Discussion: 24

Forgot the helmet?

Yup, a mile or two up the road when I remembered. Wasn't going back for it, but did try to be extra careful.

I've don't that on a nice summer day. But with the temperature 25 degrees, I'd think you'd notice the missing helmet right away.

The only reason I noticed was that I was entertaining myself by counting up all the items I had on, and suddenly it was, whoops....

It does help, but the balaclava just by itself does a pretty good job. And I'd been outside a bunch in the morning, temps about 15, so 25 seemed not bad at all.

I've ridden with no helmet a lot, including Danbury-San Francisco, long before I owned one. I tend to wear one more often these days, but it's still not uncommon for me to not wear one for a road ride.

I always use one these days. I´ve had two minor accidents - one with the helmet one without.
The no-helmet one was skating on a lake when my skate got caught in a crack and I fell. No serious damage done that time but ice is hard if you hit your head on it and I use my helmet skating since then.
The one with helmet would have been really bad if I hadn´t used it. This was roller-skiing when I ran into some construction - a small patch of gravel where there usually isn´t one - and hit my head pretty hard. Very dizzy the last little bit home (only 500 M thankfully) and the helmet was of no further use after that.

I've never worn one skating, and just got one for downhill skiing for Christmas.

I've often wondered when we'll be expected to wear them orienteering. I think the main reason it hasn't happened is because the market isn't big enough for the manufacturers to make a sport-specific model and advertise it. I've only very rarely seen anyone wearing one, and in one of the cases I can think of, it was for a night-O, and it was the most convenient way to carry the light that he had (intended for mountain biking).

It is a lot easier to forget a helmet in cold weather when you already have some sort of warm cap on your head, so it doesn't feel as if something is missing. I've always worn a helmet for rock climbing or caving since I took up the sports in college and for perhaps forty or forty five years while biking, not too long after the more modern type of bike helmets (not the little network of leather strips over the head) came onto the market in a significant way. There have been a few winter mornings over the years, though, when I have arrived at work and realized that the bike helmet was still at home. More recently I have taken to hanging the helmet over the seat of the bike when I finish the ride, and then it is harder to forget to put it on at the start of the next ride! I've never been in an accident where the helmet made a difference, but a number of friends have had occasions when wearing a helmet probably saved their lives (though unfortunately several others where wearing a helmet was not enough), and it has always seemed a reasonable thing for those sorts of activities. I can't imagine wearing one for orienteering, though!

A helmet for road biking always seems superfluous ... until it isn't. I've been riding regularly for over 50 years, and I've had a couple of minor and one major accident, but my head had never hit the ground until a year and half ago when I went down fast and hard. My helmet cracked when it hit the pavement, but I came away only with a slight concussion, so only a minor accident. Without the helmet, who knows, I might today be drooling in a nursing home, or six feet under.

But for orienteering? The risk of serious head injury seems much, much less than biking on the roads. Though I wouldn't say it is non-existent.

You can probably make a good case for the value of wearing one while in a car.

My neighbor two houses away wears a helmet painting his house. He does one side every year and something happened a couple years ago--ladder slid, whatever, and he fell off. So, now he wears a helmet every time he climbs a ladder.

Good plan, Carl's neighbor. My brother fell off a ladder too a few years ago and had a mild concussion.

Our firefighter neighbor wears a helmet when he climbs a ladder.

I also regularly jog past the grave of a friend/runner/artist/professor who died after falling from a ladder at the age of 53.

I stopped cleaning out the gutters of my two-story house about ten years ago (when I was 53), and started paying someone to do it. I can't tell you how many old guys I know, or know of, who were injured, sometimes seriously, falling from ladders. And I have lousy balance, and a touch of acrophobia to boot.

Acrophobia is probably more effective protection than a helmet. Complete lack of acrophobia is likely to get me in trouble.

That's the trouble with those "no fear" attitudes/t-shirts/patches. I flew with a (very good) pilot in the AF who wanted a patch that said, "some fear" because really, wouldn't you rather entrust your life to someone with some fear?

I have no fear of having ample altitude. I do have some fear of losing my remaining altitude suddenly.