My father-in-law has always been a „No helmet“ person and just wore it because we told him to do so. Then, he had an accident and crashed with his head on the sidewalk - just on the edge where the traffic lane begins. The helmet broke into two pieces, but his head was completely intact. That is when neither him nor anyone else in our family started a discussion ever again about the cons of helmets, because the pros are obvious. And, by the way, I have also discovered Leatt helmets last year and they fit perfectly! Happy New Year from Germany and thanks for your videos😃
I just shared a similar story about my dad cracking his helmet in two before seeing your comment haha. Thank God we have smart dad's showing us the way!
The exact same thing happened to me and although I did wear a helmet, that event solidified the choice to always wear one no matter what. I can still remember falling in slow-motion realizing my head is going for the edge of the street and bouncing off of it.
I do wear and promote wearing a helmet but there must be some clarification. Helmets protect primarily from "head" injuries. However, "brain" injuries are another topic. It must be understood that if you crash your bike with a helmet on and smack your helmet protected head on a hard object there is a very high chance that you are going to have some sort of brain injury yet there may be no sign of head injury at all. Most common is a concussion. It could be argued that it may be less severe, but it will probably still occur. Just look at football players. They wear some of the most advanced head protection money can buy, but they still get brain injuries. The best protection is learn how to ride, learn how to fall, and wear a helmet.
never see head injuries in any other activity, of course, only in "bike injuries". why not in cars? why not post the numbers for every type of accident, vs your selected pet peeve. broken necks and back are far more common in cyclist wrecks.
What about all of the injuries that you don't see because they never make it to you, do you think some of them may have survived had they been wearing a helmet? I'll admit that wearing a helmet isn't a panacea, but it almost all cases, it's going to make a bad situation less bad.
@@gregknipe8772why don't you just wear a helmet? It protects that bowl of noodles we call a brain in the case of an accident. You NEED that organ to work correctly to lead a normal life. And if one day there was an effective, cheap and non intrusive means to protect against back and hip issues in a wreck we would be wearing them. Like everyone wears helmets.
Ok Seth, you have done it. Your brilliance has convinced me. I was a cycle courier for 6 years, i rode 50 hours a week back then, flying in city traffic. These days i ride everyday again, i love down hill single track, commute, school runs. ALL WITHOUT a helmet. Never hurt my head in all of these years, 100,000's miles. Seth you have done it. Buying a helmet today. Thank you brother.
My dad was mountain biking with my brother, i was not there but my dad turned his head around to make sure my brother was okay going down a pretty big hill, then he went off the trail at 20+ mph and his front wheel got stuck in some bushes and threw him over the bars and he went head first into a rock. The doctors said the helmet 100% saved his life and he was lucky to walk away with only one broken vertebrae
@@FirstNameLastName-ev3jk technically no, not really but if you go over 20mph head first into a rock withOUT a helmet, your probably going to dead or wayyy more injured than just one broken bone
@@FirstNameLastName-ev3jkas the guy said, technically no, so why don't you give it a try? Go 20+ Mph in a trail and then go off course then when the slope is steep enough throw the bike aside and jump off it simultaneously towards the front onto a sharp rock without a helmet, let's see if you make it out. And if you do I would like to know your physical condition. How about it, you up for it?
What timing. My dad is in his 70s and has been into extreme sports his whole life. Never wore a helmet and still doesn’t. Now he just cruises on his bike, but he still rides ~90 miles week. Just yesterday he wasn’t paying attention and hit some landscaping rocks on the side of the road. Big crash and huge gashes all over his head and fractured c1-3. Had to get surgery and will never be the same. All could’ve been avoided with a helmet but he hated getting told to wear one, especially coming from a time where no one wore helmets. Seth makes very good points here. I’m guilty of not wearing a helmet when I should and I’m going to change that.
I'm your dad's age and I ride every day. I live in a small community with a 20 mph speed limit and no through traffic so I often fail to put on the helmet here - I shouldn't and I've been convinced its time to change. At my age its not who'll hit me that scares me but what a fall can do to me.
I used to not wear a helmet bc the ones I tried from Walmart were uncomfortable and not cool. Then I was skateboarding one day when I got hit and run by a car. Spent the next week in the trauma ICU with multiple brain bleeds and multiple facial fractures. I was lucky enough to make a full recovery and I don’t remember any of the incident or hospital stay. Now I have a fox dropframe helmet that I wear religiously. Seeing the stress I put my family and friends through by not wearing a helmet and the results of that choice was enough for me to change my ways and advocate for others to do the same. Thanks for making this video.
In Australia helmets are mandatory. We also have an unwritten rule that if you pass a small kid on the trail you have to say 'cool helmet' to encourage them, especially if they are on the bike with an adult who is walking.
And by what I read the law had an effect of reducing bike ridership and overall not improving safety. I am totally for encouraging people to use helmets, and teaching them to use them right. But I am also totally against mandatory laws, cause it reduces bike ridership and reduced bike riders on the streets means more risks for the ones left. Bicycle safety comes from good infrastructure and good education of motorized drivers. Both of which are harder to get if there are fewer people on bicycles on the streets.
@@jantonioskI've never seen that statistic before you might need to show your work. If you normalise helmet use then people who grow up in a mandatory helmet wearing society barely question it. Most people I know in Australia at least have a bike and the thing that stops them from riding is poor infrastructure.
@@jantoniosk do you have any stats to support that? You can have all the good infrastructure you want, it won't stop someone from having a brain injury if they hit their head off the pavement at speed. By your logic, we should see a decrease in the use of cars based on enforced seatbelt laws and speed limits. And mandatory insurance, registration, and license to operate.
@@bobbyellis5006 Seems my responses are not getting posted here anymore for soem reason. Your comparison does not hold up. Your Seatbelt and speed limit is not something EXTRA you have to buy and put on your head every time you ride your car. And there are clear, objective and unambiguous data showing the positive effects (and I am unaware of any negative ones). Not true regarding Bicycle Helmets. Look up cientific data online and you will find data on both the studies "proving" Helmets efficacy (quick teaser: most studies are quite biased, flawed and even disingenuous) as well as whole population analysis cases which show no positive effect of mandatory laws in regards to safety as well as drop of ridership. Ridership in Australia fell once the mandatory law came into effect and there was no real clear benefit in regards to Head Injuries which could not be explained by other factors. I know it seems contradictory that making people use a safety device on their head could have no real positive effect when you look at the population as a whole. But you have to factor in all the variables and not just look at the very specific circumstance of one's head hitting the curb in a perfect straight motion. You have to look at all the variables. Many of the more serious Head traumas are caused by Rotational Head Injury, and Helmets do not help with those as well as might even worsen the rotational forces on our monkey brains on the moment of impact. Helmets seam to help more with the less serious injuries. And that's totally fine. Do incentivize people to use it. But making it mandatory has more downsides than the small upsides it creates for people on bikes as a whole population.
I watched a stranger on a bike path fall after catching the edge of bike path with the front tire. When the paramedics arrived this grey haired older gentleman answered "1962" when asked what year it was in 2011. Despite my former inclinations about "uncomfortable helmets" I have worn a helmet since that day every time I'm on a bike. I'm really glad you made this video and I hope the unhelmeted stranger in everyones life puts on a helmet.
I've also seen this, but the person was wearing a helmet and clipped a tree. Had to tell him Trump wont the election and explain why we were all wearing masks at the hospital at the hospital over and over again.
Very clear sign of something affecting the brain. I had a previous missed condition that resulted in seizures starting in my 40s (now under control-an electrolyte disorder) just a few years ago-nothing to do with any impact-and the first thing I consciously recall was being in an ambulance and correctly telling the paramedic my name, birthdate, what year it was, and they were pleased to hear that, as I had previously told them it was 1998, Clinton was president, and I couldn’t recall my birthdate.
I hit someones folded up all black bike they left on its side in a running/biking path during a rain storm while they stood across from it (aka I saw them, gave them extra space, and hit their bike). I was luckily wearing a helmet that day, and after flying 10 feet over my handle bars and landing on my back, my head hit the ground with enough force to crack my helmet in half. I was able to walk away with some road rash and nasty case of whiplash instead of in an ambulance in who knows what condition.
I had a stick pop up and get jammed in my front fork, stopping the front wheel instantly. I was going around 20 mph. The rear lifted, and put all my weight on the rear and slid sideways. Almost went over the handlebars. Accidents happen.
Grew up in the Netherlands and never wore a helmet. Now that I’m living abroad I can finally understand why you would wear a helmet on a bike. Infrastructure and road etiquette make a huge difference.
Grew up skateboarding and nobody wore a helmet. Biked around the neighborhood as a kid and never wore one either. Starting mountain biking in my 30s and it never even crossed my mind to ride without one. Got a family to provide for and I like my brain functioning as it should.
Is biking round the neighborhood the same as mountain biking? Is roller skating at the park the same as the roller derby that used to be on tv? Is riding a bmx bike around as a kid the same as riding a vert ramp? . It’s almost as if you inherently know that going mountain biking is different than riding around the neighborhood. And you don’t need some mandate from the government to make decisions for you. Who would have thought!
80's kid here. Been riding helmetless all my life until recently. A kid jumped in front of me on a bike path as I was on a commute back home - no helmet, no pads, expensive laptop in a backpack, old brakes... ended up crashing to save the kid and banged my head agains the curb. Nothing bad but it made me realise things can happen on a ride that I can't control or forsee... long story short I have two helmets now and looking for a nice full-face for the trails :)
Glad you walked away without serious injury! If you're looking for a full face, I recommend the Bell Super DH Spherical. It's pricey, but sales can make it hurt the wallet less. It's one of the most comfortable full faces I've found. It's also downhill certified while having a removable chin bar which is nice if you don't want the full-face protection for every ride. There are plenty of other full-face helmets, but I wanted to throw in my ticket for the Bell if it helps. Happy riding!
This is often my argument-it’s not necessarily that the bike itself is dangerous. It’s the stuff you can’t predict that might happen while you’re on it. Glad you’re okay.
Few years ago,same situation,going back home,laptop on the backpack,old bike and very stupid me looking to some nice random woman crashed very slow from the side walk to the road head first. I was wearing my helmet but my face got a good hit against the curb and my laptop screen was destroyed in the accident. I always wear helmet on 2 wheels.
Before October 2014, I never wore a helmet unless it was absolutely required, say at a skate park, rip The Incline Club. Some day in October of 2014, I was going to Allaire State Park, in New Jersey. I was riding my bmx bike. Before I left the house my uncles house with my cousin, he told us to wear our helmets. When we couldn't see the house anymore, we took the helmets off and put them in our backpacks. Anyways, there is a big hill you go down on hospital rd in Howell. Went down the road to the trails "lobster jumps, or lobster trails". We saw the jumps, they were too big for us, so we left. Got back onto the road, and was going toward the big hill to now go up, so leading toward it is a slight hill and I got some speed. I had mud on my back tire, the tires were semi slicks. No brakes. I was carving like a skater would. I was on an asphalt side path. My back tire slipped, I was still holding the handle bars being dragged by my knees, reaching for the brake lever, realizing there is not one. Fell to the left, hit the side back of my head, inches from my head landing on the grass, unfortunately my head hit the asphalt. I touch the back of my head with both my hands and they were covered in blood. Took my shirt off and put pressure on my wound. This guy we met at the trail, maybe his name was Stirling, something like that. He had a was getting into his car when he heard me scream. He stopped and picked me up and put my bike on the rack and took me up the hill, to meet with my older cousin to take me home. I went to the hospital and ended getting 8 staples. Thank you Stirling for picking me up, even though I got blood on your tan dashboard. Thank you, where ever you may be. Anyways, my life has never been "normal" since then, I don't know what normal is anymore.. I was sensitive to light and loud noises in the beginning. Sirens were scary to me, sound and light, especially strobe lights. 10 years later, my equilibrium is off, after being on an elevator I get so dizzy or vertigo that I need to sit down. I see floaters in my eyes one pupil is bigger than the other. My eyes sometimes shake like if your looking at the perfect times, it feels crazy, my gf saw it and she said it was weird also I can feel and see it when it happens. I get killer migraines still. Wear your helmet or end up like me or worse, end up like Scott Cranmer that was even wearing a full face. If you don't protect your head no matter if your barley doing anything worth wearing a helmet, you could end up dead. WEAR YOUR HELMET!! My hand is numb, I've been typing so long, lol.
Thanks for the story. People tend to brush these occurrences of as a rarity, but the reality is - barely anyone has a perfect record of not banging their head against something, twisting their ankles and so on. It's one or another; nobody's unscathed.
But for this you have to have the same crash and now with a helmet. You know what the funny part is? the damage will be worse. There is no proof of helmets saving life's on bikes because it is not true...
Just like you, I grew up not using helmets, actually we thought it was kind of looser. One day, one friend that usually go to work using skateboard arrives at the office carrying a helmet. Someone mocked him, and he said: "I don't care, it’s MY head". Since that day, I started to use helmet every time I mount my bike for a ride, even a ride with my young kids. I'm not a looser, it's MY head! Excellent video, as usual!!!
I'm an 80's kid and no helmets in my childhood. But then started riding motorcycles in my teens and always wore a helmet, even on the road. Been on motorcycles for 20 years before I found mountain biking. While mountain biking I've always worn a full face bicycle helmet. Not only is my brain important to me, but so is my mouth and face.
In almost 20 years on a mountain bike, most of my more serious injuries happened in the city, while riding casually. I never leave my helmet off when riding. It saved my noggin a lot of times. and in unexpected situations. For example - a huge slab of ice fell more than 20m. Directly on my head. The bloody fullface helmet saved my life.
Reminds me I accidentally left my helmet on a stone wall while bikepacking in Wales. I went back to get it, tough as Wales is super hilly! But on the way back a massive branch came down and smacked into the ground right next to me breaking up into pieces. Could have hit my head while I did not have the helmet! I looked up and it was actually a crow that dropped it! Crazy. Did not like bikers.
I once misjudged a low hanging branch and hit it hard enough that it almost knocked me off my bike and left a deep gouge in my helmet. It's horrifying to think what could have happened if I was bareheaded.
I mostly ride in the city (like 10 km somewhre and then back) but some times I do longer trips (like 100 km somewhere) on the road. Some people seem to think that helmets are only needed on the road. My experience is exactly opposite. On the road everything is very predictable. I don't even remember having any close calls on the road. In the city the pace of events is much tighter and there is a lot more things you have to pay attention to.
A helmet saved my life. I was racing with a team when I was stationed in Hawaii. It was the start of a race, going into the first turn. I saw white jerseys at the front (my team wore white) coming out of the turn and thought to myself, I need to get up there and pull. I got around the corner fine and got out of the saddle and started to sprint to the front. Later I looked at the gps data and saw that I was doing 23mph when I came off the biile. I remember my right foot unclipping from the peddle. I remember thinking, "this will be bad." I remember falling forward and seeing the front wheel turned 90 degrees to the left. I remember waking up on the ground and people were telling me to stay down. I did a systems check. I had less skin than before the crash, but everything seemed to be working okay. My jersey, bibs, and gloves were shredded. When I took off my helmet I saw that all the styrofoam between the vents in the back was completely crushed, only staying in place because it was glued to the outsr skin. I was driven to the ER, had a chest and pelvic X-ray and a head CT. I walked away with only a dislocated rib and a concussion. One of the women on our team was right behind me when I went off. She later told me she was really shaken up by the crash because she thought I was dead. If it hadn't been for the helmet, I would have been. I still have road-rash scars, including one on my left cheek. From the scratches on my glasses and face I figure that I must have been sliding face down after I was knocked unconscious. But I lived through it and was able to finish out a 26 year career in uniform to include a deployment to Iraq.
