15 reviews on whether need to wear a helmet while riding a bicycle, or a fancy thing?

In recent years, more and more people fall in love with cycling for it’s a fashionable and attractive way which enables people not only to enjoy life but also to live a healthy life. In terms of the security of riding a bicycle, some people may have the question about whether we need to wear a helmet while riding a bike or should we choose a fancy thing. Different people have various points on this question. Let’s see what they got on whether need to wear a helmet or not.

It depends on where I ride a bike.

I wear a helmet while riding in the suburbs. I don’t need a helmet when riding in the city. It is a direct reflection of the amount of risk I perceive when cycling in my surroundings. Almost a half of the cyclists in the city of Chicago wear helmets. As a result, I can confidently say that drivers in the city are looking and aware of cyclists. Somewhat amazingly, in 9 months of tourists wearing helmets like newbies in and around Chicago, there have only been a some quality of accidents and without serious injuries.
The opposite is completely true in the suburbs. Almost no one cycles to work in the suburbs. As a result, no one is looking for you if you have an accident. Large amounts of accidents take place at higher speeds which is a suburban phenomenon. In the winter, because of the lack of plowed infrastructure, the roads are slippery and there is no way to avoid sharing the road with fast cars on icy pavements which is the main cause of accidents. It seems that crashes in suburbs are always more serious even few cyclists are riding there.
I ride in the suburbs more often. In spite of my understanding of risk, on the weekends only a quarter to a third of cyclists wear helmets. And I find this somewhat puzzling that if we wear helmets, cyclists might be more apt to take greater risks that will lead to crashes.
Generally, whether I wear a helmet is a personal choice, but it is a more appropriate way to wear a helmet while riding in the suburbs in case of some accidents.

Helmets can protect us from severe injury.

As you can see, the whole rib is gone. It is the consequence of a direct impact with a hard rock, which happened because I went straight on too fast in a corner and went over the handlebars. So I had my head more or less hit on the rock. As a result, I got a scratch on the back of my knee. And I had to take a preventive X-ray to the neck to check if the spine was doing okay. Luckily I wasn’t seriously hurt, but my neck and back muscles were sprained badly, that’s why I could hardly look back over my shoulder for half a month which was really inconvenient.
The helmet was totally broken, all the way from front to the back. But it did protect me from serious injury efficiently.
To those who keep saying that using a helmet is unnecessary or that it doesn’t work, try and imagine the results of a direct impact of the head with a hard rock. I would rather wear a helmet.

A helmet can’t do much when a real, proper accident with a car.

On the one hand, I live in a mid-sized town where traffic is quite slow in Europe. I use my bicycle to run errands and to get from this place to that place in the course of it I hardly go faster than 20 km/h, consequently, I don't need a helmet. I have been using my bike in this way for about 17 years and while I did fall a couple of times in which I only got slight scratches.
On the other hand, if I had had a real, serious accident with a car, I don't think a helmet could have done much. Many cycling accidents in my country occur because of the sudden presence of motor vehicles at fast speeds, with the cyclist being unable to react in time which leads to their run over. Bike helmets are simply not that great at speeds over 30 km/h, and they offer no protection against car wheels squashing your body.
But if I were to use a bike for XC, downhill or competitive road cycling, I'd probably wear one.

Above all, yes, bike helmets can reduce the risk of head injury to some extent, but I'd rather avoid an accident altogether than wear a helmet. I obey the traffic laws so I signal the lights when I make my turns in that I have my light on the bike.

If you are very risk averse, do wear one at all times. But I don't believe they are necessary for urban calmed biking from one place to another.

In the case of it works.

It is true that when accidents happen, helmets do nothing. It is also true that when accidents happen, helmets do protect your head from contacting cement or bruising at a high speed. There are speeds and other variables besides the helmets don’t work, which cause injuries even though helmets do have the protection function.

Even if things above are true, I choose to wear a helmet because of its protection function.

It depends on you.

Luckily, I've never broken my skull or suffered brain damage when falling off a bicycle, but others haven't had that kind of luck. Theoretically, a helmet greatly decreases the risk of serious injury in bad accidents (including "freak" accidents).
Whether you think it is "fancy" or not depends on how you evaluate your risk of a "bad accident". And it depends on whether you have the confidence that you can take care of it when falling off a bicycle.
PS: I don’t wear a helmet when riding.

According to the history, we don’t need it.

Many years ago no one wore a helmet and I have never heard that helmets could have saved the victims’ life in any accident. I understand the benefit of helmets in professional races when going downhill at 80 km/h or when sprinting with a group of 50 racers riding at 50 km/h. But in daily life, I don’t think it’s necessary. But it is not harmful to wear one either.

Doctors say yes.

I asked my close friend in high school, who's a pediatrician now, whether my children needed to wear helmets when riding a bicycle because I didn't need a helmet when I was a kid. And he told me: doctors can repair or displace nearly everything in the human body with the help of modern medicine, except the head. From my point of view, this answer tells you everything you need.

A helmet can definitely protect you.

Have you ever have the experience that any part of you scratched on the road, do you know how hurting it can be, how long it will take to recover and how frequent it can be for the wound to get infected. If you are sure a helmet can protect you from a skull fracture or other injury alike, it will protect your skin undoubtedly. I would never ride a bicycle without a helmet - why would someone want to take the risk of losing their skin on the road by not wearing a helmet?

Your brain tissue CAN’T heal.

