The bicycle helmet use after the introduction of all age's helmet legislation

The bicycle helmet use after the introduction of all age's helmet legislation

Introduction

Riding bicycle is on the most popular transportation and recreational activity in Canada, even though it does leads to injuries and then ending up in the emergency department, deaths and hospitalization. It has been observed that 20 percent of the bicyclist have to visit the emergency department because of the head injuries and the increase in proportion with over 75 percent are fatally injured or damaged. After collecting much evidence and evaluating the data it is been a suggestion that helmets can help in reducing the risks of these injuries and deaths.

Discussion

It has been shown to the public that the way helmets can play an important role in preventing the head injuries that could promote to safe bicycling in other countries. But it is very important to keep acknowledging the people about the effectiveness of the usage of helmet, certain systematic and promotional activities like media campaigns, community incentives, and educational program have been designed that could result in short term or long term effectives. There are many cities who are trying to practice the use of helmets and according to the survey two important cities like Calgary and Edmonton including eight other small communities in Alberta have been seen successfully demonstrating the use of helmet in the year 2000 in all age groups.

Law

In the year 2002, provincial law was passed in Alberta that required all the bicyclists to wear helmets who were under the age of 18 and two years later, observational survey was held again in Edmonton to gather data about the use of helmet among the bicyclists and there was an increase seen from 28 percent to 85 percent that came up with the change in law that included the children over 18. Since they wanted to make these changes gradually in the year 2006 St. Albert's city council that is a suburban area located Northwest of Edmonton that held a population of 57,000 observed by the “Statistics Canada 2006” that resulted in passing a traffic law that altered the provincial helmet legislation and making it obligatory for all the age groups to wear helmet while bicycling that was effective since 2006.

In order to observe and analyze the effective of this provincial law, a follow up observation was conducted and that in the year 2006 during summer and quantitative research was performed in order to get to the conclusion of how the usage of helmets lowered or maintained the fatal injuries or deaths in Alberta.

Research

There were five professionally trained observers hired in order to collect the information about the cyclists for specific areas including different levels that consists of schools, designated cycling paths, commuter routes, and residential areas. In order to perform the research accordingly these researches obtained a list of parks and schools through the municipal website. In order to observe the residential areas, the routes that were often used by the ...