Wear helmets, ye kids especially

This ‘personal choice’ argument would be so much easier if it weren’t for the fact that too many ‘personal choices’ wind up becoming other people’s problems and expense.

Edit to Will C:

Not what I wrote, Will. Not anywhere, or any time.

Ever read 'Atlas Shrugged'? You should. Rand's Objectivism philosophy is well known to be attractive to immature young males who fancy themselves as intellectual.

what if you wear your helmet when you want to, I’ll wear mine when I want to and if we aren’t climbing together we never fuckin talk about it again? 

apogeewrote:

This ‘personal choice’ argument would be so much easier if it weren’t for the fact that too many ‘personal choices’ wind up becoming other people’s problems and expense.

That's why I think this is a touch and go topic, interesting to revisit. Yes, it's a free country to do what you want, and it's free country to privately judge. I think this topic is working it's way to getting more socially unacceptable to not wear your helmet (like seatbelts), for healthcare workers & your partners burden in the aftercare of a careless accident. So I think it's merited for people to gripe about it openly. There is some shame to be had in not wearing your helmet, I'm for the peer pressure rising. Don't shame and judge someone brashly to their face, don't be an a**hole. But peer pressure is rising. Poke fun of your fun of your helmet-less friend climbing, refuse to belay them, etc.

Becca Joy Steinbrecherwrote:

 There is some shame to be had in not wearing your helmet

no, there's not.

Will C wrote:

Very nice. Let's see Paul Allen's ad hominem.

Look, buddy...you start manufacturing other people's comments to fit your own narrative, and you damn well better expect more of the same bullshit coming right back at you. (Rule #1: Don't be a jerk.)

Personally, I don't give a shit if you or anyone else wears a helmet, though every partner I climb with tends to wear one *most* of the time, because they value their brain above everything. But as is often said, 'you do you'. 

Walt Peterswrote:

https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-racing/kask-wg11-rotational-energy-impact-test-and-mips/

I just want people to wear helmets and some helmets that use Mips are cost prohibitive compared to helmets without mips. There is no disadvantage of using mips,  but is there really a tangible benefit?

Wow killer article props to outside and kask. I am familiar with kask for their chainsaw helmets but had never looked at their sports stuff. I personally wear helmets in all the different activities I do that one may be useful perhaps most importantly logging and tree work. However I have felt in the last ten years that the sports industry has gotten very gimmicky with their helmets. Stuff like mips but also now many companies actually say you should replace your helmet every 3 years even if you’ve never had an impact. I certainly understand foam degrades over time and will lose some effectiveness but come on 3 years is crazy. 

Just to throw another sport into the mix:

https://www.surfer.com/culture/surfers-wearing-helmets-pipeline-30-years-history

Kai Lenny: my helmet saved my life when my head hit the reef at Pipe

MP: how do you know that, Kai? Did you test this theory and die without a helmet in an alternate pumping Pipeline universe?

David Bwrote:

That's just plain incorrect. According to a survey with 1279 climbers, the statement "helmets take away from the aesthetic look and feel of a climbing scene" scores 2.16 in a 1-5 scale and is found to have a statistically significant negative correlation to helmet use (pearson correlation = -0.323, p < 0.001).

See table 9 here. 

Great find, David!  Always good to have actual research data on stuff like this.

Will C wrote:

 think your comment is a great example of a phenomenon that's fairly recent but becoming increasingly common, which is that some people think there is a responsibility upon the individual to consider the impacts and factor in the masses into every decision one makes.

Will, how do you define community and what role do you see for community in modern society?

If there is value in community is there value in individuals walking towards behavior that benefits the community?  Ie wearing a helmet climbing to make it less likely I end up in the ER that day.

And I think most to you point, is there a difference between me deciding that success of the community is important and I want to lean in to that vs what you see as "pressure to conform/control"?

