The Upright Truth on Mountain Bike Helmets

You probably know by now that mountain biking importantly requires you to wear a mountain bike helmet no matter how ridiculous you think it may be. A mountain bike helmet is always an important safety precaution gear to use during sport activities like mountain biking. The helmet functions to protect the brain or the skull of a person from great impact during accidents or falls. It may also lessen injuries and damages acquired from the accidents.

Even though the helmet’s sole purpose in its life span is to protect your head from injuries, it has no other offered benefits. But if you think of disadvantages you get from wearing a mountain bike helmet, then you should come up with few (more than its benefit).

If you are into mountain biking, whether it’s your sport or hobby, you automatically think of your safety so you gear yourself up with every safety gear you can find. In mountain biking, you need high speed to run your bike, and you encounter lots of upright drops, and extreme terrain. Undeniably, it is absolutely advisable to use protective gears like a mountain bike helmet when you want to trail rocky roads of the mountains.

Nevertheless, mountain bike helmets cannot protect you from all the threats of mountain biking. Other researchers and professional mountain bikers question if helmets are really protective or it just cause further problems. For one, mountain bike helmets (or any other kind of helmets, for that matter) only protect the head from injuries. Helmets don’t protect the spinal cord which may also cause worst injuries if damaged. Spinal cord injuries may require surgical operation and may even cause paralysis, and eventually death.

There have been surveys and researches done on why there are more occurrences of bike-related accidents with more people wearing helmets. Other cyclists say that they feel that they are well-protected when they wear their mountain bike helmets and so they tend to pedal faster to speed up which may lead to accidents. They unconsciously rely on the helmet for full protection not knowing that the mountain bike helmet is only for the head protection.

The most common bike-related injuries are damaged head or brain which causes intellectual impairment and death. Another common injury that mountain bike helmets cannot prevent is the rotation injury. Rotational injury is obtained from the great impact torsional force which may lead to Diffuse Axonal Injury (DAI). Although there is no direct relationship between mountain bike helmet usage and seriousness of an injury, helmets are still not 100% efficient in providing protection especially from injuries on neck and spinal cord.