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Universal wear your helmet memes are idiotic bullshit.

Doing it with or without a safety net is at every level relevant to the surfskating experience, as it is to the trapeze experience.

Only one in ten million or so surfskaters do not need safety gear at all

I'm going out on a limb here for those who want to think about the excitement of danger and safety a little more, about something that is interesting at least for me to think about that does not apply to my or your surfskating, just like being a top professional sport star is worlds beyond merely well above average talent like ours.

It is by far wiser to surfskate with safety gear because surfskating is not much safer than the trapeze or tightrope. The exception I am referring to here is as stated incredibly rare.

Just like for the trapeze artist or tight-rope walker, only for a very few talented athletes (not the very top) it is reasonable that the full experience at every level includes first doing it with and then without safety equipment. M-a-y-b-e unless one goes very slow, step by step, so slow that it is more about enjoying the journey.

And I think everyone can agree that there are the ones even rarer than that, superhuman rare, the few so rare nearly no one ever meets them. Videos of their brilliance exist on YouTube: sick individual athletes brilliant-crazy enough to remain somehow measured in physical chaos that don't need it at all. But my guess is that such talent is one in ten million or so. And even they can be very unlucky and still crash and never be the same. But the probability of that is very low for them, much lower than driving a car in traffic, and easily low enough to take that chance.

For everyone else going too fast or too big with something they're not very, very good at already will with very high probability result in a fall that seriously debilitates or kills them... and it can happen even with safety gear, but less so.