A Michigan boy’s life was saved by a bicycle helmet. 12-year-old Zach Hall was riding his bike to a convenience store near his grandparents’ house to buy worms for fishing, according to Wood TV. He stopped at the stop sign and proceeded into the intersection.

He said he didn’t see the truck coming around the curve. The truck swerved, but Zach still hit the side of the truck. He was thrown from his bike, and his head hit the pavement.

Luckily, Zach was wearing a helmet. The next day he had a few bumps and bruises but was alive to tell the tale. His helmet absorbed the impact of the crash. It cracked into four different pieces. If he had not been wearing the helmet, that may have been his skull that cracked into four different pieces.

However, not everyone’s outcome is as good as Zach’s. Many times people don’t wear a helmet and wind up seriously injured or dead. The number of bicyclist deaths in 2014

Bicycle helmets can save a life. (Flickr / Creative Commons / Robin Zebrowski)

was 726, according to the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center. There were 50,000 bicyclist injuries in 2014, 29 percent struck by cars.

Each year about two percent of motor vehicle crash deaths are bicyclists, according to the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute. In many cases the injuries are to the head, proving the importance of wearing a helmet. Helmets reduce the risk of injury by 85 percent.

Without a helmet, Zach’s life could have been claimed by a motor vehicle crash. This further proves the importance of wearing a helmet to protect against head injury at any age. The CDC states that older children are less likely to wear a helmet. This kind of mentality against helmets needs to be changed. The goal is to not have any crash fatalities for bicyclists by everyone simply wearing a helmet.

Gordon Johnson

Attorney Gordon Johnson is one of the nations leading brain injury advocates. He is Past-Chair of the TBILG, a national group of more than 150 brain injury advocates. He has spoken at numerous brain injury seminars and is the author of some of the most read brain injury web pages on the internet.

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