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Comment by devilshaircut | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if you ride bikes or not. Regardless of this, you should know that bike helmets are safety rated for low-speed crashes only. An example of this collision is a stationary object - e.g. the ground - impacting a moving object - e.g. your head - at a speed of 11-14 miles per hour.

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.

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I commute by bike on roads shared with cars every day and wear a helmet. When I ride in the whole way to work, I tend to average about 15mph, which is probably about 18mph if I count only time actually moving. Some cyclists can ride far faster than this. Most cyclists ride slower than this. There are far more occasional riders or people taking a mountain bike to Caltrain than there are lycra-suited enthusiasts.

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.

I am not going to go digging for this information for you but essentially the way bike helmets are tested is a weight is dropped onto the helmet traveling at a certain velocity and the result is recorded. It is not representative of the real world and it is only valid for speeds between 11 and 14 mph.

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.

Do you disagree with the studies showing that helmets prevent injuries?

> 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...

Yes. Those studies are one-sided. It is as I indicated in another post a point of contention among the professional cycling community whether or not helmets do more harm than good (both in accidents and sociologically). Here is a study that was very much talked about in recent years.

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

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

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