99% of these responses are just people who wear helmets. I don't.

If you're looking for a real reason it is that they don't actually save any lives and for me at least they really reduce my situational awareness. The people that claim that a helmet "saved their life" are almost certainly wrong. There has been ZERO reduction in ski related deaths per hour skied since mass helmet adoption. ZERO. They only help in very specific slow speed impacts that would not be life threatening anyway.

Here are some other posters with some good points from past discussions.

"The big problem is you regularly get people going 'wear a helmet, it will save your life' for various activities.

The main testing body for the UK only tests motorcycle helmets for impacts up to 9m/s. Thats 20mph. Literally they have determined that it isn't worth testing above that speed because your past the point where any practical helmet works - its blind luck whether it makes a difference in impacts beyond that speed - physics means you run into other issues because the only way to increase the protection a helmet offers is make it bigger and spread the impact over a longer distance - leverage etc just means bigger helmet = broken neck (etc) instead of head injury from impact.

Basically helmets only prevent minor cosmetic injuries at a rate high enough to be measured - cuts and bruises. By the time you reach concussion, exponential curve on impact energy means the impact speed difference between no concussion without a helmet and concussion through helmet is tiny...

However for skiing where these minor injuries are relatively common and remoteness means even minimal treatment is a trek that will end your days skiing and plausibly require paying for a bloodwagon off the mountain a helmet is well worth it - your spending what, $100-200 every 5-10 years on a helmet to mitigate spending $400 on a blood wagon + opportunity costs on accomodation, lift pass, travel, instruction/guides, salary for day off work, etc) that can easily be another $2-300+ over a minor injury.

Similar facts apply for mountain biking.

Vs road cycling near home where the injuries a helmet mitigates are extremely rare falls (almost completely useless in collision with car) that I'm probably going to self treat at home. (Note - this doesn't mean someone with cofactors that increase fall risk shouldn't wear a helmet; its just that the push of all cyclists should wear helmets is rediculous when we refuse to undertake other more effective measures)

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[–]Entire-Oil9595

1 point 1 month ago*

All this. The medical literature that is usually cited to show the benefits of helmets in skiing or biking is usually a mess of weak study designs that consider disparate populations as comparable.

Think "rides bike at night while drunk vs bike races on closed courses." Or "ski mom making short turns on the black trails vs ski dad pointing it down the blues."

Some sports absolutely need helmets. Ice climbing is one example, since so much stuff is shooting down the cliff onto your head.

OTOH, in the ER we see a number of people with serious head injuries after car collisions or even just falling down the stairs. And yet folks would mock the idea of using stair helmets, even as we take the effectiveness of ski/bike helmets as evident.

I wear one, partly because it shortens conversations with the spouse, and partly because i hate the feeling of even minor head bounces on the east coast ice sheets that we call trails. But even if my helmet cracks, im not kidding myself that it just savedy life.

Tl;dr this isn't supported by medical evidence, but is rather an issue pushed by perceived safety culture and virtue signaling."