... and here is where emotion creeps in.

People often say they were involved in, or knew somebody who was involved in, some kind of incident in which a either a helmet saved them, or were hurt while not wearing a helmet. This makes it personal. It isn't very objective or precise but it means something to someone.

The trouble is, people are seriously injured while wearing helmets and that is often ignored or discounted, as are cyclists without helmets involved in serious crashes getting up without head injuries.

I think it's best if we step back and look at the big picture. The opposite of what often happens when someone is going over a recent fall. I guess it's a hard thing to think that cyclists live longer, not shorter lives after you've just had a scary brush with injury.

One of the problems with this particular statement is that, as discussed on the previous version of the thread, helmets cannot prevent concussion, yet a claim of being saved from one is made. That claim may be representative of the other claim, that the others were saved from serious head injury. Someone may feel that is true, but they just don't know that it is. It's the emotion talking.