J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ise

AllyG wrote:I'm not going to buy one, I'm going to hire one.

I wonder about that. Any helmet that's had a knock needs replacing and I wonder how many renters report that to the store or if it's logged. Some organisations used RFID tracking of PPE for that reason in fact, I don't think that's reached ski stores though.

caron-a wrote:they don't always hurt in my opinion.
it's got us talking about buying helmets

agreed, that can't be bad

steverandomno wrote:
It's common sense. I don't care what the stats or studies say, common sense and experience tells me that wearing a helment is a good thing.

I think you'll find common sense tends to agree with properly conducted studies, when it doesn't it's either not common sense or not a proper study as a rule of thumb :D

actually, I'll just add a personal observation to that :lol:

My own risk assessment tells me that wearing a helmet for snow sports is a good thing but it's a personal choice. So, I think it would be safer if people did. Which means any incident that makes people wear helmets is actually beneficial. It's just the engineering part of my brain abhors faulty logic whether it leads to the right decision or not.

steverandomno wrote:Studies and stats are one thing.

They're the most important thing, someone might get hit by a piece of falling debris from the space shuttle, it doesn't mean it's going to happen to anyone else though :lol:

The whole, and only point, of taking risk mitigation measures relies on assessing what the risk actually is and not someone's emotional response to a situation. In your case the risk was the same before and after you fell over and the outcome no more or no less likely. It's just human nature to react to things that are either close to us personally or well publicised and it's not a bad thing, it's just the information to make a reasoned assessment before an incident is out there and it's better to use it.

The trouble with anecdotes is sooner or later someone produces one they think in some way disproves some rule, you might have easily said that you slid half way down a mountain without a helmet or injury and that proved it wasn't required.

Otherwise, what does happen is that people fret about things that are entirely unlikely to occur ignoring things that can happen.

The reason people wear helmets when under supervision in activities like rock climbing is that the formal risk assessment makes it a simple decision. You have a situation where the likelihood of the event is low but not zero, the consequences are serious i.e. up to and including multiple fatalities and the mitigation doesn't compromise the activity. You might arrive at the same conclusion for snow sports but you measure those inputs by available data rather than personal anecdotes.

AllyG wrote:Why don't skiers just wear motorbike helmets then, if they work at higher speeds?

Ally

who says they do?

by and large, the helmet for one sport doesn't work for another, if you're hitting the road which is flat you need a helmet to take one big impact, if you're bouncing down a slope it's got to take several impacts and deal with penetrating impacts from rocks for example.

IceGhost wrote:I thought brain injuries were immediate.

They are, it's just you've no pain receptors in the brain so (excepting a penetrating injury) symptoms don't start until some sort of inflammation has occurred. Most serious brain injury is linked to a loss of consciousness at the time although it seems that didn't occur here. Inter cranial pressure or ICP is caused by slow bleeds or swelling similar to bruising, it can occur up to one week from the original impact, arterial bleeds into the brain cause much the same and are similarly difficult to treat.

Neiltoo wrote:I just can't make up my mind about helmets.

The following is a quote from the New York Times:

“The situation is sort of mixed,” said Jasper Shealy, a professor emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology who has been tracking skiing and snowboard fatalities since the 1970s. “We’e now at the point where roughly half the population wears a helmet, and we’ve seen no difference” in fatalities.

But helmets do seem to make a difference in the head-injury statistics: Mr. Shealy’s own research found a 35 percent reduction, and he said that other studies had found as much as a 50 percent reduction in head injuries.

“Typically, in the scenario that results in death, you need something more than a helmet to save you,” Mr. Shealy said. Referring to helmet-wearing, he said, “Where it really comes into play is if you fall into hard-packed snow, and that can turn a serious head injury into a minor injury.”

Helmets have been shown to protect the heads of recreational skiers traveling at a rate of 12 to 17 miles an hour, but typically not at higher speeds.

That last sentence makes me wonder.

Some interesting statistics in the full article :here

I've seen that before and it's a fairly neat summary of the state of research about helmets for snow sports. There's other data points in the literature as well that are interesting, notably that helmet use in groups tends to reach a tipping point where it becomes a standard and that this is led by reaction to perceived risk and widely publicised accidents rather than any real or absolute risk. Where they've worked is in situations where the impact is predictable, for example rock climbing with debris falling on the head, cycling and going over the handle bars etc, where the helmet design can be matched to the application in effect.

The last sentence though is hugely misleading. This alludes to the lab' test done with helmets which simulate impacts, it's a drop test and done at a low simulated speed, there's plenty of clinical evidence that helmets provide protection at much higher speeds. In fact, the same testing is done for motorcycling helmets which obviously work above this speed.

The reason it gets confusing is it's like listening to a politician explaining how they've lost all our money, it's all x percent of y percent of something else. In this case around 10% of injuries are head injuries, of those around 40% or 50% would be mitigated by helmets possibly but 80% (I think) of fatalities are related to head injuries for which I have no immediate recall of mitigation figures.

I'd also point out if we look at other sports like cycling while there's reckoned to be reduced risk of mortality for helmet wearers much the same can be said of pedestrians and passengers in cars, in fact one study showed more effect would be achieved with helmets for car passengers than for cyclists.