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I use a bike trailer to tow my children. I take them to and from a playground, which is around a 30 minute ride in each direction.
It is 90% greenway, with some sleepy 2-lane connector roads. While I am of course an incredible pedal pumping engine capable of incredible feats, I average only around 12 mph.
The bike trailer has a 5-point harness and an aluminum roll cage.
The problem: Putting helmets on my kids looks fucking miserable. Their heads are cast downward, they have nowhere to look around, and the youngest is clearly upset after around 15 minutes in the trailer. The oldest still has an OK time but is far quieter than when we rode together with a secondary saddle. FAQ says deal with it.
Assume you're a typical parent (I.E. your children are the most important thing in your life and you can't imagine causing them harm through negligence) but you also loathe the vapid stupidity of "better safe than sorry" in the face of all rationality, would you consider forgoing the helmet?
"Other Site" discussions:
I wouldn't bother. Some risk is acceptable, otherwise we would all wear helmets all the time. I am one of the last skiers not wearing a helmet because at the speeds I ski at it wouldn't help me at all. I recently had a bad crash that injured my knee, a helmet would have potentially made me a quadriplegic if it had caused my head to hit the ice wall instead of my leg.
Helmets are not a panacea and have no benefit in many cases. I personally feel like they restrict my field of view and make my neck more likely to be damaged. I have worn one as required for races. This study found no benefit in snow sports. https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ijatt/28/4/article-p173.xml
This sounds like cope.
I snowboard, fast. I can't count the number of times where I've had "I love helmets" moments on the slopes. Snow is softer than concrete, but it's hard enough that I'm sure I'd have had a concussion if I wasn't wearing one, and instead I got up without a scratch. I appreciate you've linked a study, but my lived experience disagrees.
The objection my European skier buddy always had was "well, you don't catch edges like that on skis, so you don't need one", but no matter what's under your feet, if you bail at any speed, you're still falling vertically at least your own height, then tumbling down the mountain after that uncontrolled. Funny enough, same guy now wears a helmet after slipping on ice and bonking his head hard enough to knock some sense into him.
You can get very light helmets. Most don't obstruct your vision, since the front piece is cut away past where your goggles sit. You can get a glossy exterior that doesn't catch on the snow, and if anything presents more of a smooth surface to glide along and not wrench your head any direction that would hurt your neck.
A cope? What am I coping with? Extra convenience and comfort? It would be a cope if I had brain damage from smacking into a tree with no helmet that a helmet would have prevented. That said I think they may be of some help in avoiding skull or skin injuries to the back of the head for slowboarders like yourself.
Snowboarders tend to spend a lot more time on their backs and close to the hardpack and tend to tip over backward and give their noggin a good smack. But unless you're hitting your head so hard that you're fracturing your skull and exposing your brain directly to the groomer you're on, that concussion comes from your brain bouncing off of the inside of your skull from stopping fast, not from hitting the snow itself.
"Results from the four studies8,9,12,13 evaluated show slightly varying results with the majority of the studies trending toward no difference in head injury occurrence when the snow sport participants are either helmeted or not helmeted. According to Dickson and Terwiel,8 head injury rates did not differ by helmet use status. Porter et al.’s9 study demonstrated that helmeted participants were more likely to suffer an intracranial hemorrhage, but less likely to sustain a skull fracture or scalp laceration"
Without going into every study in that review, the obvious flaw is: people who aren't injured don't show up in the data. They're taking people who already have a head injury, and then noting helmet or no helmet.
Yeah, you're still going to have a bad time if you accelerate your head into something solid at a high enough speed, but given that it might happen, I'm 100% going to choose to put foam and plastic in the way to dissipate the impact. If you had to fall onto groomed snow and land on your head, say from a standing position, not even at speed, and I offer you the choice of wearing a helmet or not, would you really prefer not to wear one?
But as some studies have shown I'm less likely to hit my head in the first place due to overall awareness and a sort of "I'm safe to take risks" feeling from using a safety device like a helmet. Yeah if you're going to hit me in the head I would rather wear a helmet, but the odds of you connecting are less if I'm not. Skulls are built to dissipate force as well, it is just a lot uglier than if the helmet does it.
Interesting quote from an article citing an ongoing meta study, "Studies show that helmets reduced non-serious head injuries, such as minor concussions, by nearly 70 percent in the 17 seasons between 1995 and 2012. But to Shealy’s amazement, there was no change in the number of fatalities. “The question became,”he says, “Why aren’t helmets saving people’s lives?”"
"In the early ‘90s, only about 5 percent of skiers used helmets. Flash forward 20 years, and nearly 80 percent of snow riders opt-in." With no reduction in fatal head injuries.
So I think that strikes a nice middle ground with what we are both saying here. I ski at a pace where a fatal mistake is a fatal mistake. Yes a helmet could mitigate some minor injuries, but who is to say I would even have been in a place to be protected from those if I wasn't wearing it?
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No, he's right -- I also ski very fast and have been doing so since well before helmets were a thing -- I used to ski more in places with a lot of hard things (ie. rocks), where helmets might have been a good idea -- but falling on snow is not a problem that needs solving with a helmet. I ski hard and still fall from time to time -- used to be much more, I was quite silly when younger; I've fallen a lot in my life, and taken some long rides too. No helmets, no concussions.
I do also think that the modern prevalence of helmets has contributed to collision risk -- depending on design it may or may not be peripheral vision related (you know you don't strictly need to wear goggles to ski either, right?) -- but hearing and general situational awareness seem to be much more of a problem now than in the past; ie. I can ski up right next to (helmeted) people on a cat track and they don't notice me until I'm several yards ahead of them. It's like they are skiing in a bubble.
Anyways you are neglecting the 'feels good man' factor -- I am very sad that people growing up in the last 10-ish years will not experience a nice spring day in a sweater and sunglasses with the wind in their hair out of manufactured fear; this is what they've taken from you.
Sure, I'll grant they reduce auditory awareness, and possibly lead to accidents like this (though, snowboarder should have shoulder checked, and skier should have seen them since they were uphill).
On the other hand, accidents like that happen regardless, and if they're going to happen to me, I want to be wearing goggles that won't shatter into my face like sunglasses, and a helmet that will protect my noggin.
Riiight: Just things everyone knew in the 90s
Face it, you've been fed a bag of shit since the day you were born by these safetyists -- retvrn to the 90s, you will not regret it. (nobody worried about people ramming you from behind then either, but everyone also knew that the uphill skier/boarder is the one at fault)
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