[dkrich]

This seems like a serious case of Black Swan reasoning. In other words, she seems to be taking an apparent lack of evidence that helmets prevent injury as evidence that helmets don't prevent injury. Just remember, you wear a helmet 99.9% of the time for no reason to prevent serious injury on that 0.1% incident because that's all it takes. We all know that slamming your head on pavement is bad and having a shell to protect your head is preferable to not having one. She seems to be assuming that because nothing bad has happened to her yet that she is safe with no helmet.

Put differently- I wonder if you told the author a brick was going to fall on her head and then asked given the option to wear a helmet or not wear one which she would pick.

[panglott]

The point is that ordinary commuter cycling in normal weather on flat, clean roads is a lot less dangerous than standing around while people throw bricks at your head.

And there's a health tradeoff between the exercise benefits of physical activity and the risk of injury. Convincing people that cycling is so dangerous (like people throwing bricks at your head) that you need to wear some goofy-looking, uncomfortable contraption dissuades them from getting the exercise and the fun of cycling around their neighborhood.

[dkrich]

> The point is that ordinary commuter cycling in normal weather on flat, clean roads is a lot less dangerous than standing around while people throw bricks at your head.

This is true until you fall off the bike and your head hits the pavement. Then having a brick thrown at your head might well be safer. It's only the lower expected probability of having one event occur than the other that gives the illusion that it's safe. But if you ride a bike everyday, even in the safest of conditions, your odds of having an accident at some point are actually pretty high given all of the variables involved. So you should wear a helmet every time you ride with the assumption that it will do nothing for you if you don't have an accident.

[panglott]

If cycling is so dangerous that people throwing bricks at you is safer, wouldn't the most reasonable course be to not cycle at all?

[dkrich]

The point is that if the author of the article got on a bicycle with 100% certainty of being involved in an accident, I seriously doubt she would get on it without a helmet or some protective gear, despite her claims that wearing a helmet actually increases your risk of injury. Obviously if you knew you would get in an accident you wouldn't get on the bike. I'm convinced that it's the not knowing (and erroneous assumption that she is safe) that makes her comfortable not wearing a helmet, not a ironclad case that not wearing a helmet is safer than wearing one. If put in a position where she absolutely had to decide whether she would be in an accident with or without a helmet, I do not believe she would back up her claim and go sans helmet.

It's really not that different than most risks we take, such as unhealthy eating or exposing ourselves to ultraviolet radiation. We're immune to the danger until we're not.

[panglott]

As a person who doesn't wear/trust bike helmets, if the certainty of an accident on a particular ride was increased to 100%, I would choose to not ride the bike rather than trust the helmet to protect me in a collision. If I knew a brick was to dropped on my head at a certain time, I would reach for a steel helmet before a styrofoam one, but first endeavor to not be at the appointed place and time for a braining.

That's tragic, because this debate is about a tradeoff: a moderate benefits of exercise vs. a small risk of injury. I am a very regular bike commuter, and it is my main form of exercise, but collisions are very, very dangerous. I would not get on a bike in the case of 100% certainty of an accident. Helmet advocates focus on the risk of injury and tend not to consider the benefits they're trading off against, or consider how they are dissuading people from the benefits of cycling.

It seems like this boils down to an argument not to cycle as much as to wear a helmet.

[mcv]

"We all know" lots of things that don't turn out to be true. The only way to be sure is to look at actual accident statistics.

And ultimately, helmets are just a tiny fraction of the factors that influence safety.

[dkrich]

You are disputing that blunt force trauma to your head causes injury? Or that having a barrier between your head and the point of impact prevents severity of injury? Which part exactly are you saying isn't true?

And actually, looking at actual accident statistics doesn't do a whole lot of good due to all of the variables involved (this point was actually made by the author and is about the only one that I agree with).

[mcv]

> You are disputing that blunt force trauma to your head causes injury?

No, I'm disputing that the majority of bike accidents involve blunt trauma to the head.

And looking at real data is the only way you can determine both the causes and results of real accidents, as opposed to artificial lab setups.