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"in
1988 the largest survey of cycling casualties ever
undertaken concluded that helmets did not prevent injury;
indeed, increased use correlated with increased risk of
death"
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Child Deaths from Helmet Use
According to a report in the York
Dispatch (Pennsylvania) February 9, 1999, three year old Eugene Arnold
was suffocated when his helmet caught in play equipment. He was found
wedged into a small opening. Paramedics arrived too late to save him.
This is not the first incident where a bicycle helmet has caused the
death of a child. Six children in Sweden and one in Lumsden,
Saskatchewan, Canada have been hanged by helmets when the straps got
tangled on play structures in similar incidents. While the wearing of
helmets may have prevented relatively inconsequential injuries to
children, it has never categorically been shown that they have saved a
child's life. There is now categoric proof that helmet use can cost
children their lives.
Authorities and helmet boosters have
been very quiet about the Swedish deaths since they were reported in
the early nineties. The Swedish authorities blamed it on the buckle and
had helmets redesigned to incorporate a buckle which releases under
load. Unfortunately, this virtually ensures that the helmet will fly
off in a collision.
American helmet crusader, Randy Swart
of the Bike Helmet Safety Institute (BHSI), promptly blamed it on the
play equipment, pointing out that the gap where the helmet got trapped
varied 3% from measurements specified by the American standards body
ASTM for play equipment. A US manufacturer has added a warning to
helmet labels that a choking hazard could arise if the helmet is used
other than for cycling. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission
(CPSC) rushed out a press
release recommending that parents ensure when children get off
their bikes, they remove their helmets. This sounds like an echo of the
auto air bag controversy, where consumers have to go to unnatural and
extraordinary measures to protect themselves from another piece of
"safety equipment". A farcical but serious situation now exists in
jurisdictions with child helmet laws. Parents are now not only forced
by such laws to insist that their children wear helmets when cycling,
but also forced to insist that their children remove them so as to
prevent their children getting killed!
For far too long, organizations with
myopic zeal like the BHSI, Safe Kids, the WHO Helmet Initiative, and
the Harborview Injury Prevention Research Center in Seattle have been
promoting bicycle helmet use as a panacea. Helmet sceptics like
ourselves for some time have been concerned over the design faults in
helmets, the shortcomings of the helmet certification procedures,
psuedo-scientific studies which produce helmet efficacy claims which
have not been reproduced in large populations despite rapid increases
in helmet use, and what has become a propaganda industry pushing
helmets on all regardless of consequences. It was just a matter of time
till a death would be laid at the door of a bicycle helmet in the US.
Now that it's partly out in the open, let's hope this will signal an
end the secretiveness over the many negative aspects of bicycle helmets
and their use.
The OCBC bicycle helmet FAQ
addresses questions about the limitations and shortcomings of modern
bicycle helmets. The answers are based on currently available research,
national standards literature, and other published sources.
From the web pages of the OCBC - Bicycle
Helmets Kill Children March 1999
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