Or is teen ds re bike helmet?

[choosingchilli]

Ds (14) used to wear his helmet with no issues.

He hasn't ridden his bike in about 18 months purely because our rules are no helmet no bike.

He has a bike sitting in the garage, he wants to ride it to hang out with his friends in the local park but NONE of his friends wear a helmet and he freely admits he won't wear his because he will get "roasted" by his mates.

We're going round in circles, he knows the reason why helmets are important. I feel really strongly about this issue as I've seen brain injuries as a result of split second accidents and even though the roads around here are fairly quiet there is still always that risk.....

He's a good kid and he won't go out pretending to wear his helmet then take it off round the corner (which I half expected him to do).

I'm not usually particularly strict and even though I feel strongly about this I do understand peer pressure and I can see that the majority of teens around here don't wear helmets. AIBU in sticking to this rule?

my son was five minutes from home and cycling on the pavemnet. he skidded, slid into the road and was hit by a car.
He was literally the luckiest boy in the world and only sustained a really nasty facial injury-just above his eyebrow. he had extensive facial bruising and stitches but was alive and well.
If he'd been wearing a helmet, he wouldn't have facial scarring now.

I could never stand wearing a helmet. I would take it with me and ditch it at a friends house when I knocked for them. YANBU but honestly it's not the hill I'd die on. If he is cycling on roads or mountain biking or doing idiotic tricks then yes I'd insist but just riding around cycle track and parks etc with mates I'd let it go. I've come off my bike dozens of times throughout my life, once, memorably, into the side of an underpass while on the back of a friends bike, neither of us wearing a helmet and we both came away with skinned knees and elbows but none the worse for wear. He'd have to be very unlucky.

Ds14 will always wear his helmet. Reason being when he was 5 he had a nasty fall off his bike, thankfully minor cuts and bruises, however his helmet had the biggest crack in it- proper helmet, we paid roughly £45 for it, so nothing cheap. But we showed him and said, if you had not been wearing it, this would have been your head. It scared him. Anytime we’ve had a ‘I don’t want to wear it’ moment we remind him of that crack, and he puts it on.

(Being honest it scared him, it terrified us. It was the realisation of what could easily happen)

Sorry no helmet no bike. Have heard too many stories (as above) to waiver from this. We wear helmets and so does my dd and this is regardless of where you are. I had a colleague whose very experienced cyclist partner nipped to the shop without his helmet. Came off his bike due to something stupid, hit his head on the kerb - no more partner. Just not worth the risk imo.

www.cyclehelmets.org/1052.html

Stick with your beliefs. The helmet is essential! A friends husband came off his moped with a helmet on, at a very slow speed. But he hadn't made the helmet secure, he'd put it on but not tied it. His ventilation system was turned off after 6 months and he died minutes later. Helmets are essential (and also need to be worn properly).

We have compulsory helmet laws. Without those I would choose to wear a helmet only occasionally. But my 12 year old rides to school on a busy road and I hope that he wears a helmet always for that trip even if the laws are overturned.

The research just isn't there for helmets. Drivers are more inclined to risk hitting someone on a bike if they perceive them as safer - high vis and helmets.

If there are no main roads I'd probably give in on the issue. I'd prefer my child independently moving around the community than not.

I co-ordinate and collect all the data for every major trauma which comes into our hospital. It generally goes like this

RTC
Motorcycle crash
Falls from a height
Assault
Cycling injury
Weird and wonderful ways to hurt yourself

I cant believe more people dont wear them. Virtually noone wears them round here. Even a Dad giving his small child a lift - neither had a helmet. I think they are all idiots.

I'm currently supporting a family, one member of which is in hospital 5 months after being hit by a car while cycling and sustaining a head injury. He will probably never be well enough to live at home again. While a helmet may not have entirely prevented the injury, anything which reduced its severity would have been good.

My cousin, on the other hand, went right though the windscreen of a car which hadn't seen him (so hit him at speed). He was wearing a helmet, and walked away (well, until the ambulance turned up and strapped him down). Our entire family wear helmets.

images.app.goo.gl/vWicLWBtoov4ZGBU6

So many people wear there helmet like a bonnet

Side note re trauma data and cyclists, its usually multiple open fractures as apposed to head injuries

Research has shown that drivers go closer and faster to cyclists wearing helmets than bare headed ones. Something to consider?

Birmanbaby and what’s the data on RTA do they suffer head injury at above 50% as the national trend?

Well I’m willing to bet that flying 30ft (he was doing close to 30 when he hit side of car) and landing directly on the head on road before somersaulting is likely to damage said head.

My dcs all club cycle. All wear helmets.

He's come to a reasonable conclusion for the wrong reasons. It's quite reasonable not to wear a helmet whilst cycling in the same way it's reasonable not to wear a helmet whilst in a car. The risk of head injuries is very similar.

But making decisions based solely on peer pressure is daft. There are some quite nice helmets around. It might be worth seeing if he'd compromise on one of those.

Put Air Ambulance ER on, there is a teenager about your sons age in Darlington who sustained a very nasty head injury with his helmet on.
I suggest your son watches it, it may make him see sense.

Janleverton, so why didn’t my ex get brain damage then, car hit him and he went over the car and 54f down the road..52 stitches in his head

A teenager round here was obsessed with his hair, and refused to wear a helmet. Unfortunately he fell off his bid and now has a major traumatic brain injury's

@CloudyForest are you for real?
I work in London and have lost count how many cyclists we have been called to who are trapped under a bus, and there helmet has done what its supposed to do and prevented a serious head injury.

I have also seen many kids with serious head injuries because they were just messing about doing tricks without helmets on.

The evidence that wearing a helmet makes you genuinely any safer is flimsy at best. this is BS

There is evidence
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27450862
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29677686

This said, we live in Australia, here my kids wear helmets and when they go on bike tracks they wear full face helmets. When we are on holiday in Europe and they cycle to the beach or with their friends, they don't wear it.

My friends son was on the one show about a week ago. Why because he did not wear a helmet home from school for this reason. He had an accident spent 13 days in a coma almost died, had to learn to walk and talk again and the level of trauma to his brain is unclear. Someone else I knew had an accident going down a few steps on his bike no helmet and died. Tell him life is more important than street cred.

There may be instances where a helmet doesn't help or even makes things worse. But why ignore the many first-hand accounts, on this thread alone, of people who have witnessed the value of a helmet in an accident ?

@ivykaty44 sounds like your DH has been through the mill, but just because he did not have any brain damage does not mean someone else will not.

Firefighter - but just because you were wearing a helmet doesn’t mean it saved you either