Protecting You and Your Kids from Head Injuries - Bike and Scooter Safety
From the Show: Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital - Its Your Health Radio
Summary:
Air Date: 4/26/19
Duration: 10 Minutes
Dr. Bud Lawrence discusses how to protect your kids from head injuries when they're riding on bikes and scooters.
Transcription:
Melanie Cole (Host): The city of Santa Clarita recently launched a bike sharing program. Several Southern California communities even have scooter sharing programs. It’s easy now to hop on a bike or a scooter, but what precautions should you take to ensure your safety, especially from head injuries. My guest today is Dr. Bud Lawrence. He’s the medical director of Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital’s Department of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Lawrence, why is head injury safety, bike safety, scooter safety, why is it so important? What do you see in the emergency room?
Dr. Bud Lawrence (Guest): Well good afternoon. Thank you for having me. In the emergency room, that is where we see patients who have been in bicycle accidents, they generally are going to end up making their way to the emergency department, and what we usually see are people with – when it comes to head injury, they can have concussion on the lighter side if it’s just a mild head injury, or we unfortunately do see patients who are sicker from their head injury, they can have skull fractures and actually bleeding of the brain, which certainly can be life threatening.
Host: Yikes, so let’s talk about helmets because they haven’t been around that long. When I was young, I don’t think I wore a helmet on a bike. What are helmets designed to do? Are they really designed to save lives? Can they prevent concussions? Tell us a little bit about helmets.
Dr. Lawrence: Well I agree, when I was a kid, I did not wear a helmet either and I fortunately made it this far, but I have to say the advances in helmet technology do save lives. So we often times will see patients who weren’t wearing a helmet and they have a severe injury, and we see patients who were wearing a helmet and may have no injury or just a mild injury, and you have to understand that every accident is different, but when it comes to emergency medicine and the things that I see on a daily basis, you know clearly I would tell my children and my family members there’s no question about wearing a helmet. They certainly give you protection well above and beyond not wearing the helmet and the bottom line is you never know when an accident’s going to happen. Unfortunately these things usually are unexpected. So when that accident does happen, you want to be as best prepared for it as possible, and absolutely helmets should be on your list of things to have.
Host: So if they’re on the list of things to have for parents, what activities do children need to wear helmets for? Because they do a lot of stuff that predisposes them to these head injuries, and it’s not always easy to get them to wear the helmet, but if we role model of course, that makes it more acceptable to them, but what activities should they be wearing their helmet for?
Dr. Lawrence: You know, clearly things like bicycle riding and scooter riding, like we’re speaking about today, but we do see a lot of concussions when it comes to things like snowboarding and dirt biking. Any time where you can wear a helmet, I’d advise it. Now there are a lot of sports where you can’t wear a helmet, things like cheerleading, and soccer, and volleyball. They are sports where there are activities where a helmet’s just not feasible and unfortunately we have to deal with concussions and head injury in those cases, but again there are, where we see severe head injury is going to be things that have a lot higher energy, so those will be falls while snowboarding or skiing or dirt biking, and certainly bicycles and scooters.
Host: What should we be looking for? Now that they’ve gotten more technologically advanced for helmets, what is it we’re looking for as a parent when we go shopping, we want to fit our child, how are they supposed to fit? What are we looking for?
Dr. Lawrence: Well you want something that fits the child’s head appropriately. So something that’s too small is going to ride high on the head and isn’t going to provide good protection and something that’s too large is just going to wobble around and again isn’t going to provide very good protection. So you want to make sure that you try on multiple sizes to make sure that your child or even your helmet fits properly, and there is a new technology out there called MITS, which stands for multidirectional impact protection system. So these helmets that have MITS in them have a little additional layer of safety where the helmet glides on a sort of low friction surface to allow for a little rotational movement and other movements that just provide your brain a little added protection depending on the variable way that you may fall if you do crash or any other type of impact. So that is certainly a technology advance that for me, my wife, and our children, we have our helmets with that technology because we feel it’s a significant addition to keeping us safer.
Host: Does helmet use encourage cyclists or kids to behave more recklessly? Will they be more tempted on scooters to try ramps and things like that if they’re wearing a helmet?
Dr. Lawrence: I don’t think so. I think they’re doing it anyway. I think that the kids that are doing the crazy things are doing the crazy things, and I think that you have to be real and honest with yourself and if you are taking risk on your bicycle or scooter, you should certainly be wearing a helmet, and it always blows my mind when I see kids in a skate park or on the street doing crazy tricks that are really impressive, but certainly are high risk for head trauma, and I think that there is a certain stigmatism to am I going to be cool or not cool if I’m wearing a helmet – I think you have to move past that and you have to look for the global picture of health, which would be to certainly wear a helmet any time you’re doing those types of activity.
