My last ride without a helmet

Unicycles and Equipment
1

I’ve been a helmet wearer for a couple of years, and also promoted it to other unicyclists, especially beginners or anyone doing anything remotely extreme.

My take on safety gear has been wrist guards and a helmet- wrist guards because it’s common in a fall to land on the wrists, and helmet because, although head impacts are very rare on a uni, they are potentially very, very serious.

However, for this summer I’ve got into the habit of wearing a hat or bandana when I’m just doing easy mild riding. Basically thinking that the weathers hot, I rarely fall off, and much of my riding is just getting from A to B.

So I’ve been saving the helmet and guards just for more extreme stuff.

That stops now because tonight I experienced my first head impact coming off my uni.

I didn’t have the helmet cos it was just going to be a straight ride round the streets, maybe climb a few verges and hillocks in the park etc.

Ironically I rode past a nurse and pulled up for a drink of water :wink:

She stopped and asked a few questions about the uni and balance etc.

More ironically, one of her comments was that she was wondering, as I rode past, what she’d do if I fell off. I laughed, explaining that I hardly ever fell off, and, when I did I invariably landed on my feet- no medical assitance necessary :slight_smile:

After chatting for a while I continued and rode into the park, where I climbed the steep grass surrounding the tennis courts- rode round the top, rode down, turned, climbed up, and came back.

At this point I was aware of being watched by a Chinese bloke, as I rode down terrain on which I anticipated no problems whatsoever.

Then suddenly I’m off the muni, my arms go out and my head bounces off the gravelly concrete surface- I feel really surprised that my head has hit the ground and can’t understand how my arms failed to stop it.

As well as the impact I’m also aware of the disturbing sound of my skull hitting the ground.

I sit up and pause awhile to collect myself. As I stand I reach up to feel my head and my hand comes back bloody.

At this point I realise that the Chinese guy seems to have lost interest and is slinking off in the other direction- at the time I find it fairly mind blowing that anyone can watch a unicyclist smash his head into the ground then just wander off! Where’s my nurse? she would have been quite handy here.

I feel OK and jump on the uni to go home so I can look at the damage.

Luckily it’s not too bad, a minor cut tucked away in the eyebrow and an area of grazing above it.

Certainly it’s not as bad as it could have been, given that the eyebrow is fairly close to the temple, and that the impact could have been harder- I feel lucky.

Also, the area I fell on was low to the ground, 30 seconds earlier I’d been negotiating a corner on which I was a great deal further from the hard ground- the same fall there would probably have fractured my skull.

So from now one, my helmet and wrist guards are as integral to the One Wheel Dave experience as my unicycle wheel.

One of the things here is that it’s easy to say I’m just going for an easy ride in the sun, but then I come across an interesting looking grassy hillock/muni type detour, and I’m away.

Another is that I generally consider even the muni terrain I do to be pretyy non-extreme, after watching videos of the likes of Chris Holm dropping six feet of a boulder on a rock strewn hill, what I do seems pretty tame.

But, relative to what I was doing a year ago, it is fairly hardcore and, as today has made very clear to me, I can get hurt doing it.

Lastly, it may be rare to land on the head, but riding 6/7 days a week for an hour or two at a time, as I do, is a good way to push the odds of it happening to near certainty.

So, if you unicycle, my advice is to wear a helmet (and wrist guards).

And tonight I’m happy, because I’ve been lucky enough to not be hurt by my stupidity :slight_smile:

2

I wear a helmet when riding because my sponsor told me I had to set a good example for people. But still, my helmet has saved me from a few head bashings. I also recommend biking gloves! I am a violinist and before I started wearing biking gloves I couldn’t play because of scraped my hands up badly, now I don’t scrape my hands up very often, but I still wear my gloves just in case.:slight_smile:

3

Glad to hear that you are O.K. It’s good to have a second chance when it comes to safety. In the USA we have similar discussions regarding safety belts in cars. People will say, “I’m not going to wear it, I’m just going down to the corner store” Most of the time nothing happens, but every once in awhile someone isn’t so lucky.

