Schwinn Giving Away 250 Children’s Bike Helmets

Teaching kids to wear bike helmets is important. Biking photo via Shutterstock.

This Saturday, Schwinn Bikes and the ThinkFirst National Injury Prevention Foundation will be giving away 250 free children’s bike helmets at Boston Children’s Hospital’s Martha Eliot Health Center in Jamaica Plain from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. (or to the first 250 kids that show up). Boston Children’s is hosting the safety fair, and in addition to giving away free helmets, there will be a raffle for two Schwinn bikes, games, trivia, and food.

Helmets on Heads is an educational campaign from Schwinn Bikes that stresses the importance of wearing a helmet while riding a bike. The program’s goal is to educate one million kids about bike helmet safety over the next 10 years. But unfortunately, wearing a helmet can seem “uncool” to kids, so the fair is set up to stress the importance of wearing a helmet and to educate children and parents on why it’s important.

Boston is becoming a “bikers city.” Our city recently ranked in the top 10 for the best biking cities in the U.S., with neighborhoods like Cambridge, Fenway/Kenmore, the Back Bay, and Jamaica Plain all ranking very high when it comes to bike friendliness. In addition, City Councilor and mayoral candidate John Connolly is trying to convene a public hearing to talk about Boston’s bike infrastructure and how it can be improved.

With the success of Boston’s bike sharing program, the Hubway, more and more people are taking to our city’s streets on two wheels. The Hubway is even planning to install helmet rental stations at its bike-share locations starting in July. So it is more important than ever to get kids into “liking” their bike helmets to ingrain the behavior early. Think about it: It’s instinctive to put on a seatbelt when getting in a car (or at least if you were taught correctly). So it should be the same for bike helmets. It could save your child’s life.