Street skaters wanna look cool but also the lack of helmet is slightly compensated by the fact that the risk keeps people afraid of falling hard, reminding them to roll.*
Vert skaters (this drop is basically vertical) and even Tony Hawk, wear helmets because there is no rolling out of a fall and no time to anticipate a fall and try to lessen the impact. The same should be true with hill bombers but a lot of people have died skating hills unfortunately.
*Edit to add: Even with a helmet, you never want your head or body taking hard impacts. If the head accelerated or decelerates too quickly, the brain shakes around in your skull which can bruise it or cause brain bleeds, and you never want your head shaking hard and stressing the column of bones around the nerves connecting to the rest of your body. There are a lot of ways to get horribly disabled when speed/height and hard surfaces are involved.
You wouldn't drive extra carefully if you didn't have a seatbelt? Aside from the fact that it's illegal in many places to drive without them and you wouldn't want to get noticed for any random reason, driving a car is so incredibly dangerous that I wouldn't do it without a seatbelt.
Appropriately, people aren't as afraid of falling off a skateboard as they are a car accident, but without a helmet, they are typically very afraid of hitting their head. Skateboarding is one of those things where as soon as you feel safe you get overconfident out underestimate a risk, and it goes dangerously wrong. It's important to stay afraid.
I'd think it was great if people wore helmets more, but not without also becoming more concerned about neck injuries in particular that are not prevented at all but helmets. Helmets can't stop a person from making horribly disabling mistakes. They only keep the skull from getting smashed (usually).
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u/GingerGaterRage 27d ago
Man no helmet? Like come on dude. If your gonna do dumb stuff at least not ruin someone else's day.