France is introducing a law that will require children aged 12 and under to wear an approved helmet while riding a bike, whether they are pedalling themselves or being carried as a passenger.
The forthcoming legislation was officially announced in December, with the new law coming into effect from 22 March this year to give families three months to prepare themselves for its introduction.
It is one of 26 measures contained in a report published last October by an interministerial committee for road safety, and is aimed at preventing facial and cranial injuries among children.
Adults who are carrying a non-helmet wearing child on their bike, or who are accompanying a child who is cycling without wearing one, will be liable to a fine of €135.
The law will apply to residents and visitors alike – so if you have children aged 11 and under and go cycling with them while on holiday in France, they will have to wear a helmet.
Opponents of compulsory helmet laws, such as those that apply to all cyclists, including adults, in Australia say that such legislation discourages people from riding a bike in the first place.
As a result, they maintain that requiring people to wear a helmet has a negative impact on the general health of the population that outweighs any perceived benefit in terms of safety.
44 thoughts on “France makes cycle helmets compulsory for children aged 11 and under”
Maybe they’ve seen pictures
Maybe they’ve seen pictures of American children and figured “Hey, our kids aren’t nearly fat enough.”
handlebarcam wrote:
Or perhaps they have seen the reduction in cycling in New Zealand due to the helmet law and want French kids (and, by extension, adults) off the roads too?
Laws such as this are pointless and unnecessary.
If bike helmets are designed
If bike helmets are designed to do anything, it’s probably offering some head protection in low speed falls from a bike that children are arguably prone to, rather than high speed vehicle collisions. Shame wearing is being made compulsory though. What is really needed is widespread driver education/safety reinforcement/enforcement, cycle appropriate infrastructure improvements, and a culture of reduction of vehicle numbers in urban centres.
Surprised they didn’t make it
Surprised they didn’t make it 13 as they’ll all get mopeds at 14.
My son who’s 9 came off his
My son who’s 9 came off his bike the other day and went under a car. His helmet was pretty much destroyed by a combination of the road and car. It’s impossible to say what would have been the outcome if he hadn’t been wearing it, but it could only have been worse realistically. I’m not sure about making them mandatory, but in this case, I’d certainly very glad I made sure he was wearing a decent one.
drosco wrote:
Well, that’s settled the helmet debate for me. How could scientific, peer reviewed, proper research stand up against a totally unproven, unprovable, apocryphal story?
cyclehelmets.org
burtthebike wrote:
Well, that’s settled the helmet debate for me. How could scientific, peer reviewed, proper research stand up against a totally unproven, unprovable, apocryphal story?
cyclehelmets.org— drosco
If someone told you their son had been in an accident that could very nearly have killed them to your face, rather than a forum, would you call them a liar too? Get a grip.
drosco wrote:
Any helmet thread has helmet deniers. Even if you can give them actual proof of a head injury or potential head injury they will argue that helmet was still pointless and the human skull when transported by a bicycle becomes invulnerable.
My friend managed to bounce himself of a car windscreen (probably his fault, though he can’t remember) and ended up with a head injury and went into a coma. No helmet. Maybe, at least maybe a helmet would have helped in some fashion.
Yorkshire wallet wrote:
What do you mean by ‘denier’? What on earth does that word even mean in this context? Please explain.
You seem to just be trying to imply (without a supporting argument) that there’s a similarity to climate-change denial or Holocaust denial, when there’s no similarity there at all. As you are talking about denying a mass of scientific evidence vs denying that a single anecdote proves something about the general issue.
That seems like a transparent rhetorical trick to me.
You also throw in a straw-man there with the ‘invulnerability’ comment. Nobody has ever said that, so why try and pretend they have? As ever, one could just as well say that those who oppose wearing helmets for traversing the stairs are saying the human skull becomes invulnerable when walking up stair-cases.
People are just skeptical as to whether the downside of helmet use is justified (in every case) sufficiently by the potential up-side, and, above all, wary of the risk of compulsory helmet laws.
No belief in invulnerability is required for that.
