Each day in emergency rooms nationwide, more than 700 kids are treated for injuries received while riding bikes, skateboards and scooters. Many of these injuries are life-threatening and disabling. Wearing helmets and other protective gear, and following the rules of the road can help prevent injuries.   

Follow these tips to assure your child wears a bike helmet:
•    When you buy your child’s first bike, buy a helmet, too.
•    Be sure the helmet you buy is approved by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
•    Make wearing a helmet a rule you enforce.
•    Be a role model, always wear a helmet when you ride a bike.
•    Let your child personalize the helmet by using stickers or paint to decorate it.
•    Praise your child and others for wearing their helmets.
•    Help your child realize the head is the most important part of the body.
•    Help your child’s school establish and support the rule: “If you ride your bike to school, you must wear a helmet.”
•    Make sure the helmet fits properly. If the helmet is too loose, it is not protecting your child’s head. Bike riding can be fun for your family. Make sure everyone is wearing a helmet.

Protect your child by teaching the rules of the road
Riders should be restricted to sidewalks and paths until they reach the age of 10 and can demonstrate they know the rules of the road. Supervision is essential until children develop the necessary traffic skills and judgment.
•    Bicycles are vehicles, not toys. Riding bikes, scooters, skateboards and inline skates – especially around traffic – is an important responsibility.
•    When on the road, ride with traffic rather than against it. Ride as far to the right as possible.
•    Use appropriate hand signals.
•    Respect traffic signals. Stop at all stop signs and red lights.
•    Stop and look left, right and left again before crossing an intersection.
•    Look back and yield to traffic coming from behind before turning left at intersections.
•    Don’t ride when it’s dark. If riding at dusk, dawn or in the evening is unavoidable, equip your bike with lights. Make sure your bike has reflectors as well. Wear clothes and accessories that incorporate retroreflective materials.

FAST FACT: your child is 14 times more likely to survive a bike crash if he or she is wearing a helmet.

Jane Howard is the Injury Prevention event coordinator for Children’s Health Education Center. She works primarily with the Kohl’s Tour for Kids Safety. The tour travels throughout eastern Wisconsin offering booster and car seat checks and bike helmet fitting events. Low-cost bike helmets are available for purchase. Trained experts will fit your child with a bike helmet. These events are free and open to the public. No appointment is necessary. A limited number of Kohl’s gift cards also will be given away. Check for a tour stop near you at www.chw.org/carseats.
 

Every year, young children are involved in automobile accidents and sports-related injuries. If the adult in the vehicle is seriously injured, unable to talk or not present, those responding to the emergency have no easy way of identifying the child. But, two new programs offer added protection through identification.

W.H.A.L.E. (We Have A Little Emergency)
Wisconsin law requires all youngsters under 4 years of age or up to 40 pounds be seated and harnessed in an approved child safety seat when riding in a car. The safety seat can provide vital information about its young occupant in the unfortunate event that the driver of the car is incapacitated in a car accident. W.H.A.L.E. stickers are placed on both rear side windows of the car and on both sides of the child safety seat so emergency personnel will know immediately there is vital information about the child on the back of the car seat. The W.H.A.L.E sticker includes the child's name, medical history, names and telephone numbers of two guardians and up to three emergency names and telephone numbers.

That’s Using Your Head
That’s Using Your Head is a sports helmet identification program designed to provide identification to emergency personnel in the event of
an injury or emergency. Helmets are a critical piece of equipment for safety during all sports such as bicycling, inline skating, baseball, rock climbing or skateboarding. That’s Using Your Head includes a large emergency information sticker to be placed on the inside of a helmet and a smaller sticker for the outside of the helmet. Stickers will help with emergency identification and medical safety information in a crisis situation.

Children’s Medical Group-Bayshore Pediatrics provides both W.H.A.L.E. and That’s Using Your Head packets to local North Shore police and fire departments for distribution during car seat installations and to parents and children through clinic visits, day care centers and preschools.

Sharyl Paley, MD, FAAP, is a pediatrician at Children’s Medical Group-Bayshore Pediatrics.

FAST FACT: Children’s Medical Group physicians provide primary and behavioral care for children in 18 clinics throughout southeastern Wisconsin. In addition, CMG oversees school-based health centers located in central city Milwaukee Public Schools. Find a local pediatrician at www.childrensmedicalgroup.org.