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kai2k1 0
All opinoins welcomed
There's no truer sense of flying than sky diving," Scott Cowan
alan 1
QuoteI would think, though that a gear manufacture could be more likely to be sued if their helmets are actually certified and someone still gets a serious head injury.
In principal, I agree. Now I can't help but wonder, are skydivers more likely to sue than an injured BMXer, for example? Seems as if with the large market thay already have and the relatively extreme activities the target markets have, wouldn't the legal issues have surfaced by now? Maybe they have and they just don't want to add to them. Would not be logical to me, but then who knows.
alan 1
I figure that if you hit the ground with your head, it will bounce and cause soft tissue damage to your neck, helmet or not. The extra thickness around the chin may cause some mechanical leverage increase. I don't think that the difference is huge though. You are gonna hurt either way. I have never seen a study (like car crash test dummies) that shows any valid research into it.
Fatal impacts? If there is enough impact to break your neck while wearing a helmet, you are going to be dead from blunt impact trauma without one.
Non-fatal? The damage is a lot less. I've seen people hit and survive some wicked stuff with a helmet on. Stuff that should have been fatal. Even with a camera to provide extra momentum, the helmet saved their life.
I tend to agree with you here, and figure if a helmet is somehow making an injury worse, i.e. fragments embedding chances are it's going to be a byline to a more serious situation. Unless of course a helmet is somehow focusing the collision energy instead of dissipating it, but that sounds like pp engineering to me and anything that does this should not be called a helmet.
Bottom line is i'm wearing a helmet every time I go up, as I think the chance of the helmet I use making an injury worse is vanishingly small and far outweighed by its benefits.
Happy turkey day!
Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me
Feel the hate...
Photos here
kallend 2,027
QuoteThe Navy did some studies years ago, may not be relevant. They concluded that the helmets Navy pilots were wearing at the time were the cause of death during high speed ejections. I believe they used the terminology of hangman's noose syndrome.
I heard the same thing but I can't find the source. I *guess* that is the reason most helmets are cutaway significantly at the back these days. I don't like the look of some of those heavy duty chin "straps" on camera helmets.
The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.
riggerrob 643
QuoteDoes it seem logical to say that a "skydiving" helmet would not really help in the event of a crash towards the ground. But more to protect you from Riser slaps on unstable deployments, knocking your head on the plane on exit and being kicked in the head during RW?
All opinoins welcomed
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Those are the main reasons that I wear a Protec.
My loving students have an annoying habit of jamming my head into the doorframe!
The last time Steve wore a leather hat, a tandem riser almost ripped his ear off!
The last time I wore a leather hat, my canopy collapsed at low altitude (due to turbulence) the PLF that followed left bruises all the way from my left ankle to the left side of my head. I promptly traded my leather hat for a Protec.
If professional skydiving paid a bit better, I would buy the better protection offered by a Bonehead Guner or M3T.
alan 1
alan 1
The source is referenced here, it should be sufficient for you to find the original if you wish. Not the gospel by any means, but enough for me to ask questions. I'm not anti helmt by any means, but have a problem with the mentality of not questioning their effectiveness and or safety. Apparently there are those that feel we should just all agree that they are a good thing based on their personal observations or experiences and let it go at that. Who needs real empirical data to eveluate. I guess we can all agree that the Earth is flat and the Sun orbits the Earth.
Tangential or rotational forces to the head/neck are the cause of the majority of head impact injuries. Most are in the frontal and lateral areas, with very few from the back.
Ah hell, here is the link to the report.
http://www.kena.net/phd/docs/deadpilot.htm
Quote
Tell me what happens to you if you get dropped head first from 4ft high onto a curb because that's what a 10mph headplant onto a curb would feel like. The observation that "There was not another mark on him" means that his head/neck took the full force of impact so i'm not surprised that his neck broke as something had to take the load from 240lbs moving at 10mph.
QuoteApparently there are those that feel we should just all agree that they are a good thing based on their personal observations or experiences and let it go at that. Who needs real empirical data to eveluate.
If we observe or experience something, then isn't that empirical?
QuoteTangential or rotational forces to the head/neck are the cause of the majority of head impact injuries.
I think you probably meant normal (perpendicular to surface) and rotational forces. Are there any other types of impact forces in spherical coordinates?
Quote
Ah hell, here is the link to the report.
http://www.kena.net/phd/docs/deadpilot.htm
QuoteREFERENCES
1. Wood James F: The ideal lesion produced by judicial hanging. Lancet 1.53, 1913.
Jim must have been a sick, twisted man...
I hate it when statistics are abused like in http://www.kena.net/phd/docs/ntsb.htm. So let me abuse them the other way . But seriously...
QuoteThe study in question, made by Raeder and Negri of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles in 1969, compared motorcycle accident and injury data for the years 1966 and 1967 in order to detect possible effects of the mandatory helmet law which became effective January 1, 1967.1 The study showed, first, a decrease of 39 percent in total number of accidents which were reported - - from 5184 to 3161.
So there was a 40% (~factor of 2!!!) reduction in reported accidents. Either 1) there were 40% less motorcyclists on the road because the helmet law scared them away. 2) 1966 was a really bad year(doubtful) 3) Something happened on January 1, 1967 that reduced the number of reportable (serious) accidents. hmmmmmm....
Quote
Percentage
Severity 1966 1967
Fatal 1.6 1.6
Personal Injury 92.4 94.4
Property Damage 5.9 4.0
____ ____
99.9 100.0
Thus far, these data show no effect of the helmet; the proportion of fatality among all accidents is unchanged.
Maybe they are the same because incidents that are worth reporting have their own distribution (e.g. in accidents bad enough to report, a helmet doesn't really help you all that much).
From these numbers I would conclude that the chance of a reportable incident occurring is reduced by a factor of ~2 if you wear a helmet. If you do have a reportable incident, however, your chance of dying is 1.6% no matter whether you are wearing a helmet or not (assuming everyone riding a motorcycle in 1967 was wearing a helmet and nobody wore a helmet in 1966) with the caveat that the sample is small. In reality, the only valid number in this report IMHO is the total number of reported incidents.
You know the best way to resolve this whole helmet debate is to run an experiment. Helmet lovers and haters take turns jumping off some low object like a desk and hitting their head on the ground with/without a helmet on. The group that requires the least amount of cumulative head related hospital care after 10 rounds wins the debate. I think 100 people on each side should give us enough statistics.
Happy turkey day!
Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me
Feel the hate...
Photos here
Exactly. It isn't going to save anyone, but it may help.
I can't understand how people can make an argument that it would make an injury worse. That doesn't seem logical to begin with.
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