The Air Attack perfectly illustrates what drives most helmet innovation: performance

For most everyday commuters, some safety is required at a reasonable price. So a $40 helmet will suffice. For more serious and avid cyclists, they will more likely splash out for the more expensive honeycomb MIPS design.

It took a while for the article to get there, but I was thinking all the time I was reading this about the lightweight honeycomb bike helmets that the British Cycling Team adopted for their Olympics:

http://www.designweek.co.uk/news/crux-product-design-creates...

http://www.trackcyclingnews.com/olympics12bchelmets.html

Extensive testing found that aluminium honeycomb, often used within the aerospace industry, worked well as a material for the helmet core. When combined with the unique dual shell, it was said to outperform previous designs in terms of absorbing impact energy efficiently and ensuring deceleration forces weren't transferred to the wearer.

http://gizmodo.com/5949067/the-ridiculous-high+concept-infla...

Bicycle helmets are the equivalent of telling homeowners they should build a nuclear bunker for their home because we have no interest in ensuring safety standards for nuclear reactors fearing that could cause prices to go up.

This reads like a rant for rants sake. The article wasn't about helmet laws but rather helmet technology and safety standards.

To the "dubious return" point you made - why should bike commuters not optimize for their situation? It scarcely matters whether or not their city could have been better designed. Assuming they don't intend to move to the Netherlands, it makes eminent sense to maximize their safety while on the road.

But we can not possibly divorce the bicycle helmet from its' origin, effects and the economical pressures at work here.

http://cyclingincities.spph.ubc.ca/injuries/the-bice-study/

Considering how dangerous and destructive driving is, maybe its a win-win.

Being a heavy object attached to your body by a thin, fairly weak neck, your head is very likely to hit the ground if you fall at speed.

Also, I live in a place that has social healthcare so, it makes sense to mandate safety since we all foot the bill.

Bicycle helmets are probably more equivalent to mandating homeowners to use insulated wire in their wiring than mandating everyone have a nuclear bunker which is very expensive and extreme ...unless of course your hair is the biggest deal on earth.

Obvious questions arise... like why are motorcycle or pro-sports helmets so radically different in design (full head + visor), even for scooters that barely go faster than bicycles, and how many "major crashes" result in head trauma as opposed to other kinds?

And if bicycle helmets are so great, why don't we require car drivers to wear helmets too? Surely then they would also do an 'outstanding job in keeping our skulls intact in a major crash'?

> In 1989, The New England Journal of Medicine published a study that looked at hundreds of cyclists treated at Seattle-area hospitals. The research team concluded that helmets “reduce the risk of head injury by 85 percent and of brain injury by 88 percent.”

They are basically a very easy insurance policy whose main "cost" is inconvenience.

>fairly straightforward intuition

Ignore this when thinking about statistics.

All the complainers are either cranky motorists or sidewalk cyclists. They feel slightly more guilty right-hooking a commuter who isn't wearing a helmet than some day-glo Lance wannabe. Witness their guilt turned to fury at the mere mention of actual facts about bicycle helmet effectiveness!

Besides who would cause a bruise an injury? I get bruises every day. Bicycling is one of the safest things I do.

Not to be any sort of jerk, but until you've spent enough time cycling in traffic to be comfortable, your intuition regarding the safety of that activity is suspect. Several factors are involved. First of all, there is the risk compensation phenomenon (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21418079), which is also seen for seatbelt-wearers etc. and causes users of any "safety" device to behave less safely to compensate for that use. This phenomenon also applies to other road users, so that when they see a cyclist they perceive to be "protected" by a helmet they don't give her as much space, they drive faster, etc. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457506...) Other factors are follow-on effects from the fact that requiring helmets reduces cycling rates (http://www.nber.org/papers/w15658): fewer cyclists make for more dangerous roads for everyone (http://www.ctc.org.uk/campaign/safety-in-numbers) and cyclists who cycle less aren't as good at cycling. There is a "rhythm" to riding in traffic, and after I've taken some time off, I have to be more careful until I sharpen up. With regular practice, you know:

    - exactly how close the damn delivery truck is going to pass, just by the engine
      sound
    - which car is going to change lanes without signalling, not from its brakelights
      but from its slight pause in acceleration
    - how fast you have to pedal to intimidate an entering SUV into waiting for you
      to pass instead of turning left completely across all lanes
    - the distinct whine of a BMW (the official car of assholes) that's going
      to attempt a right hook from 50 feet behind
    - etc.

