Bike Helmets
 

In Qld, you have to wear a helmet when you're on a bicycle. I assume that's the law throughout Australia.

Today, some coppers pulled up a 15 yr old boy for not wearing a helmet, and instead of fining him, they made him let down his tyres and walk home.

Personally, aside from thinking it was a pretty amusing way of dealing with a teenager, I think it was also inventive, and gave the kid some time to think about what an idiot he was for not wearing his helmet. Yes, I personally am in favour of helmet laws and see no problem with the police taking action over it. I know our local coppers here in our little township usually just confiscate the bikes for a couple of weeks if they catch kids riding without helmets. All the parents i know support them in this choice of punishment.

Apparently though, about half of all the people who watched the news story on it tonight didn't think the police should have done anything. They thought he should just have been warned. Even his mother was on there going on about how bad the policing was. Personally I think the mother should have been fined for allowing her child to ride a bike without a helmet, and she should have been embarrassed to show her face on telly.

What do you think?

It's not a law here, but it's smart to wear a helmet. My kids wear them. So do I.

I'm not sure it's a big enough health problem that it rises to the level that the government needs to get involved.

I think that was an excellent solution.
Had they let the kid off with a warning, he would have been back on his bike, breaking the law, in order to get home.
Regardless of whether it's a good law or not (doesn't affect me so I have no opionion) it needs to be upheld and this seems a reasonable response to me.

Some people will always be up in arms when their children are disciplined.
If her kid had been involved in an accident after being allowed to ride away unprotected she'd have been singing quite a different tune.

yeah, and had they let the kid off w a warning and he did a head plant a hour later I can imagine the shit storm that would have brewed. Great idea to let the air out of his tires.

The issue of helmet safety is a complex one, esp. for kids since I've yet to see a kid wearing a helmet properly. Usually they wear it pushed back so their foreheads are exposed. Might as well not bother in that case. The helmet is merely decorative.

This is timely for me, because Mr. Clod just happened to do a face plant into a dry stream bed on his mountain bike over the weekend. He was wearing his helmet, and still had the mother-living tar knocked out of him. Cuts and bruises all over his face, and we were thinking for awhile he might have a concussion. Who knows how bad it would have been without the helmet.

As long as we are going to pay to treat everyone who walks into an emergency room, I am in favor of laws that prevent people from stupidly hurting themselves. If healthcare went 100% libertarian, then I suppose they could get rid of the laws and I wouldn't care.

Compulsory here too. I reckon the cops dealt with it well. Agreement with everything that everyone has said so far.

But can't they make a bike helmet that doesn't look so dorky?

and now you've got cholera!

I knew, slightly, a perfectly nice guy who died that way. Name of Millard Drushal, died in a bike/car collision in Monterey, California. '77 or '78. Concrete curb on Franklin Street wins out over skull. A lid might have allowed him to get off with a concussion.

I don't see "dorky" with bike helmets. What would your idea of a nondorky helmet look like?

Of course you don't. :lol:

Aaand.....? C'mon, creative thought here. Don't be that guy.

Most of the kids I see wearing helmets on their bikes these days are wearing the skateboarder style. Somewhat less dorky, anyway.

Yeah, those are better. :yesnod:

Although I've occasionally wondered if they're less effective, being so much thinner...? Of course even Army helmets don't seem as thick as those styrofoam behemoths that passed for bike helmets when I was a kid.