It is much better to wear safety gear and never need it, than to not use it and wish that you had!

4

This is a somewhat scarey thread, I feel the need to contribute with my experience last week.
I was unicycling on along a stretch of road in Cumbria to meet Jack and find some muni. The road is always really quiet and its not unusual to go all the way along to where I stop (about 2 miles) without meeting a single car. Hence it’s easy to get cocky about safety on it.
So anyway, basically last week I was uni-ing along it and as I went round a corner I heard the roar of a motorbike coming up behind me. For some reason I had the good sense to get off and stand on the verge…I was glad I did as the bike zoomed round the corner seconds later right through the little patch of road that I had just been uni-ing on.
I was pretty shaken up by this. The main difference it has made to my riding habits are that I no longer ever wear headphones on the road, when possible I consider going on the outside of bends and I dismount when I hear something coming if the situation is even slightly blind for the driver. I realise that this is common sense for most older people but it was quite a revalation to me that I could be killed by a driver even if I was staying exactley on my right part of the road.

Tim…Sorry, that post is unnecessarily long -just read the last paragraph for the conclusion!

5

Hey thanks for the story. I think you have just changed my helmet attitude towards unicycles. Previously I have reserved my helmet only for my bicycle, as I have had a similar standpoint as you did.

6

Wow, your fortunate not to have hurt yourself a lot worse!

Do you know how exactly you landed on your head? I have yet to hit my head even lightly while unicycling, and I can’t figure out how you could :smiley:

7

Re: My last ride without a helmet

He probably thought it’s something that happens to you all the time, so you’re used to it. :angry:

But more likely, he’s a mere spectator to your life, and chose not to get involved. The more urban the area, the more you see that type of behavior as well…

Glad you were not more seriously injured.

8

It surprised me as well.

In the majority of UPDs I step off and am on my feet. On the occasions when that’s not possible I have noticed that I tend to go straight down to the ground and end up on my wrists with arms bent and face close to the ground.

I’ve assumed that it’s a good way to land as it obviously reduces risk of breaking wrists etc.

On this occasion something went wrong and I’m not sure what, probably either my head was just too close to the ground and hit it, or maybe one of my wrists slipped out; maybe because I didn’t have my wrist guards on either there was a lack of committment to getting them between me and the ground.

The main thing I’ve realised is that it’s the nature of some falls that the unexpected happens- falls are fast (no time to think) and just because I’ve not hit my head in 99% of them doesn’t mean that I won’t in the other 1%.

Head impacts in unicycling are rare, but they do happen- plenty of people have posted on this board about them, and some were a lot worse than mine.

The truth is that there’s no way to guarantee not landing on your head; which is where helmets come in.

Like I said before, prior to the last couple of months I always wore wrist guards and helmet, whatever kind of riding I did.

And really that’s the best way to go, there’s no real negatives to that kind of gear- a ventilated bike helmet isn’t overally hot in summer, it also keeps the sun of your head, keeps you warm in winter; and I’ve always thought that wrist guards look quite cool, as well as being of real value in preventing what is probably the most common uni injury- broken/sprained wrists.

9

I ALWAYS wear a helmet - just in case. Yesterday, I found out your head doesn’t have to hit the ground to need a helmet.

I was riding under a large covered area at the park. It has a bench that runs in a hexagonal design, sort of a continuous bench. It’s about 18" off the ground. I mounted on the bench to ride around on the bench then do a rolling hop off.

I mounted and didn’t get the balance right and in an effort to stay on the Muni, barely got my balance and gapped off the bench near where I had mounted it. I extended and pulled up and smacked my head onto and overhang. I never saw it. My glasses and visor had created a blind spot.

It wasn’t a crushing blow, but I was glad I was wearing my helmet. First time I ever hit something that wasn’t on the ground with my helmet.

