The "tiny risk" and potentially large consequences is why people should choose to wear helmets, regardless of experience. You never quite know when an accident is going to happen and it is difficult to account for that. The big risks are easier to account for, to be alert and modify your behaviour accordingly.
I have seen experienced ice skaters go from not wearing a helmet to being fanatical about wearing one, simply because they had an accident and had to deal with the consequences. I have also seen experienced cyclists who would have likely lost their life if they weren't wearing a helmet.
As for the company in question, which (incidently) was insisting that employees not wear helmets, it sounds more like a decision based upon the perceptions of customers. If they were truly interested in hiring people who are safety conscious, they would hire people who are safety conscious rather than those who are willing to ride without a helmet. There are more than a few people who don't wear helmets who have an astronomically high tollerance of risk.
Out of all the people who are vehemently arguing that it is pure idiocy not to wear a helmet, how many of them wear a helmet when driving? I can pretty safely guess that the answer is a big fat zero.
Driving is high risk activity that can lead to severe head injuries. It is even easier to keep a helmet with your car than with your bike. The cost to risk profile here is extremely similar but the resultant behavior is quite different.
People rarely approach risks rationally and risk avoidance behavior is highly influenced by social acceptability.
During my lifetime of skiing, I have seen the shift from nobody wearing helmets to most people wearing them. The ski patrols worked hard to make helmet wearing first socially acceptable and then socially expected (at least in some groups.) The risks didn't changed, there was some rise in awareness, but the biggest change (from my perspective) is social.
This I see the vehement support for helmet wearing as predominantly cultural alignment enforcement rather than reasoned risk avoidance analysis.
Personally, I always wear a helmet skiing because it is more comfortable, plus I ski FAST sometimes. I rarely wear a helmet on a bicycle because I bike slow and strongly try to avoid situations where my safety is in the hands of other drivers. Instead I stick to mostly quiet residential streets, bike paths, or separated bike lines. The helmet has a much larger impact on my risk profile when skiing than biking because of my behaviors.
All that said, I don't think that the company should ban standard safety gear for their riders. Especially since they claim to have good incident tracking, they should be able to find and let go any riders who act recklessly with a helmet.
Is there even a need for a helmet in most motor vehicles? Many safety features are already incorporated into the vehicle and the vehicle itself must meet safety standards. Contrast that to bicycles, which are often sold without legally mandated safety features and it is very much possible to purchase a new bicycle which should be considered criminally unsafe.[1]
The only reason why we are asking these questions is because things that are legally required for automakers is left, at best, as a responsibility to the consumer when it comes to bicycles.
[1] To be specific, any department store should be regarded as a death trap prior to a knowledgeable person verifying that it has been assembled properly. Even then one has to be careful since the components are typically intended for very light use.
> Driving is high risk activity that can lead to severe head injuries. It is even easier to keep a helmet with your car than with your bike. The cost to risk profile here is extremely similar but the resultant behavior is quite different.
Just FTR, don't wear a helmet while driving a car. It will massively increase the strain on your spine in the case of a crash and your airbags are not built with helmets in mind. Additionally, car helmets are usually of the full-size kind and reduce your field of vision quite a bit. There's a reason helmets are not recommended for normal driving.
I have seen experienced ice skaters go from not wearing a helmet to being fanatical about wearing one, simply because they had an accident and had to deal with the consequences. I have also seen experienced cyclists who would have likely lost their life if they weren't wearing a helmet.
As for the company in question, which (incidently) was insisting that employees not wear helmets, it sounds more like a decision based upon the perceptions of customers. If they were truly interested in hiring people who are safety conscious, they would hire people who are safety conscious rather than those who are willing to ride without a helmet. There are more than a few people who don't wear helmets who have an astronomically high tollerance of risk.