Cycle Helmets: "Liberty or death; don't tread on me"

The journal of medical ethics has published a report on cycle helmets. The abstract is below, for convenience:

"Many jurisdictions require cyclists to wear bicycle helmets. The UK is currently not one of these. However, an increasing number of interest groups, including the British Medical Association, want to change the status quo. They argue that mandatory cycle helmet laws will reduce the incidence of head injuries and that this will be both good for cyclists (because they will suffer fewer head injuries) and good for society (because the burden of having to treat cyclists suffering from head injuries will be reduced). In this paper we argue against this position. We suggest that cycle helmets may not be especially effective in reducing head injuries and we suggest that the imposition of such a restrictive law would violate people's freedom and reduce their autonomy. We also argue that those who accept such a restrictive law would be committed to supporting further legislation which would force many other groups – including pedestrians – to take fewer risks with their health. We conclude that cycle helmet legislation should not be enacted in the UK unless, perhaps, it is restricted to children."

The ethical issues for me are:

1) Should people be compelled to take steps to improve their own safety, and to what extent?
2) If the answer to (1) is yes, then surely this must be applied  to all - in this context, pedestrians and car occupants as well as cyclists.

The technical issue remains whether cycle helmets are in fact a safety aid. It is desperately counterintuitive to say otherwise, but:

(a) There is such a thing as risk compensation: The safer you feel the more risk you are likely to take - you have (it is argued) a 'risk barometer'.

(b) A helmet's role in any neck injury could be that of making it worse. It is bigger than your head and therefore more likely to be hit and a loger lever in the twist.

And finally, we know that helmet compulsion leads to less cycling - a disbenefit that is lilely to outweigh any benefits of helmet wearing.