Watching the olympics this summer, it was amazing to watch the street skating events with none of the competitors wearing any sort of protective gear. And it’s not like they didn’t need it either. They were getting wrecked in falls to the point where some of the couldn’t even finish the competition.
It was nuts watching it, since my last exposure to the sport was from the 90s where Tony Hawk would be padded out to the nines while standing around giving an interview by the side of the park.
What is going on that made helmets so uncool that you wouldn’t even wear one if you knew you were going to fall on your head?
That alone makes safety gear much more essential for downhill.
In addition, if someone shows up to a spot without adequate gear, crashes and badly hurts themselves, it can cause the spot to be blown for other riders. Downhill skateboarding is much easier when you’re on the good side of local residents and police.
Also, since DH communities tend to be very small and tight-knit, if someone gets hurt you hear about it. I’ve personally witnessed multiple incidents leading to broken spines, countless minor injuries, and have had one friend die while skating. Either you take safety seriously or pay the piper.
There are more factors than this, would probably make for an interesting sociology dissertation.
I don't have a dog in this fight, but I wonder what the velocity of one's head hitting the pavement is if you just stand still and fall over.
That's 0MPH, but it still seems like it'd be enough to do damage.
So yeah, that can be enough (might have been a heart attack as a result of the shock, I am NOT a doctor, but he was gone by the time the ambulance arrived).
Also, one of the reasons street fighting is so dangerous has nothing to do with MMA dudes, it's when someone falls down and hits their head. This happens all the time. They sometimes die from the fall.
it's all context, no?
You wouldn't try to trick over a 17ft drop on a longboard, either. [0]
[0]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/kzn58e/the-leap-of-faith-was...
Bombing a hill is very different from skating a stair set. The speed at which you do tricks is manageable to be able to tumble your body correctly if you fall (and you’re ready for that fall usually) but bombing a hill is an enormous amount of speed and you can’t prepare yourself for an unknown rock that throws you off.
That’s another somewhat important difference too with street skating, for big tricks you triple check the area and often sweep it because of those tiny rocks.
So context does matter. I’m not advocating against helmets but these are incredibly different things.
Edit: and fwiw I’ve hurt myself far more bombing hills than I have skating something like the big four in ATL. Notice how they fall: https://youtu.be/Ban0D24Aip4
(And the reason they aren’t making this trick is ironically they are not going quite fast enough)
Edit 2: and because I’m reminiscing a bit, the big four is hard because the run up is pretty short. You need good bearings and small wheels to gather the speed required. The only time I’ve ever seriously hurt myself in 15+ years of skating was doing a dumb trick in a standing position. Helmets are important for things like vert for sure where it’s lots of speed and lots of height, and if my kids and I go out and skate we wear helmets (they’re small and I want to set a good example). But most of street skating can be treated as though you’re a trained stuntman (because you basically are)
The 17ft drop is equivalent to the 80mph example in my post, and should definitely involve a helmet, gloves and impact padding (which can be worn under clothes).
Widdershin's response is excellent, but I'll add a bit more context: the physical similarities between a skateboard and a longboard are very superficial (we can barely trade any hardware at all); that extends to the respective communities, which also have disjoint histories.
Longboarders trace their roots to surfers; likely someone bored of waiting for a good wave has put skateboard trucks on their surfboard. Some niche longboarding cultures/disciplines were inspired by surfing/SUP (surfskate, pumptrack, land paddle), and one major longboarding discipline is a lot about moving on and around the board ("dancing" on it).
In these other longboarding communities (perhaps except pumptrack), you will see people using helmets and other safety gear much less often, and it's probably fair. But I've never, ever been dissed by any of these people for wearing a helmet, even if just cruising.
long answer: branding
anecdotally, am a daily skateboarder and long time snowboarder who is guilty of having an ego, and even wear pads to protect a couple massive contusions (swellbos) but i never wear a helmet, so ill frame it like this: 95% of the time i am not that much at risk for serious head injury when skating, and even though i take it for granted, there is an element of knowing how to fall/bail early and skating just within my means.
however on a snowboard, i am much more acutely aware of the consequence -- my casual and super comfort "resting" level is like 25-35+ mph, which is a car accident, which is almost always a threat for serious head injury.
there is a huge difference between tripping at about walking/jogging speed and hitting your head versus at 35mph, and this realization happened after 15 winters of safe riding without a helmet.
the reality is, i am just not that worried about it -- ego or no ego, except when i snowboard, which i will not do without a helmet anymore.
