Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
M O R P H E R – folding bicycle helmet
LAST month I attended the British Inventions Show.
The stand-out product was the stand by the entrance.
It took me about one second to sense that this was a good idea.
I met the inventor, Jeff Wolf OBE, who explained his head was saved by a regular helmet ... yet few cyclists trouble to wear them. It set him thinking:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/morpher-folding-helmet-technology
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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John, today (possibly yesterday), the Mayor of London was photographed coming out of No.10 holding his bicycle helmet He set a good example.
Until roads are transformed across London making them physically safer for cyclists, surely the only rational response is to wear a helmet that would improve one's chances in the event of an accident, even if slightly.
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Permalink Reply by AndrewAW1 on
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I think a lot of people would agree that Boris would be better with cycle training (which he has repeatedly turned down) than a helmet.
Unfortunately the view of a helmet as a magic force field is very prevalent in the UK. After all, it's a lot cheaper to declare a cyclist was knocked off due to the lack of a helmet and hi-viz as opposed to poor infrastructure and fundamental failings in driver training and vehicle design.
Looking at it rationally there is no evidence that "the only rational response is to wear a helmet" http://www.badscience.net/2013/12/bicycle-helmets-and-the-law-a-per...
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Andrew, here's a discussion today that's partly relevant: of how helmets came about for the riders of a slightly bigger two-wheeled vehicle, similarly unprotected. Eventually common-sense prevailed.
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I think the argument that a different piece of safety equipment on a different vehicle isn't the most convincing argument.
Scientific studies on the use of helmets and related injury rates amongst cyclists have proved inconclusive and I'd prefer to go by relevant studies rather than "common sense".
However, if you do want to persuade a group that they should be wearing helmets in order to keep safe then car passengers are what you should be looking at. A high proportion of severe head trauma injuries are from car accidents so all car passengers should wear helmets, it's just common sense.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2012/04/02/forget-football...
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Thank you Paul. I appreciate your wishes of safety.
I do not think I take on more risk of head injury on a bike than I do walking on an icy pavement, taking a shower with a hangover or carrying my Christmas decorations down from the loft. Therefore I will choose to wear a helmet for all these activities or none.
to do anything else would be illogical</ Spock> and driven by media rather than facts
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Woolf on
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But all of the activities you mention are at walking speed or less. Nature cleverly designed our skull to cope with many knocks at this speed.
The average walking speed is 2 miles an hour. When your on a bicycle you're way, way faster than that, maybe even 10 or 15 times faster, and your skull simply ain't designed to withstand a smash at that speed.
Also, how ever careful you're being you're not always in control. It's other road users you have to be wary of. I only hit my head on a kerb because I was hit by an out of control car. I wasn't carefully walking on ice or cautiously climbing down from a loft.
Think about it for a minute...
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Jeff,
I am not saying no one needs a cycle helmet. Just that helmets may be suitable for some cyclists but not all.
I cycle at 10-12 mph max and indicate like Brown Owl taking the vicar's wife out for cycle tips. My biggest problem in traffic is nice gentlemen slowing down to let me out when I was slowing down to let them pull in. Am I really in the same risk group as Mr Carbon-Fibre-Strava-Lycra?
The question you are not asking is how often such falls occur. I cycle 40-60 miles a week in London rush hour traffic and I have fallen off my bike 4 times in 5 years. Of those 4 falls, I hit my head once. I am not disputing that there is a subset of cycle injuries which a helmet would help with. I am disputing whether that subset is statistically significant enough to wear a helmet when cycling.
If you look at counties with regular transport cycling you will see that head injuries are most common in helmet wearers. Is this because helmets make cycling more dangerous? Of course not. It is because without a helmet/fear culture cyclists wear helmets for more risky activities. If everyday cycling without a helmet was so risky you would expect that to far outweigh the injuries to helmeted sports cyclists.
I appreciate you have a produce to sell but please don't do so on false fears. -
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Please don't accuse me of using false fears to sell my "produce". That is libellous and completely untrue. You don't know me at all but I assure you that I wouldn't dream of trying to profit in such a way.
As I said earlier, I have been studying cycle helmet statistics carefully for more than the past 2 years. That and my personal experience are what I am using to try to convince cyclists to wear ANY helmet. Not just my own invention!
You also said: "If you look at counties with regular transport cycling you will see that head injuries are most common in helmet wearers."
Can you show me a single report to support this ludicrous statement? No, of course you can't. Nothing out there supports this. The opposite is true.
Just over a month ago, in fact, a report from The American Academy of Pediatrics (an organization of no less than 60,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults) stated that "Only 11 Percent of Children Involved in Bike Accidents Wear a Helmet" -( http://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/Only-11... )
This is the complete opposite of what you claim. It shows that 89% of children involved in accidents DON'T wear a helmet! Your claim is groundless and so very dangerous.
Anyway, thankfully the tide is turning and common sense is beginning to prevail. The overwhelming evidence is that wearing a helmet is far safer than not wearing one. No rational human being can refute this obvious truism.
I wish you continuing good luck and safety with your riding but please bear in mind that if you were to hit a metal post or fall onto a kerbstone at your full speed of 12mph (6 times the average walking pace) then you would be at risk of grave injury.
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Jeff
1. your stats are about children. Is your helmet designed for children? I have no issue with children wearing helmets - they do have different accident levels to adults, and road accidents stats are very different depending on whether children are included or excluded. But I am sure with your two years of extensive research you knew that.
