A southern country is about the extent of your country's link to our world. There's nothing wrong with being anti helmets or American - a country which provides your country with the technology to connect to the Internet. They just aren't as cock sucking of govt safety program's as Australians are. Helmets are great but don't confuse American anti helmet justifications with no helmets. They just think more in terms of self responsibility. If you want to fuck yourself Americans say you can do that. In Australia we have the govt telling us what to do. On way more than they should. How many US ride reports on this forum show a US rider with no helmet.
One word: Insurance. A very powerfull word. It shapes Gubermint policy. It will always try to save you from yourself. Motorcycles would be banned altogether if the average pollie was given a say. Having said that, I prefer ATGATT , speshully the older I get. BUT! it's my choice.
I concur the only problem was i didn't quite cover enough bits. Now if only could find my old suit of armour i wore as Horatio in the grade 7 school play.
Yeah I agree that the weight of the helmet itself can cause it's own issues but in the cases were the head does hit the ground or some other hard object I'd rather have a helmet on. I've experienced and seen a few instances of helmets pretty badly damaged from impact with the ground, rocks etc where the wearer got out of it pretty lightly. Bit of a catch 22 I guess, pay your money and take your chances. Iain
Cmon ECKS, you and i were both there that day in the Brick pit.. i've never seen a 4WD move as quick as you heading back for Stu..how do you reckon it would been without a helmet..?. Your gut knows the answer is pro helmet. Interestingly, to add to the debate, i have tangled with a few guys (Doctors) from both Royal North Shore and Westmead who have indicated that Helmets may save you from a head trauma but the trade off is you sit in a wheelchair following a substantial neck injury.. better off dead..? i don't know .. but both gents where about to knock me out to fix something caused by motorcycle injury.... What i do know is that i've spent way to much time listening to what happens outside a helmet in such said events. A high speeder that sounded like a gattling gun rotating round my head as i rag dolled it down the road and thanked god i had a helmet on, through to a non helmet crash that involved a barb wire fence "picking' me off the bike by the face. The opinion was a helmet would have directed a barbed wire to my neck and provided a convenient way to carry my head to the morgue.. The long and short, i pull on every bit of safety equipment i can, and give myself the best chance of success...
I vary the amount os saftey gear I wear depending on the type of riding I do so I guess that makes me pro choice, although when I think the risk level is going up I'm usually ATGATT, including Leatt and knee braces.
Next time, show them the stats. There's already enough misinformation about motorbikes amongst some dr's.... .http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news...s_helmet_weight_as_risk_to_neck_called_a_myth Inidentally, the injury Rjf is alking bout is a 5 point facial facture. Essentially, you break all the bones holding your face to your skull, so your face drops back and you stop breathing. Treatment is to grab the victims face and pull it forward whilst trying not to vomit.....I wear full face.
Yes mate, still have nightmares about the Stu incident! As I have said above, I believe in helmets and personally believe that my mate would have been better off in a helmet. I was fascinated that this story came from Westmead about a helmet not helping in this case. But when you think about it, it is rare for a rider to have hardly any scratches but yet end up in a coma for 3 weeks after a crash. Thinking about it, this might be more of a comment about this particular crash than about helmets and bike crashes in general. Anyone would have to admit that my mate was incredibly lucky to survive, and that the only injury of consequence was to his head - and I mean he literally had a couple of bruises and very small scratches, then a life threatening head injury! Or maybe this was that freak accident that he should have walked away from and he was so unlucky to get hurt? Sent from my MB525 using Tapatalk 2
The long and short, i pull on every bit of safety equipment i can, and give myself the best chance of success...[/QUOTE] For what it's worth I'm a farmer (in rougher pastoral country) and I ride a bike every day and probably do around 10000km in a year mostly at relatively low speed and I think that this is when most of the accidents I see and hear about happen...........at low speed while people are concentrating on something other than looking where thay are going. I never ride without a good quality helmet and will not let anyone ride a bike on my property without a helmet. I have destroyed two helmets over the years in "relatively low speed accidents" !!! I have plenty of scars and several bones that no longer sit in the same position that they were designed to and some bones with extra bits screwed into then but have never suffered a serious head injury........my head is ugly enough and doesn't need any help to enhance ugliness !!! I honestly cannot understand why anyone would ride a motorbike anywhere without a helmet ????, but I also believe a lot of rural bike accidents are caused by people riding bikes with poor suspension set up's that generally don't understand the effect of overloading the bike etc.
Having worked on a farm, I cant say farmers are complacenent - most probably ride more than us all combined and at fairly low speed. They use radios and phones and taking a helmet on and off is a bother. They perceive the risk as low. Since time is money and they are running a business most cockys probably rationalise that a helmet costs money - until they have a big one. They never wore helmets when riding horses, so with the eveolutioon to steel horses, they probbaly carry some of the use patterns.
From memory in the Hurt report there was only one person whose helmet failed to reduce head injury and that was a rider on a gold wing who had his helmet trapped between the kerb and one of the heads of the bike at speed.
Here is some light reading and interesting stats http://www.safesci.unsw.edu.au/downloads/riskofheadfacialandneckinjury.pdf The odds of sustaining serious to severe head trauma were notsignificantly different for helmet wearers than non-wearers.