10

Re: My last ride without a helmet

onewheeldave wrote:
> As well as the impact I’m also aware of the disturbing sound of my skull
> hitting the ground.
>
> I sit up and pause awhile to collect myself. As I stand I reach up to
> feel my head and my hand comes back bloody.
<snip>
> Luckily it’s not too bad, a minor cut tucked away in the eyebrow and an
> area of grazing above it.

I know that this is a ng where the most tentative suggestion that a
helmet may not always be a good thing tends to be treated with derision.
But I can’t let this pass, so I would ask you all to open your minds
for a moment.

Dave, first of all I’m sorry to hear about your fall, and I’m glad
you’re OK. But ask yourself, how sure are you really that a helmet
would have helped matters and would not have made things worse? Of
course it’s common sense that a helmet would help, but study after study
has shown that where helmets are concerned it’s just not as simple as
common sense.

You clearly had the sort of impact that the Mk 1 skull is able to cope
with. Your skull is probably undamaged and the chances are that there
is no significant brain trauma. Good.

Now imagine that you had been wearing a helmet. The effective diameter
of your head would have been very significantly increased. Your
reflexes would have had just a tiny bit less time in which to slow the
movement of your head towards the ground before impact. The impact
may therefore have been harder. The deceleration of your skull on
impact may therefore have been faster, while the rate of deceleration
of the squishy brain inside the skull would be unchanged. The increased
differential between the rate of deceleration of the skull and the rate
of deceleration of the brain would lead to a greater risk of greater
brain trauma. At the same time, there would also be a greater
differential between the rate of deceleration of the skull and the rate
of deceleration of the spine, leading to an increased risk of neck injury.

How sure are you that your head was not rotating at the time of impact?
If there was any rotation then any increased differential between the
rate of skull deceleration and the rate of brain deceleration would also
result an in increased risk of rotational brain injury. These tend to
be the worst types or brain injury. Helmets do nothing to prevent them,
and there is a great deal of evidence that helmets can make them worse.

Frankly there’s no way to know whether you would have been better off
with or without a helmet, unless you are willing to go back and repeat
the experiment a few hundred times with and without. My feeling, from
your description, is that you were probably very slightly better off
without. Of course I wasn’t there, and if you’ve considered all the
variables then you’re the person best placed to decide whether a helmet
would have been of benefit.

I am not going to get involved in a lengthy helmet debate. I don’t
have that sort of time on my hands. If people disagree with my opinion
(developed over many years of following helmet debates and reading
helmet research) then that’s up to them. I would ask you, though, to
read up on the research for yourself before simply insisting that I’m wrong.

A good place to start is:
<URL:http://www.cyclehelmets.org/>

I also have my own page of helmet links:
<URL:http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/danny/cycling/ghd.html>

–
Danny Colyer (the UK company has been laughed out of my reply address)
<URL:http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/danny/>
“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.” - Thomas Paine

11

Re: Re: My last ride without a helmet

Interesting links, and food for thought.

I found the following interesting: -

'By far the most effective way to reduce risk for all cyclists is to encourage more people to cycle. For every doubling of cycle use, the risk of injury per cyclist falls by around a third.

This reduction in risk is much greater than anything yet achieved through the use of cycle helmets. It is a consequence that has been well-demonstrated across time and between countries, and is the principal explanation as to why the risk of cycling is lowest in countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark which have large cycling populations.

Conversely, anything that reduces the number of people who cycle, such as is generally the result of helmet promotion, increases risk for those who continue to do so’

not strictly relevant to the topic but a good point.

Also, the stuff about helmets making head impact more likely (by effectively increasing head size) seemed plausible.

And the increased likelihood of a relatively harmless direct force being converted to a more dangerous rotational one.

It did actually occur to me after the fall that it may be worth taking off the visor from my cycle helmet, as, had I been wearing it, it would definitly have hit the ground first.

my concern was that it may have snapped off and been a danger to my eyes, but, having read your links I can see that the visor, and general shape of the helmet, could have caused rotation.