In HS, a classmate died falling off a compact car hood going 10 mph from smacking his head on the road.. You can 100% kill or disable yourself on a bike without a helmet. And yet in college this dingus continued to ride without one. It "looked dumb" and "was a hassle". After 6 years of dealing with motorcycle gear everywhere I go, a bike helmet is comparatively not a hassle at all. (At a minimum, much more substantial helmet, jacket, gloves, having to wear pants / boots mid summer)
There has been a massive shift in helmet use at ski resorts in the last 25 years. Our understanding of TBI has started to make differences and I think that will continue to spread to bikes.
Downhill skiing has a VASTLY greater risk of taking falls and getting serious injuries (including head injuries) than just riding a bicycle in a normal, safe manner along road or bike-path.
@@petesig93I am not sure that is true. I think if one is competent and in control and not pushing ones boundaries, for either sport, risk of injury can be very low but not zero. It is very important to learn how to fall safely to reduce the risk of a head injury regardless of helmet or not (helmets are not a panacea and have some mild downsides for sure). Sliding and/or rolling to break falls is key. I'm from Seth's generation and did lots of mtb and alpine skiing (including race training) without a helmet. I started wearing a bike helmet first on roads because cars hurt. I got a rec ski helmet because they are warmer than hats. I never had a fall in either sport where a helmet would have helped until my first ski season wearing one. Freak accident from pushing boundaries and I smacked the back of my helmet on the rim of a metal barrel for the snow guns. Would have cracked my skull open without it. So yes, they are great to wear in both sports. What I will say is people do overestimate the value of helmets (even though they do indeed save lives). They are fantastic for protecting against skull fractures. Nobody wants their skull split open, and for that alone they are 100% worth wearing. In terms of concussions, they probably help a small amount, but that is not the reason to wear a helmet. I know lots of people who suffered major concussions wearing helmets. The best way to protect against concussions is to develop strong neck muscles through training. Ski racers who do gym programs targeting the neck have fewer concussions on average.
@@jamesroscoe7555 helmets for car collision impacts are of near-zero actual benefit. ALL helmet manufacturers make this quite clear in their literature. The Australian Standard for Bicycle Helmets was developed to simulate a fall from 2 metres onto concrete (or a sub-20kmh impact).
@@petesig93 Sure, serious collisions with cars will probably overwhelm a helmet, but many bike-car interactions are low speed but dangerous for cyclists. Eg dooring. All it takes is a fall onto concrete or the edge of something solid to potentially crack ones skull.
When I was a junior studying Physics at Uni, I had an allergic reaction that left me unconscious in a bathroom. I woke up lumped over the toilet with the right side of my skull cracked and a broken nose. I forgot how to do math, a chunk of my second language, a loss of many memories, and some motor skills. I went from nearly graduating with a physics degree to struggling with basic fractions. Having so much effort (I've never been inherently gifted in mathematics) flushed down the drain nearly destroyed me. It's been a few years and I've recovered much of what was lost but some things will likely never return. I will always have a helmet on when rock climbing, mountain biking, etc. It simply isn't worth the potential damage Thank you for this video and thank you for using your platform to encourage safety. If this video saves even one person from the life I have now or likely one far worse, you've done a great service to the community.
@@primtve_dope9568 Some German has returned, but it's still hard to speak. Reading or hearing it is doable though. Math and other academics took years. I never graduated and couldn't manage when I returned to school. It took a while before I could learn again. Currently I'm planning on an IT career and plan to go through cert courses and whatnot at the same university if all goes well. I went into trades as a carpenter for a rigging company to pay for medical and for the university fees. Though that job recently came to a close. As for memories, a lot have come back. Having photos and videos from the past helped a lot to spark them back. Now I have weird phenomenons where a memory is triggered and can be vivid or something like a smell or feeling. Like hearing a song reminded me of walking to class a certain day, riding the bus in highschool, or the stomach pit of a breakup I had forgotten for example. Though there are some blank spots that I have to be told of by friends. A trick to regaining my ability to remember was ALWAYS having a notebook on me. It's a small field note one and I wrote everything in it. Conversations, dates, gift ideas, poems, anything that came to mind. And I would study those. After conversations or dates, I would sit in the car after writing out bullet points trying to recall every detail. Eventually I got to a point where I didn't need to write things to remember them and have made a very lucky recovery. I've gotten to a point where I almost feel a guilt for how lucky I got with recovery. Though it is still hard sometimes. I had episodes where I wouldn't remember a day or where I was which was terrifying. Though I haven't had one in a while now. I know I've kept it vague but I hope that answers some of the question.
Hello. No helmet guy here… just wanted to share a thought. Seth here didn’t go through the effort to make this video views or to sell a product or make money there’s no click bait or sponsored ad he made it cause he genuinely cares and that is nice just wanted to give credit where credit is due. You are a gentleman and a scholar sir
I used to not wear a helmet, I had one on just to mount a go-pro, crashed, the shattered helmet and lack of injury to myself is the reason I did my 180. Thanks Seth. Great video, very important indeed.
Being a mountain biker, I used to leave the helmet at home when I commuted to school. That all changed when one day, an SUV came flying out of a parking lot and right into me. I was lucky to land my front flip on my butt and not my head. I've worn a helmet since and have always demonstrated that for my kids. It's usually the factors outside of our control that can get us.
My 75 year old mother crashed her electric scooter on Christmas Eve and sustained a serious head injury. It is now New Year's Eve and she has not woken up from her emergency surgery. She is laying in a hospital bed with her skull still open from the surgery. I hope this account of what my family is experiencing is graphic enough to convince someone out there not to ever ride without a helmet. I will likely never have another conversation with my mother and a little head protection could have made a huge difference.
I'm so sorry to hear about your Mother. I hope she makes it - it is possible! I lost my Dad in a very similar situation last January. I wish the very best for you and your family. This kind of thing is so very hard.
@tonut.2684 we do have mandatory safety laws for cars. A lot of them. Seatbelts, speed limits, crash safety regulations. Cars need to be registered and insured and drivers literally need to be licensed to use them on public roads.
@@bobbyellis5006cars are significantly more dangerous than bikes. As mentioned in this video, the Tour de France ran for years with no one wearing a helmet with hundreds of cyclists going top speed downhill on twisty mountain roads, and yet fatalities were not common. You can look at any motor sport in the same period and see that helmets, roll cages, flame retardant suits, fire extinguishers etc were required, and they had fatalities every year. The risks are not the same.
And cars have helmets built into them beginning with foam-loaded bumpers (just like bike helmets) and engineered crumple zones to slow the decelleration -- exactly what a helmet is trying to accomplish. Then there are the real helmet analogs inside cars already, by law -- airbags that deploy in front of the head, at the side of the head, and spring-loaded padded headrests that deploy behind the head. The people who try the "you don't wear a helmet in a car" line aren't thinking. They're looking for an excuse to justify their uninformed opinions. @@bobbyellis5006
A few years ago I was on a green (easy) MTB trail with a buddy near Redrock Park outside of Las Vegas, NV, when I hit a rock and ended up looking at the sky. I fractured my scapula and tore some ligaments in my shoulder, but my head (and I) survived. It only took a few seconds to go from “easy” trail riding to going over the bars. Thanks for sharing your experience and wisdom.
Are you saying that your helmet helped or something? Because from the sounds of it it seems like a helmet wouldn't have done anything at all for you except maybe prevent a bit of scratches or bruising on the head.
@@MsHojat the helmet had clear dents from the impact. NV trails are not very soft anywhere. Rocks (lots of rocks), cacti (and other sticky things) and hard packed ground. Yes, I believe the crash could have been much worse if I had not had a helmet on. We were about 3 miles from the trailhead. Without my helmet, I completely believe that I would have been dead or severely injured.
I'm of the same generation. Free range kid, no helmet, used my bike to go everywhere. Even as an adult, never wore a helmet. A good friend of mine was an avid cyclist, he had thousands of miles of riding experience. A freak accident where he was crossing a set of light rail train tracks at 5mph, his front wheel caught between the rail and pavement, which resulted in a traumatic brain injury. He was in a coma for a week and in ICU for nearly a month. He's able to function now, but no where near where he was before the accident. He'll never be physically able to ride a bike ever again. That was my wake up call to always wear a helmet.
Yeah, I get it that 99% of the time you will never have an issue on a bike without a helmet. For me, it was about establishing the habit of wearing one just like a seatbelt. Thank goodness, because I hit some ice on a mundane bike ride a few years ago and actually landed on my head. To each their own.
I’m a road cyclist, never used to wear a helmet. I always thought the worst thing that could happen was a car could hit me, and in that case a helmet wouldn’t help a ton anyway. Fast forward to one day I’m testing out some bike tires that were faulty, I slipped and fell off my bike in the parking lot. Seriously hurt me and left me shook up, with many cuts and scrapes on my forehead. From that day on I always wear a helmet no matter what.
The "no downsides" argument is actually what convinced me. Like, what is the downside to wearing a helmet in general? It messes up your hair and is slightly sweatier? Sounds like some pretty minor downsides to me. That's why I wear a helmet any time I'm going faster than running. My dad's a firefighter/EMT and I've heard too many stories of people not wearing helmets when they should be and ending up quadriplegics, in the ICU, or worse due to not wearing a helmet when they should be.
Of course I think it should be personal choice, but in my case my head is shaved. Hell I have to put a hat on anyway, so I figure what's the difference?
Problem is, the 'no downside' argument is fallacious. Look up the scientific reseach. It indicates theat helmets are correleted with a small decrease in cranial injuries, and a significant increase in severe rotational neck injuries. Broken necks.
@@mateusseer5353 sounds a bit like the helmet gave these people the chance to die / be critically injured through a neck injury rather than their brain leaking out on the pavement. nice try though.
@@Amber-tu2jo It might 'sound a bit like' that to you, but that's not logical reasoning and not supported by any statistical or theoretical evidence... nice try though...
At my first job out of college a woman I knew well got reversed into by a van whilst commuting to work on a slow road. Head went through the glass and died later in hospital. It's not always about what you're doing, it's what others sharing roads/paths do that concerns me.
My friend used to tease me whenever I got into his car and put on a seat belt. "What's the matter, don't you trust me?" he would say. "Oh, it's not, you," I would lie, "It's all the other drivers I'm worried about."
@@Durwood71 funny thing is one person without a seatbelt can cause a lot of harm to those who have one. Seen a video about a side crash with two people in the back, one with a seatbelt, one without. The woman with the seatbelt remained seated but the other one flew right into her and bounced right back in what looked like less than a second. The collision resulted in a neck injury for the person with the seatbelt
@@mad_scientist5597 - yes but that is no reason not to wear a seatbelt (funny thing...), more a reason to fine the adults choosing to put the other occupants at risk (people incorrectly state that they are only risking their own safety, not so...- or in the case of children, it is the driver in control at fault, how much penalty for risking children''s future is too little???.
@@kadmow That depends on the country I guess although I do believe it's true where I live that only the driver can be fined for not having a seatbelt, or if there is a child in the car without the proper protection for their age. If a child is in the middle and people with no seatbelt on either side then the child is getting crushed as soon as the car turns in a crash but creating such conditions is not an offense. Ah yes the legal systems and its downfalls.
This was the best and most well rounded video on helmets I've ever watched. Amazing job Seth and great insight. I used to ride without a helmet as a kid too but right around college, I started getting into road cycling. During that time I recognized that I'm going at much faster speeds on much busier roads than I was when I was a kid and decided to start wearing a helmet. I'm so glad I did because a couple years ago I had really big crash... involved an ambulance, the emergency room, and a broken collarbone, but NOT a caved in skull. Literally remember tumbling through the air and feeling the side of my head smash into the pavement but my helmet saved me from having to learn how to speak again. To this day, I don't feel confident on a bike unless I have a helmet on. Your point on having a good helmet is also a BIG deal. Modern helmets have gotten so good and they're just down right comfy. Where I live (as with a lot of places) cycling received a big boom due to the pandemic and thankfully so did helmet use. Not wearing a helmet around here is even considered "uncool" which is kind of a complete 180 to a decade ago and it's honestly amazing.
@@ianhughan7325strong disagree. It isn’t any different than any other videos saying “ i didn’t wear a helmet until this happened to me and now I do”. It also kinda shows his arrogance in thinking he knows everything. Seth, along with many others, very clearly over estimate their risk assessment capabilities and you’re not gonna change their minds unless some sort of accident happens to them (as stated in the video by himself)
In the 70's there was no such thing as a bike helmet (BMX arose around 1980...) never even had one to wear if I wanted to. Now I wear a helmet because I embrace the full-on Bike Nerd persona and rock it hard! Plus, I only get one brain in life. Keep your brain beautiful! Please wear a helmet. Just in case. P.S. And it's not bike riding that worries me - it's the others out there, esp. motorists who are driving distracted and not even looking! let alone keeping an eye out for bikes and pedestrians - accidents happen in one second. LIVE. LOVE. RIDE.
Class 3 + No helmet scares me. I love e-bikes but it's crazzzzy to me how little fear people have on them. Even putting your foot down wrong while rolling on a normal bike at 8 mph you can mess you up big time which is something I forget all the time. I feel like our risk assessment is definitely too optimistic 😅. Stay safe everyone!
Gen X here. I think a lot of us did not realize the dangers that surround us back then. Thank you Seth for doing this video. I did not know they make other kinds of helmets. I got a walmart one and I hate it because it is so uncomfortable and the straps rubs against my hearing aid.
i was on the bus once and i overheard a guy was bragging about how his hair would save him if he crashed his bike. we lived in a very hilly area. ive seen people fall and brake things like its nothing. his hair would do nothing ive always been a helmet person... because why not?
The dangers were VERY clear to me in the 80s and 90s. I rode a lot, at one point I would ride up to 70 miles per day. I grew up in Houston and have been hit by cars, high sided and low sided avoiding being hit by cars. I still don’t own a helmet. I’d wear one riding offroad though….
When I was a teenager (like 14-15) I was at a BBQ and I had my BMX bike and the other kids there had skateboards and scooters and stuff and we were just dicking around in the driveway doing bunny hops and ollies etc, not a helmet in sight (I mean, we were just dicking around in the driveway right...?) My dad's friend comes up to me and asks to have a go on my bike, says he used to race back when he was my age. I gave him my bike, he jumped on and proceeded to pop a wheelie. He looped out instantly and smashed the back of his head on the concrete driveway. He died in hospital that night. If he had a helmet on I am certain he would be here still today. I'm 30 now and I'm a massive stickler for helmet use - if I'm riding my bike, I'm wearing a helmet. Period.
That's terrible to hear man. It happens so fast and no one really expects it. I've seen a lot of footage of people's lives change instantly from just not wearing a helmet. Seeing stuff like that was extremely convincing, made me always want to wear a helmet. I know there's a lot of young people out here still doing tricks and I just think it should be mandatory to sit them down and show them the footage that simple tricks without a helmet has good chance leaving you dead, or wishing you were if you land in your head. I hit my head pretty good twice when I was in middle school. Thanks to God that I'm somehow not impaired from it.
I sometimes commute by bike and I think wearing a helmet is mostly so that motorists feel less worried about running into people riding bikes. I don't think I should have to wear a helmet so that other people can behave more recklessly. However, even without taking the risk of colliding with road traffic into account, there's still a chance I could fall off the bike for whatever reason and hit my head on concrete. Like he said in the video, there are so many other activities where it would make sense to wear a helmet that we don't wear helmets for. Riding a bike with a helmet does make sense though.
Something I've noticed (your mileage may vary) is that motorists around here are much more cautious of giving cyclists space if they are NOT wearing a helmet. Very weird. Put on a helmet and reflective vest and get ready to get close passed a lot. I still helmet up but it's strange.
