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Hmm yes, just like how the state kills anyone who sells alcohol or cigarettes to a minor.
(don't interpret this as me saying that a legal requirement to wear a helmet is a good idea)
frankenbike-
just like how the state kills anyone who sells alcohol or cigarettes to a minor
They haven't got around to killing anybody for that lately, AFAIK. It's not that they kill everybody who resists, or even many, just that at the margin they have to be prepared to, and are permitted to, do so for any law. It's always worth remembering this whenever you think a new law is needed.
gbj_tester
To the extent that the evidence is any good (and I'm not coming down on either side of that question), it might lead to well informed people deciding to wear a helmet voluntarily. That is nothing to do with the legal compulsion question, which aside from the points introduced earlier about dissuading cycling and thereby causing more harm than good to population health, has a much more serious and for my money insurmountable problem; for all legal prohibitions, at the margin, the state must be prepared to kill citizens to enforce them. If you're going to start killing people for resisting your laws, you need to be absolutely confident that the public goods you are buying with those deaths are worth the price. There's no way even the most charitable reading of the possible benefit of making everybody who doesn't already voluntarily wear a helmet wear one under penalty of law amounts to a justification for killing people.