Conference noted::bicycle

    Does the article mention whether or not the foam helmets had lycra
    mesh covering or not??  I dont think that any helmet is fool proof!
    I wear a foam helmet, but I have never hit my head. I suppose the
    man with the titanium battle helmet says the same thing about your
    plastic helmet.....he would never wear it. 
    
    Now we have two cases of death "possibly" caused by a foam helmet,
    and thousands of foam helmets out there (tens or hundreds of
    thousands). Certainly there have been other accidents besides these
    two. What is the ratio between the number of heads saved by foam
    helmets and these two deaths? Two people died in airplane accidents
    last year...have you given up flying? Two people died from food
    poisoning last year...have you given up eating?  Just because two
    people died from something is not a reason to give that something
    up. The benefits/disadvantages have to be weighed. If a lightweight
    foam helmet will get 100,000 more people to wear helmets (who would
    not wear them otherwise....like myself), then foam helmets are
    definitely good. They probably save far more heads than lose lives.
    
    Save the scare tactics for when it really matters, like when someone
    is not wearing a helmet.
    

    Seems like the real question to ask is:
    
    How many times would you break your neck (from 'sticking') with
    a softshell helmet, where you WOULDN'T have broken it with a
    hardshell?
    
    I don't know, but the difference seems slim...
    
    Mark
    

    
	I have had misgivings about the all-foam helmets since I first heard
  about them.....

Why??? They meet all the testing standards that the others met.






  My original fear was for lack of protection in the second impact of a fall:
  
Really!!! Well I believe most of us are concerned about the initial impact.
  

  When you fall off a bike, you typically first hit the ground with
  much of your body, including your head.....

Not when you go over the handle bars.




You then slide on the ground until  you grind to a stop or fetch up against
something, like a curb, stone wall, tree, etc.  The foam helmet will give
protection for the first impact. In doing so, there's a good chance that it
will also shatter into pieces.....

Facts, where's the facts??? Don't make statements like this without the facts. 
I have seen bell helmets completely shattered from a crash that took place in 
a field sprint at 45 mph. I was right beside the rider that went down. He walked
away from that with road rash.






If you fetch up against something head first, you will have little protection 
in this second impact if the helmet is in pieces. 

The same could be said of the Bell helmet above.
All helmet mfg's will tell you once the inside foam has been compressed it no
longer should be worn. Which means on the second inpact of a fall neither
a hardshell nor a all-foam helmet will offer you safe protection.






	In a recent UseNet posting, there's news that the USCF is looking into
  a new problem:  With a hard shell helmet, the shell skids along the road as
  you grind to a stop (the grinding produces "road rash").  It is now SUSPECTED
  that the foam helmets grip the road at the first impact and twist your head
  under your body.  USCF has two broken neck injuries that are SUSPECTED of
  being caused by foam helmets.  



Lets not talk about solutions until the evaluation has been completed.





as.1 stated
    Now we have two cases of death "possibly","possibly. Before we go scare
    riders lets wait for the facts and lets each of us make our own decisions.



Your greatest chance for injury or death comes when you get behind the wheel
of your car and most of us don't even think twice about that.

    I've been out of commission since last Friday, I think my helmet
    caused it.
    Got a severe muscle strain across the top of my back, into my neck.
    Can hardly hold my head up. Tried to do 25 miles in less than 90
    minutes on my way home from work, and really strained up the last
    hill. 
    I was thinking about the new lightweights until yesterday when a
    friend told me that they were suspected of causing damage in cases
    of "bounce" or secondary collision, much as Chris' description.
    
    
    =-=-=-=-=-g=-=-=-=-
    
    BTW....Glad I don't read Chris' notes at breakfast. You sure are
    descriptive, Chris, what with the horses*it in Michigan and grinding
    to a halt with a helmet.  Eh Reg?
    
    			8-}

    Good grief!  I switch to a comfortable helmet (after putting up with
    the Bell biker for *years*) and now it's unsafe to ride in it.

    Maybe I should start wearing elbow and knee pads too...

    Or perhaps it would be safer to forget about cycling and take up
    watching TV instead.

    - Jim

    I've been wearing the Bell ovation for 3 months now and too me this
    seems to be the best of all worlds.  It is only 1 1/2 ounces heavier
    than the shell-less models.  The qualtiy of construction seems better
    than the previous Bell I wore. People who were looking at the new
    shell-less models, I highly recommend evaluating the Ovation.
    
    steve

Wow, some people should really consider switching to decaffeinated coffee!

What's the deal with Chris' note, anyway?  He stated he had reservations
about foam helmets, explained why, and gave supporting evidence.  I don't
know about everyone, but I'm concerned about *all* head impacts, primary
and secondary.  

Sure the chances of a crash are relatively small.  I still wear a helmet.
And the chances of an injury during secondary impact are smaller still,
but if you can insure against that as well by doing no more than selecting
a different *kind* of helmet, then why not?

.jim

 Les, and other replies to this note "doth protest too much, me thinks"
  I just wanted to warn people about something that may be serious, and
 may prove to be a deciding factor in some (non-Macho) peoples choice
 of helmets.   - Chris

Newsgroups: rec.bicycles
Path: decwrl!labrea!polya!Gang-of-Four!les
Subject: Re: New Product Query: Ultra Light Helmets
Posted: 24 Aug 88 03:37:08 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
 
In article <3670134@hpmwtla.HP.COM>, allana@hpmwtla.HP.COM ( Allan
Armstrong) writes:
. Another concern:  In this weeks Velo News is a short letter in which the
. author postulates that two riders broke their necks and are now paralyzed
. because the soft foam grabs the pavement, whereas a hardshell won't.  I
. think helmet manufacturers should research this problem and quit the beer
. cooler designs if this allegation is true.
 
