Helmet Crusade Proves Worthwhile
My angry breath nearly toppled the woman bicycling along Coeur d’Alene’s Locust Avenue last summer.
No helmet squashed her hair. No worry creased her face. She was unhurried and unbothered until I thrust toward her the mangled 18-speed bicycle I held and said something like, “What if this happens to you? Where’s your helmet?”
She pedaled a little harder to get away, and my attention turned back to my 21-year-old daughter, Lindsay. Fresh scrapes - road rash - bloodied her back and one elbow. Her 30-mph, downhill bicycle collision with a moving motorcycle bent her back wheel in half, ripped her shorts and crushed her helmet.
But it didn’t hurt her brain. My daughter was wounded, but she still could talk, think and function correctly thanks to her helmet. Kootenai Medical Center’s emergency staff praised her for wearing a helmet, then replaced her cracked one with a new model.
My helmet sensitivity raged for weeks. Every day, I noticed riders without helmets, and I clenched my teeth. I slammed on my brakes to prevent my car from hitting a boy without a helmet who darted on his bicycle from between parked cars near North Idaho College.
Helmet apathy disgusted me, but I kept my thoughts to myself. People made fun of me when I lectured the world.
I contented myself with my family’s safety. My two daughters returned to college at summer’s end with their bikes and helmets. I cycled several times a week and wore a helmet as automatically as I buckled my seat belt in the car.
It paid off last week. My helmet saved me, not during my heavy-sweat workout ride around Fernan Lake but during a casual cruise two blocks from home.
No one knows what stopped my bike suddenly just feet after I slowed to turn right at a red light on Seventh Street and Lakeside Avenue. No one knows why my body flew over my handlebars.
Rod Braun ran to my rescue. He’s an appraiser for Kootenai County and was headed to Zip’s for a lunch burger. There I was in the middle of the street with a pool of blood growing by my head and my bike next to me.
Rod warmed me and talked to me while other people watched until an ambulance arrived. Rod kindly supplied the details because I wasn’t conscious.
I don’t remember the medical tests or interviewing doctors, as my husband has reported. I don’t remember the stitches to my ripped lip or my overnight stay on another floor. I don’t even remember any pain.
Still, my wounds healed and my memory began again, thanks to my helmet. It’s cracked and useless now, but I’m not.
Dr. Michael Ettner figures he sees about 20 head injuries a month in KMC’s emergency room from bikes, motorcycles, scooters and skateboards. Only 10 percent to 25 percent of those patients wear helmets.
“We see people with severe, deadly or incapacitating head injuries, and a large percentage are preventable,” he says.
He tells patients that helmets would have protected them. So does KMC spokesman Mike Regan and Bicycle Service’s Steve Schultz. Mike Regan’s bike safety groups have given out 10,000 helmets in nine years. But he agrees with Steve: You can hand them out, but you can’t make people wear them.
The brain injury information doctors gave me as I left KMC tells me I was smart to wear a helmet even cruising comfortably through town. Brain injuries from all sources cost people nationwide an average of $1million in medical care over their lifetimes.
That means my family saved up to $2 million this year, and a lot of life-changing grief.
What North Idaho accident wised you up recently? Share the lesson with Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814; fax to 765-7149; call 765-7128; or e-mail to cynthiat@spokesman.com.