A consultant paediatrician in emergency medicine in Children's Health Ireland Crumlin, Dublin, has called for helmets to be made compulsory in the Republic, saying she was making her call now because cycling injuries increase from May each year.
Dr Carol Blackburn added if she could prescribe a helmet for every child in Ireland she would. She believes Ireland should follow the example of Australia, where she pointed out head injuries reduced when laws making helmets compulsory were introduced in the 1990s. However, she did not mention the introduction of those laws led to a decline in cycling trips of between 30 and 40 per cent overall and a drop of 80 per cent in some groups, including school-aged females.
Very few countries have followed the example of Australia and New Zealand in making helmets compulsory, mainly because cycling declines so significantly when such laws are introduced. Furthermore, cycling is seen as a way of introducing people to an active lifestyle rather than daily routines that are sedentary, which leads to chronic health conditions and adds to the growing obesity epidemic. Nations with compulsory helmet laws are regarded as outliers in an international context.
Advertisement
"From the month of May onwards in the emergency departments… we start to see children who come in having sustained injuries from road traffic accidents where they've come off their bicycles or scooters, but mostly bicycles," Dr Blackburn told RTÉ Radio One's News at One.
Related News
"Some of these injuries would include fairly significant head injuries; like moderate severity concussions, perhaps fractures or indeed facial lacerations and other injuries, a certain number of which would certainly be prevented if these children and young people have been wearing properly fitted bicycle helmets."
With Australia-style laws "compliance increases and it's a good thing for children to see and a good habit for them to get into". "The benefits (of helmets) are really quite well demonstrated internationally at this point in time so we would love to see it become a requirement in Ireland as well," she added.
Dr Blackburn said serious brain injuries where reduced by 80 per cent in cycling crashes if the person who crashed was wearing a helmet, which could also reduce facial injuries by around two thirds.
Children's bones were still growing into each other and they had "growth plates at the end of the bones" which were vulnerable to fracture. She added children could "get up and unexpected amount of speed" while cycling. As they get older children were also "a little bit riskier in the way that they like to travel and the chances they like to take", thus increasing the likelihood of serious injury.
