>>>Hi Mike.
>>>
>>>>When I see a kid wearing a helmet, what I actually see is an overprotective parent.
>>>
>>>When I see a kid NOT wearing a helmet, what I actually see is a negligant parent.
>>>
>>>I've been wearing a helmet for more than 20 years (yes, as an adult) and I've had three crashes in my life -- two this year :( -- that involved hitting my head on the ground hard. My son knows that bike helmets are like seat belts: you don't go without one. It's just one of those common-sense things. Why risk a brain injury that'll screw up the rest of your life when it's preventable?
>>>
>>
>>OK, reasonable people can disagree. When you put it that way, sure, no one wants their kid to get screwed up with a brain injury. But there are risks in everything. The question is how far we want to go in an attempt to head them off. Are we going to send them to school in hazmat suits in case there is a biological attack that day? Better yet, keep them home? They should be very safe there. OK, that's being a little silly. I guess I just don't think the chances of a kid getting a serious head injury on a bicycle, that a helmet would have been prevented, are great enough to warrant sending them out in armor.
>
>Do you wear seatbelts?
>
>You might this interesting:
>
>http://www.smf.org/articles/report.html

Yes, I wear seat belts, and so do the girls. I don't think it's an apt analogy. The chances of a high impact collision in a car are astronomically greater than they are on a bicycle. I'm not talking about bombing down a mountain pass in the Alps during the Tour de France -- it would be dumb not to wear a helmet then -- but kids tooling around the neighborhood or between each other's houses on their bikes.

The study in your link does not answer (that I saw) the question I had: how common are bicycle accidents that cause head injuries in the first place? My guess / assumption is not very. No question that if it should happen you would be better off wearing a helmet. I just don't think the chances of it happening are enough to worry about.