Of course, individual bikers can also still wear a helmet, but they should also demand proper biking infrastructure.
You mean, I think, that it fails to improve it in the way you would like. Or are you actually asserting that making people wear helmets actually reduces safety?
Yes, if it's done instead of improving biking infrastructure, as it often is.
Honestly, this whole "don't ask me to exercise personal responsibility until you've changed the world for me" thing seems a little petulant.
A bit, but I'm claiming it will help way less than improving the infrastructure, and there's a long way to go in improving the infrastructure before focusing on wearing helmets makes sense (at a societal level! individuals can still focus on that, of course).
Even in the Netherlands, which has comparatively speaking amazing biking infrastructure, the majority of biking deaths are due to a collision with a car, not people falling down [1]. That to me says that even there, focusing on further improving the infrastructure still makes more sense than focusing on helmet wearing.
However, looking at the data [1], I did find one (almost) exception: for people over 70, biking deaths without a collision approached those with a collision (though the latter were still a majority). So I'll concede that for people over 70, telling them to wear a helmet when biking might make sense.
[1]: https://www.cbs.nl/-/media/_excel/2022/37/maatwerktabel-fiet... (xlsx file)
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Edited to address the edit:
> Honestly, this whole "don't ask me to exercise personal responsibility until you've changed the world for me" thing seems a little petulant.
I'm asking society to focus their efforts on the measures that have the best ROI for improving safety. My claim is that focusing on improving infrastructure has a better ROI than focusing on asking bikers to wear helmets.
That is not to say that individual bikers shouldn't wear helmets. I'm also not arguing about whether or not they should take individual responsibility or not. I'm only claiming that at a societal level, focusing on individual responsibility reduces biking safety. I believe that is backed up by data quoted in the article.
It's totally possible that a helmet saves your life/head with no cars involved. Happened to me a couple months ago.
Helmets should be required and infrastructure should be great.
The article cites the Netherlands, where bicycling is extremely popular, but helmets are not. The "safety" comes from the infrastructure which reduces hazards that make bicycling unsafe. Visibility, and isolation from 3000+ lb metal objects are the two most important things.
There's a fun catch-22 here. You need more riders to create safety (groups of cyclists are visible. large groups of cyclists can advocate for bike lanes, etc), but without safety you can't attract new riders.
/s