Do your DC wear bike helmets ?

[Tipsykisses]

My Ds has always worn a helmet , he's 7 now and rides really well so now rides to school with Dp (his dad) .

The bikes are kept in PIL garage a few doors down from us as we don't have room at our house , all our nieces & nephews are in and out regularly and ds helmet couldn't be found this morning .

I've told Dp he either needs to find the helmet or we need to buy a new one if Ds is going to continue to ride his bike but he thinks I'm over reacting & says that plenty of children ride without them .

Am I over reacting ?

Same here. No helmet, no bike.

My husband is a keen cyclist. He once went out cycling with a friend and following a misunderstanding whilst cycling along, they collided with each other (no other vehicles involved). Husband's helmet was cracked open, as was his friend's. His friend also cracked his shoulder blade and collar bone.

It would have been much, much worse if they had not been wearing helmets.

People on two wheels are very vulnerable, and the helmet, whilst not perfect, is one of the few lines of defence they have.

My ds who is 4 has worn a helmet from day one of having his balance bike, age 2. He now races around on it and I'm glad we have made it a part if biking. He fell off his balance bike in the summer while going quite fast and would have seriously hurt his head. His helmet had a scratch and a small dent in it. I was so relieved it was his helmet and not his head that was damaged.

In fact, helmets are so normal for us that Ds2 who is 18 months insists on wearing a helmet to ride his push along trike like his big bro.

It's non negotiable on our house and I would get a replacement ASAP.

Niminy - I don't get why you need the evidence to be so definite before you would make your child wear a helmet. If there is ANY evidence that it MAY help, why wouldn't you?

Where I live everyone has to wear them or pay a big fine. I actually find it a bit annoying. My whole route to work is on a bike path so my chances of falling off are tiny. It would be nice to do my hair sometimes before going to work. Sigh. I would buy one of those Swedish invisible ones if the price would come down (a lot) from 300 quid or whatever.

And, of course, if we listened to horror stories and acted only on those, we would probably never get into a car...
this is a bit silly.
Because of the horrible stories (or rather the possible consequences) I wear and make sure everyone else uses seat belts (and drive carefully).
The same with a bike. DS and I wear helmets (even if they may not save our lives in a high speed collision) and teach DS road sense (as I do as a pedestrian).
Safety belts don't fully protect at high speeds, but even a 10% effect could mean the difference between life and death.
So, I'll still wear and insist on helmets as well as making sure DS cycles/walks as safely as possible.

Non-negotiable here too.
Roads are much busier than when I rode my bike as a teen. And you can read how bad 4x4's/SUV's are for having bumpers etc at exactly the wrong height if hit cyclists.

There are lots of ways to reduce the risk of head/brain injury while cycling. There's a big variation in the number of spills people have. Some have a memorable fall once or twice a year, (or even more often) while others go ten years or more between falls. That's not by chance, it's due to different expectations and strategies.

Wearing a lid is only one, last resort, and the evidence is not at all clear that they provide a protective effect in practise. The reasons why they don't are complicated, and it doesn't mean that a lid won't work for any given individual in any given situation. But at a population level, as I understand it, there isn't a noticeable effect - its not just that it's not the big effect you might expect, but that there isn't a statistically noticeable effect. That suggests that in practise the protective effect of lids is small or limited to a few types of impact. Which means that you as an individual might decide that lids are right for you and your household, but you cannot impose that choice any other people because the evidence doesn't support it.

"Niminy - I don't get why you need the evidence to be so definite before you would make your child wear a helmet. If there is ANY evidence that it MAY help, why wouldn't you?"

Because the evidence isn't there: hospital studies are flawed because they are based on incomplete information, and population studies show negligible or no protective effect. Where cycle helmets have been made compulsory there has been a permanent decrease in the numbers of cyclists, and studies show that cyclists are safest where there are most of them.

"And you can read how bad 4x4's/SUV's are for having bumpers etc at exactly the wrong height if hit cyclists."

