Aibu to wonder whether most parents insist their children wear helmets when on bikes and scooters?

[Pl242]

I’m curious on views on this.

We have always insisted both our kids (5 and 2.5) wear helmets when on their bikes and scooters.

Our 5yo is in year 1 and has just started to cycle to school. The bike is stored at school and we have been taking the helmet home and bringing it back at pick up. Mostly just as we thought it might easily get lost.

We had noticed that a fair amount, in fact probably the majority of kids who we see on bikes and scooters around school, don’t wear helmets. This surprised us a bit but obviously none of our business as to what decisions other parents make.

However now our 5yo has told us that they’re allowed to cycle around the playground at playtime and also at the after school club she attends at least one afternoon a week. This isn’t a surprise but hadn’t crossed our minds really. She told us about it in the context of a new after school club friend in the year above her who she says doesn’t wear a helmet. This prompted us to tell her that our rule is that she always needs to wear a helmet when cycling and that we would start to leave the helmet with her and her bike at school. She accepted this but obviously we won’t be there to enforce that and she did seem a bit confused/upset as to why she has to and her friend doesn’t etc. We just reinforced our view again.

I don’t want to come off as precious. It’s not as if we’re hugely worried of the risk of her having a serious bike accident in the playground. It’s just that we want to be consistent on helmet wearing. And I know that I can and should direct any specific concerns about bike use at school to the school.

It’s just that this situation prompted me to wonder whether we’re in the minority here or not. Interested in views and if you want to vote I suppose the possible answers are:

YANBU- most parents insist on helmet wearing
YABU - most parents don’t see helmet wearing as important.

Another shit parent here. Kids don't wear helmets. They don't go on the road. Just pavement or park.

If the helmet isn't fitted correctly every single time. And Che ked regularly through out the ride then it's fucking pointless. So many kids wear them half on their heads.

If my kids want to ride on the road then ill get them helmets. And get them fitted professionally.

Scooters, no, bikes yes. My dc are 13 and 15 though and the 13 yr old has just started biking the mile or so to school so a helmet is non-negotiable. In fact school won't allow them to bike to school without a helmet, thankfully.

I think it's important to get into the habit of wearing a helmet when on a bike. It only takes a little fall

We insisted on helmets when the dses were children, and were out on their bikes - even when they were teenagers doing paper rounds.

@HosannainExcelSheets

www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/1365/is-it-safer-to-wear-a-helmet-when-cycling

It's more complicated than most people think. Helmets might actually make you more likely to be involved in a collision and there's no evidence that they help in collisions with cars. Head injury rates in Australia didn't change when helmets became mandatory for cyclists, and head injury rates are very low in Holland where almost no one wears a helmet to cycle.

BTW Bikeability absolutely do not insist on helmets. It's a choice on the consent form.

The reason you wear a helmet is to reduce the severity of your head injury. So instead of a skull fracture and life changing serious head injury, you get a mild head injury. So yes, “head injury rates” do not decline with helmet use (nor do they increase as your throwaway baseless comment that helmets cause collisions would indicate). But what does happen is that helmets reduce serious head injury by 70%.
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/sep/22/bicycle-helmets-reduce-risk-of-serious-head-injury-by-nearly-70-study-finds

Definitely not being unreasonable. My parents always insisted I wore one as one of my friends split her head open falling off her bike outside our family home when I was a child. They didn’t want that to happen to me and it was a prime example of what could happen if you don’t wear one (also I’d already split my head open by that point - unrelated to riding a bike though!)

I’d be insisting my DD wore one to ride a bike or a scooter or she wouldn’t be riding it at all.

@Fabbydabbydoozey

Shit parent here!

My 6 and 7 year cycle on the pavement or round the park without a helmet.

I was a 'shit parent' too until my youngest DC was killed on a skateboard. While not wearing a helmet. I held his hand as he died at the side of the road, and every day for the rest of my life I'll have to wonder if a helmet could have saved him.

