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Don't you think it's a little hypocritical to force everyone to draw their acceptable risk line at exactly where you happen to draw it?I always find takes like this a little weird. This is something we do all the time in society. Seat belt laws. Bicycle and motorcycle helmet laws. All sorts of safety regulations and laws around sports, transportation, health, etc.
We as a society often decide to "protect people from themselves". Some of it is out of an understanding that humans are notoriously bad at risk assessment and will do unsafe things. Sure, that's a bit paternalistic, but... that's life. But some of it is also because severe injury and death don't just hurt the person injured or killed. The emotional toll of those effects are felt widely. The economic effects are felt widely too.
Certainly there are lines to be drawn, and there's plenty of reasonable debate as to where those lines should be drawn. Some possible safety measures might be very difficult, burdensome, or expensive; sometimes in those cases we can't require things like those without causing other types of harm. But others... not so much.
> Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar and steal boards from anyone that doesn't agree?
Because it's not just about the individual in question. It's about the entire community. The community of longboarders don't want severe injury and death on their hands, so they develop social norms that include requiring helmets. That's entirely within their right to do so, as it is their right to ostracize those who do not conform. (For the record, I think "steal their boards" was hyperbole. I doubt people's boards actually get taken. I expect it's more likely that they get shunned and ejected from the community.)
> Should people that think that downhill longboarding with a helmet is risky steal your board?
If the community consensus is there, then maybe that's reasonable. (In the "eject from community" sense, that is, not necessarily the literal "steal their board" sense.)
Certainly all of these sorts of decisions should be based on research as to what actually makes people safer. Humans are imperfect and don't always follow the science, but the hope is that, on a long enough time scale, with enough people weighing in, we'll get it right most of the time.