Let me start by saying I do always wear my helmet when riding in SA as I would not want to incur the wrath of the Hub. However, I hail from Holland and there bikes tend to be used for commuting rather than sport and basically no-one is wearing helmets (and neither do I when I go back). If you rent a bike, no helmet is supplied with it either. So you would think that Holland has a much higher occurrence of serious damage to heads due to bike crashes (as opposed to visiting coffee shops). However, some universities have done some research and this is not the case. One can debate whether this is because the cycling infrastructure is much better and thus there are fewer accidents or commuting is at a slower pace or some other reason. It is sort of an interesting fact that in a country hailed as a cycling mecca, the vast majority of cyclists do not wear a lid
