> Bicycle helmet use was associated with reduced odds of head injury, serious head injury, facial injury and fatal head injury. The reduction was greater for serious or fatal head injury. Neck injury was rare and not associated with helmet use. These results support the use of strategies to increase the uptake of bicycle helmets as part of a comprehensive cycling safety plan.

OK, let's see your data!

I'm getting real sick of the, "your feelings" talk. You used to get socked in the eye for talking to people that way in public. There's a better way of expressing your point than speaking to proverbial others as though they're children. It's enormously toxic.

Helmets are mandatory in all major cycle competitions - so I'm not sure this reveals a preference among professional cyclists, so much as a preference among competition administrators.

The question is actually more interesting with public health. I have seen several studies that showed that mandatory cycling helmets decrease life expectancy. That's because less people will ride a bike if they have to wear a helmet and the benefits of cycling outweigh the dangers of not wearing the helmet. That doesn't mean it isn't good to wear one anyway if out cycling.

>Also in terms of common sense consider that all professional cyclists wear helmets when they're competing.

Mentioning professional cycling does not help your argument. The riders organisations were fighting strongly against mandatory helmets, and professional cycling was very late with requiring helmets they came many years after they were mandatory for amateur races. There is also the observation that professional cycling has become riskier, although I would not necessarily link that to cyclist wearing helmets, it would be worth investigating though.

I ask because there are “studies” that show there are more skiing accidents with helmets than without, but anyone who has spent a day at a ski hill can tell why that is: the vast, vast majority of people are wearing helmets. Throw a rock into a crowd of skiers and you’ll probably hit someone with a helmet. Does that mean helmets attract rocks?

Assuming their accident rates are anywhere in the same ballpark, accidents will involve more helmet wearers by a significant margin just because they outnumber non-helmet wearers.

Never read any triumphant reports about how this has saved ten thousands of lives though, so I suspect that numbers aren't that impressive.

I don't remember a big campaign or anything but probably some combination of snowboarders normalizing, it becoming seen as negligent not to make kids wear them, and probably a general increase in safety culture--especially among the sort of people who can afford to downhill ski.

There are only around 40 downhill skiing deaths in US annually--although the majority of those are brain injuries.

I find it much more likely that claims of "data shows..." are due to uncontrolled confounding factors, such as riders being more likely to wear a helmet when they perceive the ride as meeting a certain risk threshold.

If people only choose to put on their helmets when doing dangerous things, but don’t bother when doing relatively safe things, then it’s going to look like helmet use is correlated with injuries. Even if, on a per-person basis, the helmet actually reduces injury severity.

And it’s difficult to test helmet effectiveness directly because it is widely considered unethical to randomly subject people to blows to the head.

This demands proof, citation, and of course, controlling for how many cyclists in an area wear helmets vs. not.

Because otherwise you go in the dead column.

Comparing the fatality rate of bicycling to the one for riding a motorcycle is not good.

edit: That's not only a claim that bicycle helmets vastly reduce the fatality of bicycle accidents (rather than just significantly reduce them), but a claim that so many unhelmeted riders die from bicycle accidents that it distorts safety figures. All of this without any safety figures.

You provided no data.

My personal feeling is that the "helmets don't help" line is a strategic choice made by bike activists who are doing work I approve of, but I don't trust them when it comes to my safety. They're fighting for separate infrastructure, which I like, but they're dedicated to the idea that the kind of riding I have to do to get anywhere is inherently unsafe. They aren't interested in making what I have to do now more safe; they're interested in making sure people in the future don't have to do it.

There’s a reasonable causal story to tell wherein helmet-wearing leads people t take make riskier maneuvers on trips they’d be on, which leads to helmet wearing being associated with injury.

There’s another reasonable causal story wherein helmet-wearing leads people to chose to bike on trips they otherwise would take alternative transport, or skip entirely, which leads to helmet wearing being associated with injury.

In the first, a pedicab company might prohibit helmets to reduce risky behavior, but should really compare that intervention to just training and incentivizing lower-risk riding. In the second, the company is severing the connection between the intervention and the effect! The passengers tell riders where to go, so helmet wearing has no effect on risk-taking behavior _specifically for their riders_. Prohibiting helmets then dramatically increases risk/severity of injury.

I’d want to be very sure about the specifics before taking such a counterintuitive decision.

Helmets may inadvertently create more accidents, but they also protect the most vital organ in your body during those accidents.

My impression is:

1. Dutch-style utility riders using a bike to get around town for errands -> Rare helmets

2. Lycra-clad competitive cyclists with drop handlebars -> Widespread helmets

3. City cycle hire scheme users -> Rare helmets

4. Parents cycling with young children -> Widespread helmets

5. Poor people commuting on beat-up mountain bikes -> Rare helmets

6. Organised cycling events with mandatory helmets -> Widespread helmets

7. Teenagers riding with their friends -> Rare helmets

So the popularity of helmets depends on your locale (does your area have utility riders?) - and whether you measure per-mile or per-bike-owner :)

But fair, I don't have numbers.

So that means ice cream causes drownings and that we should ban it? Or it happens that ice cream eating and swimming both happen during the summer.

It's total BS to try and combine accidents with injuries and I'm aware of no reputable study that claims both of your statements.