Wear helmets, ye kids especially

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

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.

Everyone needs to get off this Youtube science, it’s junk and proves nothing.

It’s obvious that wearing a helmet is a net benefit but they most certainly are not the be all end all of climbing safely, just another tool in the box.

Math Bertwrote:

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!

You inability to comprehend what I am saying continues.  I have never said that helmets don't "work" or allow for a statistically safer experience.  How many times have I said that I often wear one and certainly don't judge others who do/don't.  

What I am saying started as a simple nit about "saving" lives.  And despite all the pseudo science about non destructive testing - which is not really germane to TBI although testing (destructive) can certainly measure helmet effectiveness and used for CE and UIAA certifications (which I probably know more about then you), there is no way of determining what the outcome of the fall taken by the OP would have been sans helmet.

What does annoy me is posting something like this as a PSA - expecting a different outcome then the previous 100x its been done.  Playing the kids card (I wonder if she has kids? - you will probably interpret this as me saying kids shouldn't wear helmets.  For the record I have 4 kids and 2 kids-in-law.  5 of them climb and wear helmets most of the time - I didn't insist on it but I'm glad I do) and advocating public shaming.  Just seems like another example of the gym bred crowd  (who certainly monopolize MP) trying to sanitize climbing - safety above all.

Eric Engbergwrote:

there is no way of determining what the outcome of the fall taken by the OP would have been sans helmet.

There it is again!  We get it!  You've can't prove a counter-factual!  That's always going to be a true statement.  I would advise though, that if you choose to live your life with that as a guiding principal, it would lead you to some pretty absurd conclusions.  This is now getting philosophical and off-topic, so I will leave you this is XKCD cartoon (not a perfect analogy of this situation, but close enough):   xkcd.com/552/

Becca Joy S wrote:

I take your continued interest an indicator that we should conduct a test on you! Please, inform us all.

The helmet debate can be interesting but nothing new is coming from this thread.

On a related note, don’t approve of abortion? Don’t get one!

Will C, you might wanna wear a helmet for your descent into madness. 

You have the right to not wear a helmet if you want, I'm not going to stop you. I have the right to say I think that's a bad decision. It's a proven fact that wearing a helmet is safer, saying otherwise is nonsense. You have the right to make your own decision and ignore the facts if you want, and everyone else has the right to point out how that can affect others too. 

What gets me is the argument about 'why can't other people have higher risk tolerance than you'? I'll accept that argument when you're clearly gaining something from the risks you're taking. e.g. Alpinists have to take risks to get to a summit, but we generally accept those because there's a clear trade off with those risks and the 'reward' of summiting. But what do you gain from not wearing a helmet? You feel sweaty, you don't think you look cool? I admit those factors are there but relatively minimal especially with modern gear. Weigh that vs protection from brain injury and it feel like people aren't really understanding the trade off they're making. I could be wrong and others have weighed everything and decided getting sweatier is worth that risk, but I still think it's the wrong decision.

Also, I think people really discount the 'cool' factor in not wearing a helmet. That is absolutely a factor. Take a look at other sports like skating, no one wears a helmet there despite all of the obvious upsides, and falls are way more common there than climbing. If I watch a bunch of videos of pros climbing the newest, sickest, raddest stuff and none of them are wearing a helmet, that makes me a gumby if I'm gonna wear one on my sport route. Or even if whenever you walk up to the sport crag and all the people climbing the hardest routes aren't wearing one, you take notice. We're social creatures and are affected by the decisions of others, don't pretend otherwise. I think this more than a 'higher risk tolerance' really tips the scales towards taking more risk. 

To bring this back to kids, they 

1. Have brains that are not good at weighing risk, 

2. are especially affected by social pressures 

They should absolutely always have to wear a helmet, even if they don't want to.

Now 6 pages in and only 4 real life stories of helmet/no helmet injuries.  The climbing story to bloviation ratio on this thread is too low, so here's another helmet story.

April 1st, 1989.  First day of climbing in Yosemite Valley of the new year.  A few months before I had read a story in Climbing magazine about traumatic brain injuries from climbing falls and I thought "gee, that makes sense, maybe I should wear a helmet".  I didn't come to climbing from a mountaineering background and none of my partners wore helmets so it had never occurred to me.  I had gone 9 years of climbing by that point without a bad fall or an accident so it wasn't something at the front of my mind. Anyway I had bought one and it was in the back of the truck.  We got up to the cliff and I realized I had forgot to pack it.  "Oh well, I've made it this far without a helmet, what's one more day."

I started up the first pitch of the day, a 5.10 I'd done before.  Halfway up, I saw some bolts a little off to the left I'd never seen before and thought "oh that looks nice, maybe I'll check that route out."  Now I have to inject, maybe I wasn't thinking all that clearly in the moment.  My mother had passed away and I was still in a state of extreme grief. So I went up and left and the farther out from the bolt on my route I got, the farther away the new bolt looked.  Foreshortening is real.  Then I realized I was in licheny crumbly unclimbed rock and the climbing was pretty hard. I had that realization rather simultaneously with falling.  One of the longest falls I've ever taken, about 50 feet.  But the bad part was I smacked a protrusion near the end of the fall that spun me around 180 degrees, so I stopped with my back to the rock with my shoulder and head whacking very hard.

Well, fortunately my partner was able to lower me to the ground and off we went to the Valley Clinic (our gear was recovered by some kind souls climbing nearby).  On the way he was asking me to name the president and stuff like that and I was saying, "Jack, please tell my husband I'm so sorry I died.  Please tell my family I love them and I'm sorry."  My head hurt REALLY bad and I didn't think I was going to live.

