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https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/04/how-effective...

Key point for this discussion: "In 1993, New South Wales, Australia, commissioned a study to see if a new helmet law for children was increasing helmet uptake. It did—but the researchers also found 30 percent fewer children were riding to school. In New Zealand, where helmet compulsion was introduced in 1994, the number of overall bike trips fell 51 percent between 1989–90 and 2003–6, according to one research paper."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/do-bi...

"Meanwhile, it seems that bicyclists wearing helmets may encourage riskier driving by motorists."

Just to be clear, I'm not advocating against wearing a helmet if you DO commute on a bike. As someone who fifteen years ago cracked a helmet instead of his head after falling on some jagged pavement, I appreciate what a helmet can do for you. And there may be statistical support for wearing a bike helmet as well:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/sep/22/bicycle...

However, I think the OP's basic point holds. Being sedentary is a greater health risk than riding without a helmet.

> Anyone commuting to work should have a plan to deal with a helmet, it's such a trivial thing to plan for and deal with compared to maintaining your bike, having parking for it, arranging showers, etc.

There are whole countries, like the Netherlands and Germany, where that simply doesn't happen. In fact, biking is much simpler in those countries, they don't even bother with showers (instead they bike more slowly).

Correct, besides that we also don't wear helmets. Note however that our road infrastructure is very different from most of the other countries.

Getting hit by a car is not something we worry much about. Besides the bike friendly roads, chauffeurs are used watching out for bycicles.

Then there's special laws where a car hitting a bycicle is always wrong. The reasoning behind that is that a byciclist is much more fragile. This also makes car drivers more careful.

Yes, but it does demonstrate show that armoring up bike riders isn’t the only sane option (we could improve our bike infrastructure and give them more priority).

Yep, there are more ways as just one correct way. I doubt that armoring up would ever work down here. There are of course fatal casualities, but they are rare.

Riding a bicycle is embedded into our culture, another example is the dutch reach [0].

[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/the-dutch-reach-how-o...

This’ll sound vain - because it mostly is - but some folks really care about their hair and may have it in an aesthetic construct that helmet-wearing will obliterate.

For those folks, wearing a helmet is anathema.

Personally I recommend simply not riding in this situation, because helmets save lives. But I’m not everybody.

> For the one off scenario where you don't have your helmet on hand, then it's more of an interesting question: "should I chance it and ride the bike without a helmet this one time?"

This is the issue right here. Habits matter, and getting out of a habit can destroy the habit entirely. If the argument is "always wear a helmet" and you cancel rides because of that requirement, I would think you are much more likely to fall out of the habit of riding. If you can continue to ride when you don't have a helmet, you keep that habit going, and next time, you're likely to have the helmet again, and keep accruing the benefits.