The first study you mention is also pretty interesting, however it only is measuring the efficacy of legislation on safety and is not measuring the efficacy of helmet wearing itself. Im not sure if legislation on its own is a good proxy for helmet wearing and the authors do state: "While helmets reduce the risk of head injuries and we encourage their use..."

I used to ride around for years without a helmet despite laws that mandate that I wear one. Interestingly, even after two tickets I still rode around without a helmet because I perceived that I was an awesome cyclist with perfect judgement and not prone to human error at all, a typical attitude for my age at the time.

A few months after starting to wear a helmet because people were being judgmental, not because I thought I would ever need it, I got into an accident where I went flying off my bike. Short story, it saved my brain.

Ya ya, this is anecdotal, but what was important about that experience for me, is it made me realize that my perceptions of safety were totally off. Our own control over the world is actually minimal, and even we fail despite how perfect we think we are at assessing the situation.

I was stupid. Being a cyclist wasnt experience enough for me to assess my safety, I needed a couple of near misses to realize how wrong I was. I needed to physically experience how my head deals with its momentum and pavement. I needed to experience how flying through the air face first with my arms extended to cushion the blow results in my back hitting the pavement followed next by the back of my head. Some people need to learn these things through experience.

If I were to assume everyone was as dense as I was at the time, I would counter with something like "until you've had enough experience being in accidents and thrown into objects, your intuition regarding the safety of that activity is suspect"

I didnt used to listen to people like me either!

Another occasion that really sticks out in my mind is the time I laid the bike down and jumped off to the side to avoid a child who literally jumped out from behind cover into the street directly in my path. If I had been in a car, going the same speed, that episode would have ended very differently.

I don't have a problem with helmets in general. I never snowboard without a helmet. There are many rivers I won't kayak without a helmet. I don't usually wear a helmet when riding horses, but there are exceptions, like polo. I'm sure I'll encounter other circumstances that seem helmet-appropriate as well. The point is, bicycle commuting is not an extreme sport, so enforcing the conventions of extreme sport is an effective way to discourage it.

For every anecdote, there is another anecdote. You only think your helmet saved you, while I know that my lack of helmet did not harm me in the crash I described. (And if we're going to speculate intuitively, it's a good thing I didn't have a solid bulky object on my head to catch on the pavement and impart a jolt of rotational acceleration to my brain!) If you've never considered the phenomenon of risk compensation, you could think more deeply about an issue that is much more complicated than "it's bad to injure your head". Fortunately, there's a place you can go to educate yourself: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/

Risk compensation also applies to drunk drivers, but no one argues that driving drunk is just as risky as driving sober. Yes, it plays a part in the whole equation, but it doesnt necessarily discredit the theory!

Just because other people take bigger risks while cycling with helmets on, doesnt mean that we should write off helmets. They can be very effective when combined safe cycling practices, and perhaps thats how that information can be made useful.

'you could think more deeply about an issue that is much more complicated than "it's bad to injure your head"'

Are you about to argue that head injuries could be considered good? Please enlighten this simple thinker.

> Bicycle helmets are the equivalent of telling homeowners they should build a nuclear bunker

Um, your head gets a bit sweaty and you have to shell out $40. You look kind of dorky too, like the rest of the 50% of cyclists wearing helmets. That is not nearly the inconvenience of "building a nuclear bunker." It's more like asking the homeowner to pay a small premium on his insurance for a slightly riskier residence.