People! People! People! As we all know, skin can heal, bone can recover, even muscles will resettle. But your brain tissue cannot heal. You will never have more brain cells than you do at the moment. Wear a helmet, as long as you think the stuff in your brain needs to preserve.

Wear one anyway.

I would like to give some suggestions for those who don’t think it’s needed to wear a helmet: Get one anyways, just put it on when it's an icy or raining day and you’ll think it may be needed very much. After a while, you'll find it more comfortable to wear a helmet than riding without one. And if you have an accident accidentally when your head hits the ground you won’t be regret wearing one.

Needed.

It’s needed because sometimes I am a fool. I broke my shoulder blades and my helmet on a wet, slippery wooden bridge. Without the helmet, my head would have broken.

It’s needed because sometimes I am not lucky enough. I fell over on my friend’s front door because my foot couldn’t get free from the pedal. And I had to land right on the corner of a small step. My helmet had a triangular hole on it. Without the helmet, there would have had a hold on my head.

It’s needed because sometimes I can’t forecast danger myself. I miscalculated the distance to a tree and a big branch hit my helmet. I lost my consciousness. Another time I overestimated a small jump and my full weight was on my head when I fell. The helmet was broken but I only got bruised and a really sore neck but otherwise was OK.

It’s needed when I am skiing or snowboarding or chopping down trees. In these situations, I have needed them.

In a word, without helmets, I wouldn't be here anymore.

Getting what we want and what we need.

If you want to wear a helmet do so but why demonstrate their efficiency by showing photographs of them 'broken'? Why is something so-called to protect the brain from injury (particularly shaking) so hard it smashes? Surely they should be crushing as they take impact? Could it be that if they crushed on impact they would distort in storage and any use and people would simply reject to buy them at these ridiculous prices？
I have a helmet which cost my more than £100 that I was told it must be cast off after three years irrespective of use or damage and lose its protection function in any way. All the enclosed documents insulate the manufacturer from any fault whatever clearly stating that it will not protect my head in collisions in a piece of technology that is little different from that used to protect toasters from China! The literature in the box expressly stated that the helmet cannot protect my head and that is for use between 8-10 mph while average minimum cycle-travel is about 12mph.
Why do we never see people with snapped seat-belts or burst airbags saying, "look my safety device, which I paid much money for, failed miserably and cracked or burst so picture how lucky I am to have put my faith in it, please go out and buy some of these products that will fail for you too." The manufacturers do not make any claims for their product. NONE - but by their funded 'independent' trusts spread publicity that is regurgitated by the very consumers that pay for the product that smashes instead of crushing on impact. What a fantastic business model it is. Cycling is not hazardous.
If the helmet shattered it was not protecting your brain! If the helmet shattered you were very unlikely to have been 'definitely dead' without it - as people love to say. If the helmet hit the ground and failed maybe your head wouldn't have hit the ground anyway if one hadn't had two-inches of toaster packaging around it. Maybe all these people with the 'safety hat' (that failed) would have cycled differently if they had not held a false sense of security from their faith in claims that the manufacturer dare not give them anyway.
While helmet manufacturers actually tell us their product doesn’t work, on stickers on the thing and in all the literature wired to it that we drag away without reading it, they fund arms-length 'trusts' and shadowy organizations to spread the legend of their efficiency. I am not against people being able to get something to protect their head from scratches and bumps but in my view, we are being sold a sub-standard, useless piece of equipment as a con.
There is completely no independent, peer-reviewed research that shows that helmets offer any protection for one's head/brain. NO. There is research that shows helmets can in certain instances cause severe injuries to necks by increasing torsional turning-forces on the neck via the helmeted-head. There is peer-reviewed research showing people ride differently with hats on and that drivers take less care around cyclists with helmets on.
I suggest all cyclists, no matter how long you have ridden, to get some urban-cycling training which will change not only how you ride but how you see cities might work. Using your neck to turn your head to revolve your eyes and your ears is how to protect your head and every other part of your body. What I am trying to say is, do what feels right for you but I also think we are 'wanting what we get' rather than 'getting what we want' or, more importantly, what we need.

The mandatory helmet law was ended in Dallas.

Last week Dallas finally abolished the requirement for adults to wear helmets after a 20-year mandatory helmet law. Why did the city council stop the requirement? Simple enough. The council wanted its new bike-share program to be successful. And all the evidence shows that mandatory helmet rules prevent those who don’t do sport from cycling. Dallas was one of the largest few American cities that required cyclists to wear a helmet. Since the law has ended, I don’t see why we still need to wear one. What I mean is look around the world, we can see that only 1 percent of daily cyclists wear helmets.

It depends on your own.

You are the only one who can decide whether something is needed or not, unless you are living in a district where the law orders you to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. Concerning whether helmets are “useful” or not, my answer is a strong yes. The mythology that helmets can’t protect us, or even that they make it more dangerous to ride a bicycle has been disclosed a long time ago. Studies found that bicycle helmets can decrease the risk of severe head injury by 70 percent efficiently. From this point of view, bicycle helmets do work! Helmets do save people’s lives and cut the risk of injury. If you don’t want to get a serious injury when falling off a bike, just take a helmet with you.

There is no a helmet can protect your whole body.

There is no a helmet which can shield your whole body overall. I don’t think the helmet which with the best quality in the world can prevent me from falling off my bicycle. The best way to avoid injury is to promote our own riding skills and be very careful when we are riding a bicycle.

After viewing the reviews above on whether need to wear a helmet while riding a bicycle, how do you feel? Who do you agree with? And what is your opinion?