I took the blade guard off my table saw. But I wear a helmet most of the time. Ahh, my luscious life of contradictions....

Seriously: it's all about risk assessment, isn't it? If some people assess the risks of bicycling and conclude that wearing a helmet is worthwhile, great.

The simple fact is that we can't prepare for every possible contingency. For example, when I was a kid, a house in the next town over had a meteor crash through their living room -- this was in Wethersfield, CT. The resident was not prepared. No one else on the street got worried about their house because of the freak event. But a decade later, on the same street, another meteor crashed through someone else's house. And these idiots still don't meteor-proof their houses!!

The point is that there are risks to *everything*, right down to being struck by a meteor while sitting in your living room. We take reasonably preventative steps for the events that we think have a reasonable chance of happening. The bicycle helmet is something of a gray area -- I mean, knock on wood, I have never fallen off my road bike and never crashed it -- but I fully recognize that if I do, there *might* be hell to pay.

Anyway, I'm saying that I don't think it's unreasonable to take measures to protect your head if you feel that your head is in danger. What's unreasonable is the fervor with which so many people argue both for and against the positions! I think that if you compare it to other activities, like deciding what to do with the blade guard on table saw, wearing steel toe shoes on a job site, locking your car and other reasonably safe but who-knows-what-might-happen activities, it really puts things into perspective.