2. Asking people who deal with injured cyclists about helmets is poor methodology because they can only speak about the effect on people who have had an accident. There is no way they can answer the most important question - are head trauma accidents common enough to justify helmets? After all, if two million people rode a bike last year and a single person had an accident and hit their head, the accident trauma professionals would be entirely correct to say that 100% of bike injuries would have been avoided with a helmet!
3. "Can you show me a single report to support this ludicrous statement? No, of course you can't. Nothing out there supports this. The opposite is true." Actually I can. Here you go: "13.3 per cent of the cyclists admitted to hospitals with injuries wore helmets — even though just 0.5 per cent cent of Dutch cyclists wear helmets." http://thecyclingsilk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/helmets-dutchman-goes-...
Once again I bear no ill-will to you or your product. There is definitely a suitable market for it. But if you want to protect adults bimbling to work/shops, better helmets come way down the list.
You may find this interesting - http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f3817?ijkey=I5vHBog6FhaaLzX&...
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Permalink Reply by Paul Harvey on
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How about cycling on ice with a hangover?
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Hi LSquared, thanks for your contribution to the discussion about cyclist helmets.
I strongly object to your assertion that the only reason cyclists who don't wear helmets is that they don't bother.
It remains true that many cyclists don't wear any kind of helmet (for whatever reason); I did not say that unwillingness to "bother" was the sole reason for not wearing helmets. I'm one of those who still doesn't bother to wear one all the time. It is fairly obvious that cycle helmets are a (small) bother.
Here, "bother" means take the trouble or time to put on a cycle helmet. If one were forced to put on a helmet, it would still take a little time and effort – and to store it, before and after a journey, something that MORPHER addresses.
Even when cycling with a helmet, for many reasons, I feel more vulnerable than when riding my medium-weight motorcycle. Obviously I wear a good motorcycle helmet but also boots, gauntlets and a leather jacket. I can keep up with the regular traffic and I'm more visible.
I'm happy to take your word that some cyclists, possibly many, have read some of the hundreds of pages all over the web about the subject and that some may be vehemently opposed to helmets, believing them to be the work of the devil.However I think its important to remember that they're not a hazard of themselves – they're intended as a safety device to mitigate head injuries.
I don't doubt there are accidents where a helmet would make no difference. I'm concerned about those accidents where a helmet would make a difference: that was the real-world motivation for Jeff's new helmet.
I couldn't agree more that greater effort needs to go into safer roads in the first place: joined up cycle lanes, physically separate lanes, cyclist phases on traffic lights and Dutch style roundabouts.
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Thank you for your courteous and considered reply.
My concern is that helmets ARE a hazard, not on an individual basis to the cyclists wearing them but on the macro level to the safety of cyclists overall, not because they are the work of the devil but because they position safety as a primarly a function of cyclist fashion rather than driver behaviour. I believe that the very slight change to my chances in the event of an accident at low speed is far outweighed by the increase in overall road danger.
(I also believe from my own experience that I am treated better on the road when I look like a person rather than a cyclist, but I appreciate this is probably gender, race and age specific so I don't want to extrapolate.)
Show me that the likelihood of a significant head injury riding 60 miles a week on a Raleigh Caprice with coaster brakes is greater than, say 2% over my lifetime and I might change my mind.
Cycling is not especially dangerous. Head injuries are not especially common. The belief that cyclists (and i mean here people cycling for transport, not racing or off road cycling) are particularly at risk of head injury has arisen BECAUSE of the use of cycle helmets. Cycle helmets exist, therefore I should wear one.
I'm afraid I also disagree with your recommendations for road safety. They are all ways to manage, segregate and remove cyclists. Implicit in this is an assumption that drivers, the actual cause of the danger, are somehow a natural fact that cannot change. That cycle injuries are a natural result of cyclists get in the way of drivers. But getting cyclists "out the way" of drivers can never truly solve the problem because it isn't possible to fully segregate cyclists...eventually we need to cross T-junctions, cycle to our front doors, etc; at which point we are dropped into traffic which is not expecting us. Plus the number of pedestrians killed and injured on pavements and crossings shows that some drivers aren't that great at being where they are supposed to be.
Fundamentally, cycle helmets, segregated lanes etc are all trying provide physical solutions for what is to essentially a cultural problem, and for this reason they can only partially succeed, and only at great cost.
The collective shrugging of shoulders when it comes to poor driving, the reluctance of courts to prosecute or remove licenses, the belief that "a momentary lapse of attention" is completely reasonable when piloting a tonne or more of metal around human beings, a culture that thinks threatening to run someone down is an entirely acceptable response to having to drive slowly behind them for a while, the belief that traffic lights arent really red until the fourth car, that speed limits are set on the assumption that everyone will go faster and that speed cameras are disgusting entrapment...THIS is what we need to focus on.
I'm forty. I remember when it was less acceptable for a bloke to drink soft drinks than it was to drink and drive. I remember when tv shows regularly showed men groping young women as comedy. These are both examples of behaviour which has changed in my lifetime from culturally acceptable to culturally reviled, so it is possible. It needs political will and the media on side but it can be done.
Around thirty people a week die on our roads. Very few of them are cyclists. Even if you prevented every single cyclist injury, you'd be nothing nothing to help thousands of people hurt or killed every year. We don't need special hats or special lanes. We dont need special treatment. We, all of us, drivers, cyclists and pedestrians, need road culture to grow up.
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