From March 22, 2017, on bicycles, wearing a certified helmet becomes compulsory for children under 12, whether they are drivers or passengers.
Excellent for health, as well as for air quality, cycling is increasingly popular with public authorities. But the bicycle, as the ancients say, is not without danger. It requires, from an early age, to adopt good safety habits. Protecting the most vulnerable is therefore one of the government’s priorities.
Thus, to reduce the seriousness of facial injuries and the risk of head injuries for children practicing bicycles, wearing a helmet will soon be compulsory for children under 12 years of age.
From March 22, 2017
The decree relating to this obligation was published this Thursday in the Official Journal, indicates Road Safety in a press release. It provides for a period of 3 months so that each family can have time to equip themselves correctly. The entry into force of this obligation will therefore become effective from March 22, 2017. The obligation will concern all children under the age of 12, whether they are on the handlebars of their bike or passengers.
And as such, the Ministry of the Interior calls on adults to lead by example. “Equipment and choosing suitable individual safety equipment, including a bicycle helmet, must therefore be learned from an early age,” he writes. “In this respect, it has been found that the parents of children equipped with helmets are inclined to already wear one themselves”, underlines Road Safety.
Protection against the risk of injury
For the authorities, this protection is all the more important since head shocks in young children can cause more serious injuries than in adults or adolescents. The helmet thus reduces the risk of serious head injury by 70%, the risk of minor injury by 31% and the risk of facial injury by 28% (1) .
A recent study (2) confirms, for its part, the greater risk of neurological lesions in the head in 6-year-old children without helmets, compared to those with helmets. Finally, wearing a helmet drastically reduces the risk of loss of consciousness: at more than 10 km/h, it goes from 98% in the case of a non-helmeted head to 0.1% for a helmeted head.
And for those who overlook these risks, the government has another solution: slap offenders in the wallet. If an adult carries a child passenger without a helmet on a bicycle or accompanies a group of unprotected children, he will risk a fourth class fine (90 euros).
The measure has already been widely adopted by 11 member states of the European Union. Wearing a helmet is already compulsory for everyone in Finland.
The accident rate of child cyclists
Road Safety estimates that there are approximately 5.5 million occasional or regular bicycle users under the age of 12. The road accident rate of these young cyclists is high. It concerned 181 children in 2015, of whom 1 child was killed and 170 children were injured (71 hospitalized, according to the National Interministerial Observatory for Road Safety, 2015).
From 2011 to 2015), 1,178 children under the age of 12 were involved in a bicycle accident, of which 26 children were killed, 442 children were injured in hospital, 665 children were slightly injured and only 45 children were uninjured. “91% of these accidents (and 85% of deaths) occurred in built-up areas”, specifies however the ONISR.
(1) IFSTTAR, AMOROS E., CHIRON M., MARTIN J.-L., THÉLOT B., LAUMON B., Bicycle helmet wearing and the risk of head, face, and neck injury: a French case-control study based on a road trauma registry. Injury Prevention, n°18, pp. 27-32, 2012.
(2) Deck, C., Bourdet, N., Willinger R., Evaluation of the risk of head trauma in pedestrian and cyclist accident situations (2016), “Vulnerable Head” Project (TEVU) – University of Strasbourg (UNISTRA ), Laboratory of Engineering, Computer Science and Imaging Sciences.
(3) General Commission for Sustainable Development (CGDD) / Observation and Statistics Service (SOeS) – National transport and travel survey, 2008.
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