[rlpb]

> After the helmets were made mandatory, the mortality rate was reduced to 6/year, yet the number of regular bikers was reduced by 30%!! If anything, this suggests that helmets may worsen your chances to stay alive.

What if the majority of the bikers who stopped biking were less experienced and thus more dangerous on average? This seems likely because the more committed people are likely to be more experienced, and those who don't have a helmet handy on some particular ride and so don't ride are also likely to be less experienced.

[plamenv]

Well, that makes the anti-helmet case even stronger. If the most dangerous riders from the pool were in the 30% that stopped biking and if the helmets were actually helpful, wouldn't it make sense for the reduction in mortality rate to be bigger than 30% as opposed to the actual 17%?

[ZeroGravitas]

The mortality rate went down in absolute terms, but up in per cyclist terms so your theory is the wrong way round. To explain more cyclist injuries you'd have to give a reason why the more committed cyclists that continued to cycle regularly were more likely to hurt themselves.

You could blame the helmets themselves for causing injury and that may be partly true but a more likely reason is 30% less cyclists meaning that car drivers were less used to sharing the road with cyclists. A common bike accident term is "SMIDSY", meaning "Sorry mate, I didn't see you" since they simply didn't expect a cyclist to be there.