News

Anchorage Assembly weighs bike helmet law for kids

by Dan Fiorucci, KTUU- Friday, June 24, 2006

Anchorage, Alaska - The Anchorage Assembly is considering making bicycle helmets mandatory in the city, at least for children.

The reason? Each year, nearly 3,000 youngsters across America die from traumatic brain injury. Wearing a helmet, experts say, cuts the risk of death by 88 percent.

A simple $20 piece of foam can save a child from a debilitating brain injury -- one that could leave him paralyzed for life with $6 million in total lifetime health care costs.

In fact, just 24 hours ago, a helmet saved an adult -- Girdwood Pastor Jim Doepken -- from what likely would have been a fractured skull. Dr. Stephen Tower, the Providence physician who treated Doepken, showed the Assembly photos of his patient and the battered bicycle helmet.

“You can just imagine if he had been unhelmeted, what his head would look like,” said Tower.

“I do have an exceptionally cracked helmet, which was kind of stunning to see when I did see it,” Doepken says.

From his hospital bed, the pastor agrees that his helmet probably saved him from a debilitating brain injury.

“The helmet cracked and the plastic kind of fell off of it,” he says. “It had chunks out of it in the end. And what the EMT that picked me up in Girdwood said was that if I didn't have the helmet on, it wouldn't have been an ambulance ride, it probably would have been a helicopter ride. Because it could have been my head that was cracked, like the helmet was.”

Also at the Assembly work session, Dr. Tower showed the X-rays of a 14-year-old cyclist who was hit by a car and died of his head injuries because he wasn’t wearing a helmet.

“Half-a-million dollars went into this kid before he became an organ donor. And, like Dr. Bernard stated, the reason he didn't make it was because of his brain injuries and because he was unhelmeted.”

A panel of physicians urged the Assembly to pass an ordinance which would require children ages 17 and under to wear a helmet whenever they ride a bike.

“We know this will keep kids from being terminally or seriously brain-injured,” Dr. Tower said.

Some bicyclists swear by their helmets, and Anchorage Assembly members agree it’s a good idea to wear them. But they’re about equally divided over whether a good idea should become a law.

“We have the issues of personal responsibility versus the cost to society,” one doctor testified.

Five members of the Assembly lean toward mandating helmets for children, while six are still opposed.

Physicians, however, are not divided on this issue. They say that, every year, about 18 children are admitted to Anchorage hospitals for bicycle injuries. About five of them end up with serious brain injuries, and about 90 percent of all the injured kids were not wearing helmets.

Doctors say that, if every child on a bike wore a helmet, the number of debilitating brain injuries from bike accidents in Anchorage would drop close to zero.

The helmet question next goes before the regular Assembly session, either next Tuesday or in mid-July.

The Assembly seems to be gradually warming up to this law. Just a few months ago, only three of the 11 members favored it. Now five do.

According to emergency room physicians, the extraordinary thing is that if you could somehow get universal wearing of bike helmets, then each $20 helmet -- over its lifetime -- would save society up to $10,000 in medical costs -- a 500-to-1 return on investment.