Question:
The most important safety feature for cyclists is to learn to ride safely. It doesn't matter whether you are wearing a helmet if you are riding on the wrong side of the road, at night, without lights.

Certainly wearing a helmet can alleviate head injuries. But they are not body armour. Making outrageous claims for helmets only leads to people ignoring you. How many people believe all the safety labels on all the products we buy? How many even read them? They don't work, mostly because the dangers are overstated and the remedies are ridiculous.

Don't turn the reasonable suggestion that wearing a helmet will lessen the chances of concussion and other head injuries in a moderate crash (such as bike-bike accidents and single-bike falls) into nosense suggesting that the cyclist need do no more than strap on a helmet to be safe from speeding trucks.

Answer: That is not true. The rehabilitation facility sponsoring this article has a facility in Irving, Texas. And no, we do not have to search hard for bicycle related head injuries. They are a small percentage of our patient census compared to motor vehicle accidents and falls, but they do comprise a high enough percentage to warrant educational press releases such as has been commented on. Also, what is termed "severe" head injury is not the only type of head injury that has significant consequences. Mild head injury (MTBI), a much more likely scenario for a bicycle accident without a helmet, can have subtle yet very far reaching effects on a person's functional abilities. Many of these cases go unnoticed by the medical community and public because people are only "slightly" different from before. However, memory, perception and other cognitive skills are altered enough to significantly impact educational, vocational and many other everyday life skills.