That confidence you feel with a decent helmet is one of the (minor but measurable) detractors from helmet safety. You feel safer so you're more likely to do riskier things (like jumping up and grabbing bars). "Risk homeostasis" is one name for the effect.
For road cycling on a bike path that may make sense. For MTB, it can have precisely the opposite effect. Some MTB trails and features require speed and commitment and if you're too cautious you could actually cause a crash, OTBs in particular are usually from hesitation while riding a feature. For road cycling on the road, cars are the main worry, so crashes beyond your control are a very real risk.
Yeah, but I improved more because of that. I wear helmet when I use my skateboard. Because I feel confident, I learned a bit faster. It's really not different from people not wearing helmet. They are confident despite not wearing helmet, they learn faster because of that.
Risk compensation and the peltzman effect are other terms used for this. They were based on poor science. The Theories persist despite insufficient evidence.
November I was riding San Clemente trails, Sam’s Club on the emtb. I sent the step jump way too fast, way overshot the landing and drove my head into the ground, had to be going over 20. I couldn’t get my hands out in front of me it happened so fast. I just got this nice Giro Insurgent helmet, I cracked the fiberglass shell got 26 staples in my shin and bruised my back up. But because of that helmet, I was able to get up and ride myself back to my truck and then drive to the ER. My coworkers said with a crash like that it’s lucky you didn’t break your back or neck. The scabs on my shin just came off this week.
A simple evening ride changed my best friend's life forever. He usually wore a helmet, but this evening he was just going around the bike path with his young daughter. His helmet was inconvenient to get so he went with out. He thought "at worst a minor accident ill be fine". After a beautiful evening ride, at the end of the ride there was a stump feature at the side of the bikeway that everyone played on. Himself had many times enjoyed this feature. As he was about to exit the feature, when he washed out his front wheel and crashed to the ground. Drove his big,pink,and very soft unhelmutted Mellon into a very hard boulder. All of our lives changed in that moment. He is alive though that was also touch and go the first 24 after " the minor accident " but he, his family, and friends lost all of the little things that made him who he was. He lost large chunks of his life do to memory and or motor function loss. All of this could have been avoided for a trip to the carpark to get his brain bucket. Moral of the story: Even the easiest of trails or rides can end up going south. Bones break and heal, brains don't. Brain buckets save lives in more then one way. Keep your rubber in the dirt and your brain in a bucket.
I can totally agree that biking is so much safer than other sports even without a helmet! Like 5 or so years ago I got a concussion from a public playset which was so post to be “safe for little kids “ It may not sound like it but walking on a sand pit and falling over sometimes is more dangerous than riding your bike.
I only wear a helmet for long trips, race biking or while cycling in a foreign country. Right now it works for me, as I make sure to ride extra safe and vigilant without one on. As I get older, though, I will for sure start wearing it more. There's no shame there, but the comfort is a big issue, especially having to carry it around all the time as I use a folding bike combined with public transportation almost every single day on all sorts of trips.
I wear a helmet when commuting, the safest principals are to not make assumptions and wear a helmet because even if you don't make assumptions and read the body language of other road users perfectly, it still wont save you from a distracted road user.
When I became a nurse and realized that a simple mistake can lead to being fed through your nose and defecating in your bed for the rest of your life it really struck me. It really is amazing how we go from doubled down to “yeah I absolutely need to wear a helmet now”. It’s also exactly how it happened to me too, Seth 😂
I have a friend who made his kid ride with a helmet, but he never did. He claimed he was a "good enough rider and didn't make mistakes." I asked him if he was willing to risk making his daughter feed him and change his diaper for the rest of her life. People need to be reminded that their actions/decisions affect other people, especially family members.
@@ouisi7Additionally if he wants his daughter to wear a helmet while riding a bike it just doesn’t make sense to not wear one himself. Rules for thee but not for me very likely leads to said rules being ignored once the one enforcing them is looking the other way.
Kudos bud! We all have Certified multi-sport helmets for the skate park and parking lots. And we where just discussing the helmet I want for this summer, when I bike to work. Marley is about to get a mountian bike helmet as well, she wants to start riding around at the lake and at our ranch. Kiddos are the best reason to always have one. Lord knows my helmets have smashed the ground more than once, and I was thankful for it everytime. Thanks for taking the time to tell this story. ✌️
Honestly the note about ebikes was the most compelling to me. By far the most dangerous thing for a cyclist is poor infrastructure causing car-bike encounters, but having cycling infrastructure open to unskilled operators on very fast ebikes is likely to cause more bike bike conflicts..
Very fast eBikes? Here in Austria and most of Europe the assistance is limited to 25km/h. Even a halfway fit casual cyclist can go faster than those 25km/h on muscle power alone.
@@Mike-oz4cv the suburb of Los Angeles where I live has always been an aerospace community. Since Spacex has been here, everyone drives Teslas and their kids have ebikes that can reach 50k/hr. By law, anyone under 15 is required to wear a helmet, but you're not required to have a license to ride these types of bikes. There's almost no legislature concerning them and the legislature body is too weak to impose anything. They don't want to make any decisions. The explosion of e-bikes (which happened during covid) is so great that law enforcement can't even do anything about it. Plus you don't arrest children of the new "middle" class.
Excellent video. You're advice is true and accurate. Don't talk down or be condescending. That is great advice when arguing any topic. I'm a product of the no helmet era but now I would not think about riding without one. I don't crash much but most of my crashes have resulted in having to buy a new helmet. The worst crashes I've had have been on easy trails that I have rode numerous times. It's easy to get overly comfortable on familiar trails or slow paced paths and that is when the unexpected jumps up and bites you in the a@#. It sucks having to spend the money on a helmet but it's a lot better than having brain damage. I've been following you since the beginning. The quality of your videos has grown to be incredible and your topics and presentation continue to be interesting and entertaining.
Me too :) Skateboard, snowboard and biking for 37 years without any TBIs (besides a faceplant on big jump with snowboard😅). Thought it would never happen to me. Until an accident 3 years ago. Small declined hill into a park, path was clear, but someone had been standing behind a bush and came out suddenly. Had to steer to the side, hit a hole big and deep enough to lodge the front wheel. The bike tipped 180 and because I was holding on with a solid grip, I flew with the bike over the front wheels axis. The heavy backpack full of hiking gear made the impact velocity increase... Lucky I didn't break my neck. Couldn't walk for 3-4 months. It can happen anywhere, at any time, at any speed. Being "cool" is overrated. Be safe. As a side note, it's often when we slack off and aren't riding anything difficult that the worst accidents tend to occur. Because we don't pay attention.
I'll be 54 in a few weeks and I never owned a bike helmet until this year. The tipping point was actually a car accident I was in almost a year ago that made me get one. I was rear-ended and haven't fully recovered yet. That made me realize that I don't heal as fast as I used to. We did so much sketchy stuff in the '80s, before bike helmets were really a thing, and luckily my friends and I survived with the occasional scrape or bruise.
@mrgearhead5151 The whiplash neck piece from the company Back-On-Track is pretty nice to wear. It is said to help improve recovery through increased blood flow and such.
Here in Australia we've had mandatory bicycle helmets laws since 1990. The helmet must also meet the Australian/New Zealand safety standard AS/NZS 2063. Like driving a car without a seat belt feels not right, riding a bike without a helmet gives me the same feeling. And having had a few crashes where I've hit my head, it's probably saved me.
@@difflocktwo He's not comparing the two, only the feeling of driving a car without a seat belt and riding without a helmet. It's weird. I'd imagine if you don't do either, a seat belt and a helmet would feel weird.
I've (23) been riding without a helmet pretty much my whole life, I've heard the lectures and I reacted in the exact way you said, doubling down. Always found them uncomfortable, too big, and never found one I liked. This video is really making me consider wearing one for the first time
I'm 30 now, and until 21 y.o. always rode without one. I've had several painful crashes, both my fault or T-boned on a cycleway by a fellow cyclist, who was going for some reason on a pedestrian path). What made me buy a helmet was a nasty downhill crash where I injured my shoulder and had to go to emergency room. Retrospectively evaluated all the crashes, and decided that even if I can try not to act dangerously and stupidly, I can't stop others from crashing into me, and I'm incredibly lucky never to have broken any limb or hit my head on asphalt. Better safe than sorry
I JUST bought a helmet a few weeks ago. Beyond the desire to avoid painting the streets with my cranial fluid something that helped me get over my opinion that helmets were "dorky" was noticing you always had one on when riding 🤙
I have always hated helmets and never wore them. I even got t-boned by a car on my bmx when I was a kid and spent some time in the hospital, somehow didn't sustain any brain damage just broken limbs. But recently after over a year and a bit of my boss constantly asking "where is your helmet??" and bugging me about it, he just went and bought me a decent one. So now I have no choice but to wear it, I dont like to but I dont like to look like a dick and not wear it. So I guess just giving someone a helmet can work.
I did not always wear a helmet either, but I usually did if I was riding off-road on my mountain bike. What changed my mind to where I wear a helmet no matter what was when I was very slowly going down a hill while mountain biking, and I locked my front wheel. I rolled on my bike (technically not OTB as the bike ended up on top of me as if it were riding me instead), and I laughed the very, very slow crash off. It wasn't until I got back to my car and saw my helmet that I realized I had crashed head first into a rock, and completely cracked my helmet. I wasn't going fast, and it did not feel like a bad crash, but if I wasn't wearing a helmet I would have had, at a minimum, a concussion, if not worse. That's why I wear a helmet, because even a slow fall onto your head is more violent than you think. Others can do what they wish, but I will always take the two seconds to put on a helmet.
Seth is 100% right about getting what you pay for. I'm a little over 50 years old and I've been riding a bicycle since I was 5 years old and motorcycles since I was 25 or so. I'm a 100% "all the gear all the time" guy on the motorcycle... even if it's 95 degrees - but I never wore a helmet (or gloves) on a bicycle because it sucked and was uncomfortable. Then it dawned on me that maybe I should put some of the same thought/money into a bicycle helmet that I did into the $500+ Arai full-face I wore on the motorcycle. A good bicycle helmet doesn't cost nearly that much, but the difference between a $35 helmet and a $100 helmet is night and day.
This young kid in the bike park wasn't wearing a helmet, I asked him why not, he said "because I'm good at this" I said "so are the pros and they still wear a helmet" he look at me and had nothing to say. Happy new year 🥳
As a person born in the early 1970s, I never wore a helmet as a kid. I didn't even know it existed as no one I knew had one. I started cycling again in 2003 after I met the woman who became my wife. Since then we rode about 2000 miles per year (every year) on mostly limestone trails within a 45 minute drive of our house. For 18 years I did not use a helmet ever while cycling. The main reason is I had never fallen off my bicycle or even came close to falling so I considered the risk of hitting my head extremely low. Then on August 20 2021 I was 12+ miles into a bike ride on the trail and I was a bit tired as I had inline skated before the bike ride and it was a hot day. I came to a point in the trail which was paved just after a long bridge. The part of the trail was curvy and had a slight down hill with vegetation and a bit of a valley making it difficult to see more than a few feet ahead. When I got past one bend I looked up and could see a a very large ATV blocking pretty much the entire pavement (atvs are not permitted on the trail). I panicked and jammed on both of my hydraulic brakes as hard as I can (as I was going 20MPH or so) and on top of that I had some problems with the rear brake performance it caused me to flip over my handle bars landing on my chin and right arm. At this time I had a helmet for inline skating (started that in 2019 for the first time) which I wore every single time I skated because the chance of falling in inline skating is so much higher but I didn't wear it ever for cycling because it would be too hot and heavy and I didn't consider the low risk of falling worth that. Anyways a few months later I finally purchased a proper bicycle helmet for a little over $100US. It's much lighter and has way better ventilation than the one I wear for inline skating. I wear it every time I ride my bicycle.
Grew up racing MX and my dad had one simple rule no matter when we were getting to ride, if we were missing any piece of our safety gear we didn't ride. Simple as that. But it was different when it came to our bicycles. My brothers and I were given helmets and told to wear them but never did. It wasn't until I was in my 20s racing BMX that my mentality changed, I again was doing an activity where it was required and it just made sense, it carried over into my everyday riding. Having kids also reinforced my attitude, wearing a helmet in any activity where it's recommended, skating, snowboarding etc. Ultimately teaching my kids where it's second nature to them just like putting on a seat belt. My youngest daughter doesn't leave without her helmet even when taking a short ride across the park to a friend's house. I never have to remind them or lecture them about helmet safety, it's just what they know to be normal.
I'm thankful I started wearing them whenever I had a son if it wasn't for that he would have died without wearing one about 10 years ago. He was going down a hill lost control and hit a light pole. The neurologist inside of the emergency room said the only reason he was still with us was because of the helmet.
Great video - I had a very good buddy who was a pro racer and one of the most competent cyclists I’ve ever known .., and he was stuck by a car and unfortunately passed .., so you truly never know what’s coming down that road - might as well be protected as you can .
I grew up in the 90s and 00s BMX community. I always wore gloves, shin pads, and eventually knee pads once they started making them without the bulk. Only ever wore helmets at skateparks or if i was doing something really gnarly. After witnessing a few superbly talented riders suffer TBIs and basically need to relearn how to exist, I started wearing it any time I got on any of my wheeled things. I couldn't let that be me and have my kids witness that.
I was convinced to always wear a helmet when we were 12 and a friend got ran over by a car. Luckily he was wearing a helmet, so he did not hurt himself badly. Also, about 10 years later i was going down a hill and at the end there was a roundabout which i took face first, i could have burned my whole face against the road, but the helmet took most of that.
Definitely not the same story as mine, but definitely has a similar tone… skidding across a fresh gravelled tarmac at 13 started me wearing one, then in my early 30s I broke a helmet on a country trail with a 40mph impact on a farm track… almost certainly saved my life. Seth, thank you for making videos like this: safety first, fun all the time.
I think the only reason I started to wear a helmet (5 years ago) is because of you Seth. I been watching your videos for so long and probably in my head it programmed that skilled riders always wear helmets and I shouldn't take advice from regular commuters of what is considered cool or not especially when it comes to wearing a helmet. Thank you for that, it might save my life someday!
@@MorryB lmao right! I don't know how I made it out of the 1990s in all honesty, Never wore a helmet once during my prime biking years, And I had many crashes and near holy hell misses that I I laughed off rather than actually think what could have happened.. Crazy. My kids certainly do! I drummed it into them, Do what I didn't.. Like many things in my life lol
I think for me, especially when commuting, its about the other people on the road. I trust myself (likely) not to crash or fall but not so much the others to notice me or do something stupid
Really glad you made this video. One of the worst falls I took on my bike was a flat dirt road doing nothing crazy. ALWAYS wear a helmet, brain damage is NEVER worth it
This is the same story as me, in regards to helmet use. I went from an anti-helmet evangelist who got multiple tickets for riding without one in my 20's to someone who wears one for every ride. I forgot mine the other day and it felt so weird and dangerous that it kinda ruined my ride. I flipped over my handlebars a few times when I was younger and luckily landed on my shoulder, but it wasn't until someone I knew got a traumatic brain injury while riding that really put it into perspective... that it's very difficult to protect your head when you fall in certain positions. It's $100-200 every 5 years or so to have that peace of mind. Worth it to me.
I’ve noticed helmets have gone from “not cool” to more mainstream. Support from big community names like Seth and Scotty Cranmer (good example) coupled with better helmet technology has likely overall improved helmet usage. Hoping the next generation follows suite with their riding.
