>>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.
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>Answer to your question: Not so common any more now that kids are wearing helmets.

But they may exercise less caution, now that they feel falsely secure. Also, the helmet completely screws up your hearing; the styrofoam right above your ears is creating false echoes and the sound comes all distorted and disorienting (yep, I wore one early on, thinking I could get in trouble if I didn't). And believe me, my ears mean more to my safety than any piece of plastic on my head.

Glad to announce a happy event: today I got on the bike and went to buy printer ink :). That makes it a total of four times this year when I got on the bike to do something useful, apart from burning calories and Joules (which also deserve a chance - some of my food is actually metric).