Any action to free riders from having to wear cycle helmets should focus on the right of the state to tell its citizens what to do.

OPINION: Last weekend, an excellent group called Choice Biking organised a mass cycle in opposition to mandatory helmet laws. These lycra-clad champions of liberty want the freedom to feel the wind in their hair and the asphalt on their cheeks.

To advance their cause, they, and the legion of anti-helmet fanatics, are making some pretty dubious claims about the effectiveness of helmet safety laws.

The cause is noble but their argument is misguided.

Back in 1989, an influential US study examined 99 cyclists with serious brain injuries. Only 4 per cent were wearing helmets.

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This study propelled a lot of the regulation that blights the enjoyment of cyclists today and considerable effort has gone into discrediting this and similar studies.

DAVID WHITE/STUFF Damien Grant: If you break a fall with your skull you will suffer something even worse than a brain injury: admission into our public health system.

The most popular argument says helmets deter people from riding bikes, which leads to them getting fat and dying. Another favourite is the idea that if pedestrians wore helmets they would suffer fewer head injuries, so why do law makers focus on bikes?

There is even an often-cited 2007 study by an academic who discovered that if he didn't wear a helmet cars gave him wider berth. Likewise, if he wore a wig drivers gave him more leeway. This, it must be stressed, was based on the observations of a single cyclist who was also the researcher. And, almost certainly, an idiot.

If safety rules mean fewer people engage in risky behaviour, be it riding without a helmet or attending a Labour youth camp, then the rules have been a success. If you break a fall with your skull you will suffer something even worse than a brain injury: admission into our public health system. Prudent cyclists wear helmets.

Yet I do not. Like all prophylactics, bike helmets reduce the experience and as my number of days above ground slowly decreases I care less and less about the accidental risks of premature matriculation from this world.

Being a self-employed liquidator and occasional columnist, a head injury is most unlikely to have any discernible effect on my career and as an adult I, and only I, should be the one to assess those risks.

The anti-helmet league is making the wrong argument. The debate should not be over what policy produces the lower death toll, because we will all be on horseback if that was the criteria. It should be over the very right of the state to mandate supposedly free citizens on their choice of headwear.

We trade convenience for risk. Each person knows their own profile and is able to make their own assessment and should bear the cost of their decisions.