Occasional or regular non-bike helmet cyclist?

[Pax]

As an ER doctor who lives and works in an area where we have a lot of road and mountain bikers my opinion (and only mine) is that riding without a helmet is just stupid and you should be REQUIRED to have health insurance and a WILL if you want to ride without one.

The laws requiring helmets are not just to provide individual safety. When someone without health insurance rides without a helmet and is hospitalized, the costs to society as a whole are large.

Slippery slope, get too heavily in to safety legislation and you could risk having the activity outlawed altogether. Typically the ones making the laws are not the ones engaging in the activity, to them if safety is the biggest concern a broad brush fixes the problem most easily.