To helmet or not to helmet? A question thats been floating around in my head this past year. Of course it's illegal to not wear one in New Zealand, though I don't know how vigorously the police enforce that law.
I recently left an innocent comment on copenhagenize.com, a site run by my old Flickr contact Mikael. Just a couple of anecdotes from my past where I felt a helmet had saved me at the very least a fractured skull, and in one of my motorcycle accidents I'm pretty sure it saved my life. For balance I mentioned that I don't think they should be mandatory and I certainly agree with the anti-helmet brigade that regulating helmet use reduces the number of potential cyclists in a population.
Well this is obviously a passionate subject! Insults were flying in both directions, examples made to support both arguments and statistics twisted to fit all views.
I'm so keen on all forms of cycling that I don't like to see us arguing amongst ourselves, but it is a subject that needs debate - rational debate.
So I walked away from this fight for now, a little gun-shy but determined to learn more about the subject.
What's your opinion?