They diagnosed me with a concussion but I appeared stable and told me to go home immediate, back to the Bay Area and good hospitals, and not sleep that night and to go immediately to the ER if I manifested a list of warning signs.  Anyway I recovered.  Really interesting to see how much blood drained out of my brain over the next couple of weeks.

I've worn a helmet since then.

this debate WAS huge in the road cycling community all through the 80s-90's and even into the early part of the 2000s, until a cyclist named Kivilev went OTB with his hands in his jersey pockets in 2003(Paris-Nice). AFTER that the culture in road cycling changed...why? Because the accident was bad enough(televised live) that the UCI made it mandatory for any and all pros to wear a helmet in an event sanctioned by them. Once the pros were seen wearing helmets consistently day in and day out ... amateurs' followed suit. 

Early in my climbing career, I was leading 'Cat's Meow' at Suicide. The start is a thin crack that took a #4 stopper, then up and left on sort of a mantle move, and then to better gear. I blew sequence, popped off and grabbed the draw (like I saw the sport wankers do at Snowbird). Popped that stopper, and took a fall to the ground, striking my un-helmeted head as I rolled over backward. Helmets started to make a lot more sense on that day.

Everyone calm down.

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.

Hasn't this idea been around for millenia? For example in the form of karma from the Buddhist tradition? Surely other places/times saw individuals realizing the interconnectedness of all things and then so their own impacts on others and then so endeavoring to minimize those impacts when possible.

carried this guy out with a punctured lung and head injury while wearing a fiberglass joe brown helmet that was split right in two

. I have had so many close calls over the years. Got dinged right on the lid by sizeable ice chunks a few weeks ago. hardly felt it with the new style helmet.

Tradibanwrote:

Everyone needs to get off this Youtube science, it’s junk and proves nothing.

Did you watch the video? Literally talks to a climbing gear manufacturer representative and discusses testing. It seems you are talking out of the rear end ace ventura style. It dont look good outside a comedy.

Also, I never learned that the scientific method takes exception with “youtube,” do tell! How many rocks dropped on a melon protected by helmets do you need before you consider it statistically significant?

It’s obvious that wearing a helmet is a net benefit but they most certainly are not the be all end all of climbing safely, just another tool in the box.

You’re fighting with windmills.

While I've had some minor bangs on the helmet, pulling roofs or in one case a mid sized pebble that likely wouldn't have concussed me but coulnd't have felt good.  I have examples where a helmet, has literally saved me from getting absolutely messed up side-country skiing and trail riding(MTN biking).  Granted I have had brain issues before, but for me its a case of benefit costs on most climbs.  That being said we know a lot of things are bad for us and we still do them, smoking, drinking, fast food.  While some people can be persuaded via these types of literature, It isn't going to happen on scale regardless of how persuasive we think we are going to be.  

One thing I have noticed is " trad" climbers often wearing their helmets on sport climbs, even tho "sport climbers" don't even if they have one, or even wear it for trad.  

Eric Engbergwrote:

You inability to comprehend what I am saying continues.  I have never said that helmets don't "work" or allow for a statistically safer experience.  How many times have I said that I often wear one and certainly don't judge others who do/don't.  

What I am saying started as a simple nit about "saving" lives.  And despite all the pseudo science about non destructive testing - which is not really germane to TBI although testing (destructive) can certainly measure helmet effectiveness and used for CE and UIAA certifications (which I probably know more about then you), there is no way of determining what the outcome of the fall taken by the OP would have been sans helmet.

What does annoy me is posting something like this as a PSA - expecting a different outcome then the previous 100x its been done.  Playing the kids card (I wonder if she has kids? - you will probably interpret this as me saying kids shouldn't wear helmets.  For the record I have 4 kids and 2 kids-in-law.  5 of them climb and wear helmets most of the time - I didn't insist on it but I'm glad I do) and advocating public shaming.  Just seems like another example of the gym bred crowd  (who certainly monopolize MP) trying to sanitize climbing - safety above all.

Climber: my helmet saved my life

Eric: 

apogeewrote:

Ummm….pretty sure this thread is about *kids* wearing helmets…

This is, or it used to be, a logic-free sport. Don't try to impose your clear thinking and reading skills on others. 

It took a while, but the unbeatable and unanswerable POV, the coup de grace was delivered  "Well, what's the difference between . . .  "  

Big Bwrote:

this debate WAS huge in the road cycling community all through the 80s-90's and even into the early part of the 2000s, until a cyclist named Kivilev went OTB with his hands in his jersey pockets in 2003(Paris-Nice). AFTER that the culture in road cycling changed...why? Because the accident was bad enough(televised live) that the UCI made it mandatory for any and all pros to wear a helmet in an event sanctioned by them. Once the pros were seen wearing helmets consistently day in and day out ... amateurs' followed suit. 

I’ll say it again. If you are making money on a climbing photograph, you have an obligation to model safe behavior, because your behavior really does influence people. Do whatever you want on your own time, but if your income is derived from eyeballs looking at you, it’s no longer just about your free-dum or whatever… 

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

Did you watch the video? Literally talks to a climbing gear manufacturer representative and discusses testing. It seems you are talking out of the rear end ace ventura style. It dont look good outside a comedy.

Also, I never learned that the scientific method takes exception with “youtube,” do tell! How many rocks dropped on a melon protected by helmets do you need before you consider it statistically significant?

You’re fighting with windmills.

Melon testing is for “likes” and is not a realistic representation of a rock striking a human head. I will put it in layman terms for you.

In this case the melon is trapped between the helmet and an unmovable object, the floor. The human head would “give”, this Youtube science is showing a melon being crushed not struck by a falling rock.

I will say, I’m not the most graceful climber and I really appreciate my helmet when I smack my head against the bottom of a roof or walk into a tree while looking at the ground, trying to figure out if said tree has “good roots.”