Failure to use bike helmets could cost us dearly

A letter to the editor (”Promoting health is not mayor’s business,” May 27) implies it is not the mayor’s business to promote health and suggested that getting rid of helmet legislation would be the first step.

In his defence, the letter-writer is not the first person to advocate abolishing this law. Individuals and groups over the years have suggested easing or even eliminating B.C.’s mandatory bike-helmet laws that have been a part of the Motor Vehicle Act since 1996.

“We need to bring the responsibility back to the individual who is riding the bike,” anti-helmet advocate Ted Dixon, the B.C. Party policy chairman, said in an interview. “My personal view is the individual is best able to assess the risk. … In Australia, what the helmet laws did was kill off utility cycling — things like going to the corner store on a bike.”

The reality is that 80 per cent of bike crashes occur on “short” trips. Studies have shown that helmets reduce the rate of brain injuries by 88 per cent. Helmets help.

Those who argue against bike-helmet laws generally cite individual choice. But do parents choose to put their children in harm’s way through a lack of prevention? Do adults? Generally, the answer to those questions is no.

Yes, many of us participate in high-risk activities, but for the most part we minimize the risk of injury. When we participate in sports, we follow the rules of the game and wear our safety equipment.

For example, if we are playing hockey, we invest hundreds, maybe even thousands, in protective equipment. Who wants to receive an unnecessary injury? Why then are we so cavalier about protecting our most important body part — our brain?

The incidence of brain injury is frightening, and most likely unknown to the public. In B.C. alone, 22,000 new brain injuries occur every year. To put this horrendous number into perspective, a comparable number of British Columbians are diagnosed with cancer each year.

Many survivors of brain injury live well post-injury. However, thousands of survivors live an extremely challenged life. Stories of survivors are devastating: the young woman who prostitutes herself because she is impaired from making safe judgments and developing appropriate relationships; the aging mother who is on the verge of homelessness through eviction because her brain-injured son is unable to control his temper and is both verbally and physically aggressive to her, friends and neighbours. The stories are as numerous as they are varied, but always the cost to individuals and communities plays a role.

Here are a few more statistics about the effects of brain injury: • More than 50 per cent of those in prison populations have brain injuries; • The incidence of divorce after one partner suffers a brain injury is 90 per cent; • More than 52 per cent of the homeless population are survivors of brain injury and the majority of these individuals became homeless after sustaining a brain injury

The bottom line is that a person who has a brain injury is a changed and different person. Most often they live with significant negative effects physically, socially, mentally and relationally. It is estimated that the annual cost of brain injury issues provincially is in the billions of dollars.

We need to take an investment perspective in regard to brain injury because — and this is perhaps the most shocking statistic — 90 per cent of brain injuries are preventable.

Wearing a helmet to ride a bike has become a social norm, espe- cially for children. From the age of infancy, kids are now as accustomed to wearing a helmet as they are to clicking in a seatbelt before the car moves. Do we really want to undo the effort that has been put into teaching the next generation how to prevent serious or fatal injuries?

Does it not make sense to make the investment in and commitment to wearing a bicycle helmet? A $50 helmet can save us from a lifetime of challenges and a massive cost to our health-care system, or perhaps even save our life.

Every one of the brain-injury survivors that we have met wish they could have prevented it and not had to experience the lifelong challenges that brain injury creates for themselves or for their family.