Children’s Helmet Law Nears Vote : Safety: Sen. Bergeson’s bill would give cities, counties right to require youths to wear protective headgear on bicycles.

A bill sponsored by state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) that would give cities and counties the ability to require that children wear bicycle helmets moved closer to a final vote this week.

Bergeson said in an interview Thursday that the bill would give local officials the tools needed to prevent “needless tragedies,” such as the death of a 12-year-old Mission Viejo boy last week who collided with a car while riding his bike less than a block from his home. He was not wearing a helmet.

“If we’d had this kind of bill, we could have very likely prevented this tragedy,” Bergeson said.

The bill, which was approved on Monday by the Assembly Transportation Committee and could be the subject of a final vote by the end of next week, would replace a state law that now prohibits cities and counties from enacting local bicycle helmet laws. State law currently mandates that bicycle helmets be worn by children under the age of 4 or under 40 pounds. Bergeson’s bill would permit local jurisdictions to determine the age limit for any helmet requirements.

“I was alarmed when I found the state law prohibits local ordinances from being enacted,” said Bergeson, who introduced the bill in January on behalf of a coalition of county physicians, school administrators, law enforcement officers and concerned parents. “There would be so many lives (that could be saved) as well as devastating head injuries that could be avoided.”

Head injuries are the most common cause of death or serious injury in bicycle accidents, with about 600 children across the nation dying each year from bicycle-related trauma, according to recent statistics compiled by Bergeson’s office. In 1990 alone, 135 people in the state died in bicycle accidents. Of the 16,000 bicycle-related injuries, 15,000 of the riders were not wearing a helmet, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Recent federal safety reports suggest that helmets can reduce the risk of head injury by up to 85%, but that only about 2% of children under the age of 14 wear helmets when bicycling.

Newport Beach resident Karen Evarts was among a group of parents who initially went to Bergeson and asked for stricter bike helmet safety laws.

Although the parents had hoped to see a law making bike helmets mandatory throughout the state, Evarts said the bill is a step in the right direction.

“Education works only up to a certain point,” she said.

But even Evarts, who has spent the past three years educating elementary-school children in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District about bicycle helmet safety, has had a hard time getting her own three children to wear helmets.

At the heart of the problem is the “geek image” so many kids associate with the helmets, she said. “It’s very hard,” she said. “So many parents have asked us: ‘Why don’t you make it a law?’ ”

Residents in Mission Viejo’s Via San Gabriel neighborhood have been asking themselves the same question after the death of Justin Jeffrey Welter last week.

Now when neighborhood children go into the street to ride their bikes, they wear helmets purchased by their parents. One resident even places a homemade “Slow Children Playing” sign in the middle of the street.

“Everyone has just been really cautious about the traffic,” neighbor Matt Mosebrook said. “All the neighbors around have really come together.”