Yorkshire wallet wrote:
Any thread has helmet zealots, who ignore the evidence of whole population studies over 20 years, who cannot produce any scientific research themselves, only irrelevant anecdotes.
Maybe a helmet would have helped your friend, but all the reliable evidence says it wouldn’t. Which to choose? Blind faith or science? Tricky.
FFS drosco: he’s not calling
FFS drosco: he’s not calling you a liar. Just questioning how valid your assertion that “it could only have been worse realistically” is as a test of helmets’ safety.
The facts seem to me to be
1 Your son had an accident
2 The accident resulted in his helmet being broken.
Any other conclusions would be a leap, for me, I think. There’s the disagreement.
Granted, you may well have anecdata now: didn’t you conclude that a helmet recently save your life when you were car-doored?
drosco wrote:
Who called anyone a liar? Certainly not me. Someone needs to get a grip, but again, certainly not me.
That said, I have had many conversations with cyclists who are utterly convinced that a helmet saved their life, putting the case that all the reliable evidence shows that it was slightly less likely than winning the lottery six weeks in a row, but evidence and data are no match for blind faith.
…and if there is no adult
…and if there is no adult accompanying the child?
You can hear the little
You can hear the little French children singing…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLKOrSq6Ks93Qarq1bRojuiF0vm8tPdIDK&v=IiIUIWkLcOg
Totally idiotic, counter
Totally idiotic, counter-productive and about as likely to be followed as the ban on smoking in bars.
I received helmet for my
I received helmet for my christmas gift from colleague this year. Worn it four times out of four rides. NO ACCIDENT so far but I feel many times safer and this is allowing me to gain more speed on downs. Hope never will have collision but now I know this helmet will help.
Let us also offer this good feeling to children in France.
Schweiz wrote:
I find that a jockstrap is more useful, and would also give me more confidence desending, though I don’t wear one as a general rule due to chafing. To each their own!
Schweiz wrote:
No it didn’t allow you to gain more speed, you felt more confident and allowed yourself to gain more speed. If you investigate the topic on cycling injuries, you may be surprised to learn that head injuries figure in comparatively few crashes. If you really want to give yourself protection, rather than a misplaced confidence in a flimsy bit of plastic on your head designed to protect in crashes up to 12mph, you might want to invest in body armour and full shin protection as worn by most BMX racers and MTB racers.
Most cycling injuries are to the limbs. The body armour and shin protection will actually help you, rather than giving the illusion of doing so.
And if you really want to protect your head properly, buy a BMX/MTB style full face helmet and preferably one that can also be used for riding a motorcycle. It’ll actually protect you, rather than giving you the illusion of protection like the bit of plastic you currently use.
OldRidgeback wrote:
I think your irony detector might need recalibrating
graham_f wrote:
I hope so… I think Schweiz might be a work of ironic genius – they even threw in MIPS.
The skeptic in me is furiously facepalming, though…
davel wrote:
I think you have not seen his helmet!
beezus fufoon wrote:
Does thinking about it a lot count?
graham_f wrote:
Could be, the Swiss humour may not have translated well.
Schweiz wrote:
Thanks for summing up the risk compensation argument against helmets.
Helmets are flimsy bits of plastic offering very limited protection. Anyone who goes faster, take more risks or otherwise changes their behaviour, will overwhelm that limited protection, and this seems to be what happens in practice.
Helmet wearing cyclists have more collisions, and helmet wearing has never been shown to reduce the risks of cycling. The only proven effects of helmet laws is to reduce the number of cyclists, increasing the risk to those that are left. Children have been strangled by helmet straps but there is no proven case of a helmet saving a life. Obesity, largely caused by lack of exercise, kills many thousands more people than cycle helmets possibly could save.
Yeah, sure, we want to make sure French children have that feeling.
cyclehelmets.org
burtthebike wrote:
I think you have not seen my helmet! Firsts it is aerodynamisch which is actually helping to go faster more safely by reducing distracting drag and destabilising vortex. Second it cost my colleague a lot of money and has MIPS system which is disappation of energy in extreme condition. Third i have not been obese or even overweights in the last 4 years. BUT if i had known about this benefit of helmets while i was obese AND/OR overweights then I would definitely have worn the helmet while losing weight and still lost weight at same rate but more safely.
