Originally Posted by
rydabent
So give us your numbers. How many injuries have a helmet prevented, and how many and what kind did they cause. Has wearing a helmet ever caused the death of a cyclist?
The best head injury prevention is not to crash, the second best head injury prevention is not hit your head if you crash. Cyclist have the least head injuries in countries where helmet wear is the lowest. So there must be a bit more going on than every cyclist has the same chance of hitting his head and a helmet will soften the blow.
Is it all down to traffic and infrastructure? Statitistics don't point in that direction either. That's for commuting and utility cycling etc., to me it seems only reasonable to wear a helmet in competitive cycling. But it's not my impression less pro's got a serious head injury since the helmet got mandatory for them in 2003. I would like to have some solid statistics about that, but with all the news about dead or seriously injured pro's in the last years I don't expect to see a large improvement in safety since they started wearing helmets.
Everything points in the direction that there's more to it than 'it protects the head, so it's safer'.