Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

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What does trained to fall properly mean? Are you absolutely sure there is such a thing? I doubt that there is, because the human neck is not strong enough to withstand many kinds of flat falls (just watch FailArmy for a while), and assuming you can prevent a flat fall during an accident is a bad assumption. Assuming you can avoid a head-first fall is a bad assumption, and assuming you’re not going to be struck by a car is a bad assumption.

Have been biking many decades, fallen more times than I can count, and am as trained to fall properly as one gets, I think. I’ve had two falls in the last decade that would have put me in the hospital without a helmet, and one that may have killed me - head collided with a rock at high speed, but I had a good helmet and walked away. My belief is the opposite - that my need for a helmet has only grown the more skill I have. As I’ve gained expertise, I ride faster on average, I’m in traffic more, picking more difficult routes, riding in a wider variety of weather and conditions. All reasons to

Falling safely is a motor skill. The way you "learn" it is by doing it, repeatedly, until your body starts to react in the right way. This is a problem for an adult cyclist on a road traveling at speed. There are consequences to falling. Many of us, however, have had enough experience during our youth on "single-track" to have racked up many falls onto soft ground at low speeds. That certainly helps to a certain extent.

Unfortunately, physics sometimes can present challenges that no human can adapt to regardless of practice. If your bike comes to hard stop when traveling fast enough, your body is going to do an "endo" and your face will impact the street in a matter of milliseconds. This happens before you can put your hands in front of your face. It can happen faster than your body can respond to the stimuli telling it that an crash is happening.

> physics sometimes can present challenges that no human ca adapt to regardless of practice.

Exactly, yes. I have a lot of the motor skill you’re talking about (road cycling, mountain biking, dirt moto biking, skydiving, skiing, etc.). And the more I have, the more helmets seem like a good idea.

When I was in school, our trainer was ill, so he was replaced by a craft teacher, which was fresh from the army. He was a soviet paratrooper, so he told us that he knows nothing about training, but he sure that we will fall a lot during our life, so he will train us to fall properly. We did about a hundred of jumps and falls and rolls per lesson, up to 2 meter height, in military style for 2,5 months, up to 1000 falls in total.

When I'm falling, I'm rotating my body to fall flat on the back. I'm wearing a bicycle backpack with thick absorber and protective plate (Wolf Skin, Kite, etc.), so it absorbs energy and protects my back. Bad for backpack and notebook, but good for me.

FWIW, I had a whole skydiving career before I started biking seriously. Drop & roll is not really a viable head injury prevention plan. You’re prepped for a few kinds of accidents with a backpack and trying to roll if/when there’s time, if you’re really lucky, but you’re leaving a mile wide blind spot to many possible accidents that you don’t have control over. Good luck, I hope you don’t have any of those kind of collisions.

Biking to work is not a skydiving.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35MHUtvIpP8

Obviously. I’m saying that your soviet paratrooper roll training isn’t going to save your head in a bike crash, I know because I’ve done a whole lot of both. Biking to work is the place where you’re most likely to be hit by a car, and thus not be able to roll and not be protected by a backpack.

Hey I’m not telling you what to do, only pointing out that assuming you have control over physics in an accident is a pretty bad assumption, and that telling new riders that a few falls prepares them for non-helmet riding is dangerous advice because it’s not true.

I don’t know where you live, but we all know the Netherlands is famous for having some of the best bike infrastructure in the world, and also for low helmet use. Still, the chances of TBI in an accident in the Netherlands is 2x higher without a helmet than with. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/neur.2020.0010

In the US, helmet efficacy has been demonstrated repeatedly. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29677686/

You do you, I’m just saying from my perspective, and from actual experience, the single best thing I can do to prevent a serious debilitating bike injury is wear a helmet. It’s by no stretch of the imagination the only thing I can do, and I like some of your other advice you gave. I just think if you care about slippery surfaces enough to lower your seat, or care about cars enough to wear a reflective vest, a helmet sure seems like a good idea.

I'm from Europe (Ukraine). Yes, I'm totally aware about risk of death in a road incident. After each incident, our bicyclist association does protest near to city administration, demanding more and safer bike lanes.

Our plan to fix it is to make the city safer for cyclist. We are heavily inspired by success of Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boi0XEm9-4E . Situation is improved in recent years. Currently, half of my path to work is safe, while the other half is not.

Helmet is a good idea (I recommend to wear helmet after all), but it has some downsides. We can discuss upsides and downsides of helmet a lot, but I recommend using my OKR instead, when you recommend biking to newbies: «use helmet until you will fall 10 times at least». It's simple, easy to understand, easy to remember, actionable, and leaves no room for doubt.

I see no breakdown of incident number by years of experience in your papers.

Newbies are like toddlers, so they will fall more often and will skew the statistic. Nobody says that walking is a dangerous activity, just because toddlers are falling multiple times per day.

Still, cycling is the safest mode of transportation per km, so, if you want to improve safety significantly, convince drivers and pedestrians to wear helmets first. Cyclist will follow.

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