When I'm asked about why I wear a helmet, I have 3 points I make: One: at this point doctors can fix most of your body one way or another. If it's not immediately fatal, they stand a fair chance of fixing it with much cost and pain. If it's a brain injury, all they can say is ""good luck relearning how to do all the things you used to be able to do." If treating the swelling doesn't fix it, if there's no infection to treat with antibiotics, there just isn't much that can be done for the interconnected mass of neurons that is your brain. Two: You are restricted in your movement while straddling a bike. Unlike walking, you can no longer take a few stumbling steps to the side or easily turn 90 degrees and catch yourself. If you have lost traction or something that limits your ability to maneuver on the bike to recover, you will have trouble catching yourself without injury. And Three: while you're unlikely to need the helmet, you will never see "that one accident" where you need it beforehand. No one has bad crashes on purpose (yes there are caveats, I don't care about the exceptions). It's the same reason people buy dashcams and insurance, you generally can't see every problem ahead of time. In 27 years of bike riding, I have needed the protection on one brief incident. But on an easy MTB trail, I sure as hell wasn't expecting to need it and I am very glad I had it. Went head first over the handlebars after dropping the front wheel in an unexpected deep hole and walked away with a nose that felt flat and maybe a mild concussion that never caused much of a problem. Only cost of the accident was buying another $90 dollar helmet (Giro Hex I think) that turned out to be more comfortable and cool than I expected. My aunt lost a family friend after he fell over on his bike at low speed. Shouldn't have been much of an issue; but, with his inability to get his feet under him, he fell over and hit his head on the concrete curb. Had serious head trauma for a few months and died from consequences from it.
Amazing & informative video. In Australia helmet use is the law so I always wear one. Also wear a helmet for snow skiing, had the snow helmet on riding the skitube train at Perisher & someones ski fell onto my protected head - no problems! You just never know what is going to happen!
I think there’s a lot of non-helmet people that changed because of similar experiences. I grew up skateboarding in the late 90s with that same “helmets are for nerds” attitude but wore one when I’d snowboard because my parents were there and there was no option. I ended up catching an edge and still having a seizure and a TBI from the crash, but I don’t doubt that it saved my life.
I've had accidents but it hasn't changed my non-use of helmets for casual cycling. They're bulky to store, uncomfortable, difficult to wear with hoods/beanies, and don't reduce overall injury risk much.
Thank You Seth! In 54 years of Bicycing I just bought My 1st Helmet. You make a very compelling scenario for wearing a Helmet. I'm that 'uncle' that just wouldn't wear one.
I get it, helmets won't do much in a car crash situation or in a gnarly descent. Helmets and other safety gear apparently makes you less human to motor drivers too. They rarely wear helmets in the Netherlands and get very few bike injuries, showing that the real way to address the issue is proper infrastructure. However I've crashed 3 times and they were all slow dumb falls that were 100% my fault. The helmet was a factor once, saved me a few scratches. That's enough for me to keep wearing one.
Another helmet saved my life comment for anyone who needs convincing. Happened when I was a kid and have worn a helmet for any bike related activity ever since. I got a new bike, turns out it was put together bad, front wheel came off as I was going downhill, I flew over the bars, landed straight on my head, even bounced and got air multiple times, landing on my head every time. If I wasn't wearing a helmet, I couldn't even imagine what my head would look like after that. In other words, I would be dead.
Helmets: Before i even got onto my first balance bike, my parents put a helmet on my head. They taught me to wear a helmet before i got close to sitting on a bycicle. I am thankful for that. I never really needed that helmet, but a few bad bails on some local dirt jumps made me happy to have a helmet. Things could have been worse for me.
im being completely honest here: I grew up with very strict parents that always wanted me to wear Helmet even when I was skateboarding, all the way up until the age of 18 (it was so embarrassing for myself!) and I always felt insecure about wearing a helmet for that reason and obviously because of 'not looking cool' around my friends especially when skateboarding and trying to pick up girls while looking 'cool'...o was always jealous of my friends who didn't have to wear helmets haha So nowadays Im still ignorant and I don't want to look like a "dork" haha but really , i only have slow bikes and i strictly ride my fat bike around , and I rarely skateboard at all anymore ... but when I'm bar hopping and riding my fat tire bike instead of driving to avoid DUI's, I wear a helmet because i know how easily I can lose my attention span when riding my fat bike drunk, and that has come in handy a handful of times haha but when I ride my fat bike every day I take off my helmet (when Im sober) ... So long story short I only wear a helmet when I'm riding after drinking haha but maybe when I get older and no longer care i could see myself wearing one full time! 😂 (im 34 years old)
I know two people who were travelling at low speed who came off their bikes and hit their head on a low wall and a kerb, both sustained traumatic head injuries one can hardly talk, you dont have to be cycling fast to have a high risk of head injury because of the way people fall from bikes, helmets are easy to wear and much better than the alternative.
Yeah... I understand the argument that riding casually on a greenway is relatively low risk but shit does happen, even at slow speeds. My dad fumbled clipping into his pedal and fell over sideways going 0 mph. Snapped his femur at the hip joint. Not that a helmet would have helped in this situation, but it was just a fluke accident with serious consequences. I think that the way you fall from a bike is just more dangerous than falling from a standing position at similar speeds. Your feet are on either side of the bike and it just becomes a lever slamming you onto the ground. At least people that don't have a lot of experience bailing off of a bike.
@@williamreinhard My thoughts exactly, when you fall from a standing position you automatically put your hands out, I think on a bike most people seem to just keep holding onto the handlebars whilst thier head plummets to the ground. Hope your dad made a full recovery bud 🙂
As a counterpoint to this, I had a bike crash about 3 years ago... I had a helmet on. My front wheel went out from underneath me, and I flew off into a lamppost. I hit it with my left cheek.. My helmet didn't help at all, hell, it didn't even knock the glasses off my face! What it did do is fracture my face... I now have a titanium plate holding my left eye socket together... I'll always wear a helmet, but I'm also aware they only protect against certain impacts.
Nice video. Born in 81, I’ve never worn a helmet until a few years ago. Heck in the early 2000s I used to trail ride without one. Too much to loose to not wear one, even going around the block.
You tend to learn very fast why you wear helmet when you bike everyday in urban settings. After the first crash when you realize that your head would be like an overipe watermelon on the pavement you either wise up or end up as an organ donor. Same for gloves : after turning your hands into minced meat they start to make much more sense. And the problem is even when riding slow the speed is enough to turn your brain into mush if it hits the pavement.
Great video, unfortunately I am one of those people where I only where a helmet when absolutely necessary. For example, on my local trails that are paved railroads I never have one.
I had a moment like this, When I was like 11 I was riding around on my bike no helmet until I fell off the sidewalk causing my tire to scrape against the sidewalk Dibit And fall nearly hitting my head, wore a helmet ever since
I still don't really use one when i'm on the road, i'm a complete idiot. My cousin many years back simply went up a curb, lifted the front wheel too high and hit the back of his head, lost some of his memory and had taken a while for him to remember peoples names, I need to start wearing one all the time.
@@difflocktwothere's a study about this subject and one RUclips content creator did a video about this subject. The bottom line is that no matter what the Netherlands is safer than the US, most probably because safety in numbers that makes drivers respect cyclists (their families also ride bicycles) and better cycling infrastructure (bike lanes).
Lack of helmets are estimated to result in about 150 deaths and 3500 serious injuries in the Netherlands each year. But given the culture, no one is willing to address the issue.
What's funny is that my roommate rides a motorcycle and he's in the "full safety gear all the time" camp. He thinks I'm crazy for the kind of speeds I hit while "only" wearing a helmet, some bike gloves, and safety glasses.
Over here in the Netherlands helmets are even more a topic as the cycle nation we never really bothered with them and for the most part really that went quite well. However in the big cities more and more people show up who have not been raised in this culture, who did not ride their bikes from the moment they learned to walk and hence do not know how to work with them in traffic. Add to this a growing number of ebikes which even at the EU limit of 25kph go faster than most people normally would cycle (18kph) and the danger is just increasing. Most people are just not able to properly judge traffic when they go faster than they are used to and other traffic still has to adjust to many bikes being faster to now. To this end I now ride with a helmet, not because I am afraid I am the one to crash, I only crashed 3 times in my life and worst was the first as a kid with a broken wrist, the other was black ice I expected to be there so went down knowing and a front tire blowout, again nothing to bad got to slowed down and with my Judo background I know how to fall. So I am not afraid of myself buggering it up, but I am afraid of the other traffic, I been noticing a steep increase to the number of evasive actions and emergency breaking I have to do on my daily work commute. So I bit the bullet and got a helmet and believe me I got a good one and comfy one, but I still hate the darn thing, I get hot really easily so it not an enjoyable experience to have anything on my head, but some discomfort would be well worth it if some idiot in a car decided to just sweep me up.
indeed - so sad for you being hot and bothered in Netherlands. (Your arguments seem in line with observations that the younger generations simply can't be bothered with learning culture and how to do it like everyone else. They want the world to be like them - chaotic and impetuous.) cheers from Australia.
Not convinced that I always need a helmet. Jumping off your bike to grab a pipe is inherently a high risk activity. Leisurely riding a bicycle is not always a high risk activity. It can be dependent on surroundings, but not just because you are riding a bicycle. Helmets in some cases give people an unwarranted sense of security, you know like jumping off your bike to grab a pipe.
Exactly, completely agree. I feel like this was a pretty weak argument for wearing helmets when engaging in normal riding. Sure, wear one if you want to engage in risky behavior; but my trip to the grocery is far from being the riskiest thing I'll do in a day 😂
I like to tell myself that the riskiest thing I do each day is commute to work. Not because of my behaviors, but of those factors that are less in my control. Having had close calls in cars, motorcycles and bikes, it's the two wheeled contraptions that I feel more vulnerable in. I first had a car pull out in front of me when I was 11 or 12. Still remember it to this day. These days, it's still extremely annoying and feels like more often due to the amount of distractions. Only so much you can do...might as well consider that helmet 😎
@@nathan.landon Yeah - I totally understand that risk is all relative and pretty personal. Cyclists (and motorcyclists) don't quite get the respect they deserve here. Really wish we had better infrastructure. 🙂
@@nmnate Agreed 100%. I used to commute by bicycle in 2007-2010ish... Smart phones were what I identified as the big risk. Helmets can't solve that risk.
Working at a shop, I used to never wear a helmet during a test ride or to go grab lunch. Then, one day, during a test ride, something happened to the bike, it failed and sent me flying, whacking me in the face with the bars and giving me some pretty severe road rash. Even lost some teeth. Now I wear a helmet 99% of the time. The only time I don’t is when someone asks me to run out and diagnose a sound on their bike quickly, where it’s one lap around a roundabout and back. For some reason I always fear people judging me for wearing a helmet.
Studies have shown that people who wear helmets are more likely to get into accidents. They take more risks because they feel protected. Cars around them take more risk around them because they are protected. I am fortunate enough to live in the Netherlands, where only small kids and tourists wear helmets. Cycling here is safer than driving a car. Helmets are not the solution, better infrastructure is. And helmets are stopping that from happening. "Cycling here isn't safe!" "Oh you should wear a better helmet"
If you’re good on a bike, you don’t need a helmet unless you’re doing hairy stuff. XC mtb or in the park with your kids. DH mtb and road bikers should wear them.
So the crash finally happened. I was driving on me mountain bike on the road while this grandma stops for a bike in front of me. (me being like 3 meters behind the biker in front of me) She was gonna turn right while I was driving on the bike road separated from the main road where cars drive on. (priority road, so I go first.) She stopped for the biker in front of me but when I came along she went full throttle... I flew over the car did a flip and landed on the berm beside the road... Knee cap broken and a fragment displaced in that same knee cap. both knees bruised, hands full with wounds and they checked for both of me big toes if they wer broken, luckily they wer not. And this is exactly the point, do I now need to wear knee cap protection and heavy duty working gloves only because some stupid car can hit me? And that is the whole point of the discussion, cars are the devil in this scenario and not us needing to wear a helmet. The crazy grandma should have paid attention to the road and not her little dogs and daughter. But because they don't, you come with videos like this and claim anything of this coulda be avoided with a helm. If i wor a helmet I would have to replace it only because it was in a crash even while me head and back never took the full hit. You learn how to fall which this proves once again, me knees wer bruised and broken because of the hit with the car and the bike frame. Me hands took wounds because of taking the hit of the flying / fall and once again they made for that, they all fine already a week in. We should riot to bann cars, not riot to wear helmets! wake up!
As soon as I could get away from parents, I ditched my helmet. In college my uncle made living with him difficult until I just gave in and wore it and cultivated the habit. 6 years later, my bike experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly, and I woke up in the hospital a few hours later with only a few skull fractures, ruptured eardrum and a concussion. I think in 20 years by that point, that's the only time I hit my head biking and I was no stranger to accidents.
My father-in-law has always been a „No helmet“ person and just wore it because we told him to do so. Then, he had an accident and crashed with his head on the sidewalk - just on the edge where the traffic lane begins. The helmet broke into two pieces, but his head was completely intact. That is when neither him nor anyone else in our family started a discussion ever again about the cons of helmets, because the pros are obvious.
And, by the way, I have also discovered Leatt helmets last year and they fit perfectly!
Happy New Year from Germany and thanks for your videos😃
I just shared a similar story about my dad cracking his helmet in two before seeing your comment haha. Thank God we have smart dad's showing us the way!
The exact same thing happened to me and although I did wear a helmet, that event solidified the choice to always wear one no matter what. I can still remember falling in slow-motion realizing my head is going for the edge of the street and bouncing off of it.
My dad was the same just wouldnt wear a helmet at all , until he seen my last crash, he now always wears his helmet when out and about
I had a similar accident accept I avoided hitting my head because I knew it would hurt.
I do wear and promote wearing a helmet but there must be some clarification. Helmets protect primarily from "head" injuries. However, "brain" injuries are another topic. It must be understood that if you crash your bike with a helmet on and smack your helmet protected head on a hard object there is a very high chance that you are going to have some sort of brain injury yet there may be no sign of head injury at all. Most common is a concussion. It could be argued that it may be less severe, but it will probably still occur. Just look at football players. They wear some of the most advanced head protection money can buy, but they still get brain injuries. The best protection is learn how to ride, learn how to fall, and wear a helmet.
As a trauma nurse, I’m glad you’re making this video. I’m in S.FL and we constantly see unhelmeted traumatic brain injuries and they are not “cool.”
never see head injuries in any other activity, of course, only in "bike injuries". why not in cars? why not post the numbers for every type of accident, vs your selected pet peeve. broken necks and back are far more common in cyclist wrecks.
@@gregknipe8772 I don’t know what you’re trying to say here
What about all of the injuries that you don't see because they never make it to you, do you think some of them may have survived had they been wearing a helmet? I'll admit that wearing a helmet isn't a panacea, but it almost all cases, it's going to make a bad situation less bad.
@@gregknipe8772because it’s relevant to the video obviously
@@gregknipe8772why don't you just wear a helmet? It protects that bowl of noodles we call a brain in the case of an accident. You NEED that organ to work correctly to lead a normal life. And if one day there was an effective, cheap and non intrusive means to protect against back and hip issues in a wreck we would be wearing them. Like everyone wears helmets.
Ok Seth, you have done it. Your brilliance has convinced me. I was a cycle courier for 6 years, i rode 50 hours a week back then, flying in city traffic.
These days i ride everyday again, i love down hill single track, commute, school runs. ALL WITHOUT a helmet.
Never hurt my head in all of these years, 100,000's miles.
Seth you have done it. Buying a helmet today. Thank you brother.
Ill stick without, I already run no brakes. Half of BMX is looking cool XD
@@gunsrfun378 YOLO mutha b!tches is why!!!! Where we you when I was in college and partying like no other. 🎉
Great ❤ your ability to change 😊
I hope you never have a reason to thank your helmet, but I thank you for wearing one.
@@gunsrfun378 Some people don't have anything worth protecting up there, tell me how cool you'll look in a hospital bed.
