Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Bumface
I don't understand why we would stop trying to get the lines down on the chart. Sometimes safety becomes over the top, but is wearing a helmet during sports activities a negative experience in any tangible way that offsets the prevention of injury it provides?
|
Our society's collective assessment of risk is terrible. There's very little correlation between things we worry about and the things that actually do us harm. The most dangerous thing, by far, most of us do in our day-to-day lives is drive. And yet there would be fierce opposition to mandating helmets in cars, even though they would undoubtedly save many lives and prevent thousands of serious injuries. More pedestrian suffer head injuries than cyclists, and yet our society has deemed bike helmets essential while nobody wears a helmet when they're walking.
Safety is always a trade-off. I feel I'm better equipped to assess those trade-offs than public sentiment. Just as I'm not going to let the public hysteria over child abduction prevent my kids from playing outdoors unsupervised, I'm not going to let blanket assumptions about the necessity of helmets dictate my behaviour.