So, cheers for the different perspective, I’m all confused again now :slight_smile:

12

Having said that, wouldn’t it only be the case that the rotational effect would be relevant at high speeds?

Also, in the context of an off road unicycle fall, again it’s a low velocity matter and I can’t help feeling that if my heads going to hit the ground in that context, then I’d prefer to have a helmet.

If only because it would break apart and absorb the impact.

13

Re: My last ride without a helmet

onewheeldave wrote:
> Having said that, wouldn’t it only be the case that the rotational
> effect would be relevant at high speeds?

Certainly more relevant at high speeds. Probably barely relevant at all
in your case, but it’s such an important point when discussing helmets
that I couldn’t possibly leave it out :wink:

> Also, in the context of an off road unicycle fall, again it’s a low
> velocity matter and I can’t help feeling that if my heads going to hit
> the ground in that context, then I’d prefer to have a helmet.

It often seems to be the case that helmets are very effective against
cuts and bruises in minor impacts, while being pretty ineffective
against serious injuries in major impacts. So maybe. It’s all but
impossible to tell without doing controlled studies, but on the whole I
think I’d rather not be wearing a helmet in the situation described.

If I see a trail where I’d be worried about hitting my head, I simply
don’t ride that trail. I’d rather enjoy a ride without a helmet, than
don a helmet and take extra risks.

> If only because it would break apart and absorb the impact.

Whether a helmet that breaks has done its job properly is a very
controversial subject. The polystyrene should first deform and squash.
Whether it should ever actually break is a matter of much debate, and
I won’t pretend to have sufficient knowledge of materials science to
know the answer.

–
Danny Colyer (the UK company has been laughed out of my reply address)
<URL:http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/danny/>
“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.” - Thomas Paine

14

Re: Re: My last ride without a helmet

That was a fascinating bunch of pages I read from your links. Surpirsing to find that the evidence of bike helmet use is so far inconclusive in relation to cycling deaths.

It is clear that a helmet can make a rotational brain injury worse, because they not only make your head bigger, most bike helmets have projections beyond that.

I never thought of rotational injury. Does it mean side-to-side, front-to-back, or both? Both I guess.

Of course neither Danny nor I were there, but I don’t follow that part. I think a head that’s not bleeding is better than one that is. But the added dimension of a helmet could have brought into play an increased deflection in your neck, or other variable that would not have been there without one. However, it doesn’t sound like you hit that hard, so my guess was that a helmet would have been an improvement in that crash.

I spent some time reading this one. Fascinating. The organization seems intent on convincing us that helmets do not necessarily save lives, but I found nothing on there to make me believe they are trying to slant any of the information they are providing. Check it out.

PLEASE NOTE:
The vast majority of the statistics presented in the various stuff I read was from “average” cyclists, meaning primarily people riding in and around car-filled roads and other paved surfaces. Mountain biking numbers were mostly not noticed by me, and I assume they are harder to compile. Even with such a widespread activity as general cycling, it clearly takes years to develop numbers to see these trends. This is why we rely on bicycling numbers and have no way of compiling unicycling numbers.

CONCLUSIONS:
This is what I make of all this.

  • A skate-type helmet is probably safer in the long run than a bicycling helmet. No big projections like the back end that could worsen a rotational injury. Also a hard shell that is not necessarily compromised by a single impact. Regular bike helmets are supposed to be replaced after one hit.

  • If you’re riding Trials you still need a damn helmet. I have no numbers to support this, but the type of activity, proximity to irregular surfaces, and my experience watching unicyclists fall down suggests your helmet will do much more good than harm in this sport.

  • If you’re riding on rough terrain you should probably still wear a damn helmet. Irregular surfaces, sharp rocks, drop-offs on the sides of trails, none of these are significant players in the statistics on the cyclehelmets.org site.

  • If you’re riding on the road, use your judgement. I will continue to wear my helmet as it protects my head from the sun. I also believe the odds are in my favor that it will do more harm than good when major danger strikes, even though the studies say there is no strong evidence either way.

