I wrecked my bike a few days ago. I took a different bike than my regular commuter, just to switch things up a bit. The front tire came undone, causing the tube to explode violently. The tube snagged my brakes, and then wrapped around the front hub causing my bike to flip me over the bars. All this happened within the space of a few seconds. I was traveling at around 5 mph as I had just made a turn. I was not wearing a helmet. My head went into plastic garbage can that was sitting along the trail. There happened to be some chunks of jagged plastic sticking out of the can, and they went into my scalp. It was quite painful. I didn't get brain injury, a concussion, stitches, or anything like that, but I still certainly wish I had been wearing a helmet. I don't see any possible way those jagged pieces of plastic could have gone into my scalp if I had been wearing one, unless of course aliens beamed it away for study right before the accident. This was not rider error. I had checked the tires before I left, just as I do every time I ride the trail to work. There was nothing realistic that I could have done to prevent this, short of replacing my tires before every ride.

Maybe helmets prevent brain damage, maybe not. There's really no way to prove it either way. One thing helmets do is prevent pain. Maybe not in every crash, but in some crashes. There's an easy experiment to see the difference. Put on a helmet and hit yourself in the head with a hammer. Now take off the helmet and hit yourself again. Which hurt worse? I certainly don't think the helmet created a placebo effect.

Now I'm sitting on the fence of whether or not I should start wearing a helmet. I keep asking myself, "Would you rather hit the pavement with your head or with your helmet?" I know that the chances of me wrecking like this again again are slim to none though, so that creates the dilemma of "is a helmet worth it?" The drawbacks of helmets are that they're ugly, expensive, and did I mention ugly? The benefits are a POSSIBLE prevention of injury. I look at helmets the same way I do air bags and seat belts in cars(which I always wear). More than likely I'll be fine without them, but in the odd chance that I do wreck and get flung through the windshield, I'll be wishing I had a seat belt on. Sure there are cases of people dying because they were wearing a seat belt. About a year ago a man burned to death around here in his wrecked car because his seat belt wouldn't unlatch. Safety items are not guaranteed to work properly and prevent all possible damage, and in fact sometimes they cause extra damage. They are there to decrease the chance of damage as a whole though. The question is not whether helmets prevent injury or not as they certainly prevent some injuries, even if that injury is as simple as pieces of plastic cutting your head. The question is that is the possible protection they provide worth chucking a day's wages away and looking like a dork? I'm still undecided, but even though it's extremely, extremely unlikely to ever happen, I'd rather look like a dork than end up a vegetable in a nursing home, or possibly even dead. I'll probably start helmet shopping as soon as the snow goes away.