Kat+H’s+2015+OpEd+Article



Why someone risks their life while riding a bicycle or skateboard by not wearing a helmet is beyond me. Here are some statistics; a survey conducted in 2001-2003 showed that only 48% of children ages 5-14 yrs wore bicycle helmets. In the United States in the year 2010, 800 bicyclists were killed and approximately 515,000 sustained injuries that required immediate medical attention. Each year about 26,000 of the 515,000 serious injuries result in severe brain damage. If these statistics don’t scare you into wearing a helmet I don’t know what will. Be that as it may, I hope that we can all agree that what’s more stupid than not wearing a helmet at all is wearing a helmet but not buckling it properly. Wearing a bicycle or skateboarding helmet is optimal for maintaining good brain health, but why would you choose to leave the helmet unbuckled? This fad among teenagers and children is absolutely ridiculous. Yes, your parents bought and make you wear this helmet for a reason. My dad used to always tell me before I set off on my bike, “always wear your helmet; I don’t want to see your brains looking like scrambled eggs on the pavement.” My father had a point. Can you imagine your kid starts off to school on her bicycle in her cute little pink helmet but she doesn’t buckle it. Later you receive the news that someone ran the crosswalk and hit your child. Nearly half of the 515,000 bicyclists injured in the year of 2010 were under the age of 20 years old. I can’t imagine how the parents of these wounded children must have felt. When a cousin of mine was seventeen he fell while he was skateboarding and hit his head. He was not wearing a helmet and suffered minor brain damage. After the accident he was kept in a hospital back East for a while, but he made a full recovery. However, he has not grown since the fall. We are lucky that he is okay, but this only fuels my indignation for people who choose to not wear helmets or leave theirs unbuckled. I also cannot stand when bicyclists ride along the wrong side of the road. Not only is this illegal, it puts you and others in a lot of danger. Bicycle lanes are only so wide, and it’s all too easy to get picked off by a car and fly off of your bicycle, you’d just better hope that you’re wearing a helmet and that you’re lucky. A way to prevent getting hit by a car on your bicycle is riding along the correct side of the road. Riding along side with the same direction of traffic that you are going is the correct way to ride in the bike lane. By following this rule you can help prevent other drivers from not being able to see you. There are too many distracted and lousy drivers for you not to be a defensive and safe bicycle rider. All it takes is a quick text being typed up by the driver for someone to be hit and killed. We should be able to do everything that we can to try and prevent that from happening and being safe means choosing to wear a helmet, and wearing it properly.