Ready Kids › Road Badge › Badge 2 › Lesson 2.1
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The helmet
Fit and buckle a helmet properly, and wear it on every ride, including the short ones.
1Watch
The buckle
The buckle
A rider drops a helmet onto their head without buckling it and picks the machine up, then stops with a hand halfway to the strap; the frame freezes there.
16 secondsNothing has gone wrong yet. The film stops on the two seconds that decide it.
2The idea
One claim, and it is a big one
Wearing a helmet reduces head injury. That is the claim, it is not in dispute, and it is the largest single thing you can do about how a crash ends. Everything else in this badge changes whether you crash. This changes what the crash does to you.
The CPSC lists head and neck among the most frequently injured body parts on these machines, alongside arms and legs. A doctor at a children’s hospital in Colorado described the mechanism plainly: children tend to be catapulted off, and they lead with their heads.
3The idea
Fitting it, which is most of the work
A helmet only does its job in the place it was designed to sit.
Level on your head, not tipped back.
Low on the forehead, roughly two fingers above your eyebrows.
The side straps making a V that meets just under your ear.
The buckle done up, snug enough that the strap does not shift.
A helmet sitting on the back of your head is protecting the back of your head. The part that lands is the front and the side. Getting the fit right is a two-minute job once, and then you leave the straps alone.
4Look
Two riders, one difference
Level and tipped back
The same rider photographed twice from the side: once with the helmet level and the strap snug, once with it pushed back off the forehead and the strap hanging loose.
Both of those riders would tell you they were wearing a helmet. Only one of them has a covered forehead.
5The idea
This one is mostly your call, which is not a compliment
A survey of more than a thousand Illinois parents found that for children aged 11 and older, 42 per cent always require a helmet on an e-bike and 30 per cent always require one on an e-scooter. There is also no state helmet law in Illinois.
So for most riders your age, nobody is standing at the door checking. That is not freedom, it is just an absence of somebody else. The helmet works exactly as well whether or not a person made you put it on.
6Decide
It is four hundred metres to your friend's house and you have done it a hundred times.
Pick one to carry on.
7Say it
The line for the friend who takes theirs off
Say it out loud, in your normal voice
“I am keeping mine on. Ride or don't, up to you.”
It is not a lecture and it does not need to be one. You say it once, in a flat voice, and then you get on and ride.
8Find them
Which of these are helmet rides?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
9Your turn
Check the fit
The fit check
A head and a helmet you can drag. Get it level, two fingers above the eyebrows, the straps into a V under each ear and the buckle snug. Each of the four locks in place when it is right.
Then go and do the same four on the real one.
10Do it
Before you leave this page
Put your helmet on and get somebody to check the four: level, two fingers above the eyebrows, a V under each ear, buckle snug. Then open your mouth as wide as it goes. You should feel the helmet pull down on your head.
Tick it when you have done it.