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White cycle helmetFrance makes cycle helmets compulsory for children aged 11 and under
France is introducing a law that will require children aged 12 and under to wear an approved helmet while riding a bike, whether they are pedalling themselves or being carried as a passenger.
The forthcoming legislation was officially announced in December, with the new law coming into effect from 22 March this year to give families three months to prepare themselves for its introduction.
It is one of 26 measures contained in a report published last October by an interministerial committee for road safety, and is aimed at preventing facial and cranial injuries among children.
Adults who are carrying a non-helmet wearing child on their bike, or who are accompanying a child who is cycling without wearing one, will be liable to a fine of €135.
The law will apply to residents and visitors alike – so if you have children aged 11 and under and go cycling with them while on holiday in France, they will have to wear a helmet.
Opponents of compulsory helmet laws, such as those that apply to all cyclists, including adults, in Australia say that such legislation discourages people from riding a bike in the first place.
As a result, they maintain that requiring people to wear a helmet has a negative impact on the general health of the population that outweighs any perceived benefit in terms of safety.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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44 comments
You can hear the little French children singing...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLKOrSq6Ks93Qarq1bRojuiF0vm8tPdIDK&v=Ii...
...and if there is no adult accompanying the child?
My son who's 9 came off his bike the other day and went under a car. His helmet was pretty much destroyed by a combination of the road and car. It's impossible to say what would have been the outcome if he hadn't been wearing it, but it could only have been worse realistically. I'm not sure about making them mandatory, but in this case, I'd certainly very glad I made sure he was wearing a decent one.
Well, that's settled the helmet debate for me. How could scientific, peer reviewed, proper research stand up against a totally unproven, unprovable, apocryphal story?
cyclehelmets.org
If someone told you their son had been in an accident that could very nearly have killed them to your face, rather than a forum, would you call them a liar too? Get a grip.
Any helmet thread has helmet deniers. Even if you can give them actual proof of a head injury or potential head injury they will argue that helmet was still pointless and the human skull when transported by a bicycle becomes invulnerable.
My friend managed to bounce himself of a car windscreen (probably his fault, though he can't remember) and ended up with a head injury and went into a coma. No helmet. Maybe, at least maybe a helmet would have helped in some fashion.
What do you mean by 'denier'? What on earth does that word even mean in this context? Please explain.
You seem to just be trying to imply (without a supporting argument) that there's a similarity to climate-change denial or Holocaust denial, when there's no similarity there at all. As you are talking about denying a mass of scientific evidence vs denying that a single anecdote proves something about the general issue.
That seems like a transparent rhetorical trick to me.
You also throw in a straw-man there with the 'invulnerability' comment. Nobody has ever said that, so why try and pretend they have? As ever, one could just as well say that those who oppose wearing helmets for traversing the stairs are saying the human skull becomes invulnerable when walking up stair-cases.
People are just skeptical as to whether the downside of helmet use is justified (in every case) sufficiently by the potential up-side, and, above all, wary of the risk of compulsory helmet laws.
No belief in invulnerability is required for that.
Any thread has helmet zealots, who ignore the evidence of whole population studies over 20 years, who cannot produce any scientific research themselves, only irrelevant anecdotes.
Maybe a helmet would have helped your friend, but all the reliable evidence says it wouldn't. Which to choose? Blind faith or science? Tricky.
FFS drosco: he's not calling you a liar. Just questioning how valid your assertion that "it could only have been worse realistically" is as a test of helmets' safety.
The facts seem to me to be
1 Your son had an accident
2 The accident resulted in his helmet being broken.
Any other conclusions would be a leap, for me, I think. There's the disagreement.
Granted, you may well have anecdata now: didn't you conclude that a helmet recently save your life when you were car-doored?
Who called anyone a liar? Certainly not me. Someone needs to get a grip, but again, certainly not me.
That said, I have had many conversations with cyclists who are utterly convinced that a helmet saved their life, putting the case that all the reliable evidence shows that it was slightly less likely than winning the lottery six weeks in a row, but evidence and data are no match for blind faith.
Surprised they didn't make it 13 as they'll all get mopeds at 14.
If bike helmets are designed to do anything, it's probably offering some head protection in low speed falls from a bike that children are arguably prone to, rather than high speed vehicle collisions. Shame wearing is being made compulsory though. What is really needed is widespread driver education/safety reinforcement/enforcement, cycle appropriate infrastructure improvements, and a culture of reduction of vehicle numbers in urban centres.
Maybe they've seen pictures of American children and figured "Hey, our kids aren't nearly fat enough."
Or perhaps they have seen the reduction in cycling in New Zealand due to the helmet law and want French kids (and, by extension, adults) off the roads too?
Laws such as this are pointless and unnecessary.
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