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Bike helmets less protective than previously believed, study

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Bike helmets seem to be getting less protective. That, or their safety benefits have been exaggerated in the past.

A re-evaluation of a 2001 bike helmet safety study by Rune Elvik, a leading traffic researcher in Norway, suggests that the claim bike helmets reduced the risk of head injury by 60 per cent was wrong.

Elvik, the chief research officer at the Institute of Transport Economics in Oslo, reviewed the 2001 Australian study and said the conclusions were misguided because of publication bias and that recent studies show different results.

The study was a review of others that came before it, most of them showing that helmets provided significant protection from head injury. Elvik claims the bias of the time was to only publish studies that showed helmets to be useful. He also pointed out that newer studies between 2000 and now have trended toward showing less of a benefit from wearing helmets and suggests the number today is probably closer to 33 per cent head-injury risk reduction from bike helmets. However, when accounting for publication bias it may be almost zero.

“One would think that the earliest bike helmets that were made would be less effective than the ones that are made today, but we’re actually seeing an opposite trend: it has become less safe to wear a bike helmet over the years, and that is surprising,” Elvik said in a statement reported by Science Nordic.

It is unknown why helmets seem less beneficial today than they used to, but one suggestion put forward is that newer helmets with ventilation holes in them are less sturdy than older ones that more closely resembled motorcycle helmets.