My dad was mountain biking with my brother, i was not there but my dad turned his head around to make sure my brother was okay going down a pretty big hill, then he went off the trail at 20+ mph and his front wheel got stuck in some bushes and threw him over the bars and he went head first into a rock. The doctors said the helmet 100% saved his life and he was lucky to walk away with only one broken vertebrae
Was there any lasting injuries?
Did the doctors have evidence to back up their assertion?
@@SkiLifes Nope
@@FirstNameLastName-ev3jk technically no, not really but if you go over 20mph head first into a rock withOUT a helmet, your probably going to dead or wayyy more injured than just one broken bone
@@FirstNameLastName-ev3jkas the guy said, technically no, so why don't you give it a try? Go 20+ Mph in a trail and then go off course then when the slope is steep enough throw the bike aside and jump off it simultaneously towards the front onto a sharp rock without a helmet, let's see if you make it out. And if you do I would like to know your physical condition. How about it, you up for it?
What timing. My dad is in his 70s and has been into extreme sports his whole life. Never wore a helmet and still doesn’t. Now he just cruises on his bike, but he still rides ~90 miles week. Just yesterday he wasn’t paying attention and hit some landscaping rocks on the side of the road. Big crash and huge gashes all over his head and fractured c1-3. Had to get surgery and will never be the same. All could’ve been avoided with a helmet but he hated getting told to wear one, especially coming from a time where no one wore helmets. Seth makes very good points here. I’m guilty of not wearing a helmet when I should and I’m going to change that.
I'm your dad's age and I ride every day. I live in a small community with a 20 mph speed limit and no through traffic so I often fail to put on the helmet here - I shouldn't and I've been convinced its time to change. At my age its not who'll hit me that scares me but what a fall can do to me.
Prayers for a quick recovery
😮 just like those who hate seatbelts . They only wear when they see cops... its for u not the law....
Helmets are a must for me... have fallen down several times and my head was saved from hitting the tarmac because I always hv a Helmet on... ❤
Hope he is good
I used to not wear a helmet bc the ones I tried from Walmart were uncomfortable and not cool. Then I was skateboarding one day when I got hit and run by a car. Spent the next week in the trauma ICU with multiple brain bleeds and multiple facial fractures. I was lucky enough to make a full recovery and I don’t remember any of the incident or hospital stay. Now I have a fox dropframe helmet that I wear religiously. Seeing the stress I put my family and friends through by not wearing a helmet and the results of that choice was enough for me to change my ways and advocate for others to do the same. Thanks for making this video.
In Australia helmets are mandatory. We also have an unwritten rule that if you pass a small kid on the trail you have to say 'cool helmet' to encourage them, especially if they are on the bike with an adult who is walking.
And by what I read the law had an effect of reducing bike ridership and overall not improving safety. I am totally for encouraging people to use helmets, and teaching them to use them right. But I am also totally against mandatory laws, cause it reduces bike ridership and reduced bike riders on the streets means more risks for the ones left. Bicycle safety comes from good infrastructure and good education of motorized drivers. Both of which are harder to get if there are fewer people on bicycles on the streets.
@@jantonioskI've never seen that statistic before you might need to show your work. If you normalise helmet use then people who grow up in a mandatory helmet wearing society barely question it.
Most people I know in Australia at least have a bike and the thing that stops them from riding is poor infrastructure.
The unwritten rule you mention is the best thing I’ve heard!
@@jantoniosk do you have any stats to support that? You can have all the good infrastructure you want, it won't stop someone from having a brain injury if they hit their head off the pavement at speed.
By your logic, we should see a decrease in the use of cars based on enforced seatbelt laws and speed limits. And mandatory insurance, registration, and license to operate.
@@bobbyellis5006 Seems my responses are not getting posted here anymore for soem reason.
Your comparison does not hold up. Your Seatbelt and speed limit is not something EXTRA you have to buy and put on your head every time you ride your car. And there are clear, objective and unambiguous data showing the positive effects (and I am unaware of any negative ones). Not true regarding Bicycle Helmets.
Look up cientific data online and you will find data on both the studies "proving" Helmets efficacy (quick teaser: most studies are quite biased, flawed and even disingenuous) as well as whole population analysis cases which show no positive effect of mandatory laws in regards to safety as well as drop of ridership. Ridership in Australia fell once the mandatory law came into effect and there was no real clear benefit in regards to Head Injuries which could not be explained by other factors.
I know it seems contradictory that making people use a safety device on their head could have no real positive effect when you look at the population as a whole. But you have to factor in all the variables and not just look at the very specific circumstance of one's head hitting the curb in a perfect straight motion. You have to look at all the variables. Many of the more serious Head traumas are caused by Rotational Head Injury, and Helmets do not help with those as well as might even worsen the rotational forces on our monkey brains on the moment of impact.
Helmets seam to help more with the less serious injuries. And that's totally fine. Do incentivize people to use it. But making it mandatory has more downsides than the small upsides it creates for people on bikes as a whole population.
I watched a stranger on a bike path fall after catching the edge of bike path with the front tire. When the paramedics arrived this grey haired older gentleman answered "1962" when asked what year it was in 2011. Despite my former inclinations about "uncomfortable helmets" I have worn a helmet since that day every time I'm on a bike. I'm really glad you made this video and I hope the unhelmeted stranger in everyones life puts on a helmet.
I've also seen this, but the person was wearing a helmet and clipped a tree. Had to tell him Trump wont the election and explain why we were all wearing masks at the hospital at the hospital over and over again.
@@MitchellKinard and then you had to follow up how the masks never did anything and was a huge scam to begin with. Awkward conversation I bet.
Very clear sign of something affecting the brain.
I had a previous missed condition that resulted in seizures starting in my 40s (now under control-an electrolyte disorder) just a few years ago-nothing to do with any impact-and the first thing I consciously recall was being in an ambulance and correctly telling the paramedic my name, birthdate, what year it was, and they were pleased to hear that, as I had previously told them it was 1998, Clinton was president, and I couldn’t recall my birthdate.
I hit someones folded up all black bike they left on its side in a running/biking path during a rain storm while they stood across from it (aka I saw them, gave them extra space, and hit their bike). I was luckily wearing a helmet that day, and after flying 10 feet over my handle bars and landing on my back, my head hit the ground with enough force to crack my helmet in half. I was able to walk away with some road rash and nasty case of whiplash instead of in an ambulance in who knows what condition.
I had a stick pop up and get jammed in my front fork, stopping the front wheel instantly. I was going around 20 mph. The rear lifted, and put all my weight on the rear and slid sideways. Almost went over the handlebars. Accidents happen.
Grew up in the Netherlands and never wore a helmet. Now that I’m living abroad I can finally understand why you would wear a helmet on a bike. Infrastructure and road etiquette make a huge difference.
Grew up skateboarding and nobody wore a helmet. Biked around the neighborhood as a kid and never wore one either. Starting mountain biking in my 30s and it never even crossed my mind to ride without one. Got a family to provide for and I like my brain functioning as it should.
And since mandatory helmet laws have been in place where are all the kids biking? Nowhere in my my city.
@@trishaleaver3581 what city is that, exactly?
@@trishaleaver3581this is a perfect example of correlation ≠ causation
Is biking round the neighborhood the same as mountain biking? Is roller skating at the park the same as the roller derby that used to be on tv? Is riding a bmx bike around as a kid the same as riding a vert ramp? .
It’s almost as if you inherently know that going mountain biking is different than riding around the neighborhood. And you don’t need some mandate from the government to make decisions for you. Who would have thought!
You have been just lucky!
80's kid here.
Been riding helmetless all my life until recently. A kid jumped in front of me on a bike path as I was on a commute back home - no helmet, no pads, expensive laptop in a backpack, old brakes... ended up crashing to save the kid and banged my head agains the curb. Nothing bad but it made me realise things can happen on a ride that I can't control or forsee... long story short I have two helmets now and looking for a nice full-face for the trails :)
Delighted that you're okay. You could have been a curb stain. Keep that lid locked in 🙏
Glad you walked away without serious injury! If you're looking for a full face, I recommend the Bell Super DH Spherical. It's pricey, but sales can make it hurt the wallet less. It's one of the most comfortable full faces I've found. It's also downhill certified while having a removable chin bar which is nice if you don't want the full-face protection for every ride. There are plenty of other full-face helmets, but I wanted to throw in my ticket for the Bell if it helps.
Happy riding!
This is often my argument-it’s not necessarily that the bike itself is dangerous. It’s the stuff you can’t predict that might happen while you’re on it.
Glad you’re okay.
Few years ago,same situation,going back home,laptop on the backpack,old bike and very stupid me looking to some nice random woman crashed very slow from the side walk to the road head first. I was wearing my helmet but my face got a good hit against the curb and my laptop screen was destroyed in the accident. I always wear helmet on 2 wheels.
@@9starferret Thanks, I'll look around for it - removable chin would be very welcome. I've been looking at Uvex Jekyll for this reason.
Before October 2014, I never wore a helmet unless it was absolutely required, say at a skate park, rip The Incline Club.
Some day in October of 2014, I was going to Allaire State Park, in New Jersey. I was riding my bmx bike.
Before I left the house my uncles house with my cousin, he told us to wear our helmets. When we couldn't see the house anymore, we took the helmets off and put them in our backpacks.
Anyways, there is a big hill you go down on hospital rd in Howell. Went down the road to the trails "lobster jumps, or lobster trails".
We saw the jumps, they were too big for us, so we left. Got back onto the road, and was going toward the big hill to now go up, so leading toward it is a slight hill and I got some speed.
I had mud on my back tire, the tires were semi slicks. No brakes. I was carving like a skater would. I was on an asphalt side path. My back tire slipped, I was still holding the handle bars being dragged by my knees, reaching for the brake lever, realizing there is not one. Fell to the left, hit the side back of my head, inches from my head landing on the grass, unfortunately my head hit the asphalt. I touch the back of my head with both my hands and they were covered in blood. Took my shirt off and put pressure on my wound.
This guy we met at the trail, maybe his name was Stirling, something like that. He had a was getting into his car when he heard me scream. He stopped and picked me up and put my bike on the rack and took me up the hill, to meet with my older cousin to take me home. I went to the hospital and ended getting 8 staples.
Thank you Stirling for picking me up, even though I got blood on your tan dashboard. Thank you, where ever you may be.
Anyways, my life has never been "normal" since then, I don't know what normal is anymore..
I was sensitive to light and loud noises in the beginning. Sirens were scary to me, sound and light, especially strobe lights.
10 years later, my equilibrium is off, after being on an elevator I get so dizzy or vertigo that I need to sit down. I see floaters in my eyes one pupil is bigger than the other. My eyes sometimes shake like if your looking at the perfect times, it feels crazy, my gf saw it and she said it was weird also I can feel and see it when it happens. I get killer migraines still.
Wear your helmet or end up like me or worse, end up like Scott Cranmer that was even wearing a full face.
If you don't protect your head no matter if your barley doing anything worth wearing a helmet, you could end up dead.
WEAR YOUR HELMET!!
My hand is numb, I've been typing so long, lol.
Thanks for the story. People tend to brush these occurrences of as a rarity, but the reality is - barely anyone has a perfect record of not banging their head against something, twisting their ankles and so on. It's one or another; nobody's unscathed.
But for this you have to have the same crash and now with a helmet.
You know what the funny part is? the damage will be worse.
There is no proof of helmets saving life's on bikes because it is not true...
@@Desperado070I don’t think you know how helmets work
@@dumflame Seems like you have no idea how helmets work...
@Desperado070 you dont know how helmets work they break so that your head doesn't. Helmets break because they need to so they protect your head.
Just like you, I grew up not using helmets, actually we thought it was kind of looser. One day, one friend that usually go to work using skateboard arrives at the office carrying a helmet. Someone mocked him, and he said: "I don't care, it’s MY head". Since that day, I started to use helmet every time I mount my bike for a ride, even a ride with my young kids. I'm not a looser, it's MY head!
Excellent video, as usual!!!
2:58 the no helmet beach cruiser wheelie into the bar spin, made my day.
I'm an 80's kid and no helmets in my childhood. But then started riding motorcycles in my teens and always wore a helmet, even on the road. Been on motorcycles for 20 years before I found mountain biking. While mountain biking I've always worn a full face bicycle helmet. Not only is my brain important to me, but so is my mouth and face.
In almost 20 years on a mountain bike, most of my more serious injuries happened in the city, while riding casually.
I never leave my helmet off when riding.
It saved my noggin a lot of times. and in unexpected situations.
For example - a huge slab of ice fell more than 20m. Directly on my head.
The bloody fullface helmet saved my life.
Reminds me I accidentally left my helmet on a stone wall while bikepacking in Wales. I went back to get it, tough as Wales is super hilly! But on the way back a massive branch came down and smacked into the ground right next to me breaking up into pieces. Could have hit my head while I did not have the helmet! I looked up and it was actually a crow that dropped it! Crazy. Did not like bikers.
I once misjudged a low hanging branch and hit it hard enough that it almost knocked me off my bike and left a deep gouge in my helmet. It's horrifying to think what could have happened if I was bareheaded.
I mostly ride in the city (like 10 km somewhre and then back) but some times I do longer trips (like 100 km somewhere) on the road. Some people seem to think that helmets are only needed on the road. My experience is exactly opposite. On the road everything is very predictable. I don't even remember having any close calls on the road. In the city the pace of events is much tighter and there is a lot more things you have to pay attention to.
@@Durwood71 When I was working in a meat grinding plant: I found that I was more likely to bump into things because the helmet adds 2 inches.
That could have happened to you just standing still.
A helmet saved my life. I was racing with a team when I was stationed in Hawaii. It was the start of a race, going into the first turn. I saw white jerseys at the front (my team wore white) coming out of the turn and thought to myself, I need to get up there and pull. I got around the corner fine and got out of the saddle and started to sprint to the front. Later I looked at the gps data and saw that I was doing 23mph when I came off the biile. I remember my right foot unclipping from the peddle. I remember thinking, "this will be bad." I remember falling forward and seeing the front wheel turned 90 degrees to the left. I remember waking up on the ground and people were telling me to stay down. I did a systems check. I had less skin than before the crash, but everything seemed to be working okay. My jersey, bibs, and gloves were shredded. When I took off my helmet I saw that all the styrofoam between the vents in the back was completely crushed, only staying in place because it was glued to the outsr skin. I was driven to the ER, had a chest and pelvic X-ray and a head CT. I walked away with only a dislocated rib and a concussion. One of the women on our team was right behind me when I went off. She later told me she was really shaken up by the crash because she thought I was dead. If it hadn't been for the helmet, I would have been. I still have road-rash scars, including one on my left cheek. From the scratches on my glasses and face I figure that I must have been sliding face down after I was knocked unconscious. But I lived through it and was able to finish out a 26 year career in uniform to include a deployment to Iraq.
What rank were you?
Did you fill out a high-risk activity form?!
@@navigator8222 Major (O-4)
@@adamschackart6859 No
@@navigator8222 What's your mother's maiden name?
In HS, a classmate died falling off a compact car hood going 10 mph from smacking his head on the road..
You can 100% kill or disable yourself on a bike without a helmet.
And yet in college this dingus continued to ride without one. It "looked dumb" and "was a hassle".
After 6 years of dealing with motorcycle gear everywhere I go, a bike helmet is comparatively not a hassle at all.
(At a minimum, much more substantial helmet, jacket, gloves, having to wear pants / boots mid summer)
my friend died after getting hit by a suv, instead of wearing helmet lets ban cars
There has been a massive shift in helmet use at ski resorts in the last 25 years. Our understanding of TBI has started to make differences and I think that will continue to spread to bikes.
Downhill skiing has a VASTLY greater risk of taking falls and getting serious injuries (including head injuries) than just riding a bicycle in a normal, safe manner along road or bike-path.
