It's through reading threads like this and others that I've come to realise how irrational my views on helmet-wearing were. If you'd asked me ten years ago, I would've said that helmets are a very important piece of safety equipment and would be mildly in favour of compulsion. How wrong can you be!
Turning to my own history, a look through the old family photo album this Christmas found me looking very proud aboard my brand new Raleigh Grifter, sporting a full-face helmet that consisted of a thin plastic shell and some pipe-lagging type foam inside it - its usefulness no doubt the square-root of sod all. With the early nineties began my love of mountain biking and it's in this case I do see the value of a helmet - speeds are generally low, skip lorries absent, and taking risks is an innate part of its appeal. I've lost count of the number of low-hanging tree branches I've whacked, or all those graceful arcs over the bars on a steep, rooty descent. Coming to road cycling later as I did, I simply carried on wearing the helmet out of habit more than anything else.
Yet at the same time as taking up mtbing, I got into skiing - protecting my head only with a woolly hat, and mum had nothing to say about that... even after I cut my forehead open in an accident.
A gap of ten years saw me return to the slopes, and I was amazed to be in a minority of non-helmet wearers. I think @
PK99 makes an important point - the equipment has changed radically, and it's possible for the novice or intermediate skier to tackle terrain that would've been well beyond them using the towering planks I learnt on. Is it possible that no change in the overall injury rate - despite all those helmets - is in part due to novices taking more risks, because they're able to? I don't know.
I suppose there's a parallel with the development of mountain biking - compare my lightweight, full-suspension and hydraulic disc brake equipped machine with the rigid, cantilever braked lump I was racing all over northern England twenty years ago. There's far more potential for the averagely talented mtber to get herself into high-speed trouble. On the other hand, the capabilities of a modern mtb may mean you're less likely to come off in the first place. Again, I don't know what impact this has had on injury rates. I do know that the kind of terrain you find in some trail centres would've been very challenging for all but the very best riders on my old bikes.
Meanwhile, away from skiing and Welsh trail centres, road cycling continues pretty much as it always has. Yet we have far, far more bums on saddles than we've had for many years. Given what we know about safety in numbers, the impact compulsion may have on that, and the limited (at best) benefit helmet-wearing has in road accidents, it does seem very curious that some are so keen for everyone to wear one.
I'm going to keep wearing mine though.
Sorry for the ramble.