Today we have bikes that can ride virtually any terrain, carry hundreds of pounds of cargo, soak 10" bumps at 60mph, ride backwards down vert ramps, accomodate limited-mobility riders, and access enough gears to put you in the right pedal cadence in just about any grade.

Yes, it's two wheels, pedals, and a chain. Yes, it's still the diamond-frame safety bicycle. But it has changed.

It's a market where all you can buy is the kids plastic version of a Porsche or a literal Porsche.

The real challenge of improving anything in cycling, from an industrial design perspective, is that a bike is a product whose primary virtue is minimalism. Adding features can be useful for certain niche markets (suspension for downhillers, aero bars for racers) but for the most part a bike is only improved when one can deliver the same (or improved) characteristics of handling, comfort and durability while using less material. Sometimes this is a question of design improvement, but this is rare -- many designs recur over decades (like integrated headset bearings) without ever really becoming essential. More often improvements come from better materials and fabrication techniques.

Take a look at Rohloff hubs.

Take a look at belt drives.

Take a look at disc brakes.

You've already dismissed everything to do with materials, oh well.

Sounds like you just mean: bicycles are two triangles and two hoops... and you would be right.

Strangely that's because the UCI restricted the development of bikes to ensure a level playing field, recumbents were banned in races, as were Moultons with their small wheels and pylon frames, as were the monocoque carbon frames, as were the bikes with farings.

Ultimately, being restricted to two triangles and two hoops means that the manufacturers can only really innovate with everything else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stelvio_Pass

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derailleur_gears

The only real innovation I've seen in bike helmets lately is this:

http://www.hovding.com/en/how_it_works?/en/how

Without this kind of total reimagining of bike protection, I doubt it is possible to innovate on what is currently classified as a helmet for cyclists.

EDIT: Link already posted by a previous poster, of course.

Remember that protection is a balancing act. You are reducing the already low chance of catastrophic injury. However, in exchange for that, you are increasing your weight, drag, reducing your ventilation, giving yourself helmet hair, increasing the sweat your head is bathed in at the end of the ride, etc. Tossing a motorcycle helmet in may reduce your risk of injury even further, but remember, catastrophic crashes are relatively rare, they can kill you in many other ways than simple head injury, and a motorcycle helmet is way too heavy, hot, and unventilated for riding a bike, as well as restricting your vision and hearing and thus probably making it more likely for you to be involved in a crash. I would be very surprised if motorcycle helmets actually made you safer once you took all of this, as well as the effect of suppressing your desire to ride due to the discomfort and inconvenience (thus losing the benefits of the exercise it provides), into account.

Bike helmets reduce the risk of injury in virtually all crashes that an improved helmet would reduce it. They simply don't reduce it as much as an improved helmet would. I don't stress too much about biking with a conventional helmet. Mine is a few years old and I'd like to replace it with a MIPS helmet when they are available, but as it is with a conventional bike helmet, my concerns with biking are:

1. Getting run over by a bus, in which case the helmet is quite moot.

2. Crashing and hurting myself, which with a helmet is unlikely to kill me, but may result in trying to stuff my bike in the back of my wife's car while dripping blood.

The Hovding is something I would never in a million years wear. I want protection from tree branches and similar, and I don't want to worry about throwing out a $300 single use item after a minor spill.

This is what I term "a small subset of crashes".

Realistically, cyclists ride faster than this. And realistically, the types of collisions you want to protect against are not between you and the ground but rather you and a moving object, such as a car. Bike helmets are not rated for these kinds of crashes.

I would not use the Hovding either. The reason I presented it is because it represents a radically redesigned bike helmet.

Anyhow, as I said before, the only thing you can wear to really prevent bad bike accidents is a motorcycle helmet, which are in fact rated for high speed collisions.

I have never seen any reference to bike helmets being "rated" for a specific speed or type of impact. Bike helmets are approved based on a single test carried out by the CSPC which is not calibrated to correspond to any particular speed or type of impact. I don't consider the method of testing helmets particularly important to the well-supported fact that these helmets significantly reduce the risk of serious head injury and death.

