...to not make my 5 and 3 year old wear a cycle helmet?

[blindasabatenburg]

Am I failing to protect them sufficiently? Nobody wore helmets when we were kids and I don't recall anyonr suffering a serious head injury, though we all came off from time to time.

They could just as easily fall from a climbing frame at the park, but nobody would insist on a helmet for the park!!!

DS, aged 2 and a bit, hurtled off his balance bike and missed a large fence post by millimetres - I was so glad that he had his helmet on. that day (and indeed, on the several other occasions that he has come off his bike and hit his head on the ground).

Shabba - so sorry for your loss.

I guess the odds of a nasty bang are about the same as, say a contraception failure (and that never happens does it?). Why risk it (helmet, not 'tother thing).

Patpig - seat belts in cars can cause injuries too. Do you not wear one of those either for fear of seat belt injuring you. Better to be injured than dead I would say.

It is a question of odds really and helmets save wearers from more injuries and deaths than not wearing one. Nobody, not one single person has posted that they were badly injured because they were wearing a helmet. I've not read every single post so maybe I've missed one but even so it would be just the one. The same cannot be said of people posting because of injuries sustained from not wearing one.

You'd think even if it were a friend of a friend or in the local paper, if somebody knew someone injured by helmets, they would have posted by now, when this thread is so large. There is a choice yes, but odds are stacked against you more if you don't wear one than if you do.

Thanks Shabba - so sorry that your story did not have a happy outcome.

I remember dh telling me in the hospital that if ds was not OK, he would blame himself until the day he died as he had bought the bike and he had suggested the route. He said he knew I would blame him too. He was wrong. It would not have been his fault, any more than it was yours. I hope you have come to realise that.

"It is a question of odds really and helmets save wearers from more injuries and deaths than not wearing one. "

Well it might be a question of odds, but the point is that the odds/statistics show that helmets do not reduce injury rates.

It is self-evident that if you were to bang your head into a brick wall you would rather put a helmet on first. But it would be better still not to bang your head at all, and there is no doubt whatsoever that wearing a helmet makes that more likely, for numerous reasons.

Whether overall they are a good thing, maybe they are on an individual basis, but it never justifies the foaming at the mouth you get from some people, and certainly not compulsory helmets.

"it never justifies the foaming at the mouth you get from some people."

PatPig A little empathy would go a long way. Instead of pushing your biased agenda, why don't you read a few posts up about shabba who shared her story of a tragic loss. Perhaps engage your brain before you open your mouth.

I haven't seen much frothing. Some bloody sad and heartbreaking stories of loss and awful injuries.

crashdoll I have read many stories of children dying in bicycle accidents. A large proportion could have been avoided with better road sense/training/awareness.

Unfortunately there is a knee jerk reaction to talk about helmets, rather than focusing on cycle training. Some parents of children killed as a result of poor cycle skills and/or badly maintained bicycles, are campaigning for mandatory helmet laws, even though these laws kill more people than they could possibly save.

Back in the days before helmets, there was a common sense approach, which was that children would be given their Cycling Proficiency, and try to cycle safely.

Now helmets are just bandied around as a magic, no-thought, solution to cycle safety. Most children's helmets don't fit properly. Many children ride dangerous and/or poorly maintained bicycles. Helmets are a distraction from common sense.

Your priority should be safe riding on a safe bike.

'Well it might be a question of odds, but the point is that the odds/statistics show that helmets do not reduce injury rates.'

What statistics? Please post a link but first make sure they are saying what you think they are saying and are relevant unlike the last lot you posted.

'But it would be better still not to bang your head at all, and there is no doubt whatsoever that wearing a helmet makes that more likely, for numerous reasons.'

Of course it is better not to bang your head but not wearing a helmet does not mean you won't bang your head. Again, proof please that wearing a helmet makes you more likely to get hurt. Nobody on here has given any examples of that.

You keep making these sweeping statements but you never provide any proof. Do you just not like people who ride bikes or something?

