When little Miranda Raymond was struck by a hit-and-run driver last week, she became one of more than half a million bicycle riders who are injured in accidents each year.
Fortunately for Miranda, however, she isn’t part of another group of statistics — the 900 or so cyclists who die annually as a result of those accidents. That Miranda will live and ride her bike again and do the things 4-year-olds do is probably due to one simple fact: She was wearing a helmet at the time of the accident.
“If she hadn’t been wearing a bike helmet ... she might not be with us now,” Enochville fire-rescue Capt. Jimmie Hadden said after the accident, which knocked Miranda 20-25 feet through the air.
In addition to reducing fatalities, helmets reduce the risk of debilitating head injuries by 85 percent, health experts say. Putting on a bike helmet should be as automatic for kids as buckling a seat belt, or looking both ways to cross the road.
But for most North Carolina children, it isn’t. Only about l7 percent of the state’s bike riders use a helmet, and that figure drops to an abysmal 9 percent for riders aged 14-18, according to a study conducted last year by UNC’s Highway Safety Research Center.
Opponents of helmet laws often argue that protective gear is cumbersome, inconvenient and detracts from the biking experience. They argue that you can’t legislate away all highway risks. And perhaps, as adults, we should be allowed to take whatever foolish risks we choose.
But we don’t have the right to expose our children to those same unnecessary risks when they’re unable to weigh the odds for themselves.
Amanda was lucky that someone cared enough to make sure she was wearing a helmet when she went for a bike ride last Friday. A lot of other kids in North Carolina aren’t as lucky, and too many of them won’t make the trip home from the emergency room.
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