When he was a boy, Dr. Steven Mardjetko witnessed a frightening accident as he and his pals were riding their bicycles home from football practice.
“All of the kids used to take off their (football) helmets when they rode home after practice,” Mardjetko recalled. “But this one kid kept his helmet on. While riding home, he was hit by a car. We saw this kid skid, and his head went right into the curb.”
Mardjetko and his friends feared the worst. “But because he had his football helmet on, he stood up and walked away from a severe accident,” Mardjetko said.
This incident would become more meaningful after Mardjetko became a pediatric orthopedic surgeon. “I hadn’t thought about that story in years until I began seeing more and more head injuries,” Mardjetko said. “As I look back, I’m sure he would have had a severe head injury if his helmet was not on.”
Mardjetko, 42, has become one of the state’s leading advocates of wearing bicycle helmets. As chief of pediatric orthopedics at Cook County Hospital in Chicago and as a staff physician at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center and Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Mardjetko has seen the results of childhood head injuries. He has seen youngsters suffer brain damage, loss of motor skills and lifelong paralysis.
“It’s by far the most devastating kind of injury,” he said. “We can get their bones to mend for the most part, and in spine injuries that are not too severe, we can even get their spines to heal. But the head injury is forever. Even though kids have a remarkable capacity to recover, they’re never completely back to normal.”
With summer in full swing and more kids and adults out riding their bicycles, Mardjetko said it is a good time to remind people about the importance of wearing helmets. The Lake Forest father of two has made it his mission. He has served on an injury prevention committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics Illinois Chapter, which has lobbied to get helmet laws in Illinois. So far, they have been unable to get a mandatory helmet law passed for bicyclists.
“We have to approach it the same way as seat belts,” Mardjetko said. “Once you mandate it into law, and once you raise the public awareness, people will start to use them until it becomes second nature. It’s just a matter of staying with it and being conditioned and consistent.”
State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chicago) sponsored a bill last year that would require children under 16 to wear a helmet while riding a bicycle or on a motorcycle. The bill did not make it out of committee.
Nonetheless, Feigenholtz believes the debate succeeded in one sense, because it raised public awareness. “I’m optimistic,” Feigenholtz said, “not about getting a law passed but about increasing the learning curve. More people are wearing helmets out there today.”
While state lawmakers have yet to pass a helmet law, individual communities such as Barrington have passed their own local ordinances requiring helmet use for children (an ordinance requiring adults, too, to wear helmets was rescinded after much protest).
The value of wearing a bicycle helmet, especially for children, is widely acknowledged. But making it a law is where the line is drawn. Randy Neufeld, executive director of the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, said the group’s 5,000 members are divided on whether helmets should be mandatory.
“About half think it’s a good idea and half think it’s a return to fascism,” Neufeld said. “I think it’s important that we put significant resources into helmet education. . . . I think everyone would do well by wearing a helmet.”
Helmet laws may not be the answer. “What’s more important is parental responsibility,” Neufeld said. “Whether my kid has a helmet on should not necessarily be a police issue.”
Mardjetko agrees that a helmet law may not be the right approach. Still, he feels strongly that there should be some way to require children to wear them. Mardjetko said he may consider proposing a helmet law for Lake Forest. If nothing else, he hopes it raises more awareness in his community.
“We’re just starting to get going in Lake Forest with this. It’s my hometown, so I figured I’d start there first,” he said. “Lake Forest is a very nice area, very well educated, I assume, and parents and kids ride around without helmets. I think it’s just a lack of knowledge of the risks. I think if they knew the risks, they would wear the helmets.”
It doesn’t take much to cause a severe or permanent injury. “Any child who is hit by a motor vehicle and doesn’t sustain some type of head injury is very lucky,” Mardjetko said. “I would say the majority of children sustain some type of head injury. We know that kids are killed every day; we know they suffer injuries that are permanent, and there are children who are brain damaged. It’s very frustrating.”
Mardjetko and his wife, Karen, have a son Mac, 4, and daughter, Stephanie, 7. He began teaching them helmet safety as soon as they began cycling. “I know what it’s like to take someone else’s child to the operating room. I know how devastating it can be.”
Mardjetko also is an advocate of helmets for in-line skaters and skateboarders. “The key is appropriate safety equipment. They need elbow pads and wrist protectors,” he said. “Those are where the major injuries occur. I also think helmets are a great idea. The head injury statistics in skating are not as compelling as bikes, but I think it’s still prudent for children to wear helmets.”
Parents should simply use common sense with their kids. “You can’t protect every child every minute of the day,” Mardjetko said. “That’s very difficult to do. There’s no doubt that in something high risk, such as bike riding, we can do something.”
THE FIGURES ON INJURIES
The American Academy of Pediatrics offers these bicycle facts:
– Each year, nearly 1 million people are treated nationwide for bicycle-related injuries.
– Head injuries account for 43 percent of all deaths from trauma in children aged 5-9, far surpassing all other causes.
– Using bicycle helmets reduces total head injuries by 85 percent and reduces the risk of brain injury by 90 percent.
– Use of bicycle helmets nationally would prevent one death every day and a serious injury every four minutes.
– Nearly 25 percent of all significant brain injuries in children 14 years or younger are bicycle-related.
– Seventy-five percent of serious bicycle injuries are head injuries.
– Most bicycle crashes involving children don’t involve cars. Injuries occur from falls, collisions with fixed objects or loss of control.
– Boys are injured twice as often as girls.
