Helmets and head injuries: a thread.

A driver last week challenged my assertion that motorists and their passengers suffer half of all head injuries.

It was a fact that I’d carried in my head for years, but I wanted a source.

So I checked, but here in UK there are no ...
2/ routinely collected statistics on the types of injury suffered by different types of road user.

The best I could find was an old webpage on the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation but few if any of the original studies are online.

It says:

:: The road users most at risk ...
from head injury are pedestrians and young drivers. (Morgan 1988; Ramet and Vallet, 1987).

:: In England, Scotland and Wales, six times more pedestrians and 18 times more motor vehicle occupants suffer lethal head injuries than cyclists. Pedestrians and motor vehicle...
4/ ...occupants also suffer more lethal injuries to the abdomen and thorax. (Kennedy, 1996; DfT, 1)

:: Children are 2.6 times more likely to suffer head injury through jumping and falling than by cycling. (O'Rourke, Costello, Yelland and Stuart, 1987) ...
5/ :: More than 99% of head injuries seen by UK hospitals do not involve cyclists who have been on the road (Derived from OPCS 1 and Thornhill et al, 2000)

:: Helmets for motorists are much more effective than those for cyclists and more beneficial than seat belts, interior ...
6/ padding or air bags. Their potential for reducing injury is 17 times greater than that of cycle helmets. (McLean et al, 1998; Kennedy, 1996)

Perhaps it is time that these figures were brought up to date.

One interesting paper I did find was the Prevalence of Bicycle ....
7 Injuries in Large Urban Hospital (2019), which states: "Of all helmeted patients, significant head trauma seen in 35%. This was like non-helmeted group where 34% had significant head trauma." ...
8/ Wear a helmet if you want to but please don’t evangelise to those of us who choose not to wear one.

One person nagging me to wear a helmet a year ago has led to a year of angst for me. The result is that I've cycled less, and even considered giving it up. /end

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