Unfortunately cycle helmets are not designed to protect you in collision with an SUV. They are designed to protect the head from impacts at a slow speed, a small distance and without collision from a vehicle (roughly speaking, if you fall off your bike and hit your head on the kerb). There is a real danger of cycle helmets promote a false sense of security about the level of protection they offer. The real answer to protecting cyclists and pedestrians from SUVs is to ban SUVs.

"Safety belts don't fully protect at high speeds, but even a 10% effect could mean the difference between life and death. "

Why not insist that everyone uses helmets in the car then?

Why not insist that everyone uses helmets in the car then?
I was talking about safety belts.

Cars have Airbags and head rests to protect the heads (and necks) and the seat belt is supposed to prevent most head hits as well. Plus the car itself these days is designed to absorb most of the shock.
Unlike bikes...

Where people are supposed to drive at high speeds, they are required to wear helmets indeed.

Wearing a helmet will protect you from a particular type of impact on a bike. If you whack your head off a kerb, you are very much less likely to have a life-changing injury if you are wearing a helmet.

Although pedestrians can be hit by cars, it's not very common for people to spontaneously fall over whilst walking (though even then you can have a catastrophic brain injury if you do fall). It IS very common for children to wobble off a bike, and adults too.

Given the choice between walking away with a cut knee and a gashed elbow, or a serious brain injury that may result in death/permanent disability/long years of rehab, there's no question.

LilyBolero, what is your evidence for saying that "if you whack your head off a kerb you are very much less likely to have a life-changing injury if you are wearing a helmet."?

Roughly how common do you think it is for children and adults to wobble off a bike? In incidents per person per year? And how often do you think such unassisted falls result in death/permanent disability?

I'm intrigued now, to know what people think.

"Cars have Airbags and head rests to protect the heads (and necks) and the seat belt is supposed to prevent most head hits as well. Plus the car itself these days is designed to absorb most of the shock.
Unlike bikes."

That's an unsupported, evidence-less claim.

52% of head injuries are caused by motor vehicle accidents, and head injury is a serious thing. There is no question that helmets would save lives for car passengers and drivers, so why aren't people wearing them?

An adult I know skidded sideways off their bike and hit the side of their head. The helmet was in pieces, they had a skull fracture and concussion. The hospital kept them in for several days and it took weeks to recover. They couldn't manage going back to full time work for a while.

At one point they were worried that it would be life changing and that they wouldn't be fit to return to work full time - they had hit their head on the pavement.
There was also a case in the press recently of a man who was punched in the face causing him to fall backwards and hit his head on the ground. He died as a result of the head injury.

52% of head injuries are caused by motor vehicle accidents
In passengers, or people struck by motor vehicles?

I think the debate about cycle helmets reveals a lot about how we weigh up risk. When things 'feel dangerous' to us we think they are risky, but they may be less risky than we think -- and the converse is also true, things that 'feel safe' can be more risky than we think. Travelling by car is a very good example of this.

In terms of populations, there is no evidence that cycle helmets have a significant protective effect, and what effect they do have is outweighed by the negative effect on people's health by the drop in cycling that accompanies making cycle helmets compulsory (and even, though to a lesser extent) campaigning in favour of them. People stop cycling because they feel that cycling is a dangerous activity. But it isn't.

On an individual level, the choice over whether to wear a helmet is yours alone, and there are individual cases where wearing a helmet has protected an individual person. But that does not mean that you are dicing with death if you choose not to wear one. Statistically speaking you are no safer, nor more endangered.

But of course, most people do not assess risk in this rational way. The thought of being injured is very scary, and that may influence our decision-making. And that's fine, it really is. But when car drivers (the biggest single threat to cyclists) shout at me for not making my children wear cycle helmets, in the middle of a busy road when we are doing a right turn, then that is wrong.

Actually it's more than wrong, it's bloody dangerous -- for me, my kids and for the car driver.

It's not how likely any it's how awful if it happens. This outs me really but our neighbours lovely boy was on a path on a quite road when he swerved in panic at our other neighbours dog. He crashed, hit is head on the corner of a wall and suffered life changing brain injury. He didn't have a helmet and this scenario is one where one may well have helped.

