This story was on cnn:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/parenting/05/11/bike.helmets.reut/index.html
my question is why don’t parents care enough about their kids to make them wear helmets? This should not be a choice, sorta like stepping in front of a moving car. We teach them about that danger why not this one.
I don’t get this either. It seems like such common sense. I know parents don’t want their kids hurt. Is it that they don’t realize what a big risk it is to ride without a helmet? I believe it’s the law here that any child under 12 (? not sure of the age) has to wear a helmet. Similar to car seats, this seems to be the only way to make sure parents get their kids to wear one. Most of the kids in my neighborhood wear one, although I noticed that many of them are very loose. I’m always making them give me their helmets so I can adjust the straps.
Dawn
This is a huge problem in my area. The kids in our neighborhhod either don’t wear their helmets at all or wear them without clipping the chinstrap. My kids are not allowed on a bike, rollerblades, scooter or anything other than their own two legs without a helmet! And I discourage my daughter from riding with other kids when they don’t have a helmet. I keep two extra helmets here that are available for her friends to use if they “forget” their helmets. Only one child still occasionally shows up without a helmet now. I have often wondered if the parents of these kids even know that their kids are out there riding without a helmet.
I’ll start by saying that I’m religous about wearing my helmet, either road riding or mountain biking. I feel naked without it. That being said, i grew up in a suburb south of Philly. I never, i repeat, NEVER wore a helmet, i didn’t even own one. Did i ever fall off my bike? Sure i did, but almost never on the street. I think the kind of riding we (I) as triathletes do is a little different than the kind of riding we (I) did as a kid. I rode to get from point A to point B. That usually required riding threw the woods, through peoples yards, and occasionally on the road. I didn’t hang out on the shoulder of major roads for 5-6 hours at a time like i do now. Now here’s the catch, I am athletic, and i don’t mean athletic, i mean coordinated. I look back and i don’t regret never wearing a helmet and if i were to go back i still wouldn’t (although the roads are more heavily trafficed now-a-days. Now on the other hand, i’ve seen people that can chew gum and think at the same time, maybe those people should be wearing helmets as kids, but i used to ride hard, big dirt jumps in the woods, screaming down huge paved roads, etc. Again, it wearing a helmet a good thing? Sure, should it be a law? Absolutely not. What next? Soon i’ll be forced to wear my seatbelt, and relieving myself in the woods will be illegal too…wait.
Just because you didn’t wear one as a kid and didn’t get hurt doesn’t mean that all kids shouldn’t be forced to wear one. A survey of one isn’t very useful. This is a question about safety of children. If the only way to get parents to understand that wearing a helmet is important is to make it a law, then that makes sense to me. Once you’re grown up, you can do what you want, but kids need to be forced to wear one and parents don’t seem to understand how important it is. Not all laws are bad. Look at how many children have been saved because there is a car seat law. Surely you think that’s a good idea.
Dawn
In response to:
Once you’re grown up, you can do what you want, but kids need to be forced to wear one and parents don’t seem to understand how important it is. Not all laws are bad. Look at how many children have been saved because there is a car seat law. Surely you think that’s a good idea.
Dawn, i see your point, but i have a slightly different opinion on these matters. You see by forcing people to be safe by making laws, you don’t teach then to be responsible for themselves (the parents not the kids). When my mother told me not to touch the kerosine heater (think- enacted law) that didn’t teach me anything except that i shouldn’t do something. Inevitably i touched it and i got burned. You see we need to learn to be responsible for your own actions and safety, not to give away all your rights to choice waht is safe. You see a law like this leads to more laws which take away more choice, and while i’m all for choice, my big problem is with lack of choice you have lack of learned responsiblity. Should all parents encourage their children to wear helmets? Absolutly. The responsible parents will. But by forcing them to so takes that the responsibilty of safety out of the hands of the people and it takes the choice away from the people, and then it all leads to people who can’t make responsible choices for themselves because all the choices have already been made for them.
Now i’m going to get a little radical and i don’t mean to hurt anyone by saying this so feel free to flame me…
Humans got to be the way we are today because those who could keep themselves safe and alive, by their OWN choices and decisions, lived to pass on thier genes to promote offspring who could keep themselves safe and alive. Those who could not keep themselves safe and alive… we’ll they were eliminated form the gene pool.
My 3-year old thinks he’s the “cat’s pajamas” (I don’t know what that actually means, but I say it) on the bike. He goes “no feet on the pedals”, “no hands”, “one-hand”, standing up, etc. He’s had a few spills where his helmet has hit the ground with a pretty good thump (attempting a “cheetah turn” … sharp angle at top speed).
