Badge Kids › Road Badge › Section 1 › Lesson 1.2
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The helmet
Fit and fasten a helmet to the four checks without help, and wear it on every ride including the short ones.
1Look
The strap
Both of those riders would tell you they were wearing a helmet. Only one of them is wearing it in the place it was designed to work from.
2The idea
One claim, and we make it flat
A helmet reduces head injury. That is the claim. It is not argued about, it does not depend on where you live, and it is the largest single thing you can do about how a crash ends.
Notice what it does not say. It does not say you will not crash, and it does not make you a better rider. Everything else in this course is about whether the crash happens. This one item is about what the crash does to you afterwards, which is a different job.
3The idea
Fitting it is most of the work
Four things, and they take two minutes once.
Level on your head, not tipped back.
Low on the forehead, about two fingers above your eyebrows.
Side straps making a V that meets just under your ear.
Buckle done up, snug enough that the strap does not shift.
The training standard writes this as a criterion you get assessed on — fasten a helmet correctly, with assistance if you need it. A helmet on the back of your head is protecting the back of your head, and that is not usually the part that lands.
4Your turn
Get it level
The fit check
A head and a helmet you can drag and tilt. Get it level, two fingers above the eyebrows, the straps into a V under each ear, the buckle snug. Each of the four clicks into place when it is right, and the card tells you which one you fixed last.
Then go and do the same four on the real one, because the real one has hair and a bag strap in the way.
5Decide
It is four hundred metres to your friend's house and you have done it a hundred times.
Pick one to carry on.
6The idea
The law is a floor, and it is a different floor everywhere
Where you live, the rule is this: set by your state or province, and sometimes stricter in your own town. Ride into the next state or the next province and that sentence can come out completely differently — a different age, or all ages, or nothing at all. It is one of the least consistent rules in either country.
So the law tells you what you can be stopped for. It does not tell you what your head is made of. We are also not going to tell you which sticker to buy, because the people who would know give three different answers. A helmet that fits, buckled, every ride.
7Look
Level, and tipped back
The second one is comfortable, which is why it is the one that happens by accident over a few weeks. Nothing about it looks wrong until you see the two together.
8Find them
Which of these are helmet rides?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
9Say it
The line for the friend already rolling
Say it out loud, in your normal voice
“Give me two seconds. Then we go.”
It is not a lecture and it does not need to be one. You are not asking them to put theirs on. You are telling them how long they are waiting, which is a much easier sentence to say.
10Do it
Before you leave this page
Put your helmet on and get somebody to watch you do 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.