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2009-11-21

2009-11-18

2009-11-05

Agriculture

Lifestyles

Friday, July 10, 2009 8:55 PM

How can my child get a free bike helmet?

By LINDA BROWN, Ask a Professional

About 800 Americans die each year in bicycle crashes.

Wearing a bicycle helmet could have saved about 680 of them.

About 500 of them are younger than 18.

That all manes one out of four serious bicycle crash injuries is a head injury — a head injury that may have been prevented if the rider had been wearing a helmet.

Through the cooperative effort of the Ottawa Police Department, Franklin County EMS and the Ottawa Rotary Club, there are about 150 new bicycle helmets available free to community children who need one.

“If your child doesn’t have a properly fitting bicycle helmet, we’d like to provide one for you — free of charge,” Chuck Bigham, past president of the Ottawa Rotary Club, said.

The helmets were purchased with a matching grant from Rotary District No. 5710. The grant provided $700, and the local club matched its own $700.

The grant was written to provide helmets, to partner with local organizations and promote the use of helmets through activities and training.

Twelve Rotarians joined forces with the Ottawa Police Department and Franklin County EMS personnel last April for the Communities in Schools Bicycle Rodeo for all second grade students in USD 290.

“We helped fit them with helmets and taught them bicycle safety while they were actually on a bicycle,” Bigham said. “They learned turn signals, the stop signal, went through intersections and stop signs and drove around cones.”

The school district paid for the helmets distributed to the second-graders with special funding for that purpose.

The community helmet campaign was the Ottawa club’s answer to Rotary International’s 2008-2009 service project calling to reduce infant mortality.

“We chose to do this as a way to reduce injuries and potential deaths by providing helmets and teaching bicycle safety,” Bigham said.

According to a study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, bicycle riders wearing helmets had an 85 percent reduction in their risk of head injury and an 88 percent reduction in their risk of brain injury.

“This idea actually began as an idea of Ottawa Police Chief Dennis Butler, and we are pleased that both he and EMS Director Nick Robbins see this as a community service partnership that we could all benefit from,” Bigham said.

Police officers and EMS personnel have cards they hand out to area youths they see riding bikes without a helmet. The cards tell them how they can get a free helmet.

Like all sports gear, a bicycle helmet needs to be the right size for the person using it.

To set up an appointment for your child to be fitted for — and receive — a free helmet, you may call (785) 229-7300 ext. 3 or (785) 242-2561 ext. 423.

Linda Brown is marketing director for The Ottawa Herald. E-mail her at lbrown@ottawaherald.com.

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How can my child get a free bike helmet?

By LINDA BROWN, Ask a Professional

E-mail this story to a friend | Print this article | Enjoy the convenience of home delivery of The Ottawa Herald.

E-mail this story to a friend | Print this article |
Enjoy the convenience of home delivery of The Ottawa Herald.