*** NEWS *** Are helmet-mounted cameras safe? A few days ago we were talking about recording footage from bikes for training purposes and Ken Haylock and others mentioned helmet-mounted cameras as giving a higher, riders eyeview position. My own preference since the earliest days of a ruddy great camcorder strapped on the tank is for bike-mounted cameras as they dont wobble around quite so vomit-inducingly as one stuck on a helmet. But theres a safety side too, something brought home by the MSV instructors on the Ride Skills days at Brands who have a strict, no helmet-cam policy. As a very basic explanation, there are two types of head injury. As a result of a direct impact, the head can suffer bruising, laceration, abrasion or skull fracture, which may not always result in brain injury. But damage to the brain is also caused when the brain itself impacts the inside of the skull when an impact brings your entire head to a very sudden stop. A helmet will protect against a skull fracture but the lining inside the helmet cannot prevent this kind of damage except when the impact is a very mild one. The other kind of injury is caused by rotational shearing. If the head rotates on impact, which is actually very likely as the head can move on the neck, the brain will in turn rotate within the skull, rupturing veins and causing bleeding resulting in a subdural haematoma. The brain itself also shears internally, severing nerve fibres and the tiny vessels that supply blood deep within the brain. This is called Diffuse Axonal Injury (DAI). The MSV argument is that the camera and mount can generate neck-twisting and brain-spinning forces as they impact and grip the ground, when what you really need is for the helmet to slide smoothly on the surface. Exactly what happened in Michael Schumachers skiing crash to cause his injuries isnt at all clear from the article - theres no detail at all, just an unsubstantiated statement (which we expect to see refuted by Go-Pro at any time incidentally). Its been argued that the amount of force that would rip the camera off would be minimal, but in bike crashes head injuries are all too common and it seems daft to risk making them worse just to gain a bit of footage. As we said a couple of days back, anything stuck on the outside of a helmet that can make head injuries worse is, in our opinion, best avoided.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 08:52:48 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015