It’s not quite that simple. Helmets are deterrents - Melbourne is a fantastic example where cycling is less common than it should be and public bike schemes keep failing specifically because of the requirement to wear a helmet. Companies like Lime try to solve this by attaching a helmet to the scooter. 90% of the time the helmet is missing. Yeah I could spend 30 minutes walking to every scooter in the area trying to find one I can ride legally, or I can just get an Uber.
When people are deterred, they take less eco friendly forms of transport, and are less active. This has negative health consequences, although difficult to measure and compare. But it’s not black and white.
The entirety of Europe gets by perfectly fine with public healthcare and no helmets. So I don’t buy the argument that this is truly a problem for healthcare.
Eastern Europe. My sister works at ER and they are calling cyclists without helmets "organ donor wannabes". The point is that unlike bikers, many of these cyclists don't end up as organ donors and/or "fatality" in statistics. They only manage to cause permanent damage to their head/brain.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but people who work in ER have skewed opinions because they’re only dealing with the people who end up with serious injuries.
You need to look at the bigger picture - first of all what’s the probability of having an accident, then within that probability what’s the difference between wearing a helmet or not. That then needs to be compared against the risks of staying sedentary. It’s complicated.
Of course the have their biases, but they actually only ones who see the cases mostly not covered in statistics and they are the ones who can say whether helmet would save someone or not. The problem is that our culture is biased against fatalities. Even in this discussion there are mostly links to graphs about death rates. But these people in ER are the ones who see a lot of cases where death would be better outcome. Looking at my neighbours taking care of almost completely paralyzed son (accident not related to transport), I tend to agree.
When people are deterred, they take less eco friendly forms of transport, and are less active. This has negative health consequences, although difficult to measure and compare. But it’s not black and white.
The entirety of Europe gets by perfectly fine with public healthcare and no helmets. So I don’t buy the argument that this is truly a problem for healthcare.