"people ride sans brain-bucket because of some ego/vanity/I'm a "real man"/"the hell with my loved ones"/misplaced ideas about "freedom"/"it doesn't look cool"

Ya know Dwight, funny you should say that. I ride with my helmet 100% of the time (OK, fine, 99.3% of the time), and never give it much thought, until I go to Bike Night, then I get all self-conscious about it, because the only other ones there wearing helmets are the kids on sport bikes. It's a funny thing, because, if I were riding a SpeedTriple or even a standard T100 or Thruxton, I would feel perfectly at home ANYWHERE I went wearing that helmet. But because I'm on a "Cruiser" suddenly, it's not "cool" to wear a helmet. I still wear it, but I feel so self conscious. There are a couple folks at Bike Night riding HD's that wear half-helmets, and i've even considered getting one just for bike night, but realize that a) it's ****** silly, b)i'd then have to get goggles so I could still see above 45mph when my eyes got all watery and full of grit/dust, so what the hell is the point. I hate a windshield on my bike, it (to me) destroys the lines of the bike. I like the long, low-slung look of the bike and like to maximize that effect when I put stuff on the bike. But I don't like bugs/rocks/sand/crap from cars, so I wear a flip-up full face helmet, which I love. It's comfy, keeps the garbage out of my eyes, and cuts down some on the noise.

To all of those who drag up the arguments about how unsafe helmets are, that they restrict vision, or cause further injuries, hogwash. IF that were the case, then why does EVERY motorsport, car, motorcycle, airplane, etc... require helmets. Are not the Isle of Man TT riders not the manliest of men, yet they wear them. GP riders, seem pretty manly to me, and they ride WAY above the 17.5mph thrown out elsewhere in this post, why not just wear good goggles to protect the eyes, after all, the helmet is just so much added weight and it isn't safe, right? I don't think the Federal Government mandates that GP riders wear helmets, and pretty sure medical insurance won't touch them, so really no reason to wear the foolish things. In the auto industry, when we have a failure part at the customer, we have to do a "Five Why's" analysis. In other words, a series of simple questions and simple answers to get to the bottom of a problem. For each answer given, you ask "Why" (like a 3 year old!!) until you have the actual root cause. I think if most people took off all blinders, personal biases, political motivations, and really honestly did this with accidents where people were killed while wearing a helmet (where the helmet "was to blame") the end result would be that there was some factor that was not obvious to the casual bystander or is missed when someone hears about the accident second-hand. "The guy died when they removed his helmet, so the helmet is to blame" would actually be "the guy died when they removed his helmet because his vertebrae (below the helmet) was fractured, and the person removed it without being cautious or knowing how to do it properly, and cause the fracture to sever the spine" As to the helmet getting soft while sliding down the street and building up friction, I'm thinking even warm and soft, the helmet has MUCH less friction than my scalp and scull!!! Not to mention, that is assuming that the person is sliding down the street with the same contact patch being pushed down on the pavement the whole way. I think in 99% of sliding accidents, you'll see that the persons head is going to be moving around due to the various forces, bouncing up and down due to the irregularties in the street surface (anyone here live in a town with glass-flat perfect streets?!), not to mention the body is also going to roll and tumble most likely, so that single contact point will never exist in reality. No thanks, but I'll drag my head down a street in a helmet ANY day over dragging it bare!!!!