Originally Posted by
wphamilton
If you mean, does it make sense sometimes and is that substantiated, I think that it is. In some situations for practically anyone, in all situations for some people, and everything in between, wearing the helmet can, provably, improve the person's chances to avoid injury enough that it's a meaningful, reasonable measure.
For other people, in other situations, the risk is insignificant enough that it's pointless to guard against.
Our judgement of those situations is based on the resources available to us.Among those resources is a person's skills and abilities, his knowledge and experience. Results of crash tests. And risk studies - everything we know helps inform our judgment. You take them with a grain of salt, but it's just as much an error to summarily dismiss them as it is to insist on a study to the exclusion of everything else. It's not like we're picking teams and trash-talking the other side. Is it?
Depends on which part of the other side. There are two kinds of helmet advocats, those who want more and safer cycling and those who want less cycling. I'm not doubting anyone's motives here, but I do think the question why cycling enthousiast helmet advocats find themselves on the same side with people who want less bikes to make way for the cars is food for thought.
I also doubt that the measure is reasonable. Is it sound reasoning? Or is it just an assumption that a helmet will make you safer and mass helmet use will make cycling safer based on a gut feeling rather than reason? The helmet advocats don't have the international statistics going for them, and the lab testing of helmets isn't very convincing either. If it's about reason, wouldn't the same facts and the same science lead to the reasonable choice to wear a helmet when walking, when driving and in the shower?