The death of Sonny Bono is what caused that change in the skiing world. Prior to that many people didn't even know ski helmets existed.
@@petesig93I am not sure that is true. I think if one is competent and in control and not pushing ones boundaries, for either sport, risk of injury can be very low but not zero. It is very important to learn how to fall safely to reduce the risk of a head injury regardless of helmet or not (helmets are not a panacea and have some mild downsides for sure). Sliding and/or rolling to break falls is key.
I'm from Seth's generation and did lots of mtb and alpine skiing (including race training) without a helmet. I started wearing a bike helmet first on roads because cars hurt. I got a rec ski helmet because they are warmer than hats. I never had a fall in either sport where a helmet would have helped until my first ski season wearing one. Freak accident from pushing boundaries and I smacked the back of my helmet on the rim of a metal barrel for the snow guns. Would have cracked my skull open without it. So yes, they are great to wear in both sports.
What I will say is people do overestimate the value of helmets (even though they do indeed save lives). They are fantastic for protecting against skull fractures. Nobody wants their skull split open, and for that alone they are 100% worth wearing. In terms of concussions, they probably help a small amount, but that is not the reason to wear a helmet. I know lots of people who suffered major concussions wearing helmets. The best way to protect against concussions is to develop strong neck muscles through training. Ski racers who do gym programs targeting the neck have fewer concussions on average.
@@jamesroscoe7555 helmets for car collision impacts are of near-zero actual benefit. ALL helmet manufacturers make this quite clear in their literature. The Australian Standard for Bicycle Helmets was developed to simulate a fall from 2 metres onto concrete (or a sub-20kmh impact).
@@petesig93 Sure, serious collisions with cars will probably overwhelm a helmet, but many bike-car interactions are low speed but dangerous for cyclists. Eg dooring. All it takes is a fall onto concrete or the edge of something solid to potentially crack ones skull.
When I was a junior studying Physics at Uni, I had an allergic reaction that left me unconscious in a bathroom. I woke up lumped over the toilet with the right side of my skull cracked and a broken nose. I forgot how to do math, a chunk of my second language, a loss of many memories, and some motor skills. I went from nearly graduating with a physics degree to struggling with basic fractions. Having so much effort (I've never been inherently gifted in mathematics) flushed down the drain nearly destroyed me. It's been a few years and I've recovered much of what was lost but some things will likely never return.
I will always have a helmet on when rock climbing, mountain biking, etc. It simply isn't worth the potential damage
Thank you for this video and thank you for using your platform to encourage safety.
If this video saves even one person from the life I have now or likely one far worse, you've done a great service to the community.
what do you still forget or what memories haven't come back? and did you graduate?
@@primtve_dope9568 Some German has returned, but it's still hard to speak. Reading or hearing it is doable though. Math and other academics took years. I never graduated and couldn't manage when I returned to school. It took a while before I could learn again. Currently I'm planning on an IT career and plan to go through cert courses and whatnot at the same university if all goes well.
I went into trades as a carpenter for a rigging company to pay for medical and for the university fees. Though that job recently came to a close.
As for memories, a lot have come back. Having photos and videos from the past helped a lot to spark them back. Now I have weird phenomenons where a memory is triggered and can be vivid or something like a smell or feeling. Like hearing a song reminded me of walking to class a certain day, riding the bus in highschool, or the stomach pit of a breakup I had forgotten for example.
Though there are some blank spots that I have to be told of by friends.
A trick to regaining my ability to remember was ALWAYS having a notebook on me. It's a small field note one and I wrote everything in it. Conversations, dates, gift ideas, poems, anything that came to mind. And I would study those. After conversations or dates, I would sit in the car after writing out bullet points trying to recall every detail. Eventually I got to a point where I didn't need to write things to remember them and have made a very lucky recovery. I've gotten to a point where I almost feel a guilt for how lucky I got with recovery. Though it is still hard sometimes. I had episodes where I wouldn't remember a day or where I was which was terrifying. Though I haven't had one in a while now.
I know I've kept it vague but I hope that answers some of the question.
SLOC is a thing, it can happen to anyone...
So, moral of the story is people should wear helmets 24/7? Lol
Hello. No helmet guy here… just wanted to share a thought.
Seth here didn’t go through the effort to make this video views or to sell a product or make money there’s no click bait or sponsored ad he made it cause he genuinely cares and that is nice just wanted to give credit where credit is due. You are a gentleman and a scholar sir
This was an honest & objective look into bicycles and helmet use. Very refreshing, Seth!
I used to not wear a helmet, I had one on just to mount a go-pro, crashed, the shattered helmet and lack of injury to myself is the reason I did my 180.
Thanks Seth.
Great video, very important indeed.
Being a mountain biker, I used to leave the helmet at home when I commuted to school. That all changed when one day, an SUV came flying out of a parking lot and right into me. I was lucky to land my front flip on my butt and not my head. I've worn a helmet since and have always demonstrated that for my kids. It's usually the factors outside of our control that can get us.
My 75 year old mother crashed her electric scooter on Christmas Eve and sustained a serious head injury. It is now New Year's Eve and she has not woken up from her emergency surgery. She is laying in a hospital bed with her skull still open from the surgery. I hope this account of what my family is experiencing is graphic enough to convince someone out there not to ever ride without a helmet. I will likely never have another conversation with my mother and a little head protection could have made a huge difference.
I'm so sorry to hear about your Mother. I hope she makes it - it is possible! I lost my Dad in a very similar situation last January. I wish the very best for you and your family. This kind of thing is so very hard.
@tonut.2684 we do have mandatory safety laws for cars. A lot of them. Seatbelts, speed limits, crash safety regulations. Cars need to be registered and insured and drivers literally need to be licensed to use them on public roads.
@@bobbyellis5006cars are significantly more dangerous than bikes. As mentioned in this video, the Tour de France ran for years with no one wearing a helmet with hundreds of cyclists going top speed downhill on twisty mountain roads, and yet fatalities were not common. You can look at any motor sport in the same period and see that helmets, roll cages, flame retardant suits, fire extinguishers etc were required, and they had fatalities every year. The risks are not the same.
And cars have helmets built into them beginning with foam-loaded bumpers (just like bike helmets) and engineered crumple zones to slow the decelleration -- exactly what a helmet is trying to accomplish. Then there are the real helmet analogs inside cars already, by law -- airbags that deploy in front of the head, at the side of the head, and spring-loaded padded headrests that deploy behind the head. The people who try the "you don't wear a helmet in a car" line aren't thinking. They're looking for an excuse to justify their uninformed opinions. @@bobbyellis5006
Shut up
A few years ago I was on a green (easy) MTB trail with a buddy near Redrock Park outside of Las Vegas, NV, when I hit a rock and ended up looking at the sky. I fractured my scapula and tore some ligaments in my shoulder, but my head (and I) survived. It only took a few seconds to go from “easy” trail riding to going over the bars. Thanks for sharing your experience and wisdom.
now what you did with no helmet is just begging for trouble I think we just found this years Darwin award winner...
Are you saying that your helmet helped or something? Because from the sounds of it it seems like a helmet wouldn't have done anything at all for you except maybe prevent a bit of scratches or bruising on the head.
@@MsHojat the helmet had clear dents from the impact. NV trails are not very soft anywhere. Rocks (lots of rocks), cacti (and other sticky things) and hard packed ground. Yes, I believe the crash could have been much worse if I had not had a helmet on. We were about 3 miles from the trailhead. Without my helmet, I completely believe that I would have been dead or severely injured.
I'm of the same generation. Free range kid, no helmet, used my bike to go everywhere. Even as an adult, never wore a helmet. A good friend of mine was an avid cyclist, he had thousands of miles of riding experience. A freak accident where he was crossing a set of light rail train tracks at 5mph, his front wheel caught between the rail and pavement, which resulted in a traumatic brain injury. He was in a coma for a week and in ICU for nearly a month. He's able to function now, but no where near where he was before the accident. He'll never be physically able to ride a bike ever again. That was my wake up call to always wear a helmet.
Yeah, I get it that 99% of the time you will never have an issue on a bike without a helmet. For me, it was about establishing the habit of wearing one just like a seatbelt. Thank goodness, because I hit some ice on a mundane bike ride a few years ago and actually landed on my head. To each their own.
I’m a road cyclist, never used to wear a helmet. I always thought the worst thing that could happen was a car could hit me, and in that case a helmet wouldn’t help a ton anyway. Fast forward to one day I’m testing out some bike tires that were faulty, I slipped and fell off my bike in the parking lot. Seriously hurt me and left me shook up, with many cuts and scrapes on my forehead. From that day on I always wear a helmet no matter what.
The "no downsides" argument is actually what convinced me. Like, what is the downside to wearing a helmet in general? It messes up your hair and is slightly sweatier? Sounds like some pretty minor downsides to me. That's why I wear a helmet any time I'm going faster than running. My dad's a firefighter/EMT and I've heard too many stories of people not wearing helmets when they should be and ending up quadriplegics, in the ICU, or worse due to not wearing a helmet when they should be.
Of course I think it should be personal choice, but in my case my head is shaved. Hell I have to put a hat on anyway, so I figure what's the difference?
Problem is, the 'no downside' argument is fallacious. Look up the scientific reseach. It indicates theat helmets are correleted with a small decrease in cranial injuries, and a significant increase in severe rotational neck injuries. Broken necks.
@@mateusseer5353 plenty of downsides big dawg we both know it.
@@mateusseer5353 sounds a bit like the helmet gave these people the chance to die / be critically injured through a neck injury rather than their brain leaking out on the pavement. nice try though.
@@Amber-tu2jo It might 'sound a bit like' that to you, but that's not logical reasoning and not supported by any statistical or theoretical evidence... nice try though...
At my first job out of college a woman I knew well got reversed into by a van whilst commuting to work on a slow road. Head went through the glass and died later in hospital.
It's not always about what you're doing, it's what others sharing roads/paths do that concerns me.
My friend used to tease me whenever I got into his car and put on a seat belt. "What's the matter, don't you trust me?" he would say. "Oh, it's not, you," I would lie, "It's all the other drivers I'm worried about."
@@Durwood71 funny thing is one person without a seatbelt can cause a lot of harm to those who have one. Seen a video about a side crash with two people in the back, one with a seatbelt, one without. The woman with the seatbelt remained seated but the other one flew right into her and bounced right back in what looked like less than a second. The collision resulted in a neck injury for the person with the seatbelt
@@mad_scientist5597 - yes but that is no reason not to wear a seatbelt (funny thing...), more a reason to fine the adults choosing to put the other occupants at risk (people incorrectly state that they are only risking their own safety, not so...- or in the case of children, it is the driver in control at fault, how much penalty for risking children''s future is too little???.
@@kadmow That depends on the country I guess although I do believe it's true where I live that only the driver can be fined for not having a seatbelt, or if there is a child in the car without the proper protection for their age.
If a child is in the middle and people with no seatbelt on either side then the child is getting crushed as soon as the car turns in a crash but creating such conditions is not an offense. Ah yes the legal systems and its downfalls.
Wait a minute, you went to college and still don't know when to use commas in a sentence? Was it some subpar community college?
This was the best and most well rounded video on helmets I've ever watched. Amazing job Seth and great insight. I used to ride without a helmet as a kid too but right around college, I started getting into road cycling. During that time I recognized that I'm going at much faster speeds on much busier roads than I was when I was a kid and decided to start wearing a helmet. I'm so glad I did because a couple years ago I had really big crash... involved an ambulance, the emergency room, and a broken collarbone, but NOT a caved in skull. Literally remember tumbling through the air and feeling the side of my head smash into the pavement but my helmet saved me from having to learn how to speak again. To this day, I don't feel confident on a bike unless I have a helmet on.
Your point on having a good helmet is also a BIG deal. Modern helmets have gotten so good and they're just down right comfy. Where I live (as with a lot of places) cycling received a big boom due to the pandemic and thankfully so did helmet use. Not wearing a helmet around here is even considered "uncool" which is kind of a complete 180 to a decade ago and it's honestly amazing.
I was going to comment something very similar, this is really a very good video on helmet safety, I've sent this to my nephew,
There wasn’t any actual statistics given. There wasn’t any actual cons given. Well rounded doesn’t mean it supports what you believe
@@ianhughan7325strong disagree. It isn’t any different than any other videos saying “ i didn’t wear a helmet until this happened to me and now I do”. It also kinda shows his arrogance in thinking he knows everything. Seth, along with many others, very clearly over estimate their risk assessment capabilities and you’re not gonna change their minds unless some sort of accident happens to them (as stated in the video by himself)
In the 70's there was no such thing as a bike helmet (BMX arose around 1980...) never even had one to wear if I wanted to. Now I wear a helmet because I embrace the full-on Bike Nerd persona and rock it hard!
Plus, I only get one brain in life.
Keep your brain beautiful! Please wear a helmet. Just in case.
P.S. And it's not bike riding that worries me - it's the others out there, esp. motorists who are driving distracted and not even looking! let alone keeping an eye out for bikes and pedestrians - accidents happen in one second.
LIVE. LOVE. RIDE.
Class 3 + No helmet scares me. I love e-bikes but it's crazzzzy to me how little fear people have on them. Even putting your foot down wrong while rolling on a normal bike at 8 mph you can mess you up big time which is something I forget all the time.
I feel like our risk assessment is definitely too optimistic 😅. Stay safe everyone!
Gen X here. I think a lot of us did not realize the dangers that surround us back then. Thank you Seth for doing this video. I did not know they make other kinds of helmets. I got a walmart one and I hate it because it is so uncomfortable and the straps rubs against my hearing aid.
i was on the bus once and i overheard a guy was bragging about how his hair would save him if he crashed his bike. we lived in a very hilly area. ive seen people fall and brake things like its nothing. his hair would do nothing
ive always been a helmet person... because why not?
The dangers were VERY clear to me in the 80s and 90s. I rode a lot, at one point I would ride up to 70 miles per day. I grew up in Houston and have been hit by cars, high sided and low sided avoiding being hit by cars. I still don’t own a helmet. I’d wear one riding offroad though….
I wish helmet companies would develop products that accommodate hearing aids and cochlear implants!
My dad also wears hearing aids and said exactly the same, took a while to find a good fitting helmet for him that he was comfortable wearing
When I was a teenager (like 14-15) I was at a BBQ and I had my BMX bike and the other kids there had skateboards and scooters and stuff and we were just dicking around in the driveway doing bunny hops and ollies etc, not a helmet in sight (I mean, we were just dicking around in the driveway right...?) My dad's friend comes up to me and asks to have a go on my bike, says he used to race back when he was my age. I gave him my bike, he jumped on and proceeded to pop a wheelie. He looped out instantly and smashed the back of his head on the concrete driveway. He died in hospital that night. If he had a helmet on I am certain he would be here still today. I'm 30 now and I'm a massive stickler for helmet use - if I'm riding my bike, I'm wearing a helmet. Period.
That's terrible to hear man. It happens so fast and no one really expects it. I've seen a lot of footage of people's lives change instantly from just not wearing a helmet. Seeing stuff like that was extremely convincing, made me always want to wear a helmet. I know there's a lot of young people out here still doing tricks and I just think it should be mandatory to sit them down and show them the footage that simple tricks without a helmet has good chance leaving you dead, or wishing you were if you land in your head. I hit my head pretty good twice when I was in middle school. Thanks to God that I'm somehow not impaired from it.
I sometimes commute by bike and I think wearing a helmet is mostly so that motorists feel less worried about running into people riding bikes. I don't think I should have to wear a helmet so that other people can behave more recklessly. However, even without taking the risk of colliding with road traffic into account, there's still a chance I could fall off the bike for whatever reason and hit my head on concrete. Like he said in the video, there are so many other activities where it would make sense to wear a helmet that we don't wear helmets for. Riding a bike with a helmet does make sense though.