I will continue to follow the trends and see if helmets are doing any good or not. If they discourage people from riding, they are not helping people’s overall health!

15

Re: Re: Re: My last ride without a helmet

While I’ll accept that the first part of that argument is true, i.e. reducing risk for ALL cyclists, it has very little bearing on this type of debate. It is relevant only for large population, not for individual. The number of other cyclists in the universe does not make ME any more or less likely to have a cycling injury. It is only my behavior that can affect that. What a larger population does is just dilute the “fringe” or the “more likely to crash” population by adding a bunch of low impact average riders that do nothing of any risk. Insurers know this also…the reason group rates are lower.

Not trying to discount Danny’s points although I don’t agree with them, but the whole size of population issue relative to this discussion is somewhere between a non-sequiter and a red herring.

16

Re: My last ride without a helmet

Danny Colyer <danny@speedy5.freeserve.giggle> writes:

> onewheeldave wrote:
>
> I know that this is a ng where the most tentative suggestion that a
> helmet may not always be a good thing tends to be treated with
> derision. But I can’t let this pass, so I would ask you all to open
> your minds for a moment.

As a card carrying skeptic, I strive to always assess new information
with and open, yet critical mind.

> Now imagine that you had been wearing a helmet. The effective
> diameter of your head would have been very significantly increased.
> Your reflexes would have had just a tiny bit less time in which to
> slow the movement of your head towards the ground before impact. The
> impact may therefore have been harder. The deceleration of your
> skull on impact may therefore have been faster, while the rate of
> deceleration of the squishy brain inside the skull would be unchanged.

WHOA THERE! Hold on a minute. Even if the impact against the ground
in your scenario was harder, the helmet would do its job and compress,
softening the blow. The result is less injury, not more for the
helmet protected fall. In this sort of fall, testing shows
significant reduction in impact to the head.

> How sure are you that your head was not rotating at the time of
> impact? If there was any rotation then any increased differential
> between the rate of skull deceleration and the rate of brain
> deceleration would also result an in increased risk of rotational
> brain injury. These tend to be the worst types or brain injury.
> Helmets do nothing to prevent them, and there is a great deal of
> evidence that helmets can make them worse.

It is simply untrue that there is a great deal of evidence that
helmets can make rotational injuries worse. Speculation about a
problem should not be misconstrued as evidence.

On the other hand, the issue has at least been seriously investigated.
The following quote comes “Reassessing bicycle helmet impact
protection”, a paper from the University of Birmingham that includes
finite element analysis as well as experimental testing of helmets in
light of recent criticisms (including some of the key criticisms at
www.cyclehelmets.org).

It is not possible to perform oblique impacts of an unhelmetted
headform, with a 1.5 m drop, because the instrumentation would be
damaged. Consequently it is not easy to prove that wearing a
helmet reduces the rotational head acceleration. However, without a
helmet, it is highly likely that the bicyclist would suffer a skull
fracture and severe brain damage.
[www.perg.bham.ac.uk/pdf/IRCOBI03.pdf]

I can’t honestly evaluate this paper (I have neither the time nor
expertise) but it looks like the real deal. A copy of a press release
on www.cyclehelmets.org refers to one of the authors, Dr. Nigel Mills,
as having “vast experience in helmets, having been, amongst other
things, the chairman of the British Standards Institution committee
for motorcycle helmets in January 1994, and a member of the umbrella
committee which oversees all helmet committees.”

> A good place to start is:
> <URL:http://www.cyclehelmets.org/>

This site argues from so many perspectives that I can’t hope to review
it briefly. The bottom line is that I remain largely unconvinced of
helmet dangers. There are some plausible claims (e.g. helmetted
riders might take greater risks) and a lot of statistics that can be
extremely hard to interpret. For example, the cyclehelmets.org states:

In USA cyclists were 40% more likely to suffer head injury in 2001
than in 1991 although helmet use had increased from 18% to
50%. During the same period cycle use fell 21%.

