Saturday, May 10, 2008

Regarding the April 29 Health article "No One Size Fits All," about wearing helmets for sports:

Over the years, our country has made a lot of progress toward increasing helmet use among children. But as the article noted, approximately 43 percent of the 80 million bike riders in this country never use helmets. Many of those are adults. According to the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute, 38 percent of adults wear helmets, while 69 percent of children under age 16 do.

Adult bicycle helmet use is rarely mentioned in the media, and I've never seen a public education campaign about it. Certainly, professional cyclists are always properly outfitted. But I'm repeatedly amazed at the sight of adults alone or parents riding bicycles with their kids: The kids are wearing helmets and the parents generally are not.

Head trauma is no less dangerous to an adult, as I learned when my 43-year-old sister died after falling from her bike. She wouldn't let her kids go without helmets, but she was not wearing one herself. Her carotid artery was severed, and people with that injury have only minutes to survive at best. If she had been wearing a helmet she probably would have lived.

That experience certainly made me a bicycle helmet convert.

BARBARA ELISSE NAJAR

Potomac