Helmets don’t replace judgment on ski slopes
Think that new ski helmet will save your life or the life of your teenager? Think again.
Most skiers and snowboarders dying on U.S. ski slopes these days wear helmets. Even more troubling is the fact that most of these unfortunate few are wearing helmets even though, overall, only a small minority of people on the slopes are helmet users.
Here are the key figures from the International Society for Skiing Safety:
_ Percent of skier/rider population wearing helmets: 28.3.
_ Percent of those killed wearing helmets: 58.
One could look at those figures and conclude that wearing a helmet makes skiing or ‘boarding more dangerous. The scientists compiling the data didn’t do that, of course. The scientists recognized the statistical possibility that the high use of helmets among those who died might reflect a greater use of helmets by those engaged in extreme, and potentially deadly, behavior.
Still, the data is troubling.
As researcher Dr. Jasper Shealy writes, “A false, or exaggerated, feeling of security can lead to people increasing their level of risk-taking. This offsetting behavior, especially in young, skilled males, appears in skiing and snowboarding to negate the benefits of wearing a helmet.”
This might help explain why the fatality rate for skiing in America has remained stable even as the use of helmets has steadily increased.
In a study of skiers at Sugarbush Resort in Vermont, Shealy reported, “the use of helmets has increased from virtually zero prior to 1995 to approximately 30 percent today.”
Over the same time period, Shealy added, the overall number of head injuries didn’t change much, but their severity shifted.
“For nonhelmeted skiers, only 23 percent of all potentially serious head injuries are more serious than a mild concussion,” Shealy wrote. “For helmeted skiers, 67 percent of their potentially serious head injuries are more severe than a mild concussion. Clearly … helmeted skiers are sustaining a disproportionate number of the truly serious head injuries.”
Now, before you dismiss all this as something that applies only to the young and reckless and pull your helmet back on, assuming it will protect you from a freak accident, at least consider one more troubling fact:
The experts agree ski helmets offer little or no protection in head-on collisions with trees or other objects _ the deadliest kind of ski accidents _ at speeds greater than 15 mph.
“That,” notes Shealy, “is a modest level of protection given that the average speed of skiers on well-groomed, blue, cruiser trails (where most of the fatalities take place) is on the order of 25 to 40 mph.”
The problem here is inadequate technology.
“In order to protect the head against a direct impact blow at 30 mph with currently available materials, a helmet would need to be at least 18 centimeters (7 inches) thick, 50 centimeters (almost 20 inches) wide and weigh 5 kilograms (11 pounds),” writes Dr. Mike Langran on www.ski-injury. com.
For obvious reasons, the least of them being fashion, nobody would wear a helmet like that. Instead, people wear light, compact, attractive helmets that have been shown to be of little use in the sort of high-velocity collisions that led to the deaths of Sonny Bono and Michael Kennedy in the late 1990s.
Those deaths fueled a helmet boom that has seen some people suggesting protective helmets should be mandatory on ski slopes.
Lost in all of this has been any sort of informed discussion of what helmets will and will not do.
There is a place for helmets on the slopes. They belong on the heads of small children and beginners. They have shown themselves useful in low-speed falls where the main impact comes from banging the head off icy terrain. There is little doubt that helmets will in these cases prevent mild concussions.
But small children and beginners aren’t the people you usually see in helmets. Instead, they are usually worn by extreme or racer wannabees, often ‘boarding out of control, often skiing too fast in congested areas, often playing in places where they mistakenly believe the helmet will save their life if they hit a tree.
Everyone involved with ski safety recognizes this. But who in safety-worshiping America is brave enough to suggest helmets should be like training wheels on a bicycle, something you learn to do without as your skills and judgment increase.
This is how Shealy hedges on helmets on the Web site, www.lidsonkids.org:
“A helmet can be an effective part of an individual program to increase one’s safety on the slope. … (But) if you are going to wear a helmet, ski and ride as if you aren’t wearing one.
“Don’t alter your behavior, take more risks or ski or ride faster because you’re outfitted in a helmet. Make sure that you remain in control and ski and ride responsibly. It is only with this mind-set that we have any chance of avoiding the demonstrated trend of increased overall injuries that typically accompanies universal use of safety devices such as helmets.”
How realistic is that?
I don’t wear a ski helmet. I do wear a bike helmet. I don’t think of it as something that changes my riding style, but I have to confess that on those rare occasions when the helmet has been forgotten, I have noticed my mountain biking become significantly more conservative, particularly on steep descents and in rough terrain.
Apparently, this sort of reflexive change in behavior is common.
As Shealy notes, “the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has found to their dismay that as the use of helmets for bicyclists went from less than 18 percent in 1991 to 50 percent in 1998, the per capita rate of head injuries increased (not decreased) by 50 percent over the same period of time.”
It ought to make any reasonable person contemplate where we’re going with this whole helmet thing.
Could it be we’re trying to cloak the brain in plastic and Styrofoam when what we really should be trying to do is get through to it with a message that what matters is judgment?
When it comes to skiing, after all, the best way to protect your head is clearly to ski smart _ stay in control, don’t take chances, watch your speed and think a bit about what you’re doing.
E-mail Craig Medred at cmedred(at)adn.com.
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