At what point should a child start to wear a bike helmet?

[StillStandingOnAMushroom]

Okay, so I know this is a contentious topic and I know there are a lot of strong feelings out there. Let me first tell you what I don't want. If you think your child should always wear a helmet from the moment they first get on a tricycle/ balance bike/3-wheeled scooter, then I know your point of view and I respect it, but it's not going to help me. Thank you very much for your thoughts, but I will very politely ignore you. So please mutter into your coffee about how irresponsible we are and leave it at that.

So our daughter is 7. She has never been one to push the physical boundaries, she's always been pretty slow and steady. We've never put a bike helmet on her, not because I don't believe in helmets - when we go mountain biking she will wear a helmet. When she goes horse riding she wears a riding hat. I think there are absolutely circumstances when a hat/helmet should be worn. But after researching helmet wearing for bikes it turns out that yes you're safer wearing a helmet if you have an accident but you're also more likely to have an accident if you're wearing one, because you think you're safer. When snowboarding, I fell so many more times when wearing a helmet because I was going faster and taking more risks. My head was safer because of the helmet, but my arms, legs, body not so much.

I want her to learn that she needs to take care of her head and her body before she gets too confident and starts doing all the crazy stuff. I think this is a really important part of teaching her safety. Kids under 12 don't really feature in head injury statistics with or without helmets. But. There is also a line where they start doing crazier stuff and going faster. At what point do you say okay they're now going fast enough that they need to start wearing a helmet?

The best time to start has already passed, but in your position op I would start it from the next time your dd is on her bike / scooter / roller skates / skis etc

I'm presuming you don't live in Holland. In the UK we don't have that infrastructure so we mitigate the risks using the technology and equipment we do have available. Helmets. Cheap, easy and widely available.

Google ai tells me that

"For non-helmeted cyclists, the most common head injuries are

• skull fractures
• subarachnoid hemorrhage
• subdural hematoma
• cerebral contusions.

For helmeted cyclists, the most common head injuries are
*subarachnoid hemorrhage,
*cerebral contusions,
*base of skull fractures"

There doesn't seem to be that big a difference to me - to my untrained eye.

But if your child doesn't ride on the road, then no cars

Wheels + my child = a helmet.

My six year old feel off his bike on to grass. He bashed his teeth and bruised his head. Doctor said it would have been a lot worse without a helmet.

None negotiable in my family.

If your child goes faster because they feel safe wearing a helmet then you need to have better conversations with them.

Just muttering into my coffee cup that some people are idiots.

You seem unclear on how helmets work.

Your child should be wearing a helmet obviously. And teach her to ride sensibly.
You, for some inexplicable reason thought a snowboarding helmet made you invincible. Research shows this is not true.

😬

Without numbers and any kind of measure of severity that is completely meaningless. If you asked what are the commonest types of head injury are in drivers, hockey players, horse riders or any other number of types of people you'd probably get a similar list. There's a limited number of types of injury that blows to the head cause and a helmet is never going to prevent them all.
Incidentally, the Dutch argument is starting to no longer really hold water. There's quite a lot of effort going on to encourage helmet wearing in the Netherlands in response to the increase in serious cycling injuries in recent years.
www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/16/the-brain-is-very-vulnerable-dutch-cyclists-urged-to-wear-helmets-as-road-deaths-rise#:~:text=The%20number%20of%20cyclists%20seriously,be%2085%20fewer%20deaths%20annually.

My 8yo has just recently learned to ride a bike and even with a helmet on he came wailing into the house last week after crashing his bike into a nearby wall - he couldn't brake in time and his face bore the brunt of the injury. His head would have been badly damaged without that helmet.

@StillStandingOnAMushroom you're clearly a goady idiot ... maybe no cars, but other pedestrians, dogs lamp posts, tree roots, dustbins, trees, loose paving slabs and many other obstacles which may need to be steered around quickly or cause a bike or scooter to wobble or tip over.

Look OP you have obviously made up your mind that your way and your "research" is safer, so you crack on with what you are doing. Just don't expect much sympathy and also you have to live with the guilt if anything happened to your child.

It baffles me why you wouldn't make a simple change to maybe save your child's life. It's astounding to be honest. And the old adage of its all ok till its not OK springs to mind. You better pray that it stays all ok for your child.

I sense a degree of arrogance in the OP. No one is above the risk of having a freak accident. No one. It could happen to any one adult or child. Wearing a helmet is good practice from a young age. Instils good safety habits so it's ingrained in the child and second nature to them growing up.

My colleague was a collision investigator with the Met and I can remember him telling me about a fatal collision between 2 cyclists who had a head on collision . The cyclist without the helmet died and the cyclist with the helmet lived - no motor vehicles involved at all. Of course you don’t know if he would have died with a helmet on but why would you risk it. Gordon Ramseys also just been knocked off his bike in the US and you should see the state of him - he made a video showing his bruises and the state of his helmet.

My friend didn't think helmets were relevant for scooter riding. Her dd fell off her scooter onto gravel and took all the skin off the side of her face off. Thankfully it's healed now but the poor child was in a lot of pain and had people pointing and staring at her for months. If she'd worn a helmet it wouldnt have happened because her face wouldn't have landed in the way it did.

One of my friends when I was a teenager had their bike wheel go out from under them, she went sideways into a fence. Her head smashed into the gatepost. Thankfully she was able to show off the massive dent in her helmet at school the next day rather than having brain surgery.

We instilled it in our kids that a helmet was a non negotiable from the first time they ever rode their scooter and balance bike. Aside from the safety, we wanted to make sure that they were used to wearing one so that they didn't then argue about it when they got bigger.

My 13 yo is now an arse about helmets having been very good at wearing them from the moment he could ride a bike/scooter. This wasn't helped by the fact I had a horrific bike accident at speed. Landed square on my face and smashed it beyond recognition despite wearing a helmet. It made absolutely no difference in my accident. That is not to say you shouldn't wear one.

My 1 year old has a cycle helmet for sitting in her wee seat on my bike. We are in the no helmet, no scooting, skating, or getting on a bike (including balance bike). We always wear our own too. You cannot muddy the water with essential safety.

You crack on with gambling your child's skull for the mere sake of trying to prove that you're right. In the meantime, seemingly everybody else on here can crack on with the very simple act of wearing a helmet in order to try to limit the chance of a serious head injury 👍🏻

The Netherlands is completely flat, there is a huge network of safe, traffic free, kerb free, bump free cycle ways. To compare The Netherlands’ use of helmets with this county is ridiculous. Far too many different factors. You are bizarre in your arguments for failing to knowingly protect your child.

Helmets don’t protect faces, I would think that was pretty obvious.

@TheFormidableMrsC
How on earth do you know that though?
It may have been so much worse?

My daughter broke her leg badly falling off a sofa. I know a child who broke their leg stepping off a curb. Do people in A&E think that children should also not be allowed on sofas or on curbs?

Stating the obvious here but there is a world of difference between a broken leg from falling off a sofa and a life changing brain injury from smashing their head onto concrete resulting in neurological issues for life such as seizures, developmental delay, coordination of limbs. Many of which will prevent them from leading an independent life in adulthood….

I'm an ex cycling proficiency instructor...she wouldn't have been able to do the course with no helmet . I worked for the road safety department.
Get that helmet on at all times.
I've seen far too many broken skulls in my time.