Protect your child's head, it's not hard!

We have always insisted on helmets for wheels of any kind including scooters.

The DC have a friend who went over a kerb on a scooter at low speed in our quiet village and fell off, resulting in a fractured skull, blue light to hospital, emergency surgery and long rehab.

Another child in the village was on their bike when hit by a car (again at low speed) and hit their head on the windscreen and then on the road. Was thought to have life-changing injuries, luckily has made a good recovery.

In both cases medics were certain helmets would have lessened the severity of the injuries.

My kids do not whinge about wearing helmets.

My son, and all of his friends, all wear helmets on their bikes. They don't with a scooter though, even though I'd prefer it if he did.

Why don't some posters here insist on helmets when riding in the park?
Dogs jump out, punctures happen, mechanical failures happen, "look mum, no hands"...you can still fall off and hit your head.

My kids are 12 and 16, they wear a helmet without even questioning it, just like DH and I do. Then again, we are a cycling family and a helmet is just another bit of kit that you wear out.

@Sheldock

Why don't some posters here insist on helmets when riding in the park? Dogs jump out, punctures happen, mechanical failures happen, "look mum, no hands"...you can still fall off and hit your head.

My kids are 12 and 16, they wear a helmet without even questioning it, just like DH and I do. Then again, we are a cycling family and a helmet is just another bit of kit that you wear out.

It's a play park. Tiny. No dogs allowed. Just some swings and a slide on some grass. They ride around, no faster than running.

We are not a cycling family. We can't afgord to buy bikes. We get them from the tip. DH and I could never afgord to buy ourselves a bike, let alone "kit".

I'm glad you do the right thing by your children if you go out for bike rides.

Scooter yes, bike depends on the situation. A child is more likely to injure themselves coming off a scooter and they are more likely to be invisible to drivers. Try coming off a scooter head first then coming off a bike head first - it's much easier to go face first into the ground on a scooter, and much harder to save yourself.

I say "bike depends on the situation" because it depends where you are cycling and what the traffic is like. But scooters are dangerous at all times.

www.researchgate.net/publication/337367329_Effects_of_bicycle_helmet_wearing_on_accident_and_injury_rates

Not a throw away comment. It's based on research showing that helmet wearing is far from a conclusive way to decrease head injury in cycling collisions and falls. It is much more complicated than helmet=good/no helmet=bad.

I still wear a helmet and so do my children. But that's a personal choice and I would not think less of anyone that doesn't make the same choice as me given the ambiguity of the data.

Most people on here will say they do but irl most don’t, I rarely see children wearing helmets, very rare even very small children 3/4 years old but of course those that don’t won’t admit, my son is 7 and when he got a new bike recently I mentioned to my mum that I would need to get him a helmet and she said I can’t put a helmet on a 7 year old as “people will laugh at him, he will look ridiculous” 😐

there's no evidence that they help in collisions with cars.

Sorry but you are incorrect. Helmets increase your chance of surviving a car collision by 16 to 48%, especially in urban areas where cars are moving slower. See below:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753517302059
Cycling fatalities: When a helmet is useless and when it might save your life:

Table 8. A comparison of the general direction from which a car hit a cyclist and the related positive effect of a helmet. These directions are not immediately related to the directions of the impacts to the heads of the cyclists (Table 3).

BMV collision Positive effect of a helmet [%]
Head-on 40.0
From behind. 16.0
From the side 47.8

Yes to both. My D's (nearly 8) has only just learnt to ride a bike but has always worn a helmet on his scooter so he hasn't objected on the bike. Last week he fell off his bike, it wasn't bad but he did hit a wall head first and so it was a good reminder to him about why he wears the helmet!!

