Consuming Your Risk Reduction?

When I started skiing in the mid-70s, very few people wore a helmet.  Today just about everyone wears one.  Are we safer or have we just consumed the risk reduction of the helmet by taking more high risk chances.  From the New York Times - Ski Helmet Isn't Reducing Brain Injuries ( link).

"In fact, some studies indicate that the number of snow-sports-related head injuries has increased.  A 2012 study at the Western Michigan University School of Medicine on head injuries among skiers and snowboarders in the United States found that the number of head injuries increased 60 percent in a seven-year period, from 9,308 in 2004 to 14,947 in 2010, even as helmet use increased by an almost identical percentage over the same period. A March 2013 study by the University of Washington concluded that the number of snow-sports-related head injuries among youths and adolescents increased 250 percent from 1996 to 2010.
      

Experts agree that the roots of the trend are complicated and could be related to increased awareness about brain injuries and reporting of them. But they also agreed on one element underpinning the trend: an increase in risk-taking behaviors that they said the snow-sports industry had embraced. In recent years, many resorts have built bigger features in their terrain parks and improved access to more extreme terrain. At the same time, advances in equipment have made it easier to ski faster, perform tricks and venture out of bounds."