He doesn’t want to wear a helmet, but he doesn’t have a choice. When he says “No” to a helmet, I pickt eh bike up, sling it over my shoulder, and start to walk away. Suddenly, as if by miracle, he wants to wear his helmet.
I try to make his helmet fun. We bought some cool Justice League stickers and we put them on the helmet.
To me it just seems like such a simple solution, that it’s not worth the risk to not wear a helmet. There is so many things that you cannot protect your child from (while allowing them to participate in things they enjoy), that when there is a simple protective device … you have to take advantage of it.
Almost all of the kids in our neighborhood wear a helmet although a good percentage are probably wearing it porrly. But, what amazes me is the number of parents that ride their bike without a helmet when they have taken the trouble to get one on their kids riding with them.
Haven’t they figured out that kids imitate adults whenever possible? What do these parents think their kids are going to do as soon as they are out of sight? Ride their bike without a helmet just like Mommy and Daddy do.
It seems to me the least experienced cyclists, the ones who could benefit most, are less likely to wear them. They live in ignorance. They haven’t seen people crash, insane drivers and the abundance of hazards that exist on the road.
Its always interesting how people perceive risk. People live in fear of terrorists and abductors, yet they are far more likely to be killed by a road accident. They’ll take every precaution to safeguard their children except for the ones most likely to kill their kids.
Where are the parents?
Those parents are probably in the same place as the mother I saw driving a high-end Volvo the other day with four kids under the age of 10 in the car who were roaming around inside the car - no seatbelts, no booster seats, and kids in the front seat where they should not be because of the airbag.
Some people just don’t get it. Perhaps I am sterotyping here, but I would think that someone who is buying a high-end volvo is someone who cares about safty and performace, because that is what the Volvo brand has stood for, for years. However, that appeared to not be the case of this driver. Oh, and by the way, she was applying lipstick, while driving down the highway to, while all this was going on.
I am thinking I just should have called the police, given the make, model and license# of the car to the police to somehow protect the children.
It’s funny how things change. Did anyone wear a helmet as a kid? I don’t think I ever saw anyone wearing a helmet. And we were doing crazy stuff like doing dirt jumps and having other kids on the hadlebars, etc… Just think of all the crazy stuff you did as a kid that didn’t even involve a bike. We used to play ‘tackle the man with the ball’ where 15 kids would jump on top of one kid who was unfortunate enough to have the ball. Sometimes this would accidently happen on the sidewalk…15 stiches, a broken wrist, and 3 months later, we’d be out there doing the same thing. Tackle football, jumping from roofs, jumping over cars(no bike -my specialty)… kids think they’re indestructible.
There was a dirt park I used to ride by a couple of years ago. there would be 20 - 30 kids out there on dirtbikes jumping and having fun. Sometimes I’d watch for a bit. While a few had their helmets on, there would always be a pile of helmets laying by a tree.
Should you put a helmet on your kids? Absolutely, but there comes a time when a kid gets around 10-12, when, ultimately, they’re going to do what they want to do when you’re not around.
It’s funny how things change. Did anyone wear a helmet as a kid? I don’t think I ever saw anyone wearing a helmet. And we were doing crazy stuff like doing dirt jumps and having other kids on the hadlebars, etc… Just think of all the crazy stuff you did as a kid that didn’t even involve a bike. We used to play ‘tackle the man with the ball’ where 15 kids would jump on top of one kid who was unfortunate enough to have the ball. Sometimes this would accidently happen on the sidewalk…15 stiches, a broken wrist, and 3 months later, we’d be out there doing the same thing. Tackle football, jumping from roofs, jumping over cars(no bike -my specialty)… kids think they’re indestructible.
There was a dirt park I used to ride by a couple of years ago. there would be 20 - 30 kids out there on dirtbikes jumping and having fun. Sometimes I’d watch for a bit. While a few had their helmets on, there would always be a pile of helmets laying by a tree.
Should you put a helmet on your kids? Absolutely, but there comes a time when a kid gets around 10-12, when, ultimately, they’re going to do what they want to do when you’re not around.
Actually a lot of kids do die and get injured from no helmets. But you never hear about it in the news unlike abductions and other violent crimes. If a kid cracks his skull falling off his bike, the story will be lucky to make it in the local newpaper. Perceived risk and actual risk get distorted because of this, thus we are least likely to protect ourselves from the things that can actually do us harm.
