The Ski Helmet Debate

ir12daveor wrote:

I road bike and mountain bike a lot. I would never dream about not wearing a helmet on the bikes. In many cases I am travel at about the same speed on skis or a snowboard as on the bikes and very often in the same areas with the same things to hit your head on. Just because the ground is covered in a layer of snow doesn't mean all danger to your head magically disappears.

I don't mountain bike a great deal, but I do ride the road and on trails through the Black Forest. I had an accident this June, breaking my right collarbone and putting a 3cm fracture in my skull. I was not wearing a helmet when the back wheel decided it wanted to be in front of the front wheel and I came off backwards. I spent a week in hospital being treated for pain whilst having CT and MRI on my head as they had detected a large swelling on the front left part of my brain(about 4 cm in witdth) which is gone now. Funnily enough had I not have had a head injury and the subsequent brain scan I would not have known about something potentially more worrying and serious. Now I do, and at least I can act accordingly.

I also went to Chile 2 weeks later with both injuries, and snowboarded for 8 days. This actually made me a far better snowboarder as I was acutely aware of what a little fall could do and I adjusted my style and behaviour accordingly. I fell once when a panicky skier pulled me over getting off a chairlift, but apart from that I had a fantastice week getting shot of my bad habits and slowing down a great deal. I have not snowboarded as I used to since.

I still do not wear a helmet snowboarding or cycling, and have no immediate plans to do so. It's all about having your boundaries and listening to your instincts. Humans have lost the natural sense of instinct due to being wrapped in cotton wool and having risk removed from thier lives. This makes them a bad judge of risk in many situations. Knowing your limits, listening to your inner voice, and acting accordinly is far more valuable in my opinion.

tino_11 wrote: Humans have lost the natural sense of instinct due to being wrapped in cotton wool and having risk removed from thier lives. This makes them a bad judge of risk in many situations. Knowing your limits, listening to your inner voice, and acting accordinly is far more valuable in my opinion.

Humans developed their natural instincts living on the plains of Africa as hunters and the hunted for a quarter of a million years, those instincts are pretty good at telling us when to run from a lion or how to capture a wildebeest but we've not developed a natural instinct telling us anything about skiing either in the 100,000 years since spreading out from Africa or in the last 100 years or so that people have been recreationally skiing.

Far from helping it's precisely those hardwired instincts that make people so bad at judging risk. Even things like our perception of distance and speed are shaped by this heritage and work better on the Serengeti than the slopes of Verbier.

On the other hand, if you're regularly attacked by lions while on the slopes, have to hunt chamois for your dinner or get attacked by the neighboring tribe then those instincts are probably going to be pretty handy )

Does that happen to you as well, I thought it was just me :D

Seriously though, I do see your point and maybe I did not explain well enough, but I do feel strongly that protection has the ability to make certain people behave irresponibly in the first place. Not only in skiing but in a diverse range of activities from motoring to sex.

tino_11 wrote:Does that happen to you as well, I thought it was just me :D

Seriously though, I do see your point and maybe I did not explain well enough, but I do feel strongly that protection has the ability to make certain people behave irresponibly in the first place. Not only in skiing but in a diverse range of activities from motoring to sex.

Certainly, but even riding within your limits does not mean you can't have an accident. After all that's what an accident is! If you are riding outside your limits and have an "accident" with someone else then you could potentially be seen as negligent.

tino_11 wrote:

Seriously though, I do see your point and maybe I did not explain well enough, but I do feel strongly that protection has the ability to make certain people behave irresponibly in the first place. Not only in skiing but in a diverse range of activities from motoring to sex.

Conversely, If you are frightened to fall, you won't learn as quickly.

Trencher

ir12daveor wrote:

tino_11 wrote:Does that happen to you as well, I thought it was just me :D

Seriously though, I do see your point and maybe I did not explain well enough, but I do feel strongly that protection has the ability to make certain people behave irresponibly in the first place. Not only in skiing but in a diverse range of activities from motoring to sex.

Certainly, but even riding within your limits does not mean you can't have an accident. After all that's what an accident is!

So everyone should live in bungalows then to prevent injury or death due to stair use?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/790609.stm

tino_11 wrote:

ir12daveor wrote:

tino_11 wrote:Does that happen to you as well, I thought it was just me :D

Seriously though, I do see your point and maybe I did not explain well enough, but I do feel strongly that protection has the ability to make certain people behave irresponibly in the first place. Not only in skiing but in a diverse range of activities from motoring to sex.

Certainly, but even riding within your limits does not mean you can't have an accident. After all that's what an accident is!

So everyone should live in bungalows then to prevent injury or death due to stair use?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/790609.stm

Great argument... comparing apples and oranges again. :?

Trencher wrote:

tino_11 wrote:

Seriously though, I do see your point and maybe I did not explain well enough, but I do feel strongly that protection has the ability to make certain people behave irresponibly in the first place. Not only in skiing but in a diverse range of activities from motoring to sex.

Conversely, If you are frightened to fall, you won't learn as quickly.

Trencher

Hmmmm, I see your point, but if you are not frightened of anything then you will die very quickly.