Host: I couldn’t agree more and sometimes you see families riding and it’s so nice that they’re out riding but the kids have helmets on but the parents don’t, and you’re like okay – not necessarily being the best role model, but what about other things Dr. Lawrence, like wrists and knees, and do you see a lot of injuries from those kinds of things if we’re using scooters or bikes?
Dr. Lawrence: Absolutely, so anytime you fall off of a moving item whether it be a scooter or a bicycle, we do see a fair amount of wrist fractures, shoulder injury, even shoulder dislocations. Obviously scrapes and things like that, knee injuries, and the other thing to think about is impact with other moving and nonmoving items, so things like pedestrians and things like vehicles. So we always advised people that they should be riding in the direction of traffic, and interestingly most accidents tend to occur within the 6pm to 9pm window. So certainly if you’re going to be out there in that evening/dusk time period, always a good idea to have maybe something reflective on, or they make a bunch of LED lights for the front and back of your bicycle or scooter to make it more visible. The key thing is visibility and overall rider safety because we do see injuries all over the body, and you have to – it’s like riding a motorcycle, there’s very little protection rather than being in an automobile, so the risk of significant injury or even death is much higher in bicycles and scooters.
Host: So with sharing programs like the bike sharing and scooter sharing, what would you like people to know? If they’re going to get involved in these bike sharing, they should be carrying their helmet with them if they know they’re going to be doing this? Give us your best advice because you see it everyday and you know what you’re talking about. What do you want us to do with programs like that and make sure that we have our helmets?
Dr. Lawrence: Yeah I do see this, and it’s very interesting when I anecdotally these bike sharing and particularly these scooter sharing programs are still prevalent now in our bigger cities. These scooters and bikes go fast, perhaps more speed than you’d be able to generate otherwise, and the majority of these people riding them who are overwhelmingly adults are usually using them to go from point A to point B and usually not wearing a helmet, and on top of that, they’re generally, particularly with the electric scooters, riding in traffic. So these are fairly high risk behaviors, you’re not always visible to vehicles, your chance of being struck by a vehicle is not zero. It’s certainly a reasonably high chance. You have to be very cautious and you should certainly wear a helmet, and on top of that, I feel that there is now a movement for electric scooters to be personally owned since they are so popular, and people riding these higher power electric scooters, they sometimes go 25-30 miles an hour, you need to be safe, you need to treat it almost like a motorcycle.
Host: I agree with you. Thank you so much, Dr. Lawrence, for coming on and sharing your expertise in this department, it’s so important that people hear what you’re saying. Thank you again. You’re listening to It’s Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. For more information, please visit henrymayo.com. This is Melanie Cole, thanks for listening.
Melanie Cole (Host): The city of Santa Clarita recently launched a bike sharing program. Several Southern California communities even have scooter sharing programs. It’s easy now to hop on a bike or a scooter, but what precautions should you take to ensure your safety, especially from head injuries. My guest today is Dr. Bud Lawrence. He’s the medical director of Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital’s Department of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Lawrence, why is head injury safety, bike safety, scooter safety, why is it so important? What do you see in the emergency room?
Dr. Bud Lawrence (Guest): Well good afternoon. Thank you for having me. In the emergency room, that is where we see patients who have been in bicycle accidents, they generally are going to end up making their way to the emergency department, and what we usually see are people with – when it comes to head injury, they can have concussion on the lighter side if it’s just a mild head injury, or we unfortunately do see patients who are sicker from their head injury, they can have skull fractures and actually bleeding of the brain, which certainly can be life threatening.
Host: Yikes, so let’s talk about helmets because they haven’t been around that long. When I was young, I don’t think I wore a helmet on a bike. What are helmets designed to do? Are they really designed to save lives? Can they prevent concussions? Tell us a little bit about helmets.
Dr. Lawrence: Well I agree, when I was a kid, I did not wear a helmet either and I fortunately made it this far, but I have to say the advances in helmet technology do save lives. So we often times will see patients who weren’t wearing a helmet and they have a severe injury, and we see patients who were wearing a helmet and may have no injury or just a mild injury, and you have to understand that every accident is different, but when it comes to emergency medicine and the things that I see on a daily basis, you know clearly I would tell my children and my family members there’s no question about wearing a helmet. They certainly give you protection well above and beyond not wearing the helmet and the bottom line is you never know when an accident’s going to happen. Unfortunately these things usually are unexpected. So when that accident does happen, you want to be as best prepared for it as possible, and absolutely helmets should be on your list of things to have.
Host: So if they’re on the list of things to have for parents, what activities do children need to wear helmets for? Because they do a lot of stuff that predisposes them to these head injuries, and it’s not always easy to get them to wear the helmet, but if we role model of course, that makes it more acceptable to them, but what activities should they be wearing their helmet for?
