I hate to break it to you, but for most of us, wear a helmet is taking care of yourself. Rants like this annoy the crap out of me. I am actually on the side of kids need to be kids and not wrapped in bubble, but not all precautions are silly. Just because nobody you knew had a head trauma does not mean it never happens, even to people who know what they are doing. You can’t learn to bike well enough to avoid all accidents any more than you can eat healthy enough and exercise enough to prevent viral infections. I have always buckled my seat belt, and I always wear a helmet. I have gone 30mph down a narrow single track over a forty foot drop (once on both sides!) without falling or having any kind of accident, but I have also gone over my handle bars when going 10mph on a paved bike trail because a five year old burst out of the bushes.
Overall there are two trends here, one good and one bad.
Good: more data is being collected and we can see the low hanging fruit of easy gains in safety for low cost (seat belts, bike helmets, etc.)
Bad: 24 hour news cycle needs to be fed and we read all the stories about all the rare incidents that happen out there. My personal pet peeve is Halloween fears. Trick or treating is almost dead in most places because of a few hoaxes a few years ago. Last time I looked into it in detail the only cases of actual candy tampering that have ever been confirmed to be real were done by family members, not strangers.
Teach kids how to fall and roll instead of going through life like a Monty Python skit waiting to happen. If you’re going to put a helmet on kids for riding bikes then they should wear them when using play ground equipment along with knee, elbow, and shin protection.
Mountain trails are justified because they route them through gaps in trees barely wide enough to get the handlebars through.
Why is it ridiculous to wear a helmet on a bike? You can’t compare a bike to playground equipment because you’re moving much faster and because you can’t control for other stuff that might come up and hit you.
The fact of the matter, is that wearing a helmet in a car crash can prevent or lessen injury. Every race car driver, and every demolition derby driver, where car crashes are more likely, wears a helmet.
Having every family member ALWAYS wear a helmet while in your car is not just whistling Dixie either, because hundreds of thousands of people actually do get into car accidents each year, tens of thousands of people in cars actually do get killed each year.
I think many many more helmetless people in cars are killed and injured than helmetless bicyclists.
You’ve got more protection in a car, though. You’re not in an enclosed space in a bike. If something barrels into you and knocks you over, you could be dead or seriously brain damaged. People can die in a car crash, too, but we try to take precautions against that by wearing seatbelts so we don’t go flying and hitting our heads on things if we smack into something.
The fact of the matter, is that more kids die in cars rather than on bikes, sleds, skis,and horses COMBINED!.
Also, driving kids around in small compact cars is just asking for trouble. What do you think is going to happen to your kids when the tiny compact car your kids are in runs into a big full size van?
Having kids wear helmets on bikes or sleds is mostly fluff, it rarely protects, and it mostly lessens guilt feelings of parents who want to pretend they are doing something to protect their children while ignoring the greatest danger.
Infant car seats have proven to protect infants, so if a child is too big for a car seat then he should be wearing a helmet. Driving kids in a large heavy car, large full size van, GMC Surburban, or very large steel framed pickup truck would also help.
I would much rather see kids in cars wearing seatbelts and helmets and in large heavy vans, than kids on bikes wearing those funny looking and almost useless bicycle helmets.
I think “the masses” like to pretend they are doing something by recycling and by putting their kids in bicycle helmets, while at the same time ignoring the true threats and ignoring the greatest dangers.
(Oh Geeeez! …this topic reminds me of all those people who wanted record immigration and have added 100 million people to this country’s population but since they “recycle” their non-water bottles, they think they are saving the planet)
One obvious reason is inconvenience/embarassment rather than a real risk argument. the other is that head protection equipment does exist in most modern cars now, in the form of airbags and seatbelts as a replacement for helmets.
Yes we could do helmets too, but it isnt the case that we dont do head protection for cars at all, unlike other activities.
Edit: And in Australia at least, car seats are mandated for children, with reverse ones for infants. Neck injury is a major concern so helmets arent a real solution in these situations.
You don’t necessarily have to die for a bike to be dangerous. If you bang into something and hit your head, you can be brain damaged, which will negatively affect you even if it doesn’t kill you.
I think bicycle helmets are **goofier **looking than race car helmets.
I dont buy it. I worked in ER. Lots of people, and lots of kids, get very banged up from being in car crashes. It is not unusal at all to see head injuries from a car accident - it is VERY common.
Something I see a lot of is parents trying to discipline their children in public and teach them the safe way to do things and the kids don’t mind. I’d say at least half of the parents just give up and let them do as they please.
When we were told not to do something and we did it anyway there were swift consequences. All but the most contrary of us didn’t do it again. That’s something I don’t see often anymore.
Last week I was swimming and I listened to a mom threaten half the afternoon that if her children kept doing what they were doing they were going home. Never happened.
Apparently mom wanted to be there and that was more important than teaching the little rascals that her word was the law when their safety was involved.
I think Natasha Richardson’s family would tell you otherwise. I believe there was a huge debate over whether she should have been wearing a helmet.
Besides, if kids are like we were, they’ll be able to find ways to be even MORE dare-devil while wearing safety gear like helmets. At least, that’s what my friends and I would have done.
I think the other problem with Natasha Richardson is that she didn’t seek medical attention right afterward because she thought she was fine. Generally the protocol is to go to the doctor after a concussion, no matter how small. Even if she weren’t wearing a helmet, she might still be alive had she gone to a hospital.
This is stupid: You know how many times I fell of my bike as a kid? More times than I can count. You know how many wrecks I’ve been in? None. And I’m not abnormal.
Bike accidents may be rare, but they do happen, and a lot of grief can be prevented by just wearing a damn helmet. It seems like a pretty reasonable precaution. I don’t get the people who seem to be adamantly against it.
“Daddy… puts a plug in there.” (Daddy is working with his woodworking tools) “I have a paperclip.” “I can unbend the paperclip.” "I put one end in! Nothing happened. Huh. Okay, what happens when I WHAM
I remember that very vividly. (Age 2 or 3) So, that’s sledding through a rock wall (Yes. THROUGH. Face first. Age… six? ) and sticking things in an electrical socket. Yeah, I wore a helmet in the 80s. Caught hell for it. Split the helmet. Didn’t give a rat’s ass if I caught hell for it. I also had what might have been the first mountain bike in NY. I did all kinds of incredibly stupid and dangerous stuff. Mostly because I kept wondering ‘So… what if I…’
I used to jump off the top of a three story building into a tree, then climb down. I don’t know why! It was just neat to do.
Of the approximately 100 children under 16 killed on bikes, 64% of them are at intersections (read hit by cars). If you want to save a child then half the battle is teaching them to ride safely.
The percentage of deaths broken down as a percentage (no-helmet versus helmet) is 91% and 8% respectively so there appears to be a correlation with the use of them although there is no breakout regarding head injuries.
You can teach them to ride safely, sure, but there are things you can’t always plan for. Why not wear a helmet just to be safe? You only get one head after all…
What did you do in the ER? If you’re a health professional, then you’re one very, very rare specimen of RN or physician or other, one who rejects safety equipment after dealing with trauma.
My ER and trauma career has been loaded with many episodes of “boy, you were lucky you were wearing a helmet” and even more of “what a shame they weren’t wearing a helmet”.
