Wearing a helmet increases risk taking and sensation seeking

[Earlyseabreeze]

Bille has the wisdom of (too 'kn painful!) experience...

As an academic I can say a few things about the published study:
1. It does NOT say wearing a helmet makes you an idiot.
2. It is only interesting because they found that risk-seeking unrelated to the helmet went up.

This is cool because it hints that us humans are weird in ways we hadn't thought of, like:
Wearing a condom while kiting could make us wanna try kitelooping.
Wearing a helmet while surfing the web could make us more likely to give our credit card details to dodgy websites.
Wearing a helmet and condom together could make us quit everything and move to a kiting paradise...

[14ToeSide]

Never ceases to amaze me what someone can make ANY study say. Like Cow Farts messin up the atmosphere. Simple: either wear a helmet or don't. Take a chance or not.

14

[LiquidXtasy]

Sorry to break this to you, but kiters do suffer head and brain injuries. Usually against hard objects but some have been killed or disabled by hitting nothing more than water, quite hard. This includes dozens of fatalities worldwide over the years. For each fatality there are many more injury accidents which are survived with temporary or at times permanent disability. It is good to have an opinion, a well informed opinion is even better particularly where you own well being and that of your fellow kiters might involved. Appearance is important but staying out of a vegetative or deceased state might be deemed more important, by some but ironically not by all. Fatalities are down but they are far from gone in kiting and accidents still happen all the time. You should do some reading to catch up things involving kiting and occasional impact trauma. You can start here but there is a vast amount of info elsewhere on this forum. viewforum.php?f=131

I thought more about this today. And I could see how having a helmet can save you if your riding strapless or trying to practice a mega loop or trying to jump over a bridge or something. But not if your riding around in flat water with boots on. That's ridiculous.

Hey man, I get that beaches and helmets don't intuitively mix. Much of the world aint a beach tho. Helmets are a personal choice and I certainly don't judge anyone who opts not to, They are the majority. But many of us come from a different perspective. The first time a kite gets the better of most of us around here its on frozen ground or ice. Only takes one good rattling to shift your paradigm. Since then my helmet has kept me warm, prevented much sun damage, Shaded my eyes, and intercepted my surfboard and foilboard more than enough times. I love my helmet. Have one for almost every sport I do.

If a helmet works for you then good, maybe it works for you and your riding conditions but not for me. Maybe I'm just not riding xtreme enough to worry about a helmet. Once I start trying to jump over bridges and mega loop I'll get one...

So it's mostly all about image to you ; and the assumption that if Ya don't LOOK like
a Dork , (then nobody will know that you ((ARE)) a Dork) ? ----

No it's mostly about not wearing something I have no need for. Otherwise I would be wearing a tuxedo whenever I kite...

[longwhitecloud]

A 15 year study has shown me that some kiters choice of safety gear is a clear warning sign, they can lack confidence which is a dangerous trait in many situations - random unpredictable choices towards other riders.

The more safety gear worn, the more dangerous/ nervous the riders have tended to be to others.

[LiquidXtasy]

A 15 year study has shown me that some kiters choice of safety gear is a clear warning sign, they can lack confidence which is a dangerous trait in many situations - random unpredictable choices towards other riders.

The more safety gear worn, the more dangerous/ nervous the riders have tended to be to others.

Yes this is exactly what i'm talking about

[KYLakeKiter]

When my lofting occurred in September, it had been a light wind day flying 17m kites just mowing the lawn with not even enough wind for a small jump. I had no inclination that things would go bad, and no intention to come on shore at the bad spot I did. My helmet was in my kite bag. Yes, I feel pretty stupid saying that and below are the results.

Head 1.jpg (92.49 KiB) Viewed 758 times

Head 2.png (433.49 KiB) Viewed 758 times

My head injuries were minor compared to the broken bones, but it would have been nice not to have them because my helmet was on my head and not on shore in a bag.

Just something to consider. We all choose our own idea of acceptable risks.

[Kamikuza]

Fell off the foil board last week and caught the back of my head on something on the way down. 2 inch cut, nice and clean though. Too lazy to go to hospital, got the wife to put a bandage on it.

A helmet definitely would have prevented the nuisance, and didn't increase my risk-taking the next session I wore it

[Starsky]

I can totally understand not wanting to wear one. If I lived/learned at a beach I would have never started wearing one and would be on the other side of the argument today. We started on snow covered ice.. helmet required. None of us used a helmet in summer for the first few years. Made sense to start considering some of our launches, but thats just me, there are plenty here who still go without. I don't think less of them.

[RickI]

Reasoning and arriving at binding conclusions absent facts, when available, is a fool's exercise. This isn't a new question, we were talking about this over a dozen years ago on here. There is a great deal of information including numerous accident accounts which you can review today unlike say in 2001 when there were relatively few. If you did some research you would know that lots of guys have died and even more injured in flat water for a wide variety of reasons. If you would like some facts to go with your conclusions, you should do some reading. If not, have at it and good luck. Not everyone goes into the grinder, only some of us but the selection can be random to a degree. Ultimately it is up to the rider to decide whether to use safety gear or not. Hopefully this will be based on some facts and not inference or worse based on concerns over how they might look to others.

I thought more about this today. And I could see how having a helmet can save you if your riding strapless or trying to practice a mega loop or trying to jump over a bridge or something. But not if your riding around in flat water with boots on. That's ridiculous.

[14ToeSide]

It's like the law we used to have in Florida that motorcycle riders HAD to wear a helmet. Now they don't. Help me understand if a rider is wearing or not wearing a helmet that the one wearing wearing a helmet is more dangerous to others around him/she??

The Wind must be dead where u all are! Woooo Whooooo!!!!