| Helmets are for any activity that has an impact risk to your head which includes cycling not just sports. I live in Austria where few cyclists wear helmets yet my girlfriend who works in the local hospital sees patients coming in with serious head injuries on a daily basis from biking accidents that could have easily been prevented by wearing a helmet. Since then we both wear our helmets religiously. You don't even have to get hit by a car. An unfortunate collision with a texting pedestrian, some dog on a leash jumping in front of you or another cyclist could be enough to smack your melon on the asphalt. Just because you hear Europeans aren't wearing helmets doesn't mean it's the model to follow. I see wearing a helmet the same as wearing a seatbelt.
Sure I never needed it since I never had an accident and it feels slightly uncomfortable but I know it could save my life. It's up to you how much you value your head. I highly doubt ebikes have a 50% share in Belgium. Do you have any references on that claim? Last year I visited Belgium's 4 major cities and almost every cyclist I saw was on some old half broken bicycle. |
Once I hit a curb, went over the handlebars, and skinned up my hands/knees and my wrists hurt pretty bad for a week or so after. Another time I wiped out at the bottom of a hill, tore a huge gash in the side of my knee. Then there was the time I chipped a tooth on a curb when trying to ride no-handed.
In all the falls I experienced, none of them involved a head injury that a helmet would have prevented (the chipped tooth incident could have been prevented by wearing a mouth guard, or by not being stupid). So based on that, it feels like helmets are useless.
Of course, in reality there is a huge difference between a kid riding a bicycle at single-digit MPH on neighborhood streets and back-woods trails, vs. going 15 - 20 MPH on roads or paved trails. At those speeds, it would probably be impossible for me to break my fall using just hands and feet, not to mention the possibility of getting distracted hand running into a street sign or tree branch. Logically I'm aware of all this, but still I have trouble with maintaining proper helmet discipline.