I don’t get this either. It seems like such common sense. I know parents don’t want their kids hurt. Is it that they don’t realize what a big risk it is to ride without a helmet?
I think that’s it- they don’t realize what a big risk it is to ride without a helmet.
When I was a kid, we rode all over God’s creation on our bikes. If we had ever seen a kid wearing a helmet, we would’ve crowned that kid King of the Dorks. I don’t remember ever seeing another kid wearing a helmet while riding a bike, and I never heard of a kid in my town getting their head hurt because of it. This is the background a lot of parents today are coming from- they rode without helmets, and they turned out OK, so why wouldn’t their kids be OK, too?
Also, there’s a difference between *risk *and *danger. *While it’s certainly dangerous to ride without a helmet, I’m not sure how risky it really is. What percentage of kids who ride suffer a fall that would result in serious head injury if they don’t wear a helmet?
Mandatory helmet laws are fine. But, parents are still ultimately responsible for their childrens’ safety.
When I was the president of the University of New Mexico cycling team, we put on bike handling clinics. The primary focus was on kids but we were willing to teach kids and their parents (and anyone else for that matter) on how to handle a bike properly, where to ride and not ride. Stuff like don’t ride on the sidewalks, because cars backing out of driveways are less likely to see you, etc. We worked in conjuction with the City of Albuquerque and the police departments. We would ususally conduct them in conjuntion with running races and bike races and bike tours. For kids who did not have helmets, we would give them a donated helmet. In 1995 I think we handed out something like 280 helmets that were donated to us specifically for these bike rodeos. We set-up agreements with local shops to refer people who purchased a new bike to meet (if they desired) with our designated bike handling trainer and give them pointers in the event that a bike rodeo was not going to happen anytime soon. Parents were thrilled to see this. The kids loved it because they were meeting with “bigtime” athletes (we always wore our team garb doing this stuff). Our team was very large back in the mid 90’s and we could have the required suport. Our sponsors loved this kind of “real people not just other bike geeks” visibilty and they worked hard to help us. Some of the larger tri clubs and bike clubs could work out similar deals I would imagine. Eventually we had to begin taking our rodeos on the road to other parts of the state and region. We eventualy went into schools. If your wear a helmet and really believe in wearing one, you will make a difference when it comes to kids. They will want to emulate you and wear one too.
That being said, the parents WILL in fact take the responsibility if they know someone else will help them with the education part of it. Most parents don’t know enough about helmets and why they are important when riding a bike.
Rusty in TX
Just started watching the Lance Chroicles. Surprised I haven’t seen any gripes about how often they show him riding sans helmet.
SM
“In 2001, 134 children ages 14 and under died and nearly 314,600 were injured in bicycle crashes. Additionally, more than 176,000 children ages 5 to 14 are treated each year in hospital emergency rooms for injuries related to skateboards, scooters and skates.”
This is a good example of how statistics are abused.
In 2001, 134 kids died in bicycle accidents. Would a helmet have saved any of them? If so, how many? How many of those 134 kids were wearing helmets?
314,000 kids were injured in bicycle crashes, and 176,000 were treated in emegency rooms after being injured on a skateboard, skooter, or skates. OK. Now how many of those injuries were head injuries? When I was a kid I contributed my fair share to these numbers, but never suffered a head injury. How many of these instances are completely unrelated to helmet use- sprains, broken wrists, bad scrapes, etc?
Attempting to use statistics in such a misleading manner undermines the argument of those who advocate mandatory helmet use, IMO.
I can’t remember where I got this from, and I’m not real big on stats, but I have it written down. Close to 80% of serious head injuries could have been avoided or lessened with a helmet.
I’ll try to find the source.
Jaj, I believe that most head injuries can be avoided, or at least mitigated, by a helmet. You don’t have to look up the source to back that up, I think we can all accept that.
What I’m asking is how many kids suffer a head injury from falling off a bicylce in the first place? Is it 100 kids per year, in which case 80 of them would be saved by wearing a helmet? Or is it 10,000 kids per year, in which 8,000 of them would’ve been saved by a helmet?
Actually, I had it wrong. The study shows that wearing a helmet can reduce the risk of serious head injury by 74-85%. Neuroskills.com.
As I already mentioned I’m not big on stats because of how easy it is to manipulate them. Just throwing these numbers out there.
I’m also not big on making it a law for kids to wear a helmet. I’m busy enough as is without having to enforce this type of law every time I drive down a street. Here in Kansas we don’t even have a law against motorcyclists not wearing helmets. Amazing what can happen to the human brain in a high speed impact!!!