Why Wear a Helmet?

According to the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute (BHSI), about 540,000 bicyclists visit emergency rooms with injuries every year. Of those, about 67,000 have head injuries, and about one in eight of these has a brain injury. Two-thirds of the deaths here are from traumatic brain injury.

A very high percentage, estimated at anywhere from 45 to 88 per cent, of cyclists’ brain injuries can be prevented by a helmet.

Helmet Usage

Yet, says the BHSI, “helmet use varies by orders of magnitude in different areas and different sectors of our society. White collar commuters probably reach 80 per cent, while inner city kids and rural kids would be 10 per cent or less. Overall, our best wild guess is probably no more than 25 per cent. Sommers Point, New Jersey, where a state helmet law is in effect, found that only 24 of the 359 students who rode to school in one week of the winter of 2002 wore helmets (6 per cent) until the School District adopted a helmet rule. North Carolina observed 17 per cent statewide before their law went into effect in 2001.”

Resources

The BHSI Web site provides a consumer’s guide to buying a bicycle helmet and provides instructions on how to properly fit a bicycle helmet so that you “get all the protection you paid for.”