When I was in junior high school I was on the 7th grade football team. One day my best friend and I were just riding around on our bikes.
For some reason, (this was around 1958) we were wearing our “Riddells”. My friend was trying to do some stunt and fell off his bike. He landed on his head and cracked the helmet. He was only shaken up but I suspect he would have been killed if not wearing the helmet.
I can’t recall either of us ever wearing our helmets at any other time.
I have always detested the helmets - even after one saved my life I still prefer to ride without one - under ideal conditions now though.
I rode everywhere from 5 years old on. Almost 4 decades later and several helmetless encounters with cars n bikes and a tree [nary a scratch except 1 freak accident w/ a 7 year old girl innocently opening her car door in a park almost severed my finger] and the up till then worst encounter with a rotweiler [stitches in my head and elbow].
Then about 9 years back, 2004, I was riding w/ a friend in the hoosierland’s Hilly Hundred and the absolute worst of all freak accidents I’ve ever encountered started simply by being bumped blindly from behind.
Luckily I had just re-strapped my ‘hh required’ helmet when I was flipped 180 degrees off the bike and onto my head. Split the helmet, broke my collarbone and shoulder blade and a rib. Thought I’d broken my hip because it hurt the worst and was so swollen I thought I had a catcher’s mitt on my hip.
Later X-rays, which I insisted the hospital needed to take for my hip and the ER attendents, in denial, insisted that I walk myself to the x-ray room, showed otherwise. I was in too much shock to realize until later that the walking myself to the x-rays only proved there point - as I had also previously proven the point getting into and out of the ambulance gurney. It was so weird I was completely calm and alert according to folks at the scene of the accident but remember absolutely nothing till about the middle of the ambulance ride.
Almost 10 years later and the swelling is almost gone - still the size of a donut. Now I limit myself to bike paths and country roads and never in large groups. Nothing like the hilly hundred ride where 5,000 riders descend on Bloomington IN and there limited foothill roads to piss off all the locals riding in their spandex glory. Glory gory days.