Consider the image of severely drunk person seated on a bar stool, who loses his balance and falls to the floor.....
........You're thinking it is a bicycle and I am always as sober as a judge and I have the balance and reflexes of an alley cat..
It only takes something to BUMP YOU off of your balanced perch on your bike and you'll be going head first towards the ground, either backwards, sideways, forward, or upside down. You're laughing. Just imagine laying on your bed at home and then deliberately rolling off of the bed and on to the floor.............you wouldn't want to do that because you know it won't feel good.
It doesn't take but a fall from a distance of two feet (approx 60 cm) to seriously hurt your head if it impacts a hard surface...........- you're thinking that with my cat like reflexes, I will brace my fall with my arms and hands and thus protect my head...........................- yeah, that is what typically happens as it is mostly instinctive BUT depending on how you get knocked off your perch, you might just not have your arms and hands in the position to provide protection.
It does not matter that you are riding on the sidewalk or in your driveway or within a closed off parking lot with zero cars..................if for whatever reason you were to get knocked off or fall over on your bike, even while barely moving or simply trying to get on and off of the bike, there is the real possibility that you could lead with the head and directly impact the head with the pavement, or concrete, bricks, or asphalt.....................Remember the image that I mentioned earlier of the Watermelon that had been struck by a hammer, or dropping an egg on the floor while removing it from your refrigerator. Don't be Humpty Dumpty! Consider wearing a bike helmet! You need not live next door to a trauma surgeon to learn the importance of wearing one. I never thought helmets were that important but I've changed my opinion on the subject in the past thirty five years. I have been riding for about sixty years so there were no helmets in those days. Though I was never a smoker, I did tolerate smokers in my office, home, and automobiles back in the old days of the sixties, seventies and early eighties too, I thought I was being courteous to colleagues, guests, and friends. Like most people, once the air quality, and second hand-smoke issues became widely known, public opinion changed. The same thing happened with respect to tolerating folks just driving home after having consumed too much alcohol. Too many people died in DUI related auto accidents and too many smokers have had health problems or also have died from smoking related emphysema or lung cancer to not heed the original 1964 Surgeon General's warning "That Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous To Your Health", something that was mandated to be printed on all packs of cigarettes beginning in the mid sixties. There was the public service messages during the late sixties and seventies that stated that "SEAT BELTS SAVE LIVES" yet nearly nobody wore seatbelts prior to the eighties. The Data from Medical and Engineering studies had proven that there was a significant benefit, long before the general public adopted the recommendations.
Don't Be Stupid because you just Don't Wanna Look Stupid!
Don't be that dope that still thinks exactly like the fools that we may once have been a long time ago.
Some things that I hear and see young people doing makes me just want to use colorful language to tell them: Don't Be A Stupid _______, ...my generation was way wrong and incredibly naive on many things, or just too stupid to know better until we either ended up dead, or smartened up..........
Forest says "Stupid is as stupid does." Jen-nay , Jen-nay, I fell off my bike, my head is bleeding and my vision is blurry, oh Jen-nay help me."
BIKE HELMETS ARE VERY HELPFUL IN PROTECTING YOUR MELON
Perhaps you believe differently or are just so enthusiastic that you are classified as being an organ donor.
A human skull banging against concrete, brick, asphalt, pavement, or a tree root is gonna at the very least, usually, cause a minor concussion, and it is potentially possible that the worst outcome would be a lights-out for good......can't get Humpty back together again.
Think about that.
Ask your friends that are in the medical profession as to their thoughts on the subject of bicycle helmets. You can bet that they don't ride their bicycles without one!
You should too!