Remember kids... always wear a helmet. (The almighty bikeradar helmet thread)

dont even understand why people even have to debate wearing a helmet. If i had been wearing my helmet 2 months a go i probably wouldnt be suffering from short term memory loss...and maybe half the scars on my face wouldnt be here now and i wouldnt of had the lenses from my glasses implanted in my cheeks. So what do ya think? Should i have been wearing my helmet or do you think i should have been like some of those hispter twats and looked in the mirror to see if i looked cool without my helmet before i went out that day. i wouldnt have met that driver who hit me then, hmm

A friend of mine cracked his head open from falling out of a bunk bed. If he had been wearing a helmet, he would not have been injured. Therefore we should all wear helmets in bed. If your argument works, so does mine.

The only, and I repeat ONLY, relevant factor in deciding whether helmets should be worn for an activity is the relative risk of serious head injury. If you are strongly advocating helmet use, then unless you have some data telling me that I am much more at risk of head injury cycling than doing $ACTIVITY, then your arguments are likely to be balony. If cycling is no more prone to head injuries than walking (say), then why pick on cyclists, why not advocate walking helmets unless you just have a groundless prejudice that cycling is more dangerous?

The question about whether cycling helmets are effective is only an interesting question if we have already decided that some kind of helmet is necessary. then the question is what kind of helmet should be worn. It is like me arguing that motorbike helmets are effective at preventing head injuries in the bathroom therefore we should wear motorbike helmets in the bathroom - its just a rubbish argument.

(btw, if you want to wear a helmet, then that is cool. But blindly advocating them for people based on rubbish reasoning is decidedly non-cool. mkay.)