The Australian case cited above is one of many that show a strong correlation between helmet promotion and severe drops in cycling - 1/3 is a certainly a huge drop and you see that sort of thing again and again.

I say that as someone who cycles in Seattle and wears a helmet. In this way I’m like JanetM - it now just feels too weird not to wear one. Last fall on a visit to Holland for a week, however, I biked without one while I was there. In the Dutch context it felt fine. (Largely, I think, because no one else was wearing one - and the drivers there are competent and courteous, and the infrastructure excellent.)

However we *feel* about helmets, the facts such as they are make it increasingly easy to imagine the following being true:

* helmet promotion lead to substantial drops in cycling
* helmet use does not seem correlated with a drop in the death rate per mile cycled
* substantial drops in cycling are strongly correlated with a greater threat of death from heart disease and diabetes

In which case helmet promotion will have been a great public policy mistake.

As has been pointed out numerous times, just because there was in indent in the helmet does not mean you would have suffered any injury.

Bicycle helmets are designed and tested to lower standards than hockey, football, and baseball helmets. Have you ever noticed that BMX riders wear full head helmets? It’s because standard helmets don’t provide sufficient protection, and BMX bikers are not dealing with the type of impact you get from a car crash.

Finally, and most importantly, biking is not dangerous. Your chance of death or serious injury is no greater than driving or walking. If you don’t wear a helmet when driving or walking then there’s no legitimate reason you should wear a helmet. If you want to wear a helmet, that is your choice, but don’t go around scaring people away from cycling, you are doing them a dis-service and endangering all the cyclists out there.

As for your second point, you’re dead right to pull me up on my equivocation: it was a fudge I slipped in with an eye to any litigious folk who might be reading.

Todd: your reasoning has the same issue as some of the other points I raised. The idea you wear a helmet because you don’t want your wife to have to explain your demise to your children only makes sense if you have already accepted a helmet increases your safety. If some people earnestly believed that carrying a pack of playing cards in your pocket made you safer, would you start to carry one so your wife didn’t have to explain you died from not having one? I’m not saying anything about helmets, here: I’m just pointing out your reasoning only makes sense if you work from the assumption they are helpful, and I’d say that’s not a safe assumption.

You are right to say that drivers don’t go out looking to have collisions. This is a very good point, and it’s something it’s easy to forget. However, some collisions happen because of misjudgements of bicycles who have been seen also. These are relatively systematic and so not accidents.

So, if you believe that wearing a helmet either increases survival or reduces basic injury and you don’t mind wearing one then put it on.

I wear one not because I don’t feel safe but rather I don’t want my wife to have explain to my kids why I can’t be the dad that they need. Also, I don’t want to be a hypocrite when I make my kids wear their helmets.

For myself, I admit that, even knowing all this intellectually, I continue to wear a helmet out of fear. I first started riding a bicycle before helmet use was pushed in the United States. I rode a single-speed bike around town. I didn’t even know helmets existed and it never occurred to me to want one. After I got a touring bicycle so I could ride longer distances, I was told (by a bicycle shop) that I should wear a helmet. I began wearing a helmet, and now I feel scared at the thought of not wearing it, even within town.

I’ve had two falls in which my head (with helmet) hit the ground (I’ve also had many falls in which my head did not hit the ground). Once I slipped in some gravel; once I was hit by a car at slow speed. It’s hard for me to say whether either event would have happened if I hadn’t been wearing my helmet. But afterward, I was glad I had been wearing a helmet, and I think that is what keeps me wearing a helmet for now. I am curious to know at what point I would no longer feel the need to wear a helmet.

You’re starting to get at a complication that isn’t brought up above, which is the difference between the individual effect of an individual decision to wear a helmet and the collective effect of cultural changes or public campaigns that lead to higher rates of helmets. It may be the case that, all else being equal, an individual is safer wearing a helmet, but working to convince everyone they shouldn’t be biking without one makes biking less common, drivers more reckless, and is ultimately harmful.