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?

there are lots I’d sad stories from people who suffered serious injuries/death because they were wearing them - not just ‘not saved’ by them.

incrediblysadtoo - what do you mean? Can you send links to any proof of this? Whose bike helmets caused injury/death??

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 ?

That pretty much sums up how I feel. Yes the chances of something happening to him are small but it could happen and being aware of that and being able to potentially stop it by something so simple as wearing a helmet makes complete sense to me.

And thanks to everyone who has shared their own personal stories, it has helped consolidate in my mind that I am doing the right thing.

@ivykaty44 please do explain?

How would you feel OP if you relaxed your rules and something happened to your DS? Agree with PP that this teaches your DS to stick to his guns and always wear a seat belt, not get in a car with a drunk driver etc. You're teaching him to have the courage to make sensible choices when he's on his own. Not teach him that it's ok to bend the rules so his mates don't roast him.

Clearly not.

I will always make my DS wear a helmet after reading about Ryan Smith, he was a 16 year old who didn’t wear a helmet as he didn’t want to mess his hair up. He got hit by a van and has severe brain injuries. He was from rural Lincolnshire so not busy roads.

www.braininjuryhub.co.uk/real-stories/mark-and-ryan

why ignore the many first-hand accounts, on this thread alone, of people who have witnessed the value of a helmet in an accident ?

It's not about ignoring them, it's putting them in perspective. When people say "he would have died if he hadn't worn a helmet" they can't actually know that. The effects of concussion may actually be worse with a helmet on.

Also bear in mind that when you fall, you instinctively try to avoid hitting your head. I've had falls from horses which have left me with bad muscle ache for days afterwards because every muscle in my body has striven to stop my head hitting the ground. A bike helmet with a thickness of several cm may hit the ground when it's possible your head actually wouldn't have done. It's a bit like hitting your helmet on a low doorway and being glad you were wearing it, only to realise your head wouldn't have made contact with the doorway without it.

It is also the fact that there are plenty of other instances which are just as dangerous in which we don't wear helmets. You could equally come on here and give anecdotal evidence of when someone would have benefited from wearing a helmet whilst walking down the stairs. Anecdotes on their own wouldn't influence how I weighed up a risk.

A few months ago I had to call an ambulance whilst my husband gave first aid to a guy who had been hit by a car whilst on his bike. He was in an awful state. It was very early on a Sunday morning and they were pretty much the only people on the road...It doesn't matter if it's quiet, it only takes one accident. The guy wasn't wearing a helmet and when I asked his colleague about him (he worked in a cafe near us) I was told he was still in rehabilitation 5 months after the accident.
He was lucky to survive but his recovery perhaps would have been much quicker had he been wearing a helmet.

When I was a teen I refused to wear my horse riding helmet and if I ever did I didn't fasten the strap. However one day I was riding on the road, it was icy, a car smashed into the back of my horse, for some reason that day I was wearing it and had fastened the strap, thank goodness because my helmet was smashed and that would have been my skull. I always wore it after that.
I don't think you'll persuade your ds to wear his helmet though op!

why ignore the many first-hand accounts, on this thread alone, of people who have witnessed the value of a helmet in an accident

www.cyclehelmets.org/1209.html

The stories here are anecdotal ... A better indication of the effectiveness of helmets comes from trends in fatal and serious injuries across whole populations of cyclists. Such data shows no reliable evidence from any jurisdiction that the risk of life-threatening injury has been reduced through the use of helmets

Regardless, if I were the OP, I'd stick to my guns.

Nope, wouldn't let him ride without a helmet at this age. Obviously as he gets older he will have to make his own choice. Having worked with children with traumatic brain injuries, many were acquired through cycling accidents and not wearing a helmet. When I deliver training in this area I often show the James Cracknell video . Had he not been wearing a helmet he would most likely he dead.

Watch the air ambulance programmes, there’s lots of cyclist head injuries to be seen. Yanbu.

