Why You Should Always Wear Your Helmet.
PSA: never put stickers on your helmets (unless you have checked with the manufacturer) because the adhesive can weaken the structure!
One day my health teacher in middle school just like … didn’t show up for class. And so of course we were all “oh if he doesn’t show up in fifteen minutes we’re legally allowed to leave”, giggling about it and all the bullshit. He did eventually show up, ten minutes into the class time. He looked haggard as fuck, sweating all over, hair messed up, beaten to hell and back. We stared at him and were about to ask what in the world happened to him when he stopped in front of his desk and smacked his bicycle helmet down on it.
His helmet had this odd discolored patch on it. Like, white against white, but … weird? It’s then that I realized his helmet didn’t have a discolored patch, it had a patch missing. A big chunk of his helmet had just been shaved away, the curve of the helmet gone and sanded flat by whatever it had been scraped against. And running through that patch, from one side of the helmet to the other, was this big crack, like the whole helmet had split like an eggshell.
Our teacher took a couple deep panting breaths and then told our class: “And this,” he took another deep breath, “is why you always wear your helmet”.
And that’s the story of how an entire class of middle school students took helmet-wearing very seriously for the rest of their lives.
My sister was doing a charity cycle, and on the last day there was awful rain. Going down a steep hill her brakes failed. I got a selfie from her missing her front teeth and she had a black eye. Before I can even lose my mind about her injuries, my dad sent me a picture of her shattered cycle helmet, the tattered ruins of her Alice in Wonderland costume and the scuffs on the shirt and cycle leggings she’d been wearing under it.
The helmet prevented her skull/face from taking serious damage and the long sleeves/leggings meant she got grazes on her limbs instead of needing skin grafts. Honestly - safety first.
The VERY FIRST BIKE RIDE OF HIS LIFE, my four year old lost control of his bike, panicked and forgot how to use the break and flipped over his handlebars and went head first into the curb. He got up like it was nothing, got back on his bike and finished the bike ride.
No bruises, no cuts or scrapes and just a couple tears for fears.
His helmet has a HUGE dint in it. Nothing punctured through. Structural integrity is still fine. All the paw patrol characters are still there. That 12$ saved us a trip to the emergency room.
Hey PSA! YOU MUST GO TO THE HOSPITAL IF YOUR HELMET LOOKS LIKE THOSE ABOVE! Helmets prevent you from dying but you could STILL BE CONCUSSED or have internal injuries! And always replace a helmet after a fall where you hit your head! Even if it doesn’t look dented, the padding inside can still be damaged enough that it’s much safer to get a new one!
any helmet that suffers a crash impact is almost always without any more structural support and will completely shatter into pieces if you crash on it again
Always replace it
I don’t have the helmet anymore to take pictures of it, but I’ve had a speeding car plow into me on my bike before. My head went through the windshield and then I got launched when they slammed the brakes. Helmet broke into four different pieces right there. With it on I got KO’d, a not too serious concussion (as far as any concussion can be not too serious), and some road rash. Got to go home that afternoon. The docs say that if I hadn’t been wearing it, I probably wouldn’t have survived.
ALWAYS WEAR YOUR HELMETS, KIDS
(That includes the straps)