./shrug
After 2009: at least 80% of adult skiers in Austria and Germany wear helmets, from the looks of things. Most frequent non-wearers are very old, permanently tanned Austrian men who literally have 5000+ ski days behind them or young ladies with nicely-done hair and make-up much more interested in getting good pictures for Instagram than actually skiing.
What happened in 2009? The Ministerpräsident (think US state governor) of Thuringia, Dieter Althaus, was flying down a black (expert) slope, turned onto a blue (beginner) slope with enough momentum behind him to go up it and crash into a lady from Slovakia.
He was in the hospital for weeks, living to earn a criminal judgment for negligent homicide, paying tens of thousands of Euro.
She died on the way to the hospital.
He was wearing a helmet.
She wasn't.
The absolute crush of helmet sales then and continued rates since are sometimes called the "Althaus-Effekt".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha_Richardson#Injury_and_...
I had a friend who fell while ice skating at the speed of a slow stroll, and hit the back of his head. He was dead a week later.
And just getting a concussion can result in measurably decreased mental capabilities for months.
Dad time: you’ve got one brain for your entire life. Stop relying on luck to keep it in working order.
Permanently, not months. All concussions result in some permanent damage, some moreso than others.
You just don’t look “cool” switch back smithing down hollywoood 16 wearing a helmet.
I skated a ton growing up and it was beaten into you at skateparks how dumb you looked wearing a helmet. No major head injuries but definitely had some close calls. I look back and cringe and how stupid that was.
Natural selection is rife.
https://www.treehugger.com/why-dutch-dont-wear-helmets-48581...
Sure you can still get in an accident. That's true of everything though. I don't go for a walk in a plastic bubble just in case a car hits me
https://www.google.com/search?q=cars+hitting+pedestrians&tbm...
I've had a few times where I slipped so fast I didn't even remember what happened but every time my arm was there protecting my head. Reflexes are awesome.
Accidents can happen sure but the added hassle doesn't seem worth it. Of course things are different when you do high speed cycling or mountain biking.
Another way of looking at it is deaths / trip; a quick search shows 4,800,000,000 bicycle trips in 2019 for a rate of 48 deaths / billion trips and 229 deaths versus 3,600,000,000 car trips and 610 deaths or 169 deaths per billion trips.
The average trip length in the US is apparently something like 10-15m which might make the number of automotive deaths per billion trips something like 130-200. Maybe. (I can't find an actual estimate of the number of trips.)
Another way is deaths per population, see one of my other comments.
Also, it's something that is only a risk to the rider themselves so leaving it to their discretion is warranted IMO.
(Correction: They would not. There were ~610 auto deaths in NL in 2020. That gives 3.5 per 100,000.)
In the US, 2020 had 11.7 automotive deaths per 100,000 people and 0.38 bicycle deaths per 100,000.
I see few if any helmets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbsMKxNORgQ
I find them very annoying, they tend to be very inconsiderate. Cycling on the road where bike lanes are available, and when they are on the bike lane they tend to be agressive to normal cyclists if they don't move along as fast as they want.
They're not all like that but many of them are, which leaves a bad taste as soon as you spot these groups of wannabe lance armstrongs :P
Also, anecdotally, I am occasionally road cycling for sports and do wear a helmet at all times. However, I am certainly not doing that because of aerodynamics.
Edit for clarity.
That said, some cyclists here seem to be downright suicidal. Helmet or not, if you run a red light against traffic while watching your phone, you don't seem to be very attached to living. I've even seen parents direct their kids into ridiculously dangerous situations. Fortunately car drivers pay attention even to stupid cyclists here.