Something I've noticed (your mileage may vary) is that motorists around here are much more cautious of giving cyclists space if they are NOT wearing a helmet. Very weird. Put on a helmet and reflective vest and get ready to get close passed a lot.
I still helmet up but it's strange.
That confidence you feel with a decent helmet is one of the (minor but measurable) detractors from helmet safety. You feel safer so you're more likely to do riskier things (like jumping up and grabbing bars). "Risk homeostasis" is one name for the effect.
For road cycling on a bike path that may make sense. For MTB, it can have precisely the opposite effect. Some MTB trails and features require speed and commitment and if you're too cautious you could actually cause a crash, OTBs in particular are usually from hesitation while riding a feature. For road cycling on the road, cars are the main worry, so crashes beyond your control are a very real risk.
Yep
Yeah, but I improved more because of that. I wear helmet when I use my skateboard. Because I feel confident, I learned a bit faster. It's really not different from people not wearing helmet. They are confident despite not wearing helmet, they learn faster because of that.
I only feel that bump in safety if I'm wearing a full face.
Risk compensation and the peltzman effect are other terms used for this. They were based on poor science. The Theories persist despite insufficient evidence.
November I was riding San Clemente trails, Sam’s Club on the emtb. I sent the step jump way too fast, way overshot the landing and drove my head into the ground, had to be going over 20. I couldn’t get my hands out in front of me it happened so fast. I just got this nice Giro Insurgent helmet, I cracked the fiberglass shell got 26 staples in my shin and bruised my back up. But because of that helmet, I was able to get up and ride myself back to my truck and then drive to the ER. My coworkers said with a crash like that it’s lucky you didn’t break your back or neck. The scabs on my shin just came off this week.
A simple evening ride changed my best friend's life forever.
He usually wore a helmet, but this evening he was just going around the bike path with his young daughter.
His helmet was inconvenient to get so he went with out. He thought "at worst a minor accident ill be fine".
After a beautiful evening ride, at the end of the ride there was a stump feature at the side of the bikeway that everyone played on.
Himself had many times enjoyed this feature. As he was about to exit the feature, when he washed out his front wheel and crashed to the ground. Drove his big,pink,and very soft unhelmutted Mellon into a very hard boulder. All of our lives changed in that moment.
He is alive though that was also touch and go the first 24 after " the minor accident " but he, his family, and friends lost all of the little things that made him who he was. He lost large chunks of his life do to memory and or motor function loss.
All of this could have been avoided for a trip to the carpark to get his brain bucket.
Moral of the story:
Even the easiest of trails or rides can end up going south. Bones break and heal, brains don't. Brain buckets save lives in more then one way.
Keep your rubber in the dirt and your brain in a bucket.
I can totally agree that biking is so much safer than other sports even without a helmet! Like 5 or so years ago I got a concussion from a public playset which was so post to be “safe for little kids “ It may not sound like it but walking on a sand pit and falling over sometimes is more dangerous than riding your bike.
I only wear a helmet for long trips, race biking or while cycling in a foreign country. Right now it works for me, as I make sure to ride extra safe and vigilant without one on. As I get older, though, I will for sure start wearing it more. There's no shame there, but the comfort is a big issue, especially having to carry it around all the time as I use a folding bike combined with public transportation almost every single day on all sorts of trips.
I wear a helmet when commuting, the safest principals are to not make assumptions and wear a helmet because even if you don't make assumptions and read the body language of other road users perfectly, it still wont save you from a distracted road user.
When I became a nurse and realized that a simple mistake can lead to being fed through your nose and defecating in your bed for the rest of your life it really struck me. It really is amazing how we go from doubled down to “yeah I absolutely need to wear a helmet now”. It’s also exactly how it happened to me too, Seth 😂
I have a friend who made his kid ride with a helmet, but he never did. He claimed he was a "good enough rider and didn't make mistakes." I asked him if he was willing to risk making his daughter feed him and change his diaper for the rest of her life. People need to be reminded that their actions/decisions affect other people, especially family members.
@@ouisi7Additionally if he wants his daughter to wear a helmet while riding a bike it just doesn’t make sense to not wear one himself. Rules for thee but not for me very likely leads to said rules being ignored once the one enforcing them is looking the other way.
@@skirata3144 - just like all policing, it works better if you respect the authority. (most millenials and zoomers won't understand). lol...
Kudos bud! We all have Certified multi-sport helmets for the skate park and parking lots. And we where just discussing the helmet I want for this summer, when I bike to work. Marley is about to get a mountian bike helmet as well, she wants to start riding around at the lake and at our ranch. Kiddos are the best reason to always have one. Lord knows my helmets have smashed the ground more than once, and I was thankful for it everytime. Thanks for taking the time to tell this story. ✌️
Honestly the note about ebikes was the most compelling to me. By far the most dangerous thing for a cyclist is poor infrastructure causing car-bike encounters, but having cycling infrastructure open to unskilled operators on very fast ebikes is likely to cause more bike bike conflicts..
Was going to say the same exact same thing
Yeah and then when you have those operators on the roads where cars are, it compounds all the problems even more than they already were
Very fast eBikes? Here in Austria and most of Europe the assistance is limited to 25km/h. Even a halfway fit casual cyclist can go faster than those 25km/h on muscle power alone.
@@Mike-oz4cv US is different lol
@@Mike-oz4cv the suburb of Los Angeles where I live has always been an aerospace community. Since Spacex has been here, everyone drives Teslas and their kids have ebikes that can reach 50k/hr. By law, anyone under 15 is required to wear a helmet, but you're not required to have a license to ride these types of bikes. There's almost no legislature concerning them and the legislature body is too weak to impose anything. They don't want to make any decisions. The explosion of e-bikes (which happened during covid) is so great that law enforcement can't even do anything about it. Plus you don't arrest children of the new "middle" class.
Excellent video. You're advice is true and accurate. Don't talk down or be condescending. That is great advice when arguing any topic. I'm a product of the no helmet era but now I would not think about riding without one. I don't crash much but most of my crashes have resulted in having to buy a new helmet. The worst crashes I've had have been on easy trails that I have rode numerous times. It's easy to get overly comfortable on familiar trails or slow paced paths and that is when the unexpected jumps up and bites you in the a@#. It sucks having to spend the money on a helmet but it's a lot better than having brain damage.
I've been following you since the beginning. The quality of your videos has grown to be incredible and your topics and presentation continue to be interesting and entertaining.
Me too :) Skateboard, snowboard and biking for 37 years without any TBIs (besides a faceplant on big jump with snowboard😅). Thought it would never happen to me.
Until an accident 3 years ago. Small declined hill into a park, path was clear, but someone had been standing behind a bush and came out suddenly. Had to steer to the side, hit a hole big and deep enough to lodge the front wheel. The bike tipped 180 and because I was holding on with a solid grip, I flew with the bike over the front wheels axis. The heavy backpack full of hiking gear made the impact velocity increase... Lucky I didn't break my neck. Couldn't walk for 3-4 months.
It can happen anywhere, at any time, at any speed. Being "cool" is overrated. Be safe.
As a side note, it's often when we slack off and aren't riding anything difficult that the worst accidents tend to occur. Because we don't pay attention.
I'll be 54 in a few weeks and I never owned a bike helmet until this year. The tipping point was actually a car accident I was in almost a year ago that made me get one. I was rear-ended and haven't fully recovered yet. That made me realize that I don't heal as fast as I used to. We did so much sketchy stuff in the '80s, before bike helmets were really a thing, and luckily my friends and I survived with the occasional scrape or bruise.
@mrgearhead5151
The whiplash neck piece from the company Back-On-Track is pretty nice to wear. It is said to help improve recovery through increased blood flow and such.
Here in Australia we've had mandatory bicycle helmets laws since 1990. The helmet must also meet the Australian/New Zealand safety standard AS/NZS 2063.
Like driving a car without a seat belt feels not right, riding a bike without a helmet gives me the same feeling.
And having had a few crashes where I've hit my head, it's probably saved me.
That is not the same. Cars are super dangerous, bikes are not.
@@difflocktwo He's not comparing the two, only the feeling of driving a car without a seat belt and riding without a helmet. It's weird. I'd imagine if you don't do either, a seat belt and a helmet would feel weird.
I've (23) been riding without a helmet pretty much my whole life, I've heard the lectures and I reacted in the exact way you said, doubling down. Always found them uncomfortable, too big, and never found one I liked.
This video is really making me consider wearing one for the first time
I'm 30 now, and until 21 y.o. always rode without one.
I've had several painful crashes, both my fault or T-boned on a cycleway by a fellow cyclist, who was going for some reason on a pedestrian path). What made me buy a helmet was a nasty downhill crash where I injured my shoulder and had to go to emergency room. Retrospectively evaluated all the crashes, and decided that even if I can try not to act dangerously and stupidly, I can't stop others from crashing into me, and I'm incredibly lucky never to have broken any limb or hit my head on asphalt. Better safe than sorry
I JUST bought a helmet a few weeks ago. Beyond the desire to avoid painting the streets with my cranial fluid something that helped me get over my opinion that helmets were "dorky" was noticing you always had one on when riding 🤙
I have always hated helmets and never wore them. I even got t-boned by a car on my bmx when I was a kid and spent some time in the hospital, somehow didn't sustain any brain damage just broken limbs. But recently after over a year and a bit of my boss constantly asking "where is your helmet??" and bugging me about it, he just went and bought me a decent one. So now I have no choice but to wear it, I dont like to but I dont like to look like a dick and not wear it. So I guess just giving someone a helmet can work.
Great boss
That’s a boss that actually cares about his employees. We need more like that
I see a dude on my local trails who doesn't wear a helmet but always has a mask on. Strange.
@@wildmikefilmsI’d let him keep riding without a helmet
Natural selection knows best…😅
I did not always wear a helmet either, but I usually did if I was riding off-road on my mountain bike.
What changed my mind to where I wear a helmet no matter what was when I was very slowly going down a hill while mountain biking, and I locked my front wheel. I rolled on my bike (technically not OTB as the bike ended up on top of me as if it were riding me instead), and I laughed the very, very slow crash off.
It wasn't until I got back to my car and saw my helmet that I realized I had crashed head first into a rock, and completely cracked my helmet.
I wasn't going fast, and it did not feel like a bad crash, but if I wasn't wearing a helmet I would have had, at a minimum, a concussion, if not worse.
That's why I wear a helmet, because even a slow fall onto your head is more violent than you think.
Others can do what they wish, but I will always take the two seconds to put on a helmet.
Seth is 100% right about getting what you pay for. I'm a little over 50 years old and I've been riding a bicycle since I was 5 years old and motorcycles since I was 25 or so. I'm a 100% "all the gear all the time" guy on the motorcycle... even if it's 95 degrees - but I never wore a helmet (or gloves) on a bicycle because it sucked and was uncomfortable. Then it dawned on me that maybe I should put some of the same thought/money into a bicycle helmet that I did into the $500+ Arai full-face I wore on the motorcycle. A good bicycle helmet doesn't cost nearly that much, but the difference between a $35 helmet and a $100 helmet is night and day.
However, that $35 helmet is still better than no helmet.
Side note, if you have an Arai shaped head, check out Smith helmets. They fit my head really well.
This young kid in the bike park wasn't wearing a helmet, I asked him why not, he said "because I'm good at this" I said "so are the pros and they still wear a helmet" he look at me and had nothing to say.
Happy new year 🥳
As a person born in the early 1970s, I never wore a helmet as a kid. I didn't even know it existed as no one I knew had one. I started cycling again in 2003 after I met the woman who became my wife. Since then we rode about 2000 miles per year (every year) on mostly limestone trails within a 45 minute drive of our house. For 18 years I did not use a helmet ever while cycling. The main reason is I had never fallen off my bicycle or even came close to falling so I considered the risk of hitting my head extremely low.
Then on August 20 2021 I was 12+ miles into a bike ride on the trail and I was a bit tired as I had inline skated before the bike ride and it was a hot day. I came to a point in the trail which was paved just after a long bridge. The part of the trail was curvy and had a slight down hill with vegetation and a bit of a valley making it difficult to see more than a few feet ahead. When I got past one bend I looked up and could see a a very large ATV blocking pretty much the entire pavement (atvs are not permitted on the trail). I panicked and jammed on both of my hydraulic brakes as hard as I can (as I was going 20MPH or so) and on top of that I had some problems with the rear brake performance it caused me to flip over my handle bars landing on my chin and right arm. At this time I had a helmet for inline skating (started that in 2019 for the first time) which I wore every single time I skated because the chance of falling in inline skating is so much higher but I didn't wear it ever for cycling because it would be too hot and heavy and I didn't consider the low risk of falling worth that. Anyways a few months later I finally purchased a proper bicycle helmet for a little over $100US. It's much lighter and has way better ventilation than the one I wear for inline skating. I wear it every time I ride my bicycle.
Grew up racing MX and my dad had one simple rule no matter when we were getting to ride, if we were missing any piece of our safety gear we didn't ride. Simple as that.
But it was different when it came to our bicycles. My brothers and I were given helmets and told to wear them but never did. It wasn't until I was in my 20s racing BMX that my mentality changed, I again was doing an activity where it was required and it just made sense, it carried over into my everyday riding. Having kids also reinforced my attitude, wearing a helmet in any activity where it's recommended, skating, snowboarding etc. Ultimately teaching my kids where it's second nature to them just like putting on a seat belt. My youngest daughter doesn't leave without her helmet even when taking a short ride across the park to a friend's house. I never have to remind them or lecture them about helmet safety, it's just what they know to be normal.
I'm thankful I started wearing them whenever I had a son if it wasn't for that he would have died without wearing one about 10 years ago. He was going down a hill lost control and hit a light pole. The neurologist inside of the emergency room said the only reason he was still with us was because of the helmet.
Great video - I had a very good buddy who was a pro racer and one of the most competent cyclists I’ve ever known .., and he was stuck by a car and unfortunately passed .., so you truly never know what’s coming down that road - might as well be protected as you can .
Very true. Especially what concerns kids. The earlier you get them into the culture of biking the better
I grew up in the 90s and 00s BMX community. I always wore gloves, shin pads, and eventually knee pads once they started making them without the bulk. Only ever wore helmets at skateparks or if i was doing something really gnarly. After witnessing a few superbly talented riders suffer TBIs and basically need to relearn how to exist, I started wearing it any time I got on any of my wheeled things. I couldn't let that be me and have my kids witness that.
I was convinced to always wear a helmet when we were 12 and a friend got ran over by a car. Luckily he was wearing a helmet, so he did not hurt himself badly. Also, about 10 years later i was going down a hill and at the end there was a roundabout which i took face first, i could have burned my whole face against the road, but the helmet took most of that.
What's less cool than wearing a helmet is a traumatic brain injury.
Had one once. 0/10 - would not recommend.
@onehandwashestheother Yeah but i don't wanna go bleeding out of my head if i can prevent it
A broken neck from a helmet
@@markwilliams5654and if you dont wear a helmet beside that broken neck you would also have your brain spread on the concreat
@@escu396 That is only an argument against fullface helmets,and in most cases the neck injury would have happened anyways.
Definitely not the same story as mine, but definitely has a similar tone… skidding across a fresh gravelled tarmac at 13 started me wearing one, then in my early 30s I broke a helmet on a country trail with a 40mph impact on a farm track… almost certainly saved my life. Seth, thank you for making videos like this: safety first, fun all the time.
I think the only reason I started to wear a helmet (5 years ago) is because of you Seth. I been watching your videos for so long and probably in my head it programmed that skilled riders always wear helmets and I shouldn't take advice from regular commuters of what is considered cool or not especially when it comes to wearing a helmet. Thank you for that, it might save my life someday!
