>People need to grow up and learn to make sense of statistics.

You need to learn to make sense of statistics. Trying to draw a causal relationship between overall death rates and helmet usage based on the stats that you've shown is inappropriate, especially given the other information in the study.
For example, it's been shown that overall cycling rates are associated with crash rates- an increase in number of cylclists is assocated with a lower overall crash rate in the absence of changes to helmet usage.
The more people ride- the more overall cycling ability they have, and the more cars expect to be interacting with cyclists. The authors assert that the drop in cycling is connected to the helmet laws, but that data was was not actually investigated by the study.

If you want to look at the protective effects of helmets- look at people who have accidents, and seperate helmet wearers from non-helmet wearers.

Only 16.1% of patients with serious head injury used helmets, compared to 28.2% in those who did not have serious head injury. The odds ratio of helmet use against serious head injuries is 0.43 (95% CI 0.28-0.66) after adjusting for age, ethnicity and time.
Accid A. Prev. 2006 Jan;38(1):128-34.

Risk of head injury in helmeted vs unhelmeted cyclists adjusted for age and motor vehicle involvement indicate a protective effect of 69% to 74% for helmets for 3 different categories of head injury: any head injury (odds ratio [OR], 0.31; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.26-0.37), brain injury (OR, 0.35; 95% CI, 0.25-0.48), or severe brain injury (OR, 0.26; 95% CI, 0.14-0.48).
JAMA. 1996 Dec 25;276(24):1968-73.

Risk compensation:
Risk compensation theory and voluntary helmet use by cyclists in Spain.:
Committing a traffic violation was associated with a lower frequency of helmet use (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 0.63, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.58 to 0.69). The results suggest that the subgroup of cyclists with a higher risk of suffering a traffic crash are also those in which the health consequences of the crash will probably be higher.

The study focused on three safety devices: seat belts, motorcycle helmets, and bicycle helmets. This is a secondary data analysis using data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The results of this study indicate that risky behavior in adolescents is associated with their non-use of safety devices.
Annu Proc Assoc Adv Automot Med. 2001;45:23-36.

Looking at a more dramatic case- if helmets induce people to get in more crashes through risky behavior, or increase head/neck injury through "rotational trauma", then the effect would be much more dramatic in motorcycles- risky behavior is more risky, and the helmets worn are much larger, bulkier, more restrictive to vision, and hotter.
However, the opposite is seen- check out the hurt report. Motorcyclists with helmets are less likely to die on the road, and are less likely to suffer both head injuries and neck injuries. If they have fewer neck injuries, then helmet use- even with bigger, heavier helmets- is probably not increasing rotational trauma.

This is like another brakeless/non-brakeless thread.