Personally I believe that when my community succeeds, I personally am most likely to succeed.  So in fact the selfish thing to do is to act in the best interest of the community if it is of no meaningful cost to me. For me, the weight and $ cost of a helmet is of no real cost to me big picture, but the benefit for me and my community is obvious in my opinion.  It's not about a responsibility I have to act in the best interest of the community, its about consistently acting in ways that recognize that if I contribute to a toxic community, where people don't ask "what if everyone did what I'm about to do" my chances go down for living a long, happy life.  

Importantly, with that logic, just like you, I have decided to wear a helmet 99% of the time and generally refrain from telling people they should live the way I think they should live.  I stupidly never imagined "fewer people will get maimed if we all..." would be so controversial.

I don't think that snide comments about people who choose to not wear a helmet is helpful in any way, this feels like the pressure to conform you (and I) aren't a fan of.  What I do think is helpful is open discussion of the facts and real world impact of the topic specifically in an effort of working towards a higher and higher percent of climbers wearing a helmet every time.

While this isn't the most profound post in this thread, I just have to ask:  Haven't you non-wearers of helmets ever tried on the Sirocco?  That thing is so light and unobtrusive that I've actually forgotten to take it off before getting in the truck at the end of the day (only noticing when it hits the roof due to lack of clearance).  I'm sure there are others that are equally light and comfortable.

I get annoyed seeing climbers climbing without helmets, not because I want to pick a fight or interfere with their freedom to take on silly risks, but because it goes completely contrary to my personal approach to risk.  If there's a measure that can be employed at virtually zero cost that potentially adds a significant safety margin, why the hell wouldn't you use it? I'm not going to tackle you at the crag and force your melon into a helmet, but I may just come to the conclusion that it's too late for a helmet to do much good in your particular case.

As for the OP's concern about kids:  There should absolutely be a stigma associated with exposing kids to those kinds of risks without basic safety gear.  We should be advanced enough as a species to mess up Darwin's predictions.  Should be.

Sep M wrote:

We should absolutely publicly shame anyone who doesn’t wear a helmet.

Everyone has the right to make their own risk assessments. But anyone who changes their mind based on public shaming isn’t actually making risk assessments. They’re just going with the flow. And anyone with the ability to make risk assessments will realize that someone pointing at them and saying “haw-haw” isn’t actually a big deal.

It takes an astounding amount of narcissism to think you’re morally entitled to shame someone else based on different risk tolerances. 

Will C wrote:

I'll preface by saying I wear a helmet 99% of the time. I think your comment is a great example of a phenomenon that's fairly recent but becoming increasingly common, which is that some people think there is a responsibility upon the individual to consider the impacts and factor in the masses into every decision one makes.

"I pay taxes for healthcare so X has a responsiblity to wear a seatbelt, or helmet, and eat less, and exercise more, and this and that". This attitude inverts a personal choice, like wearing a helmet, by installing other people as central and critical to the ethical considerations of this choice. We can see this in action in other areas, like purchasing a certain car model, eating red meat, and taking vacations or flights.

Frankly, it's rather frightening and disturbing. It seems that there is some perverted idealism driving people to erode the separation between oneself and others and to create a world where we are no longer individuals with personal choices and personal responsibility, but a "we" that is inescapably responsible for everyone everywhere. This naturally creates a pressure to conform and control, since there is always someone somewhere who is arguably impacted by your actions, no matter how tenuous or theoretical the connection might be.

first off, my comments are directed in the spirit of this thread towards children who the state believes are not fully capable of making decisions for themselves. 

i’m not mandating helmet use for adults or even kids, although i am shaming parents and adults for both decisions. 

secondly, i believe what is chafing you here is that we in fact live in a society. the seatbelt rules are written and have saved many, sorry about your individual freedoms. your other examples about eating are pretty esoteric, i don’t care about them. 

but feel free to apply your argument to smoking or drinking, again, we limit the rights of minors to consume and vice tax the shit out of these to get people to make smarter choices. 

i’ll even do you one better if you want to make more analogies - how about red lights? do you stop at them because you’d prefer not to put yourself or others in danger? or because you might get a ticket?

stopping at red lights is cultural. in italy they are completely optional, watch where you’re walking. did you give up individual rights by stopping? in venezuela cars only come with seatbelts as an option. would that make a better society for your individual freedoms by watching many peoples lives get harmed by making bad choices?

like it or not, these values are cultural and shared as part of a social contract. to me, the dangerous line of thinking is believing that you are giving something up by arguing that seatbelts are unnecessary, minors should smoke, red lights are optional, and anyone should have a loaded gun for “personal freedom”. etc. 

you know, in the spirit of having a functional society and all. is this why we can’t have nice things?

