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I think your last observation about sounding facetious is right.
It'd be great in so many areas of life if everyone in society had a basic grasp of statistical analysis, but much to the benefit of hardcore worriers everywhere, most people can't even add up, let alone interpret stats into probability. Which of course sounds facetious.
Like the lady in the local playground I overheard telling her son that because he was wearing his bicycle helmet on the playground equipment he was twice as safe as normal. Doomed.
Dugtheslug
@PhilPub
I'm in the camp of wearing a helmet because I've got one, it's expected, it might offer some sort of protection in some situations, and besides I might as well because it's not uncomfortable. (But I never bothered on occasional Boris bike journeys because I CNBA carrying it around.)
A few days ago I started a fb discussion about whether I should continue wearing a helmet. By way of playing devil's advocate, I linked one or two articles from here covering the various arguments for not wearing a helmet/having the choice whether to wear one or not. According to most respondents, particularly non-cycling family members, I might as well have suggested that I'm thinking of taking up Russian roulette, or maybe jumping out of a plane without a parachute. I've since discovered that it's difficult to argue that your sister-in-law should extend her risk aversion strategies to include wearing a helmet every time she walks downstairs without sounding facetious.