May is Bike Month: Learn About Bike Helmet Safety

From guest writer Margaret Beltrami:

If you didn’t know, May is National Bike Month. This month for National Bike Month, I will be writing blog posts weekly on issues about general bike and bike helmet safety, as part of my Gold Award. A Gold Award is the highest achieving award a Girl Scout can receive by creating lasting impact and change in her community. I am very passionate about bike helmet safety and thought it would be perfect for my Gold Award!

As I mentioned, May is National Bike Month. It was established in 1956 by the League of American Bicyclists to encourage more people to bike and showcase the many benefits of biking. The League of American Bicyclists still works to create a bike-safe America by creating strong communities and safer roads today. Here is the link to their website if you would like to learn more: https://bikeleague.org/bikemonth

Bike helmet safety is a huge issue, especially here in the United States. Research shows that almost 3/4 of fatal bike crashes involved a head injury, which shows how important it is to wear a bike helmet (helmets.org). Did you know that in the US 88% of children and 78% of adults who suffered a head of neck injury while biking were not wearing a helmet? (consumerreports.org). Also, there are more than 80,000 bike-related head injuries each year in the US (ncs.org). All of these statistics are shared just to highlight the importance and severity of the issue. 

Bike helmet safety is not just an issue in the United States, it is an issue all over the world. For example, bike helmet safety is especially a problem in the United Kingdom. Currently there are no laws about bike helmet use. And in 2018, the United Kingdom Department for Transport stated that around 4,000 cyclists were killed or seriously injured. 

So what can be done? As I mentioned, these statistics are not meant to scare you, they are just meant to bring awareness to the issue. Bike helmet safety is a problem all over the globe, but there is hope. There are many organizations that work towards the issue of bike helmet safety. One of these organizations is called Children’s Helmet Initiative, and they work to stop preventable brain injury by trying to ensure that every child who needs a helmet can receive one. Their website (stopbraininjurynow.org) also has a lot of great resources and information. 

And that’s all for this week’s post! Stay tuned for the second blog post which will be uploaded next week and is all about helmets!