How well do helmets protect your head?

Helmets provide much-needed protection to bicyclists who decide to hit the roadways, and it is a safety must-have by many professionals and cyclists alike. After all, you need all the protection you can get when going up against the might of a larger vehicle.

But do you know what sort of protection helmets provide? Do you understand how they provide this protection and the success rate that helmets hold?

Helmets can still improve

The National Library of Medicine takes a look at how helmets protect your head during a crash. A study focusing on how helmets impact overall head and brain safety discusses several points, including the improvements that helmets could still undergo and the protections they currently provide.

First, helmets are not perfect protection from injury. They do not guarantee 100 percent protection from any form of head or brain injury, which shows that they still have room for improvement. Changes and improvements could potentially reduce injuries of the head and brain even further.

Reductions in head and brain injuries

However, helmets do still provide plenty of protection currently. Even intracranial hemorrhage, which suffers from one of the lowest rates of injury reduction, still has a reduced rate of 53 percent compared to cyclists who do not wear helmets. On top of that, other injuries have a higher rate of reduction, with a 71 percent reduction in cerebral contusions and a 69 percent reduction in skull fractures.

Helmets thus do a moderate job at protecting from brain and head injuries, even if they still have room for improvement. Thus, cyclists should wear helmets when hitting the road to increase their safety and survival.