[SystemSafety] Bicycle Helmets

[Messer Robin]

There's a severity filter in that accidents below a certain threshhold don't get reported. I think this is what is happening in the British study -  if you define the size of the accident by the size of the injury, then of course the same sized accidents have the same sized injury regardless of whether you are wearing a helmet.
[Robin Messer] I have been in one significant cycling accident (in about 30 years of regular cycling). My helmet took a bashing and had to be replaced. I suspect my head would have taken a lot more of a bashing without the helmet, and I would have appeared in the accident statistics. As it was, I wasn’t too badly injured and the poor driver who knocked me down was so upset that I couldn’t bring myself to report the accident.
Helmets, unfortunately, are purely a severity reduction (or more precisely, reduction in likelihood of the worst severities). They don't do anything to prevent the accident, which can be pretty bad even with a helmet. I've just moved back to the big city and I'm seriously considering changing my cycling habits.

[Robin Messer] There is evidence to suggest that wearing a helmet actually increases the likelihood of the accident occurring. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/5334208.stm

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