lutz

Nobody doubts that, if you whack a person exactly like the bike helmet specification demands you are better off wearing a helmet than not.
However, this is not the only question of importance.
- Why is no serious study showing an improvement of fatality/injury data in the real world?
- Does a bike helmet increase the risk for rotation induced injuries and how often do they occur in the real world in comparison to tested standard blows?
- Bike helmets seam to increase your risk for close encounters with cars. Car drivers keep less distance to cyclists with helmets ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=ES&hl=es&v=YdoE2YCvwdM )
- Is a bike helmet not a very inefficient way of (only perhaps?) increasing cycling safety. Would other efforts yield a far better return in safety (lighting system, education,.......?).
- Helmet advocacy does scare people away from cycling. The health risks of not commuting by bike far outweigh the risks of bicycle accidents.
- Cycling is not a dangerous activity if you compare cycling to other activities (riding a car, being a pedestrian, having a shower, stepping out of bed). Those bear statistically risks of similar scale (and the shower and household ladders should be outlawed right away ) and nobody ever would find it reasonable to wear a helmet there.
- .....

In short, the paranoia of some people is a serious handicap to increasing the acceptance of cycling in places like the US.

Unfortunately it is not always helpful, to reduce a problem to a single simple question - if I were a crash test dummy and would participate in the standardized bike helmet test ?


BTW, Cycling can be beautiful and normal:
http://www.copenhagencyclechic.com/