If you could carry a magic, gold thread that weighs a microgram and costs a penny for a hundred of them and would cut the rate of serious or fatal injuries by 99%, would you do it? What if it only cut the injury rate by 1%? Keep in mind -- it's only a penny per hundred, and only a microgram. You could buy a penny's worth and you and 99 friends could tie one to your saddle rails. Of course you'd carry the magic thread, even if it only helped a bit. Now, if it cost a hundred billion dollars and weighed a ton, you wouldn't carry it even if it completely eliminated injuries, because you couldn't afford it and you couldn't ride your bike with it. Helmets are somewhere in between. They cost a bit and they weigh a bit. They also cut the rate of serious or fatal injuries a bit (conditional on your not doing stupid things like riding dangerously as if the helmet is a magic talisman that will prevent all accidents). Are they worth it? Depends on the probability of failure times the cost of the failure. And how much that is reduced by wearing a helmet. Even very low-probability events are worth spending something to avoid, if they are very costly when they occur. E.g., maybe it would have been worth spending a little more to site nuclear plants further away from the likely path of tsunamis, even if doing so increases their costs.
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