Originally Posted by wphamilton

It's not necessarily reasonable that it's better to have one and not need it. Have you ever analyzed it analytically in a probabilistic context? The way you wrote this I suspect you have.

I can't put a monetary value on someone's life, but reading your post it occurred to me that the value cancels out in the math. Either carry or wear, the same calculation can apply if we simplify it to probability of fatality vs survival, times probability of the situation arising, times estimated life expectancy in hours, times the hourly "value" of that period. Compared to the (one minus above probability) of wearing(carrying) when not utilized, times hours wearing a helmet (or carrying), times a percentage factor of which life was degraded (have to be subjective on that), times the same hourly "value" .

Subtract the two terms to derive the expected value of the action, divide by "value" (it's no longer in the equation), do the arithmetic, and is it greater or less than zero? I'm not doing the math since I think it's a poisson distribution and I'm a little rusty not to mention lazy, but I'll bet it comes down in favor of "not".