I have noticed a change, that you exemplify FBinNY...
And I do believe you are actually more right than others at either end of the spectrum (including me a year+ ago), in general... Nobody has said lately, that wearing a helmet actually increases your chances at head injury, and it seems to me that most "the helmet saved my life" coments have been modified to "maybe the helmet lowered some of the bad effect of head hitting the ground" compared to without a helmet... Thus I think there has been some headway...
in general in this thread.
EDIT; and yes mconolunx playing devils advocate walks the middle ground pretty well too...