I strolled down to the MIT Sailing Pavilion to get a few late afternoon photos and discovered that MIT now requires students to wear helmets:
(wind at nearby Logan airport was reported at 6 knots)
Separately, what about the Hovding airbag helmet for bicycling? Annoying to have to charge it every 10 hours but it seems like a better idea than conventional bike helmets.
Seems neat, though probably more suited to Sweden – richer (and some insurance firms cover the damage according to their site?!)
What I don’t understand is why doesn’t this inflato-helmet cover the entire head – the chin, the nose, the eyes? It could inflate another hood from below or the sides no? you wouldn’t want to ride in a bubble helmet constantly but that’s the beauty of this thing.
A long time ago when I just got a motorcycle – I ran into an acquaintance on the subway with whom I chatted on the subject before at my former office – he got a bike first… When I recognized him, I asked how’s his riding – he took out his front teeth which he didn’t yet replace with permanent ones – He was sitting on his bike on a ramp in NJ traffic, when the car behind bumped him. He flew over the handlebars onto his teeth. I always wore full face, until I had a child and donated the bike away.
Looking like F-35 pilots could use one of those airbag helmets.
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense-news/2015/10/04/f-35-fatal-ejection-fear-riles-congress/73219260/
I think they would be beneficial for many pedestrians.
But I’m not buying these half-assed solutions.
I’m waiting for a slaver stasis field suit.
@lvl: He was sitting on his bike on a ramp in NJ traffic, when the car behind bumped him. He flew over the handlebars onto his teeth. I always wore full face, until I had a child and donated the bike away.
I don’t have any children and I, too, wear a full face helmet, but due to stories like your’s and the weekly motorcycle fatalities in my county, I’m thinking of selling my Kawasaki Ninja. But riding it is a blast!
And yet all helmets come with a warranty disclosed [1]. What happened to the days living life with out too much worrying? Getting a cut and shrugging it off?
This requirement form MIT to wear helmet is for MIT to protect itself from a law suite and nothing more.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/05/sports/football/warning-labels-on-helmets-combat-injury-and-liability.html?_r=0
Most “boom” accidents on the sailboat result in nothing more than a bump on the head. It may hurt a little but one learns pretty quickly to keep the head down.
The helmet will probably make kids careless and they will get in trouble once they experience a jibe on a big boat. The boom can swing with such force that they will get thrown overboard, with or without the helmet.. The only way to prevent that is to learn that the boom presents a constant hazard when sailing downwind, and not get in the path of it.
I’m with the rest of you – Peltzmann effect!
On motorcycles, fancy helmets are great for saving your head, but unfortunately, the rest of the body has a lot of kinetic energy to dissipate also: a local mechanic (he was 42) rode his bike into the side of a small car leaving a local restaurant’s car park; the side impact bar did its work, and the driver’s door had only a shallow dent. His helmet worked fine too – looked like new.
Still, within minutes, his skin had the pale yellow colour of the newly dead – energetic CPR efforts notwithstanding. Just too much damage inside. He died within a minute or two’s drive of his family home. Soon, his mother was sitting beside him, there on the road in the rain.