Dr. Lawrence: You know, clearly things like bicycle riding and scooter riding, like we’re speaking about today, but we do see a lot of concussions when it comes to things like snowboarding and dirt biking. Any time where you can wear a helmet, I’d advise it. Now there are a lot of sports where you can’t wear a helmet, things like cheerleading, and soccer, and volleyball. They are sports where there are activities where a helmet’s just not feasible and unfortunately we have to deal with concussions and head injury in those cases, but again there are, where we see severe head injury is going to be things that have a lot higher energy, so those will be falls while snowboarding or skiing or dirt biking, and certainly bicycles and scooters.
Host: What should we be looking for? Now that they’ve gotten more technologically advanced for helmets, what is it we’re looking for as a parent when we go shopping, we want to fit our child, how are they supposed to fit? What are we looking for?
Dr. Lawrence: Well you want something that fits the child’s head appropriately. So something that’s too small is going to ride high on the head and isn’t going to provide good protection and something that’s too large is just going to wobble around and again isn’t going to provide very good protection. So you want to make sure that you try on multiple sizes to make sure that your child or even your helmet fits properly, and there is a new technology out there called MITS, which stands for multidirectional impact protection system. So these helmets that have MITS in them have a little additional layer of safety where the helmet glides on a sort of low friction surface to allow for a little rotational movement and other movements that just provide your brain a little added protection depending on the variable way that you may fall if you do crash or any other type of impact. So that is certainly a technology advance that for me, my wife, and our children, we have our helmets with that technology because we feel it’s a significant addition to keeping us safer.
Host: Does helmet use encourage cyclists or kids to behave more recklessly? Will they be more tempted on scooters to try ramps and things like that if they’re wearing a helmet?
Dr. Lawrence: I don’t think so. I think they’re doing it anyway. I think that the kids that are doing the crazy things are doing the crazy things, and I think that you have to be real and honest with yourself and if you are taking risk on your bicycle or scooter, you should certainly be wearing a helmet, and it always blows my mind when I see kids in a skate park or on the street doing crazy tricks that are really impressive, but certainly are high risk for head trauma, and I think that there is a certain stigmatism to am I going to be cool or not cool if I’m wearing a helmet – I think you have to move past that and you have to look for the global picture of health, which would be to certainly wear a helmet any time you’re doing those types of activity.
Host: I couldn’t agree more and sometimes you see families riding and it’s so nice that they’re out riding but the kids have helmets on but the parents don’t, and you’re like okay – not necessarily being the best role model, but what about other things Dr. Lawrence, like wrists and knees, and do you see a lot of injuries from those kinds of things if we’re using scooters or bikes?
Dr. Lawrence: Absolutely, so anytime you fall off of a moving item whether it be a scooter or a bicycle, we do see a fair amount of wrist fractures, shoulder injury, even shoulder dislocations. Obviously scrapes and things like that, knee injuries, and the other thing to think about is impact with other moving and nonmoving items, so things like pedestrians and things like vehicles. So we always advised people that they should be riding in the direction of traffic, and interestingly most accidents tend to occur within the 6pm to 9pm window. So certainly if you’re going to be out there in that evening/dusk time period, always a good idea to have maybe something reflective on, or they make a bunch of LED lights for the front and back of your bicycle or scooter to make it more visible. The key thing is visibility and overall rider safety because we do see injuries all over the body, and you have to – it’s like riding a motorcycle, there’s very little protection rather than being in an automobile, so the risk of significant injury or even death is much higher in bicycles and scooters.
Host: So with sharing programs like the bike sharing and scooter sharing, what would you like people to know? If they’re going to get involved in these bike sharing, they should be carrying their helmet with them if they know they’re going to be doing this? Give us your best advice because you see it everyday and you know what you’re talking about. What do you want us to do with programs like that and make sure that we have our helmets?
Dr. Lawrence: Yeah I do see this, and it’s very interesting when I anecdotally these bike sharing and particularly these scooter sharing programs are still prevalent now in our bigger cities. These scooters and bikes go fast, perhaps more speed than you’d be able to generate otherwise, and the majority of these people riding them who are overwhelmingly adults are usually using them to go from point A to point B and usually not wearing a helmet, and on top of that, they’re generally, particularly with the electric scooters, riding in traffic. So these are fairly high risk behaviors, you’re not always visible to vehicles, your chance of being struck by a vehicle is not zero. It’s certainly a reasonably high chance. You have to be very cautious and you should certainly wear a helmet, and on top of that, I feel that there is now a movement for electric scooters to be personally owned since they are so popular, and people riding these higher power electric scooters, they sometimes go 25-30 miles an hour, you need to be safe, you need to treat it almost like a motorcycle.
Host: I agree with you. Thank you so much, Dr. Lawrence, for coming on and sharing your expertise in this department, it’s so important that people hear what you’re saying. Thank you again. You’re listening to It’s Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. For more information, please visit henrymayo.com. This is Melanie Cole, thanks for listening.
