road and bicycle lanes, road accident liability law, and transport culture ? Or comparing a study covering children riding in their residential area, and adults commuting in high-density capital cities ?

That would be like comparing the mortality in bus transport in Africa and in Japan, and concluding that bus transport can not be confirmed as any safer than the car, completely overlooking the conditions of the buses in Africa, their drivers, the massive overcrowding, the population using bus transport as their primary mean of transport, the average distance traveled per week, the condition of the road network, etc. Refusing to look at all the factors influencing the stats is only proving one thing: it's not a proper study and it shouldn't be used to back up a claim (especially on Wikipedia).

One more funny example: comparing gun violence in the US and in Switzerland, and reaching the conclusion that gun control (even basic background checks) is not needed ever since it works so perfectly in Switzerland with hundreds of thousands of full-auto SIG in circulation and one of the lowest gun crime rate in the world. Who need context and factors when you can just get the stats you need and publish it ?

If that article was to be an encyclopedia article, more than half of it would be removed immediately. And that's the only thing I claimed in my first post.

* I only added my personal story because Wikipedia is, more than ever, plagued with argument from authority: "Oh you haven't published anything ? You can't find a "source" who accepted to publish your paper ? You can leave immediately, we only deal with people who are publishing IRL. That study is clearly a complete farce ? Well, have you published THAT statement ? No ? Then it's a perfectly valid study and should be the central pillar of that article, move along". I'm not even exaggerating, the reductio ad publishum is everywhere on Wikipedia. 82.131.146.70 was right regarding the Flat Earth syndrome, all you need is a vague paper that find its way to the printer and voila, no need to talk about anything (there's a reason why talk/discussion pages are deserted these days and contribution rates are dropping).

*PS: You might have noticed I haven't edited anything in the article, and only used the Talk page to discuss about the article's flaws. First because I gave up (long ago) on dealing with Wikipedians bending all the rules to prevent improvement (yay deletionism: can't erase pokemon pages because too much pro-pokemon wikipedians ? let's attack defenseless Internet-based culture from webcomics to mods before they can backup all these articles !), secondly because I'm not willing to go through all the pro/anti helmet law BS for months to get the article actually improved a tiny bit (because I perfectly know it's much more important to know Wikipedia edits tactics than having actual solid sources to get anything done), thirdly because I know I'm currently not able to spend 5 months over a single adverb (what Wikipedia is now about) because someone is afraid it might influence the outcome of its current national legislation project regarding bicycle regulation. And fourth, who still do vandalism in 2014, seriously ? So I'm sticking to the Talk pages, Talking about the article, it's what it's made for, no ? --88.177.158.231 (talk) 17:44, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

The usefulness of helmet-wearing is measured in kilo-electronvolts.

There is another, very important aspect, which the current article fails to mention: a strong medical justification to make wearing helmets mandatory, for at least the children and teenagers. The issue is not just about preventing injuries, but also about providing positive proof of a lack of possible injuries. If the wearer appears uninjured after an accident and the careful check-up of his/her cycling helmet shows the impact did not exceed its safety rating, then a head X-ray or CT can be omitted.

This is of paramount importance for kids, i.e. people still in growth, as head X-ray are proven to make kids more stupid, to say it bluntly. To be more precise, the decrease of IQ is measurable in percentage points, as the ionizing radiation destroys newly forming inter-connections among the neurons in those still developing brains. Modern medical science teaches children shall receive head X-rays only after careful consideration and possibly consilium, but never as a routine practice. Three, four full head X-rays or even a single CT scan will degrage a bright, collage-bound 7-year old to a future welder or a future welder to a garbage collector. In more and more countries, even the practice of dento-panoramic imaging of children becomes regulated, with mandatory doctor's prescription, based on the above reasoning.

X-rays are amazingly useful for medical science, but they are meant to diagnose injuries, rather than solving uncertainties. When a bare head hits Mother Earth, a doctor can never be sure about the conditions within the skull by mere external observation. Lack of skin lacerations may mean there was a lucky patch of grass, but that says nothing about deceleration rate affecting the internals of the skull. Hence the need for X-ray exposures, even if they turn out to be unwarranted and damaging for underage people. In contrast, a certified cycling helmet's foam acts as an etalon between the threat and the head. If the head looks OK and the helmet's threshold visibly was not exceeded, little Johnny can walk home with all his IQ, without ever meeting Herr Rontgen.

If people worry about vaccination making their kids autists, they should worry 100x more about helmet-less biking making their kids stupid and this aspect needs to go into this article! 79.120.175.2 (talk) 21:12, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Do you have a reliable source to support these claims? Mr. Swordfish (talk) 15:24, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Seems very much UK centric

Thatt's fine, but there's very little here that applies to the US especially in the metrics. I think this article should be labelled as such until a US version emerges or is combined with this one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frazierdp (talk • contribs) 14:37, 9 April 2014 (UTC)