I did that 3-4 foot fall at 35 mph a few decades ago. Cost me head trauma, a 5 day coma, 4 months before all the wiring was back and 7 years before I could really say it was past. I was wearing the original Bell Biker.

Suppose my injuries would have been just 25% worse had I done that head first spill without a helmet. In other words, that I suffered 80% of the damage I would have received wearing nothing. At the cost I had to live through? Seeing 25% more? No thanks! Life after was hard. Harder than most of you can imagine. Sanity was an ongoing challenge. But I came through with my life intact, most of my abilities and most of my memories. That 25% worse would probably been more memories lost, a bigger setback to my career and some more life skills and abilities lost. That alone makes a helmet look like cheap and wearing it easy.

One of my first memories after that crash was of wandering into the rooms of other brain injury patients still out and wired up and thinking I would never want to be like that. That was the recovery ward, not IC. That 5 days in a room with nothing but a bed and a wall of electronics was plenty enough for me. And the only reason I know what that room (IC) looked like is that I could walk into the IC under my own power when I went back for an evaluation with my neurosurgeon.

Ben