Originally Posted by
2 Piece
Well, it kind of suggest that in a round about way, when only compared to other competitive cycling sports, not daily cycling. The article states that only .5% of riders in Netherlands wear a helmet. Of that .5% only 13.3% were admitted to hospital. Now lets put that in real numbers, out of 1000 riders only 5 wear helmets and out of the 5 helmet wears .66 (less than 1 per 1000) get injured enough to be hospitalized. Of that 13.3% that were injured about half were road cyclist and the other half mountain bikers.
The last paragraph of the article is a key point that needs to be made.
Nice article.
Over ten times as many helmeted road bike riders admitted to the hospital than you'd expect from the percentage of helmeted riders. So apparently, close enough.
Yet I have to wonder, do the road racing bike riders, who are presumed to be out training and riding fast, perhaps ride more than ten times as far as their non-helmeted counterparts do on local trips to work or errands? It seems reasonable that they're riding further, if not ten times. If so, that greater amount of exposure would be a better explanation than high speeds, risk compensation or the other speculative reasons discussed.