pjclinch wrote:I think I understand it, and the BMC understand it, and you didn't actually read what I wrote, or didn't stop to think about it.
What I said was that much wearing of helmets is so that minor choss falls don't cause outsize problems. That isn't the same thing as protecting against major head injuries (dealing with misconceptions concerning which looks like the main thrust of the article you linked). You appear to have assumed that the former isn't worth doing, but those who've had a steady rain of ice showered on them in a winter gully think differently.
The BMC article ends with a remarkably sensible, "So, when you’re deciding whether to wear a helmet or not, make a decision based on the risks to you, not based on what you see in the magazines or what your friends will think. It’s your head, after all, and you only get one". Risks to me... well, my main problems climbing are psychological rather than technical, so I usually climb well inside my technical ability. As a result I've only ever had one lead fall (over a quarter of a century ago), but because I've had plenty of incoming debris come my way in that time when I'm on mountain/winter routes I climb with a helmet, but at my local climbing wall I don't.
Not for the first time you've jumped on a figure from a population data set and inferred rather more from it than is really safe to do so. Head protection often operates beyond the realm of serious injury and it is often used as a compromise point for inconvenience and unpleasantness. Caving is probably towards the end-point of that tendency (you'll almost certainly not die, but you'll almost certainly get a bloody awful headache) but various aspects of climbing and, hey!, cycling are there too. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of delusions going around about life-saving, but in turn that doesn't invalidate it for everyone, everywhere.
Pete.
There seems to be some disconnect here. You reiterate the choice, confirmed by the BMC article, to wear a helmet being for protection against falling rocks and ice. But the BMC article then goes on to explain that falling rocks and ice are not the main problem, falls are and you should seriously consider wearing one to protect against those even where rock/ice fall is minimal. Not that there is any evidence I can see for the claim for protection in falls. If you look elsewhere at the BMC guidance on helmets it claims freedom of choice but starts with a helmet saved my life anecdote as evidence. Curiously standards is confined to a brief uninformative section right at the end.
