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There have been serious cases of brain damage were the bicycle helmets have been hardly damaged.
This article taken from a US doctors website attempts to explain the problem:
Bike-Related Concussions Are on the Rise
As helmet wearing has increased, so have brain injuries among cyclists. From 1997 to 2011, bike-related concussions increased 67 percent in the US, according to data from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
This might seem puzzling until you take a look at the development of bicycle helmets -- and the safety standards to which they're still mostly built to meet. When helmets were first being designed and tested, the consequences of concussions were not widely understood.
Today, we know that a concussion, which is caused by a blow to your head, can lead to headache and problems with concentration, memory, judgment, balance, and more. The effects are usually temporary, although now, it's known that long-term complications may occur.
Among them, your risk of epilepsy doubles in the first five years following a concussion, and if a second concussion occurs before you've healed from the first, it can lead to rapid and fatal brain swelling.1
Research has also shown that people who experience multiple concussions over their lifetime, such as professional athletes, are at an increased risk of cognitive impairment including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a form of brain damage that's similar to Alzheimer's disease.2
Clearly, if you're wearing a bicycle helmet, you want it to protect your brain from a concussion as well as skull fracture, but to date, such technology doesn't really exist.
"…helmets were developed only to protect against massive head trauma, like cracking open your skull, and simply haven't been designed to prevent less immediately catastrophic injuries like concussions. What's more, none of us—not you, not me, not the helmet manufacturers or even the testing agencies—know for certain whether your helmet will prevent you from getting hurt."
http://www.bicycling.com/sites/default/ ... Helmet.pdf
This article taken from a US doctors website attempts to explain the problem:
Bike-Related Concussions Are on the Rise
As helmet wearing has increased, so have brain injuries among cyclists. From 1997 to 2011, bike-related concussions increased 67 percent in the US, according to data from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
This might seem puzzling until you take a look at the development of bicycle helmets -- and the safety standards to which they're still mostly built to meet. When helmets were first being designed and tested, the consequences of concussions were not widely understood.
Today, we know that a concussion, which is caused by a blow to your head, can lead to headache and problems with concentration, memory, judgment, balance, and more. The effects are usually temporary, although now, it's known that long-term complications may occur.
Among them, your risk of epilepsy doubles in the first five years following a concussion, and if a second concussion occurs before you've healed from the first, it can lead to rapid and fatal brain swelling.1
Research has also shown that people who experience multiple concussions over their lifetime, such as professional athletes, are at an increased risk of cognitive impairment including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a form of brain damage that's similar to Alzheimer's disease.2
Clearly, if you're wearing a bicycle helmet, you want it to protect your brain from a concussion as well as skull fracture, but to date, such technology doesn't really exist.
"…helmets were developed only to protect against massive head trauma, like cracking open your skull, and simply haven't been designed to prevent less immediately catastrophic injuries like concussions. What's more, none of us—not you, not me, not the helmet manufacturers or even the testing agencies—know for certain whether your helmet will prevent you from getting hurt."
http://www.bicycling.com/sites/default/ ... Helmet.pdf