And it sounds to me like Pedal Me wants its riders to ride at a leisurely pace, rather than breakneck speeds.
35m isn't an awful lot though. You can pick up a lot of speed from a bridge in the Netherlands too.
isn't this a good example of confirmation bias? it worked for you, so it must work for everyone the same as it did for you each time they require it.
its your brain, I guess. and you do have that social health network to cover you when medical issues arise. guess it doesn't matter your quality of life post-brain injury :-)
https://www.lawfirms.com/resources/personal-injury/slip-and-...
What body/head armor are you wearing when you take a shower?
> A study conducted by the Consumer Affairs Agency based in part on these statistics estimates that around 19,000 people lose their lives every year in accidents while bathing
Your odds of dying as a pedestrian appear to be 7x more than cycling. Why are you not wearing armor while walking? Clearly it's irresponsible not to.
https://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm
Are you ready to live in a society where it's expected you'll wear a helmet except when sleeping? You certainly don't want to be one of those people that slipped in your house and died. I don't. But, I'm also not willing to wear a helmet just to exist.
Am I stupid? In 2050 will everyone be wearing helmets for walking and people like me will be considered needlessly risking death for not wearing one?
Longboarding is risky, downhill longboarding is riskier, doing it without a helmet slightly moreso, doing it naked probably slightly moreso.
Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar and steal boards from anyone that doesn't agree? Should people that think that downhill longboarding with a helmet is risky steal your board?
For the same reason we enforce seatbelts in cars: Enough people died. Then those who saw them die decided on these rules so we don't need to go through the same pain. The fact that you don't get this shows that the rules work.
Most states brought on mandatory seat belt laws in the mid-1980s--mid-1990s. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_laws_in_the_United_S...)
1981 was the last year with motor vehicle fatalities over 3.0 per billion miles. By 2000 it was 1.53 and 2019 it was 1.10. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...)
I can only find pedestrian fatality numbers from 1994. (https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/road-users/pedestr...) It decreased from 5584 in 1995 to 4109 in 2009 and increased to 6272 in 2019.
In 1995, there were 2,423 billion vehicle miles traveled; in 2009, 2,957; in 2019, 3,248. Doing the division, that works out to 2.3 pedestrian deaths / BVMT in 1995; 1.4 in 2009, and 1.9 in 2019.
Interesting.
Especially if measured by any objective metric like fatality risk per passenger mile.
It's not fully objective. We're emotional humans, and that's ok. We're going to do things that are risky, and some people are going to get hurt or killed doing them. But that doesn't mean we should just throw up our hands and give up. We can still make it less likely people will get hurt doing those activities by requiring some safety measures must be taken.
I mean to say, riders overwhelmingly want to be safe and it seems to be both self-selecting and self-reinforcing. Outlaw riders are free to ride alone.
In this example, If people start getting hurt on a hill - sooner or later using that hill gets banned.
I always find takes like this a little weird. This is something we do all the time in society. Seat belt laws. Bicycle and motorcycle helmet laws. All sorts of safety regulations and laws around sports, transportation, health, etc.
We as a society often decide to "protect people from themselves". Some of it is out of an understanding that humans are notoriously bad at risk assessment and will do unsafe things. Sure, that's a bit paternalistic, but... that's life. But some of it is also because severe injury and death don't just hurt the person injured or killed. The emotional toll of those effects are felt widely. The economic effects are felt widely too.
Certainly there are lines to be drawn, and there's plenty of reasonable debate as to where those lines should be drawn. Some possible safety measures might be very difficult, burdensome, or expensive; sometimes in those cases we can't require things like those without causing other types of harm. But others... not so much.
> Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar and steal boards from anyone that doesn't agree?
Because it's not just about the individual in question. It's about the entire community. The community of longboarders don't want severe injury and death on their hands, so they develop social norms that include requiring helmets. That's entirely within their right to do so, as it is their right to ostracize those who do not conform. (For the record, I think "steal their boards" was hyperbole. I doubt people's boards actually get taken. I expect it's more likely that they get shunned and ejected from the community.)
