The Ski Helmet Debate

Well I'm not really interested in the stats. Natasha Richardson's fatal accident was enough for me. What if you had a fall on a rock hard icy patch . . .

Bottom line is snow sports ARE dangerous sports and it seems obvious to wear protection.

Mrs Smoothie and I have bought our first helmets this year and I'm actually looking forward to wearing it. It makes me feel like a proper, grown up skier.

Far Queue wrote:
To quote the headline
"After skiing together as a team for more than 50 years Good Ski Guide writers and resort Editors chalked up a hideous First last season - All six team members were hit by other slope users."

I wonder if there has not been a societal change in the last decade or so. Look at what athletes regularly do in any of the adventure, or extreme sports. No one would have believed these things possible twenty years ago. Not only that, but we are exposed to all kinds of impossible feats on TV, Film, and games. I can not imagine that even the most timid of us, has not had their expectations of what's possible changed over this period.

What has changed is ski technology, allowing people to do more, with the increased risk that brings.

There are also a lot more boarders about, my experience is that collisions are far more likely between a boarder and a skier than between two skiers (or between two boarders for that matter).

andyhull wrote:What has changed is ski technology, allowing people to do more, with the increased risk that brings.

There are also a lot more boarders about, my experience is that collisions are far more likely between a boarder and a skier than between two skiers (or between two boarders for that matter).

I agree, every time (4) I have been hit from uphill by someone speeding, it has been a skier. What can we do about them :lol:

stevesmoothie wrote:Natasha Richardson's fatal accident was enough for me. What if you had a fall on a rock hard icy patch . . .

Bottom line is snow sports ARE dangerous sports and it seems obvious to wear protection.

Actually here's the bottom line..

if you think snow sports are dangerous then according to the statistics football must be positively suicidal!!

Dr Mike Langran, UK National Secretary for both the International Society for Skiing Safety and SITEMSH (The International Society for Skiing Traumatology and Winter Sports Medicine)

- skiing isn't a dangerous sport, overall injury rates is 0.2-0.4%, football runs around 14% for example

- Natasha Richardson died from bleed caused by a blunt trauma, it's not clear a helmet would help. The actual odds of death from an accident on the slopes is approximately 1 in 1.5 million. Mike Langran has comment on this accident : http://www.ski-injury.com/latest_news/nr there's a lot of other interesting stuff on his site.

We all get something called a cognitive bias, there's many sorts and this is specifically an availability heuristic. That's the perception of the odds of something occurring is based on being able to recall a vivid example of it. Publicized accidents like that tend to push us into that trap.

Some of the other comments from above :

I always wear a helmet, keeps me protected from the nutters out there! It might well do but that's not much use, most accidents involve only one person.
I don't ski steep stuff so I really won't bother that's unfortunate, it's much safer on steep stuff. Most accidents occur at lower speeds on easier runs.
I would guess that the most common ski injury is thumbs and hamstrings and knees .. actually, that's perfectly correct )
I would like to see the statistics of serious head injuries on the slopes before I make any considered judgement try http://www.ski-injury.com but serious head injuries are rare and in many cases a helmet wouldn't help at all.

The problem here is you've got one group of people who are convinced wearing a helmet prevents a likely fatal injury and another group who've correctly assessed that sort of accident is unlikely.

Mike Langran has a balanced view I think if you read his comments about Natasha Richardson.

Far Queue wrote:
I appreciate that many collisions result in general body damage, but this is not very likely to be life threatening. It is the head damage which can either kill or affect people for life. I have just read in the printed version of the Good Ski Guide that the Swiss have an annual 70,000 snowsport accidents (yes that was seventy thousand), 10% of which are head injuries. That makes 7000 banged heads a year just in Switzerland. The Swiss have assigned a budget of 2.5 million Francs to run a campaign to try to reduce this.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of those figures, but they are certainly higher than I would have thought.

I was amazed by that so I checked the data and it's broadly correct. But some points they don't really make clear are that only 5% of injuries are related to collisions or that this figures include activities like sledging and ski touring, so a quick slice through the data seems to show only 40% is skiing or snowboarding. I also think the data is sourced from medical reports so if you turned up at the doctors with sunburn for example that would count )

ou can see some of that data on the bfu – Swiss Council for Accident Prevention website http://www.bfu.ch

thanks ise...the most informed post on this subject so far

The thread is entitled The Ski Helmet Debate. Listing a lot of statistics and their sources does not add to the debate. Everyone here can use a search engine.
Using phrases like "the bottom line" serves to deter further opinion being voiced, as though it's a summing up, and no further points can be valid.