Originally Posted by closetbiker
I don't doubt that helmets are of some value, and I am very much pro-choice on the issue, but if what Chris says is true and if we can agree that death is the best way compare helmeted and non-helmeted riders, I would never look down on someone if he/she were willing to have a little road rash on his/her scalp.
That's the point I was trying to make, or the opposite of it. If the vast majority of deaths occur in situations where a helmet would make no difference, like my example of tossing people off the Empire State building, then he is misconstruing the data. So, absolutely not, until that point is either proved or disproved (that helmets do/do not matter in cycling fatalities), the deaths are a misleading and potentially meaningless measure. From what I saw of the article, there was no evidence either way presented. A much better indicator would be serious head trauma in lidless riders (probably can find this somewhere), and the number of serious injuries
avoided by wearing a helmet, which due to the nature of the incident is rarely reported--no harm , no foul.
My beef is presenting opinion sprinkled with unrelated, interpreted facts, as the basis to make a judgment. It's just bad analysis and science.