When I were young, there was a concerted push by helmet manufacturers (Bell in particular) to bring about the mandatory helmet laws that we have now. Much of the propaganda being used in their campaign was based around personalising injury - lots of gory anecdotes - and overemphasising injury statistics.

The reason they ran their campaign was first and foremost profit. They're a manufacturer of a safety product, and they're hardly going to sell their product if people perceive the activity to be safe now, are they? Much of the bike industry got on board as well, for much the same reason. Just do the math - at that point there were fortunes to be made in selling crappy stackhats to all and dundry, and a whole lot of bike shops did quite well.

Alas it's a shortsighted thing to do, much like selling the farm for the profit. You end up with fewer people engaging in the activity because you've poisoned it. The helmet manufacturers don't give a damn - they just do the rinse-repeat thing in the next market (UK, US, wherever) using us as a shining example.