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Comment by 5h | Hacker News Reader

Statistical significance or not, I have exactly 1 head/brain that has been saved from significant injury thanks to wearing a helmet.

Happy to ride my anecdotal evidence all the way to the bank.

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Yeah, ditto. I have a couple of spectacularly smashed helmets. Although it is a hindrance sometimes, I find my brain valuable in many important life situations. I'm sticking with the helmet.

Why not wear it all the time, or at least when travelling? Per minute, the odds of a helmet saving your life are much higher in a car than on a bike.

Because in a car, you are protected by airbags, crumple zones, seatbelts, and many other safety features that aren't available on a bike.

The statistics by their very nature take all that into account. (And very few cars have ceiling airbags or crumple zones)

I don't think the gp post or mine mentioned any statistics so I can't respond.

And, still, it is more probable to have a deadly head injury in a modern car than on a bicycle. Again, why not?

Because people spend a trivial amount of time cycling vs driving on average, and because impact energy involved are generally 1-2 orders of magnitude higher.

> Because people spend a trivial amount of time cycling vs driving on average,

That strongly depends on your location.

The risk of injury is normalized by distance, so it even adds more to the argument that people should be using helmets for driving way before they should use it for driving.

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