WIN/WIN. I can not see any down sides
Let them eat tarmac.
Let them eat tarmac.
Having been judo thrown from
Having been judo thrown from my bike (never carry bags on handlebars that could get caught in your front wheel kids!), landing on my bonce and cracking my Kask, I can still write on a keyboard , and walk and go about my everyday life.
Without that Kask (may it rest in peace) I doubt very much I would be able to do that.
As for this theory that you take more risks with a helmet than without – well all I can say is I am as much of scaredy cat with a helmet as without, in fact I have always been adverse to scraping up my knees, or buggering up my wrists as landing on my head.
Same wearing a helmet skiing – something I resisted a lot longer than on a bike, that hasn’t increased my “dare devil” nature; but keeps my ears warm.
Living in France they havent got a hope in hell of making this law stick though.
Padraic wrote:
How do you know that your risk-taking isn’t increased? Seems to me that carrying bags on handlebars is a pretty risky thing to do, as borne out by the risk actually materialising in a nasty off.
It’s good that you walked away from it, but all of these ‘it would have been worse’ assertions do not amount to evidence, and the studies aren’t conclusive either way.
Padraic wrote:
But that’s you! Nobody is saying you should be banned from wearing a helmet (unless it covers the face, I suppose, whereupon the control-freak French authorities would presumably arrest you for wearing it).
For laws that apply to an entire population the appropriate factor is not what _you_ do, it’s what the aggregate effect on that population would be. So your argument isn’t relevant to the issue.
Padraic wrote:
Unless you’re Inspector Clousaeu and you’re bike is Cato, it didn’t judo throw you.
There are many cases of similar incidents to yours where a helmet did not prevent serious brain damage.
The thing about risk compensation is that it is entirely subconcious and people don’t realise it’s happening. While I was doing research for my dissertation on cycle helmets, I asked half a dozen helmet wearers to make their normal journey without a helmet, and to report back about how long the journey took and how careful they were. All of them stated vehemenlty that it would make no difference and their behaviour would not change, but they all reported feeling much more vulnerable and the journey time increased because they were taking more care. Try it yourself.
The French do seem to have a
The French do seem to have a serious control-freak tendency. See also Burkini bans and niqab bans.
Children may actually be the strongest candidates for wearing bike-helmets, in being the most likely to fall off entirely by themselves at moderate speed. But making helmets compulsory for them also risks installing early the idea that cycling requires lots of special equipment and is inherently dangerous, so I still don’t think it should be a matter for the law.
I wonder what the other 25
I wonder what the other 25 measures are? I hope that they are going to introduce a proper ban for people caught drunk driving, at the moment they can still drive a car (albeit one with a smaller cc) which they can (and often do) drive around whilst drunk as a skunk….
Natrix wrote:
I checked the other measures for you (I am French, living in the UK). It is a very rough translation, but it will do for now:
– more speed cameras and fake speed cameras to be installed
– use of drones to read number plates rather than helicopters
– driving without a licence is now a specific crime (not sure what it was before)
– now need to show your insurance papers when getting a new number plate done
– stopping cars from working without the use of a breathalysers if you were caught drink driving before and if you need your licence in the course of your work (truck drivers etc). I guess it means adding some kind of electronic reader to the vehicle.
– making gloves mandatory for motor bikers
– some kind of extra training for motorbikes over 56cv
– creation of a database of all speed limit across the country
– making it mandatory for a employer to report an employee that broke the highway code
– allowing employers to check that the employee’s driving licence are still valid
If you can read French, enjoy: http://www.legipermis.com/blog/2015/10/02/les-22-mesures-du-cisr-du-02102015-pour-la-securite-routiere/
marionr wrote:
Thanks Marion, my French isn’t great but it was an interesting read.
Last time in France (Brittany
Last time in France (Brittany) the only cyclists I saw wearing helmets were from the UK. Really don’t see how the too-cool-for-school French kids will be persuaded to wear them…
Good stuff.
