The protection that helmets provide is negated by other mechanisms, for example increased risk-taking by the riders and a change in the way other passengers on the road behave towards the riders * In any case, if a helmet is worn and an accident occurs, the helmet saves lives
By Nihil Swaminthan
You may never forget how to ride a bike, but should you forget to wear a helmet when you get on the bike? More than a year ago, a psychologist from the University of Bath in England announced the results of a study, in which he participated both as a researcher and as a guinea pig. As an avid cyclist, Ian Walker has heard complaints from other riders that wearing a helmet allegedly reduces their room for maneuver and that this increases the risk of an accident. Walker attached ultrasonic sensors to his bike and rode around Bath, letting 2,300 vehicles overtake him sometimes while wearing a helmet and sometimes bare-headed. Twice during the experiment, both when he was wearing a helmet, he was hit by a truck and a bus, but miraculously in neither case did he fall off the bike.
cancels its own protection
Walker's findings, published in the March 2007 issue of the journal "Accident Analysis and Prevention," show that when he wore a helmet, drivers moved an average of 8.5 cm closer to his bike than when he rode without headgear. But when, instead of a helmet, he wore a strange wig of long brown curls - something that gave him the appearance of a woman from behind - he gained an additional 5.6 centimeters of wide travel space.
The "consequences," says Walker, "are that the protection that helmets provide is negated by other mechanisms, for example increased risk-taking by the riders and a change in the way other road users behave towards the riders." He doesn't know how to explain the extra space he got when he pretended to be a woman, although he speculates that the drivers may perceive women of the fair sex as less skilled riders, more vulnerable or just less riders than men.
There's still plenty of room to pedal, right?
Randy Swart, founder of the Institute for Bicycle Helmet Safety, argues that studies like Walker's can mislead riders about the effectiveness of helmets. "On average, the cars gave him a very large space to travel anyway," he explains, adding that most vehicles kept a distance of more than a meter from Walker's bicycle, a distance that turns into a negligible difference of 8.5 cm.
Walker recently reanalyzed his data to counter this argument. "I estimated the number of vehicles that approached the rider at a distance of less than one meter, assuming that these are the vehicles that pose a danger," he says. "When I wore a helmet, the number of vehicles that entered the danger zone of less than a meter increased by 23%, which means that it is a real risk."
Before Walker's article was published, Dorothy Robinson, from the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, published an article in the British Medical Journal that reviewed what happened after areas in Australia, New Zealand and Canada enacted regulations that resulted in a more than 40% increase in the use of bicycle helmets in the population. The number of bicycle accidents involving head injuries was on the decline even before the new laws, and she found that the new regulations did not cause a sudden drop in the rate of head injuries among riders.
Is it worth protecting the spill?
Coincidentally, around the time Walker announced his findings, New York City released a report of cyclist deaths and injuries. The report actually strengthened the claim that helmets reduce head injuries: between 1996 and 2005, 225 cyclists died on the city's streets; 97% of them did not wear helmets. Of these deaths, 58% definitely involved head injuries, but the true number could be as high as 80%. Swart, who compares the helmet to the seat belt in the car, says: "When the accident already happens, it's better to be bandaged."
Senior officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDS) agree with Swart and say that helmets are considered an effective means of preventing head injuries from bicycle accidents. Walker himself does not recommend that other cyclists, other than himself, wear or not wear a helmet, but he encourages people to read the research and watch out for cars.
Nihil Swaminthan is a reporter for http://www.SciAm.com.
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8 תגובות
There is no doubt at all that a helmet saves lives, however I am not at all sure that there should be a law. Education should begin in childhood and must come from home, school and the child's immediate environment.
I forgot to add that when I was wearing a helmet the feeling of safety was increasing and the focus was on the ride itself, which is true with cheap helmets it can be too hot on the forehead, therefore you should pay attention that before you buy a helmet if there is a special fabric to collect sweat from the forehead or you can add (stick) a special fabric or something like that , although it is recommended when purchasing the helmet to pay attention and argue with the seller and not to be stingy.
When I was riding with a helmet the cars would give respect on the road as if I was a motorcycle and not a bicycle and without a helmet you are like any other kid on the road, you better move to the sidewalk or watch out for yourself
A company not to forget that Israel does not have the same culture as abroad (point for thought..)
Thinking that a driver's mistake can be corrected, but I discovered that there are drivers who like to test your nerve and deliberately approach dangerously when you turn your back to traffic, you are all in the hands of the driver behind
To the cool commenter:
This time you really stole it!
This seems like a perfect solution 🙂
You can always wear a helmet and stick a wig with curls on it xD
I ride with a helmet but that's because I ride off-road and there are no cars around me.
I have never done independent research on the subject but I must point out that the analysis of the data in the New York City survey can be misleading.
Of the 225 killed, only three percent wore helmets, while 97 percent moved without a helmet. Does that mean it's more dangerous without a helmet? Not necessarily! Maybe in New York 99 percent of riders go without a helmet and only XNUMX percent use a helmet? Without data on the distribution of helmet use, no meaning can be attributed to the finding at all!
More than that: according to the survey itself, in the most severe case, 20 percent of the deaths would not have been caused by a head injury.
Even if we get stricter and assume that all the fatalities among the helmet wearers were within this 20% (and the fact that they do not indicate how many of the helmet wearers were killed in accidents that were not head injuries is another failure in the data analysis) then three percent constitute only 15 percent out of 25 percent and from this we can conclude that indeed, percent Helmet wearers in the population is low and does not exceed 15 percent).
If we are less strict and based on the figure of 58 percent of deaths from head injuries, we will accept that at most one out of 14 riders wears a helmet to begin with.
Furthermore: among those who were killed from an injury that was not a head injury, there may be those who, if they had not worn a helmet, would actually have been killed by a head injury (but the helmet saved them from this injury and they were killed as a result of additional injuries), so it is likely that the percentage of helmet wearers among those killed by an injury that was not a head injury is actually higher than their percentage in the general population.
I must emphasize that my words do not refute the conclusion: it is possible that despite the errors in the data analysis the conclusion is correct, but it must be understood that the New York City survey, at least according to the way it is presented here, cannot form a basis for the conclusion it seeks to draw.