The chance tiny, the consequence is awful it isn't worth it for me. Admittedly hearing the anecdotes from relatives time obverseeibg brain injuries makes it send a bigger issue than it would for some.

I know at least 3 people personally who have had life changing injuries through head injuries whilst not wearing a helmet. They would have walked away had they worn a helmet. (The sort of injuries were extra-dural haematomas which would have been prevented by a helmet).

I had no idea that so many had commented on this thread since I last posted , i only noticed as it's just come up on active !

I posted on here to see what other parents thought as I do often wonder if I'm over protective of Ds all together as I lost a child a year before I had him .

Ds is a complete daredevil who loves to go as fast as possible however he's traveling !

I have always insisted on a helmets being worn by our Dc but I've not read any info about them I've just assumed it was safer to wear one than not .

I've only had chance to read through a few more posts but I can see already more experiences of a helmet stopping more severe injuries which makes me feel right now that I would rather Ds wear one !

Once the Dc settle down I will read through the rest .

Thank you all for sharing your experiences & info x

I grew up riding bicycles with my siblings and we never wore helmets. Not sure it was done back in the 80s and in the countryside. I never knew anyone who was injured. I'm not quite sure how cycling without a helmet has come to be seen as this really dangerous thing - is it the media? It's like the fear parents have of letting kids go out and play. There seems to be this idea that kids playing outside by themselves nowadays is really dangerous when in fact it's not.

Having said all the above, if I had kids, there is no way I would allow my children to go out without a helmet on a bicycle or on the ski slopes. I think my parents generation were just a bit more care free.

There has been an upward treand of cyclists being killed or seriously injured on UK roads since 2003.

cyclinguphill.com/safe-cycling-stats-cycle-casualties/link (read to the bottom).

statistics for helmet use showing far, far more die without a helmet than with one on.

That blog link is really interesting. Also interesting is in the section of about what might make cycling safer he does not include greater/compulsory helmets. Indeed, what makes cycling more dangerous is really the problem, isn't it?

As for the collection of statistics, you'd have to pick through in great detail to assess them. For example, in the report of cyclist deaths in NYC 1996-2005, says that only 3% of those who died were wearing a helmet. But that is not to say that wearing a helmet would have prevented them being killed -- there's no record of what injuries these people sustained, and which ones led to their death.

As I said before, if you look at hospital studies, which look at cyclists with injuries/fatalities, then you see that helmets have a protective effect. If you look at population studies, which assess the effect of helmets over number of cyclists/miles cycled then you see a negligible effect.

You can't compare deaths of stats of people wearing helmets and not (and those are US stats, no?) because the people wearing helmets will likely be riding in nicer areas, on better maintained bikes, than those not wearing helmets. They are not at comparable.

One thing that can be noted, is that whereas road deaths fell in every country after the introduction of compulsory seatbelt laws, where compulsory cycle helmet laws have been introduced cycle deaths have increased. This doesn't mean that it's safer for an individual not to wear a helmet, but it does mean that in general compelling or stopping people from cycling without a helmet is a bad idea.

Non negotiable here too - but other children in the road don't, only ours.

"the people wearing helmets will likely be riding in nicer areas, on better maintained bikes, than those not wearing helmets"

This is an important point. Today I counted the numbers of cyclists wearing and not wearing helmets on the five mile round trip my children do to school. There were 100 wearing helmets and 140 not wearing helmets.

It was extremely noticeable that as we went from a more affluent part of the city to a more deprived part of the city helmet usage declined markedly. Helmet wearing was markedly associated with having a new, well-maintained bike, and especially with specialist cycle clothing; not wearing a helmet was markedly associated with having an old bike and cycling in ordinary clothing.

In particular, the point in my trip where cyclists in helmets were in the majority was along a section of a national cycle route, used by people commuting into the city: these were people who had invested money in their cycling and would probably see themselves as serious cyclists.