Of those who appear to be rigidly anti-helmet, I have to wonder how many of them know someone personally who has sustained a traumatic brain injury- while the impacts of a severe TBI are obviously dramatic, even those who have sustained relatively mild TBI's often experience life-changing effects. Seeing people like this up close tends to leave a very different impression of head trauma, and why reducing that risk as much as possible is highly desirable (especially in children).

Eric Engbergwrote:

And you know this to be true because you ran the opposite scenario in a parallel universe?

No, we know this because some of us are capable of high school level physics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing

Time for the obligatory Seinfeld bit:
“There are many things you can point to as proof that the human is not smart. But my personal favorite would have to be that we needed to invent the helmet. What was happening, apparently, was that we were involved in a lot of activities that were cracking our heads. We chose not to avoid doing those activities but, instead, to come up with some sort of device to help us enjoy our head-cracking lifestyles. And even that didn’t work because not enough people were wearing them so we had to come up with the helmet law. Which is even stupider, the idea behind the helmet law being to preserve a brain whose judgment is so poor, it does not even try to avoid the cracking of the head it’s in.”

Badass climber guy in this thread:  "I'm a badass climber guy, and I can live with a 1/100 chance of a TBI (and I  can't  afford a $100 helmet)."

Badass climber guy over in the ice climbing forum:  "I'm a badass ice climber guy, and I can't accept the 1/1,000,000 chance that my Petzl ice tool could break, because that would be disastrous, so we should all spend $4,000 on carbon fibre and titanium custom-made ice tools every year (for safety's sake)."

We tell ourselves what we want to hear.

Sep M wrote:

We should absolutely publicly shame anyone who doesn’t wear a helmet.

Everyone has the right to make their own risk assessments. But anyone who changes their mind based on public shaming isn’t actually making risk assessments. They’re just going with the flow. And anyone with the ability to make risk assessments will realize that someone pointing at them and saying “haw-haw” isn’t actually a big deal.

I would love to meet you for this public shaming. Bring your baby oil and tassels.

William Kwrote:

No, we know this because some of us are capable of high school level physics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing

I'm quite confident that she must have run such a test before posting her dramatic story.  And one could argue that the lab is an alternative universe then the one that the device (brain) is threatened in.  It would be fairly complicated to mock up a brain and measure the results.  Putting a fake skull in a helmet and knocking it around should be straight forward though.  

You must have had quite an advanced high school physics class if you conducted such tests on any complex materials.

Eric Engbergwrote:

I'm quite confident that she must have run such a test before posting her dramatic story.  And one could argue that the lab is an alternative universe then the one that the device (brain) is threatened in.  It would be fairly complicated to mock up a brain and measure the results.  Putting a fake skull in a helmet and knocking it around should be straight forward though.  

You must have had quite an advanced high school physics class if you conducted such tests on any complex materials.

I don't know why you feel the need to keep f--ing this chicken.  It's fine if you don't understand UIAA and CE certifications; I'm sure not all of us do, but I assure you there's no need to go around posting about it!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s5ZLd-kCCRs&pp=ygUYQ2xpbWJpbmcgaGVsbWV0cyB0ZXN0aW5n

^climbing helmets tested. melon without helmet explodes, melon with helmet survives

Helmets work. I dont get the degenerate pedantics in this forum trying to argue otherwise. They are tested by manufacturers and have certifications just like any other climbing equipment. Yes it’s a game of probability and risks just like anything in life. So saying “but you can’t prove it” is just childish and not at all impressive. Yeah you can’t prove those cigarettes gave you lung cancer, but I can give a good probability on it.