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Good questions. You remind me of some of the arguments against wearing a helmet on a bike. In particular, real studies show that automobile drivers are more careful in the presence of bikers without helmets - that is, if you're wearing a helmet, drivers are more careless around you.

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Someone texting, driving drunk, or not paying attention is still gonna hurt you more without a helment though.

And sometimes you just fall on your own as well. Out of the few times I’ve met the ground while biking, I’d estimate roughly half to be because I lost balance after hitting a pothole I didn’t see or ice/snow/rain making my bicycle slide. I was glad to have a helmet in these cases.

I'm not making an argument against helmets, partly because I don't know if that effect is large enough to overcome the additional safety of the helmet. I'm just trying to illustrate that sometimes there are non-obvious offsetting effects.

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