<p>“the shorts with the padding are wonderful for many people. Keep in mind that they’re mainly for serious cyclists, who ride 50 or more miles at a time, not for commuters”</p>
<p>dmd; I know. My H is a long distance cycler (SF to LA three different times). I was making light. I use my D’s bicycle that has shock absorbers on the seat!!!</p>
<p>HBO is showing “Coma” tonite at 9 pm and would be great to show to kids who don’t want to wear helmets!!! It’s all about Traumatic Brain Injury!!!</p>
<p>Shorts w/ padding are necessities for bikers riding 20-50 miles at a time. Some of them even have special seats with a cut-out in it for um…you know… to hang down. Whatever. </p>
<p>Helmets are non-negotiable. Look at the crazy guys doing the stunts in the XGames - they all wear helmets. Today’s helmets are not the astronaut egghead domes they used to be!</p>
<p>Unfortunately, a helmet was not enough to protect Stephen Murray, a British bicycle moto crosser who crushed 3 vertebrae in a competition in Baltimore a week or so ago. He is still at University of Md on a respirator and feeding tube. He has 2 small children. </p>
<p>I just watched Coma on HBO - how heartbreaking. The scariest thing came in the credits. There is a traumatic brain injury every 15 seconds.</p>
<p>I hope you’re all referring to biking on the main road at high speeds. That’s the only time I’d wear a helmet.</p>
<p>Just riding around campus to get from class to class, I’ve never seen a single person wear a helmet, ever.</p>
<p>Yes, you still COULD fall and hit your head, but the chances of that happening are minuscule compared to the chances of you getting in a car crash. And I haven’t yet heard anyone suggest helmets in the car.</p>
<p>My SIL is a school nurse who thinks of extra things to do to ensure health in her rural elementary school, for example, conducting exercise classes for teachers at lunchtime.</p>
<p>She noticed so few kids wore bike helmets. Somehow she got a grant to provide a helmet to every kid in the district (or every needful kid, I’'m not sure). She gave them out and saw a visible difference.</p>
<p>She said she finally stopped the program when she went to one kids’ home and found one of the helmets upside-down with tomato plants growing out of it, on the parents’ front porch. But the kids were riding nearby with helmets!</p>
<p>I’m sorry to believe that by the time kids are teens parents have lost the battle on bike helmets. If they’re not using them by then, they probably won’t. Sure you might be able to brow beat them until leaving the house with them on, but ten bucks says they take them off soon as they round the corner.</p>
<p>DS is a competitve bike racer and he won’t ride 1/2 block with out a helmet. He’s never seen his parents on a bike without one either. His peer group of “serious” bikers always wear them. Not so with many of his other buddies.</p>
<p>I don’t think teens relate to “you could die without one”. Too far removed from their self-image of indistructible. However a visit with a person with a brain injury might hit home. It doesn’t take high speed or impact with a car, just over the handle bars and land in the right spot and BLAM higher math and complete sentences could be out of the question.</p>
<p>Not the indestructible line again.</p>
<p>Here, let’s put this in perspective. Who here:</p>
<p>-drives
-drinks dark soda
-drinks more than a couple of glasses of wine a week
-eats red meat
-eats more sugar than the doc recommends
-smokes
-talks on the cell when driving (even just every once in awhile)
-has a gun in the house</p>
<p>I can find you someone on their deathbed for any one of those reasons, but that doesn’t mean we should all wear body armor to get into the car. The percentage of people that die or get brain trauma riding at low speeds around their college campus or neighborhood street is extremely minute.</p>
<p>i had a friend who had a bicycle accident in 8th grade and was killed on impact… but that was a fluke accident and they weren’t sure if a helmet would have saved him.</p>
<p>Vyse, go back and read my earlier posts about TBI on this thread. You are sadly mistaken. I spent 20+ years working with traumatic brain injuries and bike accidents were among the causes. You can be going very slow and suffer a significant TBI from a minor crash. I worked with dozens of students who were not able to return to their previous academic/intellectual functioning after what seemed like a minor concussion. </p>
<p>If you are willing to for-go accepting the services of your health insurance and/or medi-caid when you end up in the ER and in neuro-rehab, then by all means, go without a helmet. It is your right. But no one should have to help pay the costs assosiated with personal negligence. (I think this is true of cigarette smokers too, but don’t get me started on that one!)</p>
<p>I don’t doubt it happens, but I’m arguing that it isn’t very frequent. Not frequently enough that I’m going to put on a helmet to ride from my dorm over to the engineering building.</p>
<p>It only takes once and the end result lasts a life time. That’s the problem with playing “russian roulette” with your brain. It doesn’t get fixed. Good luck and watch out for the other guy.</p>