There are no well-supported "facts" that helmets reduce serious head injury. In fact, among the cycling community, it is a very hot point of contention.

> A 2012 re-analysis of the 16 studies in the Attewell meta-analysis, by Elvik, found that, compared to helmeted cyclists, unhelmeted cyclists were 2.5 times more likely to sustain a brain injury; 2.3 times more likely to sustain a head injury; and 4.3 times more likely to sustain a fatal injury.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet#Science:_measur...

http://www.drianwalker.com/overtaking/

A Google search will reveal other similar studies as well. Wikipedia is not comprehensive.

I've been watching the airbags closely since they were first introduced. I look forward to standards bodies developing test methodologies and certifications around them. Then, I'll look forward to the reliability reports and injury statistics as they are adopted.

As for saying "you might as well ride a motorcycle or a scooter" - you're missing the point entirely. As a cyclist, I don't ride for any other reason than I prefer it.

If you want to say that a car is slower, I would beg to differ. In normal commuting traffic, I blow past the parking lot that urban streets effectively become at rush hour.

The reason we ride bicycles is that bicycles are perfect vehicles, and require no "safety gear" whatsoever.

For example it's fine to call a facial skin abrasion a "head injury" if you are clear about that definition in the research. It's another thing to cite research about "head injuries" and helmet use without mentioning what they means by a head injury.

The article also fails to cite research that contradicts the authors bias. Academic work such as Robinson's longitudinal study of AU or numerous pieces in the British Medical Journal (as referenced at http://www.boycottbell.com/ ) appear to have been carefully avoided.

For these reasons, and the fact that Bicycling Magazine is heavily funded by helmet advertising, it would be naive not to see the advertising influence in this article which goes out of its way to appear to be educational.

The unfortunate result of this sort of "journalism" is that people with little cycling experience and no knowledge of epidemiology read it and assume it is true despite the fact that 98% of the world's bicycling population don't wear helmets and their incidence of true head injuries are uniformly lower among them than the US' helmeted riders. Another downside to this propaganda is that many kids never take up cycling in the first place and many of those who do ride are afraid to venture outside of bike paths, sidewalks and super-low-traffic routes.

From a foreigner's perspective this illustrates American's naivete with regards to sales and marketing and their relatively undeveloped bicycling ecosystem. I for one hope both of those dysfunctional cultural attributes improve with the rising price of petrol.

I am skeptical about how well these airbags protect one's face, but its an interesting new take on protecting your head.

http://www.hovding.com/en/how_it_works?/en/how

They also have airbag jackets for motorcyclists

http://www.bikebone.com/Air-Vest-Motorcycle-Airbag-Hit-Air.h...

They both walked away from that.

These are a godsend for the motorcycle racing community. Now they just need to come down in price.

Both are spec'd and designed for crazy impacts that are not frequent in the real world, and sacrifice low-speed impact protection in the process.

I suppose you could say helmet standards are like an example of unintentional, slightly misguided test-driven development.

However, in countries like China, the Netherlands and Denmark, the most popular bikes are typically upright designs that haven't changed much in 100 years. These bikes are pretty much impossible to get thrown over the handlebars, and as such you will never land on your head. The same goes for beach cruisers, bromptons, citi bikes / velib, kids bikes and anything described as a "leisure" bike.

For cyclists who use this sort of bike it doesn't matter that bike helmets haven't changed much, because they are unnecessary for safety, anyway.

That actually sounds pretty reasonable.

Picture yourself on the stand at trial trying to explain why you didn't safety recall every model 1 after you released model 2. So did you intentionally design model 1 to be faulty? It'll just be awful.

This huge headache has also been an issue for general aviation.

The third reason is improvement R+D costs money, and with virtually no protection from Chinese copies, all that money is lost unless you can convince people to pay more for a genuine helmet rather than a cheap copy with the same improvement.

You can imagine some poor embattled CEO saying "forget it all, just license this years disney characters, put some yoga pants in the ads, and call it good".