Good stuff.
Of course you have to bear in
Of course you have to bear in mind that there is no scientific proof that wearing a lid affects the outcome of any collision of a riders head with a solid object, much as there is no scientific proof that sticking your hand in a food blender and switching said blender on, will have a detrimental effect on your ability to write with the hand that you shoved in the blender. There are no statistics, no studies have ever been done.
Judge dreadful wrote:
Are you new to the helmet debate? Or a troll perhaps?
There are many studies, the largest and most reliable show that, at best, there is no benefit from helmet wearing, and at worst, an increase in risk.
Take a look at cyclehelmets.org
Judge dreadful wrote:
Of course you have to bear in mind that there is no scientific proof that wearing a lid affects the outcome of any collision of a runner/walker’s/car-passenger’s/someone having a shower’s head with a solid object, much as there is no scientific proof that sticking your hand in a food blender and switching said blender on, will have a detrimental effect on your ability to write with the hand that you shoved in the blender. There are no statistics, no studies have ever been done.
The quesion is how likely is it your head will do that, and whether banging on about helmets is likely to have more adverse concequences that you haven’t accounted for.
This site is unusual in that
This site is unusual in that it clearly doesn’t reflect the reality I seem to be seeing on the roads. Most people on road bikes seem to be wearing helmets and will pay handsomly to do so.
Yorkshire wallet wrote:
Just because someone objects to uncritical helmet promotion and advocacy or to suggestions of legal enforcement of helmet use, doesn’t mean they never wear one! I more-often-than-not, do so when cycling (and when meeting hard-line helmet-fans, as their tendency to make arguments involving thought-experiments about hitting people over the head with assorted objects makes me nervous around them).
“There are three kinds of
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
This is such a surprisingly
This is such a surprisingly difficult issue to find reliable evidence in support of either side of the argument or even if you come to it with a genuinely open mind.
The lab tests required for a helmet to pass British standards are unequivocal in demonstrating the reduction in acceleration of a head shaped object, but as far as I am aware do not account for the 80Kg+ of human piling in behind the head.
There are dozens of studies (see ROSPA site) that conclude cycle helmets can reduce head, brain and facial injuries. However, many are decades old from a time when hard shell helmets were more common. All can be criticised in some way due to the nature of the source data and the relatively small number of fatalities in each study caused by head trauma, let alone trying to pick out all the other variables. Even the meta-analysis and grouped re-analysis of the more prominent studies are full of arguments over which studies to include, criteria for quality and interpretation of results. It all gets ridiculously complicated and statistical. One thing that does seem to be common is that more recent studies and re-analysis of older data reduce the benefit of wearing a helmet.
No study that I am aware of has any method of including all the people who claim to have avoided injury and didn’t attend A&E following a head impact where their helmet was damaged. Maybe this is where the discrepancy with all the ‘helmet saved my life’ anecdotes lurks. My personal repertoire is 2 broken lid incidents that I limped away from but without head injury and watching a cyclist die from a depressed skull fracture which may, may, may have been mitigated had she been wearing a helmet.
And there are of course the vested interests. The libertarians on one side who resent anything that smells of nanny state and restrictions on freedom, and commercial organisations who want to sell safety equipment to name but two.
And this is before you even start on the whole impact on population health by making cycling more regulated and less attractive as a viable transport solution for local journeys with arguments surrounding compulsion and demanding that cyclists protect themselves from other road users by means of a flimsy plastic hat, rather than providing the good quality infrastructure that is needed.
So are helmets affective at reducing the chances of death or serious injury from head trauma? I really have no opinion on that any more. However it’s not a risk that I really consider very up there in terms of sticky ends that I am likely to come to. Can a helmet save a few lumps and bumps along the way? Well my anecdotal experience is a definitive yes. I don’t find wearing a cycle helmet particularly restrictive but neither do I worry if I leave it at home. I most certainly do not want to live in a country where I risk a stupid fine and the police waste a lot of resource hassling cyclists who fail to wear one.
So let’s see how this experiment turns out in France.
Mungecrundle wrote: