General: helmets

I wear a Giro Atmos (http://www.performancebike.com/product_images/250/40-3685-BLK-ANGLE.jpg) most of the time.

i never ride without one. i've cracked two (head smacking pavement, hard), which would have otherwise been my skull & brains. i use a $20 bell solar, works fine and doesn't look that awful.

i wear a helmet everyday...a bell alchera bought on the cheap.

i have a 13 mile round trip commute, most of which is done on a bike/running path where the helmet prob isn't totally necessary.

i've got about 4 miles of city riding where I swear everyone is a student driver...been clipped, doored, etc and after looking at the scrapes and cracks on the helmet i'm happy to rock it.

I have a Specialized Instinct for the summer and a Louis Garneau Rebel in the winter.
http://www.bikemagic.com/news/images/instinct_hi.jpg
http://www.louisgarneau.com/media/images/catalogs/1405529/1405529_133_large_f.jpg

Helmets do suck, but I wear one to set a good example to my son.
I wish they made em cooler looking though...

here in melbourne, australia, its illegal to ride without a helmet
so i have a cheap helmet that i stripped off the plastic and left the foam core, i then took a knife and some sandpaper to it and shaved it down to a helmet thats 1cm thick.
totally impractical but its light and looks good.

thats right man if I drive by myself I say fuck that seat belt too and my logic works great. if it doesn't work for you guess I will have to get back to you in ten years. I grew up in one of the traffic craziest cities in the world Berlin and I used to ride fixed out there too. I used to go down the hill in SF on a skateboard at 45mph without a helmet and I will do so again on a fixie when I get over there next week. I got a helmet for the Velodrome because they won't let me on without it but anywhere else I say fuck it die young. I got a kid too and I still don't care and I don't think I will ever care I used to skate halfpipes without helmet and eat it occasionally I was hospitalized twice because of traffic accidents and I still shit on helmets... I don't care what the rest of the world does... wear whatever but don't come to me talking shit. I don't tell ya'll to not wear helmets. I'm just speaking for myself.

your level of animosity for something that only has the potential to help you is incredible. were you beaten with a helmet in the past?
also, do you brush your teeth?

I don't wear a helmet, but rather have just learned how to ride in urban traffic.Wearing a helmet will do absolutely nothing to prevent you from getting hit by a car.

This article was taken from the link- http://bicycleaustin.info/laws/helmet-laws-bad.html

HELMETS ARE OVER-RATED

Helmet use among U.S. cyclists was nearly non-existent before the 1990's. Nobody wore helmets in the 80's and before. So what happened when helmet use skyrocketed in the 1990's? Head injuries went down, right?
No, head injuries went up. Let me repeat that: When helmet use went up, so did head injuries. There's a big article about this in the New York Times, showing that head injuries among cyclists went up 51% in the 1990's as more and more cyclists started wearing helmets.

I'm not suggesting that helmets caused the head injuries; there are other plausible explanations for why head injuries increased (more attention to helmets and less attention to safe riding skills being one of them). But what I am saying is that the protective value of helmets is so small it's hard to measure.

...

CycleHelmets has other good information, such as the chart at right showing that countries with the most helmet use also have the most head injuries. This is important enough that it bears repeating: countries with the most helmeted cyclists also have the highest rate of cycling head injuries. And of course the converse is true: cycling head injuries are much lower in countries where cyclists don't wear helmets very much.

Some believe that helmets can actually promote injuries in various ways. One way is that they effectively make the cyclist's "head" much larger, so with a bigger head a falling cyclist is much more likely to slam it against the road or a car (causing traumatic brain injury because the brain is still slammed against the skull), or possibly even breaking the cyclist's neck. If this is true then it could explain why we don't see any reduction in cyclist fatalities when helmet use goes up: helmets could be saving some cyclists but killing others.

Helmet laws distract people from real bike safety.

Once a community passes a child helmet law parents and legislators think they've addressed the issue of bike safety and then pay no more attention to it. This leaves all those newly-helmeted kids with no riding skills on dangerous streets prime targets for getting hit, and their little piece of styrofoam will usually be cold comfort when they do. It is far more important to ensure that children know how to not get hit by cars, that they have lights on their bikes at night, and that roadways are constructed to be friendly to bicycle traffic. The fact that helmets have become a panacea is evidenced by all the cyclists who now ride around at night in pitch-black dark wearing their trusty helmet and having no lights at all. They don't realize that unlike lights, a helmet will do absolutely nothing to prevent them from being hit by cars.