This may well be true, but it fails to consider the fact that the
national 55 mph speed limit had been repealed just 3 years earlier,
that both highway speeds and injuries were on the rise in the 1990s,
and that most bicycle head injuries occur on roads with 55mph speed
limits or higher. Given what I know about the environment in which
these numbers are collected, I am very reluctant to conclude that they
indicate that helmets increase risk.

Still, the site is certainly interesting and worth reading if you are
so inclined.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, I think it is important to
recognize that the typical risks encountered while unicycling are
likely different than the most common bicycling risks. As a rule,
unicyclists travel more slowly than bicyclists and I am certain we
spend a smaller percentage of time on roads crowded with extremely
fast cars. I don’t believe unicyclists can extrapolate safety
assessments based on the sort of analysis this site provides for
bicycling.

Ken

17

Just like to point out that the above wasn’t actually a quote from me ‘onewheeldave’ but was me quoting someone else.

I’m the guy who did the first post, which was pro-helmet; then read Danny’s stuff and had a few doubts.

Now I’m back to pro-helmet because, though the links that talk about helmet dangers are interesting, as others have pointed out there’s a lot of other factors in the stats.

I do appreciate what they say about the shape of bike helmets being a bit dodgy, with the huge size and pointy bits front and back; presumably, as John said, a skate helmet would avoid those problems.

It also occured to me that when we do fall, there’s a fair chance that the head could impact a projection, rather than flat ground.

i.e. in my case there was a low wall, with corners, which luckily I missed. On muni trails you’ve got lots of rocks etc.

Surely, in the event of the head hitting something like that, a helmet, by spreading the force, could well prevent a serious fracture?

18

Re: My last ride without a helmet

“onewheeldave” <onewheeldave@NoEmail.Message.Poster.at.Unicyclist.com> writes:

> Just like to point out that the above wasn’t actually a quote from me
> ‘onewheeldave’ but was me quoting someone else.

My bad. I accidentally left your name in the quoted section (which
was properly attributed). Definitely should have edited it out.

> I do appreciate what they say about the shape of bike helmets being a
> bit dodgy, with the huge size and pointy bits front and back;
> presumably, as John said, a skate helmet would avoid those problems.

That’s a plausible argument, but I don’t buy it. At least not until I
see some strong supporting evidence. The problem is that this
analysis completely ignores the fact that helmets are designed to
crush and absorb impact. In the University of Birmingham paper I
mentioned in my previous comment, a Giro Targa helmet is impacted on
the rear projection and the resulting rotational acceleration is
actually lower than when it is tested at other points, even though the
impact is further from the center of mass! I don’t pretend that this
is the end of the story - this test assumed the rider had somersaulted
over the handlebars and hit flying backwards, while unicyclists are
more likely to fall off backwards and strike their head - but it
should certainly give pause to anyone claiming that rotational forces
are clearly increased because of helmet shape.

Skate helmets have a distinct advantage in that they cover a larger
area of the head and must exhibit extra toughness around the
circumference to protect against hitting sharp objects like curbs.

> It also occured to me that when we do fall, there’s a fair chance that
> the head could impact a projection, rather than flat ground.
>
> i.e. in my case there was a low wall, with corners, which luckily I
> missed. On muni trails you’ve got lots of rocks etc.
>
> Surely, in the event of the head hitting something like that, a helmet,
> by spreading the force, could well prevent a serious fracture?

Makes sense to me.

Ken

19

Thanks Danny for bringing up the non-helmet side of the issue again. I think you have made some interesting points, and I like how your objective is to make people think.
Instead of advocating helmet use or non-helmet use, shouldn’t someone come up with some sort of helmet that has all the benefits of the current helmets while eliminating the drawbacks? Maybe something that is thinner (therefore not increasing your head diameter by much) while still offering cushioning. Possibly an air pillow?

20

A side issue to this, in a major accident a skate helmet will contain your head in almost one piece for burial due to is more cup type shape.

Err, that wasn’t useful was it?