> Should people that think that downhill longboarding with a helmet is risky steal your board?
If the community consensus is there, then maybe that's reasonable. (In the "eject from community" sense, that is, not necessarily the literal "steal their board" sense.)
Certainly all of these sorts of decisions should be based on research as to what actually makes people safer. Humans are imperfect and don't always follow the science, but the hope is that, on a long enough time scale, with enough people weighing in, we'll get it right most of the time.
If it is a group activity the group sets the acceptable behaviour. Don't like it? Demand your board back and go play with another group, rather than expecting this group to accept your risk assessment which doesn't agree with their's.
This is especially true if the group is in any way more formal than a bunch of people arbitrarily meeting up.
Though there are some problems, like if you start running the race safety gear, you need to go all out--you can't have a bucket seat and a race harness without also using a helmet and HANS, your head is vulnerable, and if you run a roll cage without a helmet your head is vulnerable. But in race events a lot of people run "cool" safety gear and people have a good attitude towards it.
Reminds me of a blessedly terse reminder on the entry to a building site: "No hat no boots no job"
Their underlying point is we don't have a major problem with people falling off their bikes randomly, we have a problem with multi ton vehicles slamming into bikes and pedestrians. Did you know most bike helmets (not motorcycle ones) aren't tested for the force of car/truck hitting a bike? We need to stop pretending that if people put a helmet on their safe and we can go back to our lives. We need safer separate infrastructure, and if we had that you'd probably not worry so much about helmets.
It's not a conclusive argument, of course, and I have no axe to grind on this issue. It's just that I think that you might not have taken in to account what they are saying.
By this logic, there should be no life boats on ships.
> And I imagine you would agree that you are less safe wearing a helmet and going downhill longboarding than not wearing a helmet and not going downhill longboarding?
And by this logic, we should just never leave the port.
Of course I come at this from the perspective from a country where there's more miles of cycle lane than miles of car-only roads. Who knows which way the balance tips if you need to mix bicycle and car traffic. To be honest I would simply not ride a bicycle if that was required of me on a regular basis.
I'm confused what this means. So you steal their board? Or are they borrowing/using someone else's board and they forfeit the right to use it?
I've never actually seen this threat "executed": the rules are all unwritten, but most people get a clue when reminded or lectured. My friend once wanted to skate in a broken helmet - it literally saved his life a few days before. We had a cute argument, he said it's not really broken if he only hit his head very lightly (so "lightly", he actually had a slight neck pain). I told him I'd buy that broken helmet from him at a full price, just so he doesn't use it, he wouldn't believe me until I took €150 out of my pocket. Eventually he agreed to not be an idiot ;)
If you'd insist on not wearing a helmet? On an official event, you'd probably get removed, possibly banned from future events. You need a sticker with your number on the helmet, so you wouldn't make it as far as the start line. I guess on an unofficial freeride, you just wouldn't get invited again - it's all invite only to begin with, and doesn't make much sense unless you have at least 3-4 people participating; someone needs to shuttle, you split the gas cost, sometimes you need spotters, etc. Randoms on a local spot? You either already know them (so you are allowed to yell at them), or they're new, so you make friends and they get a mentor.
The safety gear allows you to just walk away from some otherwise life-ending accidents like nothing happened.
> If some riders choose to not wear a helmet [...]
...we take their board from them, until they show up with one.
This sport is almost completely unregulated (outside of official events), but somehow the community has developed an incredibly strong culture of keeping both yourself and the others around you safe. I guess something about being a niche sport, perhaps a bit of natural selection.
If e.g. a sponsor (hypothetically - I'm nowhere near good enough to get sponsorship) told me not to wear any particular piece of safety gear, I'd laugh them out of the room, and likely the entire local crew would join in the laughing. It's a small sport, once the word gets out, that company would also likely no longer be getting many sales either.
The only correct move for the Pedal Me riders is to go pedal for someone else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9yL5usLFgY