I just visited this thread after some time away and come to a similar conclusion: same mean-spirited, misleading arguments, different day. What's with the repeated red herrings about head injuries in other activities? When the thread is about bicycle helmets, why obfuscate the matter or resort to thinly veiled mockery by telling people that if they want to wear a helmet when cycling, they better wear one under other circumstances? Why use cycling's overall health benefits as a tool with which to bludgeon others who don't share the same views? Whether cycling is better overall than a couch-potato lifestyle for reducing the incidence of heart disease etc. doesn't directly address the potential for head injuries, whether or not helmets can reduce/prevent them, whether particular helmet laws are just or valid, etc.

E.g.:

Sounds like someone is trying to divert the attention away from the issue at hand by switching the discussion to falls. That page doesn't even discuss what type of falls: falls from ladders, falls in the bathtub, falls off a bicycle...?

What does that have to do with cycling-related head injuries or helmet efficacy?

So if you draw a different conclusion or disagree, you're against cycling or its health benefits? That's like how earlier in this thread a study was being used to supposedly "show" that helmet laws reduce the number of cyclists, implying that if you support such laws, you're somehow anti-cyclist.

"experts have to say is riding a bike lengthens a life" seems like a radical oversimplification of at least one of the articles linked above:

Direct link: http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/con...urcetype=HWCIT

which does not directly address the potential for cycling head injury or helmet efficacy.

If the goal is to abuse or misuse studies, you could quote that same article as telling us "Bicycling to work was inversely related to years of education" and come to the "conclusion" that only ignorant people cycle to work.