Read these article too for information about riding in traffic- http://bicyclesafe.com/

I'll reiterate that i 99% of the time don't wear one myself. only recently at the request of my mom and gf have i started thinking about it everytime i leave the house. that being said, the ONE time my best riding friend and i opted to wear them for a ride, both of us were almost hit. i think it gave me this false sense of security that inhibited my natural supervigilance. it was like my mind thought it was ok to not be as alert. and my worst riding injury in the last 3 years was painful, but would have broken my neck if i HAD been wearing a helmet. it's ALL personal choice, but i think alot of people truly need to ride with them. if you get creamed by a car or some other high speed incident, then i can see how they'd help. i guess i just see both sides to the argument.

Why don't we argue about why there is such a small assortment of helmets that aren't modeled after sci-fi alien skulls?

Posted By: meatrollyou can't ninja your way out of it.

wear helmets people!
for the sanity and love of your friends and family, if not for your own health!

Posted By: aliderkrasse
Fact is: if you crash bad your helmet most likely ain't gonna save shit. So unless you are able to except my opinion you can go fuck yourself.

SERIOUSLY? have you tested this fact? i have broken two helmets, and to do that your head needs to hit the ground HARD. as far as i know, i didn't even have so much as a concussion (second time i was already blacked out drunk, so idk)
besides the major road rash i would have gotten on my head, i don't even think my skull would have held up to that.

do whatever you want but don't try and portray that shit as fact. i'm done with this.

i dont ride with a helmet on the street..... theres alot of wierd statistics out there that say they are dangerous, increasing rotational forces to the head, increasing risk of contracoup injuries, etc. i do use one on the track though cause i have to. its one of them old hairnet helmets. catlike makes some sweet buckets though. catlikehelmets.com

wear your helmet, but don't use it...

for those daily commutes...
http://akugel.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/pilot_helmet.jpg

but all smartassness aside, i need to step my headgear game up...my current 'protective' gear just goes to prove i'm another stylebug hipster. heheheh:
http://stylejolt.com/images/15006_lrg.jpg

I like the Skater helmets, but they're too bulky for riding. I do think they need to do a re-design so more people would want to wear one.

I just found this one, good thing I have a small melon...

Otto, that's interesting. I wear a biking helmet — they're made to be really light — but I'm crabby about the ug factor. Protec makes some pretty cool looking helmets for other sports, though.

I'd rather give up the air in my hair than get my brains in my hair.

an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

I got hit by a car for the first time today. The motherfucker sped off. I just ordered a helmet. Scared the sweet living jesus out of me.

Yeah. That's pretty fucking cool.

There's a Dutch company that makes helmets with covers that look like hats. I can't find it now. My opinion is wholly ambivalent on them.

Never wore a helmet until that little pink plus sign showed up on the pregnancy test...Remember guys, once you have a kid you need to set aside the James Dean bullshit and not go looking for brain damage. And yes, if you don't wear a helmet you are a shitty parent, period.

I don't wear a helmet unless I'm at a track. I'm lucky every time I have taken a major fall that I haven't fucked my head up. Sometimes I think I should wear one, but I also see how it could give me a false sense of security and start trusting the helmet rather than my vigilance. When I broke my arm, I only fucked my eyebrow up when my glasses lodged half an inch into it, but a helmet wouldn't have prevented that, nor the break in my arm. Helmets only prevent brain road kill and coma's. But, its pretty rare that it'll happen. If I were to get hit by a car, I'd be more worried if it was my spine. It's also been said that helmets cause neck break easily. So, either way, you're pretty screwed if you get in a high impact accident. Either way, you still have a risk of getting killed. I have a front brake and highly lit lights, as well as my messenger bag (yellow tarp + some reflective tubing) which has saved my life twice. It kept my head up while I was flying the pavement on my back. Also, if I die on my bike, helmet or no helmet, at least I'll be doing something I love. But screw that mentality, we all have to just do our best to stay alive and away from crazy asshole drivers.

if she's hauling at 35 on a road where cars are paralled, i'd claim a lane to avoid getting doored. you're lucky she wasn't killed.