Originally Posted by
wphamilton
I for one plan on riding the rest of my life without a crash. But if I ride enough probably will at some point. I don't care how good you are, or how careful and observant, it takes only a momentary lapse in the wrong fraction of a second and you'll go down. And with events outside of our control, we can only react and hope that it's good enough. I don't hold that crashes are inevitable - luck could hold out forever. But likely it won't.
That said, the risk calculation is individual and subjective. It makes unassailable sense to want the most effective protection, and I admit that I eagerly consume testing data and medical studies for that reason. But when it gets down to price, I wind up closer to Lesiesturm's camp and I also have a $20 helmet years past the apocryphal expiration date.
When people say "I've never crashed", I always add a "yet" to it. If you ride enough, something will happen. As you said, sometimes events are out of our control and have nothing to do with how skilled we might be.
Personally, I have no issue spending $200-ish every 3-5 years on something to protect my most valuable asset in the event that something does happen. Sure, I could probably go longer between purchases, but I'm kind of a fashion snob, too.