I personally know people who object to helmets, and refuse to wear them even though we have a helmet law in my city.
I'm not entirely in agreement, but there is logic to this line of reasoning:
1. Helmets, and helmet laws give the impression that cycling is a dangerous activity, and discourage people to cycle.
2. the biggest thing you can do to increase the safety of cycling, is create cycling infrastructure and put more cyclists on the road (I believe this is backed up by hard data, but I have no citations).
3. It follows from 1 & 2 that helmet laws make cycling less safe for all of us by decreasing the number of cyclists on the road.
There is more to their argument than that, but that's the one I personally find most convincing. I still wear a helmet though, so clearly I'm not entirely convinced.
As a side note, research has shown it may be safer in the sense that drivers give more birth to helmet-less cylclists. They see those with helmets as more professional and better equipped, and apparently pass them at higher speeds and closer clearances.
Your first point is a strange one. Are you saying that cycling is not dangerous enough to warrant wearing a helmet? If so, then the other points are moot, and you could have simplified your argument to just "there's no need to wear a helmet".
If on the other hand, you believe that cycling is dangerous enough to wear a helmet, then you're effectively saying that people shouldn't wear them in order to 'lure' other potential cyclists into cycling. That's just ludicrous!
So if they can help reduce injury, shouldn’t they be mandatory, just like motorbike helmets? Australia tried it in the early 90s and the result was a 15 to 20 per cent drop in the number of hospital admissions for head injuries. That would have been great, but it also reduced the number of cyclists by around 35 per cent.
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A recent study in the British Medical Journal showed that cycling has a positive health impact around 77 times larger than the potential for serious injury; essentially, there’s a small chance that you’ll come a cropper, but a very large chance that you’ll reduce your likelihood of suffering mental illness, heart disease and obesity. That means the laws were hugely counterproductive
actually, it has been shown in the Netherlands that wearing the helmet is yes safer, but laws requiring helmets discourages some people from riding out of a variety of reasons. In aggregate, the GP is stating that looking at the cycling system in light of greater participation is a more effective/better solution than requiring helmets.
It would not necessarily be inconsistent to oppose mandatory helmet laws while wearing a helmet oneself.
I'm not sure what I think about the laws. But I do question the claim that helmet laws are primarily responsible for the drop-off in cycling in the US over the last several decades. I would want to see some strong evidence for that before accepting it. Just off the cuff, I would expect it has more to do with the fact that people prefer cars, and that US government policy is to keep the price of gas as low as possible.
>create cycling infrastructure and put more cyclists on the road //
I think you mean put more cyclists on dedicated cycle lanes segregated from traffic. Surely they're far safer than mixing cyclists with automobiles.
Mildy humorous anecdote: First and only time I've hit my head cycling was my first time out wearing a helmet, hit a low branch as I'd not allowed for the extra clearance.
I'm not entirely in agreement, but there is logic to this line of reasoning:
1. Helmets, and helmet laws give the impression that cycling is a dangerous activity, and discourage people to cycle.
2. the biggest thing you can do to increase the safety of cycling, is create cycling infrastructure and put more cyclists on the road (I believe this is backed up by hard data, but I have no citations).
3. It follows from 1 & 2 that helmet laws make cycling less safe for all of us by decreasing the number of cyclists on the road.
There is more to their argument than that, but that's the one I personally find most convincing. I still wear a helmet though, so clearly I'm not entirely convinced.