I’m 56 and we did everything in the 70’s growing up without a helmet on! I 💯 agree with you! I always wear my helmet now. Great vid!
We were all junior Evil Knievel's back in the day. Its a miracle a lot of us survived!
@@MorryB lmao right! I don't know how I made it out of the 1990s in all honesty, Never wore a helmet once during my prime biking years, And I had many crashes and near holy hell misses that I I laughed off rather than actually think what could have happened.. Crazy. My kids certainly do! I drummed it into them, Do what I didn't.. Like many things in my life lol
I think for me, especially when commuting, its about the other people on the road. I trust myself (likely) not to crash or fall but not so much the others to notice me or do something stupid
This is one of the reasons most dutch people don't wear helmets
Really glad you made this video. One of the worst falls I took on my bike was a flat dirt road doing nothing crazy. ALWAYS wear a helmet, brain damage is NEVER worth it
This is the same story as me, in regards to helmet use. I went from an anti-helmet evangelist who got multiple tickets for riding without one in my 20's to someone who wears one for every ride. I forgot mine the other day and it felt so weird and dangerous that it kinda ruined my ride. I flipped over my handlebars a few times when I was younger and luckily landed on my shoulder, but it wasn't until someone I knew got a traumatic brain injury while riding that really put it into perspective... that it's very difficult to protect your head when you fall in certain positions. It's $100-200 every 5 years or so to have that peace of mind. Worth it to me.
I’ve noticed helmets have gone from “not cool” to more mainstream. Support from big community names like Seth and Scotty Cranmer (good example) coupled with better helmet technology has likely overall improved helmet usage. Hoping the next generation follows suite with their riding.
When I'm asked about why I wear a helmet, I have 3 points I make:
One: at this point doctors can fix most of your body one way or another. If it's not immediately fatal, they stand a fair chance of fixing it with much cost and pain. If it's a brain injury, all they can say is ""good luck relearning how to do all the things you used to be able to do." If treating the swelling doesn't fix it, if there's no infection to treat with antibiotics, there just isn't much that can be done for the interconnected mass of neurons that is your brain.
Two: You are restricted in your movement while straddling a bike. Unlike walking, you can no longer take a few stumbling steps to the side or easily turn 90 degrees and catch yourself. If you have lost traction or something that limits your ability to maneuver on the bike to recover, you will have trouble catching yourself without injury.
And Three: while you're unlikely to need the helmet, you will never see "that one accident" where you need it beforehand. No one has bad crashes on purpose (yes there are caveats, I don't care about the exceptions). It's the same reason people buy dashcams and insurance, you generally can't see every problem ahead of time.
In 27 years of bike riding, I have needed the protection on one brief incident. But on an easy MTB trail, I sure as hell wasn't expecting to need it and I am very glad I had it. Went head first over the handlebars after dropping the front wheel in an unexpected deep hole and walked away with a nose that felt flat and maybe a mild concussion that never caused much of a problem. Only cost of the accident was buying another $90 dollar helmet (Giro Hex I think) that turned out to be more comfortable and cool than I expected.
My aunt lost a family friend after he fell over on his bike at low speed. Shouldn't have been much of an issue; but, with his inability to get his feet under him, he fell over and hit his head on the concrete curb. Had serious head trauma for a few months and died from consequences from it.
Amazing & informative video. In Australia helmet use is the law so I always wear one. Also wear a helmet for snow skiing, had the snow helmet on riding the skitube train at Perisher & someones ski fell onto my protected head - no problems! You just never know what is going to happen!
I think there’s a lot of non-helmet people that changed because of similar experiences. I grew up skateboarding in the late 90s with that same “helmets are for nerds” attitude but wore one when I’d snowboard because my parents were there and there was no option. I ended up catching an edge and still having a seizure and a TBI from the crash, but I don’t doubt that it saved my life.
I've had accidents but it hasn't changed my non-use of helmets for casual cycling. They're bulky to store, uncomfortable, difficult to wear with hoods/beanies, and don't reduce overall injury risk much.
Thank You Seth! In 54 years of Bicycing I just bought My 1st Helmet. You make a very compelling scenario for wearing a Helmet. I'm that 'uncle' that just wouldn't wear one.
I get it, helmets won't do much in a car crash situation or in a gnarly descent. Helmets and other safety gear apparently makes you less human to motor drivers too. They rarely wear helmets in the Netherlands and get very few bike injuries, showing that the real way to address the issue is proper infrastructure. However I've crashed 3 times and they were all slow dumb falls that were 100% my fault. The helmet was a factor once, saved me a few scratches. That's enough for me to keep wearing one.
😎 This is an important conversation, and I appreciate the insight you’ve provided.
Another helmet saved my life comment for anyone who needs convincing. Happened when I was a kid and have worn a helmet for any bike related activity ever since. I got a new bike, turns out it was put together bad, front wheel came off as I was going downhill, I flew over the bars, landed straight on my head, even bounced and got air multiple times, landing on my head every time. If I wasn't wearing a helmet, I couldn't even imagine what my head would look like after that. In other words, I would be dead.
Helmets:
Before i even got onto my first balance bike, my parents put a helmet on my head.
They taught me to wear a helmet before i got close to sitting on a bycicle. I am thankful for that.
I never really needed that helmet, but a few bad bails on some local dirt jumps made me happy to have a helmet. Things could have been worse for me.
Hey Seth!! I just wanted to say I love your video and it help get me want to get into mountain biking. I’m getting my first bike tomorrow!!
Yooo what’d you get?
@@jacenolmsted6293 giant talon 1.
im being completely honest here: I grew up with very strict parents that always wanted me to wear Helmet even when I was skateboarding, all the way up until the age of 18 (it was so embarrassing for myself!) and I always felt insecure about wearing a helmet for that reason and obviously because of 'not looking cool' around my friends especially when skateboarding and trying to pick up girls while looking 'cool'...o was always jealous of my friends who didn't have to wear helmets haha
So nowadays Im still ignorant and I don't want to look like a "dork" haha but really , i only have slow bikes and i strictly ride my fat bike around , and I rarely skateboard at all anymore ...
but when I'm bar hopping and riding my fat tire bike instead of driving to avoid DUI's, I wear a helmet because i know how easily I can lose my attention span when riding my fat bike drunk, and that has come in handy a handful of times haha
but when I ride my fat bike every day I take off my helmet (when Im sober)
... So long story short I only wear a helmet when I'm riding after drinking haha but maybe when I get older and no longer care i could see myself wearing one full time!
😂
(im 34 years old)
I know two people who were travelling at low speed who came off their bikes and hit their head on a low wall and a kerb, both sustained traumatic head injuries one can hardly talk, you dont have to be cycling fast to have a high risk of head injury because of the way people fall from bikes, helmets are easy to wear and much better than the alternative.
Yeah... I understand the argument that riding casually on a greenway is relatively low risk but shit does happen, even at slow speeds. My dad fumbled clipping into his pedal and fell over sideways going 0 mph. Snapped his femur at the hip joint. Not that a helmet would have helped in this situation, but it was just a fluke accident with serious consequences.
I think that the way you fall from a bike is just more dangerous than falling from a standing position at similar speeds. Your feet are on either side of the bike and it just becomes a lever slamming you onto the ground. At least people that don't have a lot of experience bailing off of a bike.
@@williamreinhard My thoughts exactly, when you fall from a standing position you automatically put your hands out, I think on a bike most people seem to just keep holding onto the handlebars whilst thier head plummets to the ground. Hope your dad made a full recovery bud 🙂
As a counterpoint to this, I had a bike crash about 3 years ago... I had a helmet on. My front wheel went out from underneath me, and I flew off into a lamppost. I hit it with my left cheek.. My helmet didn't help at all, hell, it didn't even knock the glasses off my face! What it did do is fracture my face... I now have a titanium plate holding my left eye socket together... I'll always wear a helmet, but I'm also aware they only protect against certain impacts.
This is not a counterpoint to wearing a helmet.
Nice video. Born in 81, I’ve never worn a helmet until a few years ago. Heck in the early 2000s I used to trail ride without one.
Too much to loose to not wear one, even going around the block.
You tend to learn very fast why you wear helmet when you bike everyday in urban settings. After the first crash when you realize that your head would be like an overipe watermelon on the pavement you either wise up or end up as an organ donor.
Same for gloves : after turning your hands into minced meat they start to make much more sense.
And the problem is even when riding slow the speed is enough to turn your brain into mush if it hits the pavement.
Great video, unfortunately I am one of those people where I only where a helmet when absolutely necessary. For example, on my local trails that are paved railroads I never have one.
I had a moment like this, When I was like 11 I was riding around on my bike no helmet until I fell off the sidewalk causing my tire to scrape against the sidewalk Dibit And fall nearly hitting my head, wore a helmet ever since
I still don't really use one when i'm on the road, i'm a complete idiot.
My cousin many years back simply went up a curb, lifted the front wheel too high and hit the back of his head, lost some of his memory and had taken a while for him to remember peoples names, I need to start wearing one all the time.
Here in The Netherlands almost no one wears a helmet, only people on sports bikes and old people on e-bikes
Do you have more head injuries per captia there?
@@difflocktwo I don't know actually
@@difflocktwothere's a study about this subject and one RUclips content creator did a video about this subject. The bottom line is that no matter what the Netherlands is safer than the US, most probably because safety in numbers that makes drivers respect cyclists (their families also ride bicycles) and better cycling infrastructure (bike lanes).
Lack of helmets are estimated to result in about 150 deaths and 3500 serious injuries in the Netherlands each year. But given the culture, no one is willing to address the issue.
@@bindingcurve source?
What's funny is that my roommate rides a motorcycle and he's in the "full safety gear all the time" camp. He thinks I'm crazy for the kind of speeds I hit while "only" wearing a helmet, some bike gloves, and safety glasses.
Over here in the Netherlands helmets are even more a topic as the cycle nation we never really bothered with them and for the most part really that went quite well. However in the big cities more and more people show up who have not been raised in this culture, who did not ride their bikes from the moment they learned to walk and hence do not know how to work with them in traffic. Add to this a growing number of ebikes which even at the EU limit of 25kph go faster than most people normally would cycle (18kph) and the danger is just increasing. Most people are just not able to properly judge traffic when they go faster than they are used to and other traffic still has to adjust to many bikes being faster to now.
To this end I now ride with a helmet, not because I am afraid I am the one to crash, I only crashed 3 times in my life and worst was the first as a kid with a broken wrist, the other was black ice I expected to be there so went down knowing and a front tire blowout, again nothing to bad got to slowed down and with my Judo background I know how to fall. So I am not afraid of myself buggering it up, but I am afraid of the other traffic, I been noticing a steep increase to the number of evasive actions and emergency breaking I have to do on my daily work commute. So I bit the bullet and got a helmet and believe me I got a good one and comfy one, but I still hate the darn thing, I get hot really easily so it not an enjoyable experience to have anything on my head, but some discomfort would be well worth it if some idiot in a car decided to just sweep me up.
indeed - so sad for you being hot and bothered in Netherlands.
(Your arguments seem in line with observations that the younger generations simply can't be bothered with learning culture and how to do it like everyone else. They want the world to be like them - chaotic and impetuous.)
cheers from Australia.
Lack of helmets are estimated to result in about 150 deaths and 3500 serious injuries in the Netherlands each year.
Not convinced that I always need a helmet. Jumping off your bike to grab a pipe is inherently a high risk activity. Leisurely riding a bicycle is not always a high risk activity. It can be dependent on surroundings, but not just because you are riding a bicycle. Helmets in some cases give people an unwarranted sense of security, you know like jumping off your bike to grab a pipe.
Exactly, completely agree. I feel like this was a pretty weak argument for wearing helmets when engaging in normal riding. Sure, wear one if you want to engage in risky behavior; but my trip to the grocery is far from being the riskiest thing I'll do in a day 😂
I like to tell myself that the riskiest thing I do each day is commute to work. Not because of my behaviors, but of those factors that are less in my control. Having had close calls in cars, motorcycles and bikes, it's the two wheeled contraptions that I feel more vulnerable in. I first had a car pull out in front of me when I was 11 or 12. Still remember it to this day. These days, it's still extremely annoying and feels like more often due to the amount of distractions. Only so much you can do...might as well consider that helmet 😎
@@nmnate You do you bro! Some of us don't ride with cars and aren't "commuting" by bicycle.
@@nathan.landon Yeah - I totally understand that risk is all relative and pretty personal. Cyclists (and motorcyclists) don't quite get the respect they deserve here. Really wish we had better infrastructure. 🙂
@@nmnate Agreed 100%. I used to commute by bicycle in 2007-2010ish... Smart phones were what I identified as the big risk. Helmets can't solve that risk.
Working at a shop, I used to never wear a helmet during a test ride or to go grab lunch. Then, one day, during a test ride, something happened to the bike, it failed and sent me flying, whacking me in the face with the bars and giving me some pretty severe road rash. Even lost some teeth. Now I wear a helmet 99% of the time. The only time I don’t is when someone asks me to run out and diagnose a sound on their bike quickly, where it’s one lap around a roundabout and back. For some reason I always fear people judging me for wearing a helmet.
Studies have shown that people who wear helmets are more likely to get into accidents. They take more risks because they feel protected. Cars around them take more risk around them because they are protected. I am fortunate enough to live in the Netherlands, where only small kids and tourists wear helmets. Cycling here is safer than driving a car. Helmets are not the solution, better infrastructure is. And helmets are stopping that from happening. "Cycling here isn't safe!" "Oh you should wear a better helmet"
That's just a mindset. I've grown up wearing helmets, so I've never thought why not to wear one, when it could easily stop an unexpected injury.
Hi Seth it sucks I broke my arm a week ago on mtb
Unlucky bro
wishing you a fast recovery 🙏
You always stay safe broski, have a fast recovery
Thanks guys
If you’re good on a bike, you don’t need a helmet unless you’re doing hairy stuff. XC mtb or in the park with your kids. DH mtb and road bikers should wear them.
Nice try fed, im not paying my taxes
😂
Taxation without representation
So the crash finally happened.
I was driving on me mountain bike on the road while this grandma stops for a bike in front of me. (me being like 3 meters behind the biker in front of me)
She was gonna turn right while I was driving on the bike road separated from the main road where cars drive on. (priority road, so I go first.)
She stopped for the biker in front of me but when I came along she went full throttle...
I flew over the car did a flip and landed on the berm beside the road...
Knee cap broken and a fragment displaced in that same knee cap.
both knees bruised, hands full with wounds and they checked for both of me big toes if they wer broken, luckily they wer not.
And this is exactly the point, do I now need to wear knee cap protection and heavy duty working gloves only because some stupid car can hit me?
And that is the whole point of the discussion, cars are the devil in this scenario and not us needing to wear a helmet.
The crazy grandma should have paid attention to the road and not her little dogs and daughter.
But because they don't, you come with videos like this and claim anything of this coulda be avoided with a helm.
If i wor a helmet I would have to replace it only because it was in a crash even while me head and back never took the full hit.
You learn how to fall which this proves once again, me knees wer bruised and broken because of the hit with the car and the bike frame.
Me hands took wounds because of taking the hit of the flying / fall and once again they made for that, they all fine already a week in.
We should riot to bann cars, not riot to wear helmets! wake up!
As soon as I could get away from parents, I ditched my helmet. In college my uncle made living with him difficult until I just gave in and wore it and cultivated the habit. 6 years later, my bike experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly, and I woke up in the hospital a few hours later with only a few skull fractures, ruptured eardrum and a concussion. I think in 20 years by that point, that's the only time I hit my head biking and I was no stranger to accidents.
Whenever I see someone riding without a helmet I just figure they mustn't have anything worth protecting up there... 🤷♂