A 2006 study showed that “280,000 people in the U.S. receive a motor vehicle induced traumatic brain injury every year” so you would think that wearing a helmet while driving would be commonplace. Race car drivers wear helmets. But since almost no one wears a helmet while driving a regular car, you probably fear that if you wore one you would look silly, attract the notice of the police for driving while weird, or the attention of another driver who took your safety attire as a challenge. (Car drivers are more likely to hit bicyclists who wear helmets.)
The $30+shipping Crasche hat is designed for people who should wear a helmet but don’t. It looks like a ski cap, but contains concealed lightweight protective material. People who have signed up for cryonics, such as myself, would get an especially high expected benefit from using a driving helmet because we very much want our brains to “survive” even a “fatal” crash. I have been using a Crasche hat for about a week.
Hmm.. wait a tic. Helmets absorb shock if your head hits something. On the motorcycle that's pretty much anything around me. But in the car, what exactly can my head hit?
I drive a recent model vehicle, and there's at least two* airbags around the driver. I can't think of any unprotected objects that my head could strike, that a helmet would help deal with. Plus if I wear a helmet, the added mass my neck supports is going to make it more likely to suffer whiplash, surely?
Not to mention that helmets seem to be designed to stop large accelerations over very short distances (i.e. soft-ish foam a couple of cm thick) whereas airbags are designed to act gently over much longer distances (a pre-perforated membrane that absorbs the blow and deforms over, I'm guessing like 20cm?)
I'm guessing that racing drivers wear helmets because in racing conditions debris is more likely to enter the car, the driver be thrown out of the vehicle, or the car will be deformed/destroyed when struck by another race car at 200km/h. Also the balaclava has a role to mitigating fire/burn risk from fuel spills.
I'm also sign(ing) up for cryonics, and want to make darn sure the lump of tissue between my ears isn't broken, but at the moment I can't see a reason helmets in cars would be a net positive.
*Just checked the web, out of curiosity. I apparently have "Driver and front passenger Advanced Airbag System" and "Driver and front passenger seat-mounted side airbags, driver knee airbag, and front and rear side curtain airbags". So that's 4 airbags that will cover just the driver.
Something is causing a huge number of Americans to " receive a motor vehicle induced traumatic brain injury every year." I agree with you about a helmet's mass being a problem, but the Crasche hat is very light.