My eldest and middle DCs (age 6 and almost 5) know that they don’t do much as look at their bikes without a helmet on their bonce. But lots of their friends don’t wear them! Over the summer holidays, I yelled across the green outside our house to DD “HELMET!” when she picked up her bike without it on. She then said “But X doesn’t have a helmet on!” I told her that I’m not X’s mum, so I don’t particularly care if she wears one or not, but DD will either wear a helmet or lose the bike.

Yes it’s a non negotiable for me. My 3 year old can scoot way faster than she can run. She can scoot faster than I can run.

My DC is only 4,5yo but has been scooting for a good two years now and we insist on a helmet. He obviously doesn't go out by himself or on the roads or anything yet, but I've seen him pissing about on his scooter and faceplanting while stationary, so I am aware that it doesn't take much for kids to injure themselves. He's not interested in cycling at the moment, but if he ever gets a bike I will stick to the helmet rule.

I think our school enforce the helmet rule too, as I've seen kids on bikes and scooters in the mornings and most of them wear a helmet. Good on them.

Thinking about it when I was queuing once the man in front of me asked the woman in front of him if she could save the space for him, I remember thinking that was cheeky as you can’t save the space behind you! 😒

Wrong thread!

@Sheldock

Why don't some posters here insist on helmets when riding in the park? Dogs jump out, punctures happen, mechanical failures happen, "look mum, no hands"...you can still fall off and hit your head.

My kids are 12 and 16, they wear a helmet without even questioning it, just like DH and I do. Then again, we are a cycling family and a helmet is just another bit of kit that you wear out.

They really should, wearing a helmet increases your chance of surviving simply falling off your bike. (Of course the study found a bike helmet is useless in a collision with a train....).

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753517302059
Cycling fatalities: When a helmet is useless and when it might save your life

“For instance, if cyclists fall from a bicycle or crash into an obstacle, it is 9.61 times more probable that a helmet saves their lives than that it does not.”

SVC= single vehicle collision, or falling off your bike
BMV= bike and motor vehicle collision.

“A helmet would have a greater positive effect regarding SVC than concerning BMV collisions (see Table 6). However, this difference was not statistically significant; OR = 1.53, 95% CI = (0.66, 3.55). The only exceptions were falling trees on cyclists. In these particular examples people died from polytrauma.

Table 6. Type of collisions and the potential contribution of a helmet.

Type of collision Positive effect of a helmet [%]
BMV collision 34.9
SVC 45.2

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457506001540

But you have to balance any benefits against the increased risks as well. Close passes and rates of collision with vehicles increases when you wear a helmet.

Being perceived as female or a less able cyclists gives a protective effect. Young men are more likely to see increased close passes when they wear a helmet than women or children.

So it's not clear cut that you're better off wearing one, and it's a perfectly reasonable choice not to.

Bike yes, scooter no.

But I would check that her story about being allowed to ride it at playtime*. Unless they have a designated area for it, then it sounds like an accident waiting to happen. (to the other children when she rides into them, not her)

*My ds, who normally is pretty accurate and truthful told me a long story one day at infants how Concorde had landed and gave them all a ride round.

Our school had no helmets for reception balance bikes but helmets for Year 1 and 2 bigger scooters and pushbikes (I am a TA). I basically told the head I would not be held responsible when we had a head injury due to how rough they were zooming around. Two days after we started a helmet rule for reception a child went over and cracked the helmet on the floor. I can't imagine the injury if he hadn't been wearing one.

@HosannainExcelSheets

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457506001540

But you have to balance any benefits against the increased risks as well. Close passes and rates of collision with vehicles increases when you wear a helmet.

Being perceived as female or a less able cyclists gives a protective effect. Young men are more likely to see increased close passes when they wear a helmet than women or children.

So it's not clear cut that you're better off wearing one, and it's a perfectly reasonable choice not to.

That was one guy going cycling without a wig and with a wig to “appear female” and his observations on an instrumented bicycle. A sample of 1.

And even so, this study absolutely did not say that there is any increased risk of collision if wearing a helmet because no collision happened to the sole experimenter on his bike.