[QUOTE 1170160"]
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
HELMETS SAVE LIVES
[/quote]
Be interesting to see the evidence for that statement.
Up to a decade ago few professionals wore helmets, two decades ago none did. So for over 100 years these guys were racing around two hundred days a year with no head protection, and anyone whose crash count for the year was only in single figures would be considered remarkable lucky. They have just the sort of accidents helmets are said to prevent, falls from the bike involving no motor vehicle collision with a heavy impact on the ground. Now if helmets were a nescessary safety item you would expect the number of deaths and serious head injuries among pro cyclists to have reduced dramatically during the past decade - except that it hasn't, and it hasn't because there was nothing that was there to be reduced. Cycling has always been a sport where fatalities are so rare as to be remarkable, and those very few that did occur were almost always for reasons other than a head injury.
The same goes for amateur racing, people have been killed virtually every season during the four decades I have been involved in the sport but always after being hit by a vehicle, not even one that I can remember from just a fall. The same goes for all the club runs, chain gangs, group rides etc that I have gone on. Loads of crashes, everyone walked away. Yet to hear some of the helmet evangelists you would think that anyone who rode round the block without a helmet on was taking the same risk as someone playing Russian Roulette with 4 rounds in the chamber.
Feel free to challange the above if you can find statistics to disprove what I have written above, but if you can you will be doing well because no one else ever has dispite rigorous reserch from the compulsion lobby.
So, wear a helmet if you like, no-one will laugh, but when you see someone riding without one mind your own bloody business.
Nice try Lee but I don't think that will convince the doubters! 
