Upstate Couple Pleads For Bike Helmet Law
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Helmet Safety
Helmet Safety
Just one month ago Skyy Nesbitt was a lively 5 year old with her whole life ahead of her but today she is in intensive care struggling to survive after she fell off her bike and hit her head. She wasn’t wearing a helmet. “I was crying I was screaming Skyy Skyy wake up wake up. The way the helmets are made they are made to secure the soft parts of your head which is the most delicate part the most damaging part and that’s what she hit.“ Her mother Robin says Skyy had to have immediate brain surgery, but it didn’t seem to help. Just two days ago, Robin was prepared to let her little girl go for good. Robin says, “She opened her eyes and that is when I told the doctor don’t pull no plugs.“ Skyy is now breathing on her own. However, Robin says her daughter has a long way to go and doctors aren’t sure if she will survive. Robin says the pain is almost too much to bare. “I should have bought a helmet and I should have made sure she had it on and if I had made sure she had it on it wouldn’t have happened.“ That’s why she and her boyfriend are pleading with anyone who will listen, including asking the Governor to try to make helmets mandatory purchases with bike sales. They say the simple purchase could mean saving a child’s life. She begs, “Please get a helmet for your children.“
Robin has been staying at the Ronald McDonald house while her daughter is in intensive care. They don’t know how long she will be there or if Skyy will ever fully wake up. We did some checking and found you can buy a child’s bike helmet for as little as ten dollars. Experts say you should have your child wear one while doing other activities like skate boarding or rollerblading as well. Safe Kids USA says universal use of bicycle helmets by children could prevent between 135 and 155 deaths a year. Studies have shown helmets can reduce your child’s risk of head injury by 85 percent. In one state, 5 years after they enacted a helmet law for children 13 and under, bicycle related deaths decreased by 60 percent. For more information on helmet safety and how to pick out a helmet for your child click on this link.
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Skyy’s parents are going through every parent’s nightmare. I really hope it ends well. But helmets don’t seem to be a solution to this particular problem; the figures just don’t show that they work. Helmet laws have stopped a lot of people cycling and have done nothing for head injury rates, see Robinson DL. No clear evidence from countries that have enforced the wearing of helmets. BMJ 2006;332: 722-5. http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/332/7543/722-a. (Robinson’s work is the best scientifically because she uses the best scientific methods, all available control groups and so on.) It appears that helmets break easily, but don’t absorb the impact, see the engineers quoted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet. Children’s heads seem to be too soft to crush bike helmet foam as the designers intended. A broken helmet has simply failed, and the widespread anecdotes on the theme of “a helmet saved my life” seem to owe more to wishful thinking than to science. As for “a car ran over my head”, see the pro-helmet site http://www.helmets.org/smush.htm; if a car goes over your head, I’m sorry to say you won’t be sitting up and praising your helmet. The only known connection is that helmets have strangled a few young children who were wearing helmets while playing off their bicycles.
I no longer wear a helmet and haven’t pressed them on my children. I do check that their brakes work and that they have a good idea of the rules of the road. Skyy’s parents don’t need to blame themselves or any other parents, just hope for the best for their little girl.
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