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Milton Keynes and @
DrIsotope are perfect examples of the balanced, intelligent approach. Make choices, respect others' choices. Likely they can acknowledge that helmets offer limited protection ion limited situations, but both find that personally, they are more comfortable wearing helmets just in case ... and in DrIsotope's case this has been borne out.
Neither disregard Others' experiences, neither demands others live according to their experiences.
When people are rational, there isn't much to debate about helmets. There is a lot to examine, and real numbers on stuff like severity of injury would be interesting to me. However ... because bikes are not equipped with accellerometers and most accidents are not videotaped, and not easily reproducible under lab conditions, it would be really hard to determine just how often and how much helmets made a difference. More bogus info, we don't need.
As I have mentioned before, I have twice gotten concussions while riding off-road---while wearing a helmet. In neither case did the helmet offer protection to anything but the skin of my scalp. I wear a helmet off-rad because I have been whacked in the head by low branches often enough, and because i expect to fall, when trying to clear obstacles I know from experience i usually cannot clear. Funny thing is, in most off-road crashes in which I would be engaged, a helmet is at its best--protecting skin (because I am slow.)
Where the real questions lie, is in the realm of high-energy collisions---where the impact might come from any direction. And those are the hardest numbers to get reliably.
Anyway ... I simply don't care who wears a helmet. I own two and wear them when I choose. I think the vast majority of BF posters wear helmets, and also believe in freedom of choice. It is just a few pushing the "everyone needs a lid" agenda. I would ask them ... "Can you not put a lid on it?"