Pretty lofty assertions that fly in the face of people who have devoted their lives to studying these pheomena. Look at all the studies listed in the UW link I gave earlier and notice the simliar conclusions. These are not articles out of bicycling magazine; these are published, peer-reviewed, funded studies performed by people trained in science and statistics. If you want to summarily dismiss them as "less than bright", you better have equally credible publications to support such a dismissal.

Both sides of this 'debate' falsely rely on anecdotal evidence and personal intution. If you look at the enormous amount of published literature, it is clear that wearing a helmet significantly reduces the probability of a severe head injury. Anyway, this thread is now quite off topic. Since I have no suggestions to give to the OP for what type of helmet to buy, I'll go over to the safety forum if anyone wants to discuss it further.