Vicious Cycle of Accidents, Child Deaths Can Be Ended

If your children are between training wheels and their first car, the bicycle is part of your most frightening nightmare.

Bikes are more than a toy for a youngster. They also represent independence. When we buy a bicycle for our children and watch them pedal away, we are setting them free to enter the outside world and learn from their mistakes.

And we say a silent prayer that they don’t make the ultimate mistake--like a 9-year-old Mission Viejo boy did in March of last year.

The U.S. Product Safety Commission says there were about 400 child fatalities involving bicycles in the country last year, and the young boy was one of them. Like many children, he wasn’t wearing a helmet, he was close to his Mission Viejo home and he didn’t see the van bearing down on him until it was too late.

He died in a local hospital of massive head injuries a short while later.

In my dual role as a reporter and father of a 12-year-old boy, I grieved hard for the boy’s mother and father as I wrote the story of his death. But as a parent, I wondered why he was not wearing a safety helmet, and I shook my head over the other 400 child bicycle deaths whose victims were not adequately protected.

Now, I am blaming myself.

My son was not wearing a helmet in February when he rode into the street and into the path of a station wagon traveling about 30 m.p.h.

His stepfather called me at 1 a.m. from San Jose. I heard his voice say, “Ben was hit by a car” and I threw the phone away in anger, letting it bounce off the kitchen counter into the sink.

But miraculously, my son survived the collision, his injuries limited to severe bruises and scratches.

I don’t know how he did it--there were no skid marks in the street indicating that the car had braked at all, and his bike was bent almost in half--but I am not asking questions.

Except one: Why did I, knowing fully the terrible danger, allow my son to ride his bike without wearing a helmet?

After the inevitable self-abuse passed, I discovered that I had no answer. There is no reason that makes any sense when you consider that the average 10-year-old weighs about 60 pounds and fits comfortably in your lap while the average automobile weighs in at around 1,800 pounds and fits comfortably in your garage.

Education of our youth sounds like a good solution, but it isn’t enough.

One of the sad ironies surrounding the Mission Viejo youth’s accident is that the Orange County Sheriff’s Department kicked off its first bicycle safety program in Mission Viejo at his school, just one month before the collision that ended his life.

Of course, that program should be maintained; even if it reached just one kid, it was worth the undertaking. But the light should really be shined on parents and a few basic concepts drummed into anyone who tucks their children into bed and kisses them good night.

The advice is courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

* Educate your kids about bicycle safety. Children who grow up playing with Hot Wheels and other play cars have only the vaguest concept of what a ton of speeding steel can do to a child.

* Don’t let young children ride bikes in the streets. It is the nature of the very young to make stupid mistakes. If they didn’t, we’d hand them a couple of telephone books to sit on and let them apply for driver’s licenses.

* The most dangerous street for your kids runs in front of your house. This is the area where children will spend most of their playtime, where they and their parents feel the most secure. That’s what makes it dangerous.

* Buy your children bicycle helmets and make them wear them. Many bicycle deaths involving children could have been prevented by a safety helmet. Buy them a helmet and force them, bribe them or do whatever it takes to make them wear it whenever they ride.

My son now has a helmet and a second chance at life. His bicycle is still part of my most frightening nightmare, but I feel a little better about his odds of surviving his excursions into the outside world.

I just wish that those 400 other children had also gotten another chance.