What if my children refuse to ride their bicycles when forced to wear a helmet? Is “no helmet, no cycling” a good rule?
Not from a health point of view. Scrapes, bruises and other minor injuries from physical activities like cycling are a normal part of growing up. Parents of the current generation grew up cycling without helmets. There was no problem then, so why is there a problem now? Children are already less healthy than the children of the previous generation. Child obesity has risen rapidly in the last twenty years partly because of poor diet but also because kids exercise less. “The gain of ‘life years’ through improved fitness among regular cyclists, and thus their increased longevity exceeds the loss of ‘life years’ in cycle fatalities (British Medical Association, 1992). An analysis based on the life expectancy of each cyclist killed in road accidents using actuarial data, and the increased longevity of those engaging in exercise regimes several times a week compared with those leading relatively sedentary lives, has shown that, even in the current cycle hostile environment, the benefits in t
