>[LóFarkas]Half a sentence seems to be missing, but I guess you say that the drop in cyclist numbers >increases the risk, and that's why helmet laws don't work. Even if that's true, helmet laws are still >********. But things like drivers' awareness to cyclists probably don't change in 3 years, so I guess it's >irrelevant.

I can't locate the study i was thinking of right now- however, in it they looked at the rate of cycling along particular roads, and the accident rate & found that as more cyclists went through an area, the accident rate for that road went down, both for bike and car-bike crashes. This effect was area-specific, and occured over a relatively short time span- drivers apparently look more for bikers in areas where they've seen them recently.

>That doesn't really mean that putting on a helmet doesn't give you a false sense of security. We all
>know that traffic rules don't have all that much to do with a biker's safety anyway, so the whole point of >looking at that data correlation is debatable. If I put on a helmet, I may become even more reckless

Wasn't it you arguing aginst the use of anecdotes? If you want to argue against helmet laws on the basis of decreased safety to cyclists after their introduction, you've got to prove that wearing a helmet is linked with an increase in risk. If the risk comes from a false sense of security, then when you look a population containing helmeted & non-helmeted riders, the helmeted riders should have a higher rate of serious injury than the non after you control for other factors (age, time of day, etc). I don't think that anyone has done this, and several studies have shown the opposite.

Libertarian arguments about individual freedom are free from this constraint, though i think that the helmetless motorcycle lobby is stupid.

Actually, a regulation that could be more useful in preventing injuries than helmet laws would be lights.
People night riding without lights are hugely overrepresented in accident data. Look at the dutch bikes- nobody wears helmets, but nearly every bike has lights and reflective sidewall tires.