And just for the record, 8 yr old boys don't need constant supervision nor should they. That was actually very unkind of you to blame Shabba for not supervising her son properly. I am sure she blames herself enough without strangers on the internet doing it too to further their own weird agenda.

I was riding sedately in a cycle lane on Balham High Road a few months back and was knocked off by a driver who was not paying attention. Baring cuts and bruises and a bit of shock, I was ok. I recall my head banging on the road and thinking, "Is that it?" I was a bit laissez faire about helmets, but no longer. I have only been on that road once since then, and have been religious about my helmet. Boys always wear them and it is never an issue.

Agree that helmets go hand in hand with other road sense lessons.

Not one single person has said that teaching safe cycling is unnecessary - schools round here do cycling proficiency training, I am sure they are not alone. They also insist on children wearing helmets but children are children and make mistakes. Having seen plenty of adult cyclists around most of them make mistakes too. Now you could make a mistake wearing a helmet and live to learn from those mistakes or you could leave the helmet off, thinking you know better and not live to learn from your mistake. I know which one I would rather do.

I think this thread has changed my view. As I said upthread, my children wear helmets for on road cycling, and don't when they're off the road.

I'm convinced now that I have got that the wrong way round, and that they should wear helmets off the road, rather than on. As a result of this discussion, I've concluded that in a collision with a car or lorry, a helmet wouldn't help. For the kind of injury that you get off road, it would.

Shabba's story is indeed awful, and it is terrible to think of having to live with that grief, and I can well imagine that the horror of that moment will live with her for ever. But Idisagree with the conclusions she draws: I cannot see that a helmet would have protected her son if his internal organs were crushed by a lorry.

I hope we would all have enough humanity to feel sympathy with a parent who had lost a child through a preventable accident. The person who will be the hardest on themselves in that situation is the parent. But since we can all do stupid things, I hope everyone would have enough empathy to offer support to a bereaved parent whose child had died from a head injury while not wearing a helmet. As the poet John Donne said, 'every man's death diminishes me.'

It's your choice and I never give parents who don't helmet up their kids a look or a tut but DS came off his scooter a month or so back, on a corner, at speed and caught the side of his head on a lamp post. His helmet saved it being nastier than a quick check at the GPs.

We also had an older cyclist skid and come off his bicycle in front of a friend of mine last year. He had to be airlifted to hospital with a very nasty head injury as he'd caught the back of his head on the kerb. No helmet. The paramedic said to my friend that he'd have had to go to hospital for a check even with a helmet but he'd probably not have even broken the skin, based on where a helmet normally sits and where the injury was.

I think it is better to be safe than sorry.

I prefer mine to wear helmets.

Nim - although he did have crush injuries his death certificate says 'head injury' as cause of death- the police coroner said that a helmet would have lessened the severity, and although he was still badly injured they would have stood a chance of nursing him back to good health....the blood I was trying to stop flowing was coming from the back of his head and they discouraged me from looking at the back of his head when we went to see him at the mortuary. Many years have passed and I no longer directly blame myself but my life is still sometimes centered on 'what if I had.....' 'if only...' and 'I wish he was still here.' Incidentally the lorry was going no more than maybe 1 mile an hour...he had just started the engine and my lad was having a peep at all the different soft drinks in the back....I cant make anybody put helmets on their child for cycling. I just saw the thread and wanted to share my experiences and thoughts on the subject.

Shabba, that is just heartbreaking. I'm tearing up here. What an absolute tragedy - it really really could happen to any one of us with a child.

Patpig, did you read goosey's post? A neurologist told her her son would have died had he not been wearing a helmet. He was a competent cyclist on a cycle track. Of course cycling safety should not be ignored but I just don't see why you are so against wearing helmets.

And I actually think your response to Shabba was pretty poor to be honest.