Actually, this is a very old cycling legend in new clothes.  Having seen
or experienced far more crashes than I would like to remember and quite a
few resulting head and upper body injuries, my belief is that this theory
is phoney.  Nevertheless, like many urban legends, it persists.
 
Based on my observations, the primary cause of serious injuries in crashes
is impact of the rider's head with a solid object, usually the road or track.
The Snell and ANSI Z90.4 standards are designed to measure the performance
of helmets in protecting against such impacts and are, therefore, valid in
my view.
 
It is clear that no helmet design can protect cyclists against all head
and neck injuries.  When such injuries happen to people who are wearing
helmets, someone inevitably comes up with an "explanation" that invokes
an imagined weakness in the helmet design.
 
The theory that "helmets that stick on impact cause neck injuries" is one
that has been around since before impact-absorbing helmets were invented
and is believed by a number of experienced cyclists, even though such
injuries appear to be relatively rare.  Indeed, this legend was repeated
to me last week by a former national-level sprinter, who told me that he
avoided wearing heavily-padded leather helmets in the old days -- instead,
he wore a lightly-padded helmet with a slick plastic exterior, which he
thought was less likely to stick to the track in case of a crash.
 
Fortunately, he never landed hard on his head.  If he had, he would almost
certainly have suffered serious skull and brain injury.  I didn't argue
with him about his misconception, given that he survived and no longer
rides.
 
Five years ago, when SkidLid realized that their helmets would not meet
the forthcoming ANSI helmet standard, they latched on to this legend and
fancied it up a bit, claiming that the important thing to protect against
is _angular_ acceleration, rather than impact.  Their argument might have
been more believable if their helmets provided reasonable protection
against impact injuries _and_ did a better job of reducing angular
accelerations, but the fact was that they provided relatively poor
protection against impact and SkidLid never quantified their angular
acceleration theories.  This issue faded away when they were forced out
of business by head-injury damage claims.
 
Adoption of the ANSI and Snell standards by the USCF beginning January 1,
1986, resulted in a major reduction in competition head injuries --
indeed, there were none at all reported during 1986 and 1987, in marked
contrast with earlier years.
 
Now, after two and a half years with the new helmet standards, someone has
finally been injured and the old theory immediately reappears.  We clearly
should continue to be alert to the possibility of improving helmet
standards, but I remain skeptical about the old "sticking helmet" theory
-- it clearly was wrong last time and I find it no more convincing with
each retelling.
 
Les Earnest, Stanford University             Phone: 415 723-9729
Arpanet: Les@Sail.Stanford.edu               USMail: Computer Science Dept.
UUCP: . . . decwrl!Sail.Stanford.edu!Les             Stanford, CA 94305

    re .4	Don't ask me Gary, I've got a very sore back and   
    "other parts"  right now.  If I wore a helmet water skiing it would
    either drown me or snap my neck as I go down at 60+MPH and it fills
    up with water like a big scoop and tries to stop my head quicker
    than my frail old (fat, but bouyant) body.
    
    	Try this sometime for grins:-
    
    	Get someone to tow you up to max boat speed, whatever that is,
    cross to one side of the wake and get as far out as you possibly
    can, like almost alongside.  Then make a hard cut back across the
    wake and have the driver turn hard away from you as you come out
    of the wake again, but not so hard that the boat loses any speed.
    Pull as hard as you can on the rope until you can't hold on due
    to the 75 ft whip that you're now at the end of.  Try to keep the
    ski from getting all tied up between your legs as you crash and
    skim across the water like a stone, tuck up into a ball if you can.
    Request that the driver tow you in at trolling speed and have the
    ambulance get the back board out before they try to retrieve you
    from the water.

    	Reg  {Sorry for the diversion, but there's other ways to hurt
    		Y'self}
    
    
    

    OOOOoooohhhhh, easy on the waterskiing wipeouts!
    Years ago I was on 1 ski on a whip exactly like you described,
    I fell as my speed was at a maximum, skipped & tumbled 
    across the surface for awhile... the ski stayed ON & I
    ripped up cartilage in my knee.
    
    I needed operations, & my legs were weak until I got
    seriously involved with cycling ...
    
    Mark
    

    I know this topic has gotten old of late, but...
    
    Did anyone notice the Columbian bike racer in one of the prelim races
    at the Olympics who had resumed racing after a pileup involving several 
    racers? He seemed fine, but his helmet, apparently a foam job, was perched
    crazily on his head with a hand-sized hunk from the front dangling in
    the wind.
    
    I guess the helmet did its job, but I can't help wondering if it would
    have been all in one piece if it had been a foam-plus-shell design.
    
    Ed

    SO he was wearing it after the warranty had expired...
    
    I think it would have been in one piece if foam plus shell
    but it still would have been "after the warranty ..."
    
    ed

    
    It was probably outside the warranty anyway, because helmets usually
    have stickers that say, "Not for Motorsport Use" - and if he was in
    an Olympic event he was most likely really motoring.  ;-)
    
    -john