Okay, I know that I "should" wear one, but I haven't gotten one yet, and I don't know if I will.
I've already had the lectures.

I'm just curious, who else doesn't wear them, and what's your rationale?

By the way, my bike riding will consist of very short, 2-4 mile jaunts to the store, etc., in which I will never leave Center City, and take the least travelled streets whenever I can.
I also don't plan on playing "chicken" in traffic.

Does anyone have any stats on if helmets have done any good for the average rider?
I mean, I was in my 20's before people started wearing these, and I only ever knew one person who'd ever gotten hurt from riding a bike- he flew over the handlebars and split his skull, but he was doing something stupid, and cars weren't involved, either.

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Always, always wear your bike helmet.
It has saved the bacon a couple of times and it wasn't because of anything stupid on my part.

Plus shortly after moving here, I got whacked in the head on the bike path behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art by a juvenile delinquent. I would probably have been knocked out if it wasn't for the helmet. The cop I found nearby in the parking lot sitting in his RMP working on his second box of Entenmann's powdered sugar donuts could care less about my plight or the fact that a crime had just happened a few hundred feet from his fat powdered sugar covered self and seemed quite upset that someone disturbed his donut eating.

The short answer is you should always wear a helmet.

Check this out for some stats
http://www.helmets.org/stats.htm

This is just one, but there a lot more.

If you want to look like a doofus, wear a helmet. Growing up, nobody I knew wore a helmet and we all survived.

i use a red knucklebone jumper helmet i got at via bikes. though, i think actually it's a skater helmet. anyway, it looks cooler than a typical bike helmet, and my u-lock fits through the holes on the top so i can lock it up with my bike.

I wear a helmet, mostly because while I consider myself a good biker, I know that if I ever get hit by a car, even if it is going pretty slow when it hits(10 mph say), the car will win, every time. All it takes is one idiot driver.

epoxy: You could say the same for seatbelts and other safety features. People weren't dying left and right 40-50 years ago, but enough were that the govt called for mandatory seatbelts in cars. Also for the case for helmets:

-Cars have gotten bigger
-Speed limits have increased
-Many more cars on the road
-People give in to more distractions now than 50 years ago, such as cell phones, GPS/Navi, etc.

Plus, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, 85-95% of bicycle deaths since 1994 are those who don't wear a helmet, depending on year:

http://www.iihs.org/research/fatalit.../bicycles.html


It is important to note that the stat doesn't mention how many do wear helmets, but a Google search shows a CPSC study from about 8 years ago suggesting about 50%:

http://www.cpsc.gov/LIBRARY/helmet.html

I used to not wear a helmet. I guess I was lazy and thought I'd look "stupid". Then I started thinking about how I would look if I hit my head in some stupid bike accident and damaged my brain and couldn't think or speak correctly. Looking "stupid" seemed like it would be less of a problem than that.

I have seen friends who have had accidents that didn't seem so bad at first, then I looked at their damaged helmets and thought, "that could have been their head!"

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I've never worn one in my life.

I had a face plant on a bicycle before that sent me to the hospital, but I struck the ground on my cheek, which the helmet would have done nothing for anyway.

Then on a 'cycle, I flipped and struck the road on my chin and had road rash up one whole side of my face. Still have a blank spot in my facial hair b/c of that. In that incident I should have worn a cycle helmet, but I was on an airport runway, not out on the road--so I let my guard down.

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You can spare yourself looking like a doofus, as long as you're willing to accept the possibility of being made a vegetable.

I never wear one and Im 30. Then again ive been hit a few times and flipped over a car or two. Might explain my memory loss here and there....wait what am I writing?