I don’t think this is true at all — helmets are very useful safety equipment when motorcycle riding. Protection from bugs and airborne rocks is very real — I h

I don’t think this is true at all — helmets are very useful safety equipment when motorcycle riding. Protection from bugs and airborne rocks is very real — I had some rides where I had to pull over and clean my helmet visor to see through all the grasshopper guts I’d hit — flying objects will hit you and very likely cause an accident or at least a lot of discomfort if you have no face protection. Helmets are worth it on those points alone even if you discard the (very real, very substantiated) potential to turn fatal impacts into survivable impacts. That said — wearing a helmet can cause one to take more risks out of a belief in greater survivability odds. On the track in full safety gear — the odds of crash survival really can be high enough to justify the extra risk taking mentality — loud pipes don’t boost survivability to anything remotely the same degree as helmets — in my opinion it’s very likely that someone who genuinely (and mistakenly) believes their loud pipes make them more perceivable will allow that belief to influence their actions and be very likely to drive less defensely. On the general topic of helmets increasing risk taking — I actually do think this belief can lead to meaningful increase in chance of mistakes in other contexts. I’m an avid rock climber — a very small percentage of climbers always wear a helmet but most only wear one when doing climbs with significant amount of loose rock. The main safety use of a helmet when climbing is protection from falling rocks or other objects — there are some rare circumstances when a helmet could protect you when you fall but those are quite unusual — generally only happen when you get flipped upside which usually only happens when you mismanage the rope position. It’s _possible_ the helmet could help protect from a climbing fall but much better protection is to correctly manage rope position which is necessary, typically straightforward, and also something you are unlikely to do wrong when climbing at your level. If you put a helmet on and suddenly feel “able” to take more risks when climbing you are making a big mistake — the very marginal extra fall safety of the helmet is not worth increasing your risk taking at all — but it can often be hard to avoid increase to risk taking even when you are aware the increase is not justified. In my opinion, the helmet is not worth making this trade off (except in areas with lots of risk of rockfall or dropped gear from parties above).