AIBU to think they should not be letting child out like this

[Mrbojangles1]

Walking along this morning and saw the bike-ability people

School cycle training for people who don't know and I was surprised to see that sevral of the children were not wearing helmets
My son did his last year and the school would not allow the children to take part unless they had helmets

I just think that the bike ability people should not be allowing children to take part unless they have helmets BTW they sell helmets in wilko for as little as £5

Seeing as it cycle training they should be encouring children to be safe of the roads which includes helmets gurrr and the worst thing is the trainers were wearing helmets so they must think its important

If only life were so simple, knowitallstrikes again! They all swear to wear their helmet and make sure they ride where you can't see them! You will never know.
I'm afraid that 12 yr olds do not say, 'my mummy says' and then do it!

They don't insist on it but we had to sign a form to say we accepted the risks. My son did his training this week, afterwards the leader rode off and I noticed she wasn't wearing her helmet either! Bad example.

I know that you have to trust children to some extent, but if you have actually seen your child riding without a helmet why still allow them to ride? It is (to me) a completely different thing to hope your child is doing as you have asked rather than knowing they have willfully disobeyed you and chosing to ignore it.

Again, it depends how important helmet wearing is to you.

It is like giving a teenager a curfew of, say, 10pm. If you fell asleep and didn't know what time they got in but they were safely tucked up on bed in the morning, you might assume they had stuck to their agreed time. But if they rolled home at midnight and you knew this, would you still allow them to go out, knowing that they will do what they like?

So is crossing your fingers and hoping they are wearing a helmet, whilst all the while you know they most probably not, better then?

My ds1 cycles to school as there have been 6 serious fights, one involving broken glass on the school bus and personally I think he and the 3 friends he cycles with are safer out of that environment.

Yabu. Iirc there is evidence for and against

If you know they are not, it is different. You know your child, how truthful they are. If you believe they are wearing a helmet, fine. If you have seen them without one, you know they are not. It is then not down to trust any more.

As you say, wearing a helmet is not that important to you. You would rather he cycles without a helmet than gets the bus. That is completely your choice. I am trying to say, clearly very badly, that I tend to trust my DC, but if I had proof that they were not doing something they had told me they would, I would be very disappointed. If you are going to let children cycle anyway, and you know they do so without a helmet, then don't force the issue.

A child in my local area left home wearing his helmet, took it off as soon as he was out of sight of the house and hung it over his handlebars. The straps caught in his wheel and flung him into the path of a car, which killed him. I use this story to try and convince DD to keep hers on when she is on her bike.

We all (DH, DD and I) wear helmets when out cycling and DD's school insisted they wore them for cycle training.

Yabu. Iirc there is evidence for and against

^ This ^

I've just seen a bike accident this morning, heard the scrape and clatter and looked round to see a poor bloke lying on his back in the middle of the roundabout. Fortunately he was wearing a helmet and just suffered scrapes and shock. He had been cut up by a car who didn't see him 'as the sun was in his eyes...'

Lovesbeing and ragged - do you have links to back that up?
(interested, not being arsey)

My dc know that no helmet = no bike.
They have also been warned that if I ever see them cycling with no helmet (having sneaked it off) I will sell their bikes.

Surely it's common sense to wear a hemet? Humans evolved with skulls thick enough to cope with travelling at lowish speeds. You can easily reach 30mph on a bike downhill and I don't know anyone with a skull strong enough to cope with a fall at that speed.

Helmet

I'd rather they were trained and helmetless than untrained and helmetless.

There is actually no evidence to support the assertion that helmets make you safer. There is an often quoted study which talks about an 80 % reduction in head injuries, but it fails to mention that there was also a massive reduction in people- particularly girls- cycling. And there is strong evidence for an increase in rotational injuries when wearing a helmet. And also-scary this one- an onservable increase in drivers getting too close to cyclists if they are wearing helmets. Oh, and 10 children have been strangled by their helmet straps when they kept them on after getting off their bikes.

It's not as simple as it looks.

Traditional disclaimer - I cycle daily and wear a helmet.

But, as others have said it's not a legal requirement to wear one and there is much debate as to the benefit of helmet vs no helmet. The safety standards for a helmet are that they should protect your skull in a fall from bike sitting height to the pavement - so essentially if you're stopped at lights and topple over, hitting your head, the helmet needs to protect you. If you are cycling along and are hit by a car going 30mph then the helmet may well not contribute a whole lot to protecting your skull - it's just polystyrene after all, and after one sharp dent the impact squishes the polystyrene and that's that, it needs to be replaced. These aren't F1 racing helmets we're talking about here that can protect your skull in a major crash! I'd still rather have a bit of polystyrene between my head and the car bonnet or ground regardless, it's better than nothing in my book... though I think I'd still have plenty of other broken limbs and other damage from bits of my body not encased in polystyrene.

Other arguments mentioned above include that drivers consider helmet-wearing cyclists to be more competent and somehow protected, so they pass closer when overtaking. Also mandatory helmet wearing can deter teenagers and women from cycling because they think they look stupid or it'll mess up their hair - it's been argued that this would stop more people cycling and lead to poorer overall health than from the few injuries helmets stop! Some people also say encouraging helmet wearing makes cycling out to be an "extreme sport" that's dangerous, when in actual fact it's just a normal daily activity - you don't wear a helmet to cross the road after all, and a car could hit you then... Then there's the people who claim helmets can make some injuries worse. It's quite a mixed bag really.

I didn't realise that any kids had been strangled by their helmet straps :( It would be interesting to get to some statistics for/against so the risk can be assessed properly.

CTC provides a calm summary of the anti-compulsion case.

Few points from there & off top of my head:

Risk compensation: cyclists wearing helmets take more risks, and (worse) drivers take more risks around them. This is borne out by Australian findings; fewer cyclists on the road after compulsory helmet laws came in, yet more serious incidents per km travelled.

Benefit loss: people are discouraged from cycling at all if they are required to wear a helmet, losing the environmental and personal health benefits of regular cycling (this is why the BMA historically was against compulsion). Fewer cyclists leads to weaker cycling culture, and an unsafer environment for those cyclists remaining.

Standard cyclist helmets are only 100% effective up to about 12 mph; they'd have to be pretty heavy to protect one fully at 30 mph.

Plus, wearing a helmet is pointless if it isn't fitted correctly. I see people wearing their helmets wrong all the time. On, but useless.

I wear a helmet, so do DH & DC. But I'm against compulsion.

It isn't illegal to not wear a cycle helmet. And a helmet didn't help my brother when he was crushed against railings by a lorry. It was his chest that caved it, according to the coroner. He was wearing a helmet though, so that's ok.

And if cyclists should wear helmets, then so should pedestrians and car drivers. All can suffer head injuries in a crash. Helmets give poor cyclists a false sense of security. Hardly anyone wears a helmet in the Netherlands as they have proper cycling infrastructure - we need proper cycle paths, not just a couple of feet of road marked out with white lines

The reason they can't enforce it is because it may be seen as excluding, for example, people who for religious reasons wear a turban or suchlike.

Our school had the paperwork from Bikeability saying helmets weren't compulsory but we weighed up the risks (of being sued for racism versus safety) and decided we would say that all students had to wear one or they couldn't take part.

I am a Bikeability Instructor and we INSIST the children wear properly fitted helmets at all times. in fact they cannot take part if they don't have a helmet.

Where did this idea come from that they don't have to wear helmets? It's nonsense.