Good evening speaker Quinn and distinguished members of the city council, thank you for providing our coalition with this opportunity to talk about the “helmets for Citi bike Act” that we are in favor of and the importance of your support in passing such a bill for this great city that we live in.
We are excited with this new bike-share program between the city and Citi group Inc. As you know former mayor Bloomberg to both encourage healthy lifestyle and to reduce the number of motorist on NYC road introduced this project. These potential positives of the Citi-bike program are great. Especially for members within our coalition that works in both the health and transportation arena. Moreover, the prices are reasonable so that practically most New Yorkers can afford to participate if they choose to. We love this idea of promoting a program for the city, which is both healthy and affordable to all its residents. However counselor members, there is one big flaw of this program and it deals with public safety. Even with all the positives of this program, the fact that it lacks a helmet requirement is daunting, especially in a city of “fume-belching buses, speeding cabs, honking drivers and texting pedestrians, which turn even short rides into obstacle courses” (McKernan, 2013). The Citi bike program projected to accommodate approximately 10,000 cyclists-both NYC residents as well as tourist. Without a helmet requirement, this creates a recipe for disaster. Consider the following facts, the leading cause of death and permanent disability in bicycle crashes are head injuries. They accounts for 60% or more of bicycle related deaths. A case study involving 129 accidental cycling deaths between January 1 2006 and December 2010 looked to find a relationship between the nonuse of helmets and an increased risk of fatal head injury (Persaud, Coleman, Zwolakowski, Lauwers & Cass, 2012). An association was discovered between dying as a result of sustaining head injury and not wearing a helmet. For New Yorkers, about 2,000 of its residents are admitted to hospitals every year due to bicycle-related injuries, of those about 38% had head injuries. Moreover, every year about 54 New Yorkers are killed in bicycle crashes. How can helmets help? They help to absorb the shock cause by an impact. In an impact, our skull stops, but our brain keeps traveling which eventually crashes into the skull. When this occurs, it bruises and damages the delicate brain tissue. Which most often will result in “lifelong changes in the way [the individual who had the injury] think, act, feel and move (McKernan, 2013).Opponents of helmet laws for adults and children 15 and over in NYC or by those who favored the repeal on universal helmet law, offer the claim that helmets create a “torque on the neck, which is thought to increase the likelihood of a cervical spine injury” (Crompton, et al. 2011). But a present peer reviewed study that analyzed data of motorcycle collision from 2002 to 2006, reported in the journal of the American College of Surgeons, have shown that individuals who wore helmets “had a lower proportion of cervical spine injury compared with non-helmeted riders” (Crompton, et al. 2011). Many other peer-reviewed studies have also suggested these same findings. In the concrete jungle that is New York City, with tightly packed streets and angry drivers, many would think that people would be wise enough to wear a helmet when cruising through the streets. Surprisingly, this is not the case. A study conducted in 2013 by Basch et al. found that of a total of 1,054 Citi-Bike cyclists observed, only 14.7% wore helmets. This study is the first of its kind using a very large sample of bike sharing program users. The results of this study show that bike riders either need further education or stricter rule enforcement/repercussions. Citi Bike should make and enforce a mandatory helmet law to help increase helmet use. Mandatory helmet laws have been associated with a decrease in head injuries and increase in helmet use. One study in Australia found that the introduction of a mandatory helmet law increased helmet use from 31% to 75%, with a decrease in cycling fatality to 48% (Persaud et al., 2012). Moreover, even professional and amateur sports mandates helmets because of the risky sports their players are involve in. Most importantly, “compared to the dollar and human cost of brain injuries, helmets are inexpensive insurance” (McKernan, 2013). Therefore counselor members we urge you to support “the helmets for Citi bike act NYC”. Once again, we would like to thank the city council for giving us this opportunity to state our case and look forward to work more on seeing this Act to pass.
As we stand before you today, we also took account the cost for helmets verses citi bike rentals. Annual Citi –bike rental cost approximately $95 and one U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) approved helmet cost $ 34. The CPSC in a release statement assures that the standard bike helmets will adequately protect the head and that chin straps will be strong enough to prevent the helmet from coming off in a crash .In addition, The Snell Foundation organization that is dedicated to research, education, testing and development of helmet safety standards recommends that users replace their helmet every five years. We can clearly see that the cost of helmet is much more affordable than renting a bike. We believe, wearing helmets should not be an option but required by law. The coalition for helmets for citi-bike NYC is 100% committed into making this important issue mandatory, so New York bike riders can protect themselves from devastating head injuries.

References
Basch, C.H., Ethan, D., Rajan, S., Samayoa-Kozlowsky, Basch, C.E. (2013) Journal of
Community Health. DOI: 10.1007//s10900-013-9785-7
Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute ( BHSI), (2013) , Rental helmets, Retrieved from http://www.bhsi.org/rentals.htm
Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), (2012). CPSC Issues New Safety Standard for Bike Helmets. Retrieved from http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroom/News-Releases/1998/CPSC-Issues-New-Safety-Standard-for-Bike-Helmets/
Crompton, et al. (2011). Motorcycle helmets associated with lower risk of cervical spine injury: debunking the myth. Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 212, 295-300
McKernan, B. (2013). Citi Bikes lack helmet requirement for NYC’s busy streets. Huff Post New
York. Persaud, N., Coleman, E., Zwolakowski, D., Lauwers, B., Cass, D. (2013). Canadian Medical Association Journal. 184(17). DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.120988
Snell Foundation Organization (2013). Why should you replace your helmet every five years? Retrieved from http://www.smf.org/helmetfaq