I once got pulled over by the police for riding my bike without a helmet. I was thirteen and was spooked by the burly man in uniform.
He asked me why I was riding without a helmet. I had no good answer. He warned me that if he caught me again, he’d give me a fine for $50—which felt like a fortune to me at the time!
From then on, I’ve always worn a helmet.
That’s why it strikes me when I see a huge percentage of Londoners cycling around without helmets. The risk/reward trade-off makes no sense in my mind.
When Maru and I are making decisions, we often find ourselves saying, “Why risk a lot to gain a little?”
There are tonnes of examples of this, but helmet habits are a good example!