"What statistics? Please post a link but first make sure they are saying what you think they are saying and are relevant unlike the last lot you posted. "

ipa.org.au/publications/2019/australia's-helmet-law-disaster
www.cycle-helmets.com/helmet_damage.html

"Of course it is better not to bang your head but not wearing a helmet does not mean you won't bang your head. Again, proof please that wearing a helmet makes you more likely to get hurt. Nobody on here has given any examples of that. "

You are obviously more likely to hit your head (I did not say hit yourself) if wearing a helmet, because it makes your head a significantly larger target, it is an uncomfortable and distracting protrusion on your head, distracting from hundreds of millions of years of successful evolution, which has provided us with numerous protections from ridiculous watermelon-smashing type demonstrations.

That's just the helmet itself, such that in an identical accident/impact, the helmet-wearing cyclist is more likely to hit his head than a non-helmet wearing cyclist, but there is also a well-observed risk compensation effect, both in terms of the cyclist:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2011.01589.x/abstract

and the motorist:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/5334208.stm

"You keep making these sweeping statements but you never provide any proof. Do you just not like people who ride bikes or something?"

Bizarre statement. Most people who ride bikes do not wear helmets, source:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1730264/

"And just for the record, 8 yr old boys don't need constant supervision nor should they. That was actually very unkind of you to blame Shabba for not supervising her son properly. "

Now really, I did no such thing.

However as a regular cyclist I see a lot of children cycling on cul-de-sacs and pavements, and my view is that it is more dangerous than an adult cycling on the road, because there are so many cars moving across the driveways and so on, and they don't expect a small child to be cycling across at speed.

twofalls: if you are doing mountain/trail riding, then helmet wearing is a good idea. It's a specialist activity, and specialist safety equipment is appropriate.

For general day-to-day 'utility cycling', in my view it is not.

I think it's necessary if they're on the road, not if they're on the pavement going at walking speed or less. Otherwise you may as well wear a helmet for walking.

I do wonder how much protection some helmets would give though.

And I've never been able to skate with elbow/knee pads on, too uncomfortable and actually destablise me.

You are obviously more likely to hit your head (I did not say hit yourself) if wearing a helmet, because it makes your head a significantly larger target, it is an uncomfortable and distracting protrusion on your head, distracting from hundreds of millions of years of successful evolution, which has provided us with numerous protections from ridiculous watermelon-smashing type demonstrations

In terms of evolution, cycling happened in the last few minutes. Our bodies haven't evolved to cope with falling over at speed or being hit by a mechanical object.

I think Pat is playing devil's advocate here.

Stats are wonderful things, they really are. I did a year of it for my psychology degree and you can argue just about anything for and against armed with McGoogle stats and good/bad research.

Sadly in London we have those god-awful Boris Bikes - every tom dick and harriet can get one. They have no helmets. Most of the cyclists are tourists (near us anyway), so are not used to our roads. Quite a few obviously have never ridden or and very wobbly. I'm assuming that they injure more pedestrians than are injured themselves.

My 3 year old rides his bike with no helmet. He has stabilisers though and goes at a snails pace.

My 5 year old has to wear a helmet at all times, being fairly new to riding a bike with no stabilisers.

I wish I could show you the video of my eldest coming off his bike a few weeks ago. His handlebars spun to one side. So he came off it diagonally iyswim and he whacked his head on the ground so hard it makes me feel sick to think what damage he may have done had we not insisted on the helmet.

Will try to make this my last comment - but I cant promise anything

Matts bike was new - it was 5 months old - bought at Xmas and he was killed in May. He had been doing cycling lessons at school where they took them onto the quieter roads with a qualified instructor. As I have said previously and will continue to believe the lack of a cycling helmet was a major cause of his death.

I was told this by the Police Coroner and by the Doctor at the hospital.
Thats it really......I just wish, with all my heart, he was still here and looking forward to his 29th birthday this month.

Just wondering how PatPig concludes that helmet laws "kill more people than they possibly could save". Where's the link to that article???