I agree helmets = good, but compulsory helmets as law and social policy = very very bad.
Not sure where the thread is heading but thought it might be relevant to share some experience from the land where the use of helmets is mandated by law.
The Australian "experiment" with mandatory helmet laws saw cycling participation drop by 35-40%, and exercise rates plummet accordingly, and never recover. On some credible estimates, at least a million more people would be cycling and exercising regularly if helmet laws were repealed in Oz.
Even the promotion of them can have unintended adverse consequences, as the Danes have recently found, when cycle commuting participation dropped from 37% of trips to 35% in Copenhagen in the wake of a helmet promotion campaign. The suspected mechanism is the implication in the campaign that cycling is dangerous.
While I always wear one when trail riding and commuting, and insist my son does the same, I think on the basis of physics alone we need to be realistic about the amount of protection a half-inch thick piece of foam coffee cup* can provide.
It frustrates me when trauma surgeons come out supporting helmet use saying "a helmet would have saved this man" when they have no idea of the forces involved in the impact, how fast the vehicle that struck him or her was travelling, and so on. They simply can’t and don’t have enough information beyond gut feel to support the claim authoritatively and is an abuse of the credibility they have in the community, in my view.
Further, they are only seeing what’s directly in front of them without considering the wider community health issues. Is the prevention of a few tens of head injury cases a year, at the much greater cost to the community of a million or more people not exercising and suffering obesity-related illnesses such as heart attack, diabetes, infertility and more, a sound trade-off?
My cousin, whom I greatly admired, had a clipstack last year when he hit a pine cone at walking pace with his road bike, for some reason couldn’t get his hands out, struck his head on the road and was killed instantly. He was wearing his AS/NZS 2063-compliant helmet correctly.
While they are very important pieces of safety equipment that I personally would not be without, it’s equally important to avoid placing too much reliance on helmets for the prevention of head injury.
* yes, I’m being controversial, but it is what it is.