@choosingchilli an acquaintance of mine lives with permanent brain damage after a piece of gravel on the road in her village led to her falling over the handlebars.

I've heard of a Swedish "helmet" which acts a like an airbag. Unless there's an accident, it just looks like a sort of scarf. It's really expensive but if you can afford it and are happy with its safety specs, it could be a solution?

hovding.com/

To be clear, the acquaintance I mentioned wasn't wearing any kind of helmet

Some people have really fucked up logic processes

Yep, and most of those have a complete and total inability to risk assess 🤷🏻‍♀️

thegreatcrestednewt

You said what do you mean? Can you send links to any proof of this? Whose bike helmets caused injury/death??

No sorry, I did my research into this a long time ago. Anything I saved or bookmarked would have been on my old laptop. Others have posted links though and google will help you find other studies etc.

"amymel2016

I will always make my DS wear a helmet after reading about Ryan Smith, he was a 16 year old who didn’t wear a helmet as he didn’t want to mess his hair up. He got hit by a van and has severe brain injuries. He was from rural Lincolnshire so not busy roads.

www.braininjuryhub.co.uk/real-stories/mark-and-ryan

Yes, thanks for that, such a tragic story. I remember him on This Morning with his Dad.

Having worked for a radiology reporting company and sifting through tonnes of MRI scans every day of people who have had a bike accident (and not motorbikes!), including, every damn day, kids that have had skull injuries from just pottering around the park without their helmets, there is no damn way I'd let my kids on a bike without a helmet. And I now live in a country where everyone cycles. It's £30 or less for a helmet. An injury can be catastrophic.

The cyclehelmet website is interesting but you should read the aims. I would put more weight in research done without a vested interest.

I understand the health benefits of cycling, at individual and population level. That detering cycling can have population level health implications. That there are concerns that cycle helmets being compulsory can add to that at population level.

Doesn't detract from the benefits of a correctly fitted cycle helmet to an individual.

Don't confuse population level risk with individual risk.

In our house, no helmet=no bike.

I would rather the argument progressed to improving the efficacy of cycle helmets.

If you think it's safer to not wear a helmet than to wear one, I would agree that's a big inability to risk assess. If you're instead saying you are happy with the level of risk posed by to your child biking without a helmet so they can maintain their street cred, then I shall just keep my fingers crossed for your kids. We take what precautions are available to us to minimise risk to our kids while they are still kids and don't have the best decision making abilities, and their driving forces are mainly what their mates will think. It's a better example to reinforce that they should not be so concerned with what their mates will say and advise how to stand up to peer pressure rather than compromise standards and safety to 'fit in', otherwise that's a slippery slope.

Firefighter999

Please explain,

When people say "he would have died if he hadn't worn a helmet" they can't actually know that.

So often a helmet is praised for saving the persons life or from brain damage - but as another posters says - how do we know?

I gave the example of my dh and asked why didn’t he get brain damage? Driver hits him he goes over car and travelled 52 foot. Driver was accelerating and doing 50mph dh was travelling at approximately 2Omph (TT)

I would rather the argument progressed to improving the efficacy of cycle helmets.

I would rather the infrastructure was that of Nederland and Denmark, where helmets aren’t worn for cycling anymore than they are for walking as both modes of transport are about the same risk

Well it's safe to assume that if you smack your head off the kerb in a helmet, walk away with a headache but your helmet is hugely cracked and dented, that your helmet has demonstrably absorbed much of the impact that would otherwise have been your skull. So in that scenario I would say "it's saved me from possible brain damage/death". Certainly a far worse injury and longer recovery time.

And we are not in the Netherlands and our infrastructure is not the same. Cyclists are not as common and people are not cycle aware. So until it is (likely never), wear a helmet.

YANBU. It doesn’t harm children/teenagers to understand that somethings in life are non negotiable and that as a parent you won’t back down on an issue that is important to you.