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I use a bike trailer to tow my children. I take them to and from a playground, which is around a 30 minute ride in each direction.
It is 90% greenway, with some sleepy 2-lane connector roads. While I am of course an incredible pedal pumping engine capable of incredible feats, I average only around 12 mph.
The bike trailer has a 5-point harness and an aluminum roll cage.
The problem: Putting helmets on my kids looks fucking miserable. Their heads are cast downward, they have nowhere to look around, and the youngest is clearly upset after around 15 minutes in the trailer. The oldest still has an OK time but is far quieter than when we rode together with a secondary saddle. FAQ says deal with it.
Assume you're a typical parent (I.E. your children are the most important thing in your life and you can't imagine causing them harm through negligence) but you also loathe the vapid stupidity of "better safe than sorry" in the face of all rationality, would you consider forgoing the helmet?
"Other Site" discussions:
I've towed children in a trailer like that with no helmet but for a total of 30min and perhaps half a dozen times.
If this is a routine transit then it's not a bad idea to optimize safety, and have the kids get used to it/get over it. If it's once every couple weeks, probably not worth the hassle of the helmet.
I expect a helmet to be required only in the case of a collision, as you're probably not going fast enough to do any damage if you had a sudden stop.
If you expect a small chance of a collision on that route it'd probably be wiser to forego the whole endeavor altogether as I don't think these trailers are really designed to take any kind of collision with a much larger vehicle. Or if this is already optimal transportation for you, make peace with the idea that perhaps the kids will get hurt if something bad happens. If having a helmet makes them upset and distracts you from potential road danger, then foregoing the helmet might be the safer option.
I've never been super comfortable pavement road riding by myself (vastly prefer gravel) so minimize road time as much as possible. I believe the chances of us being hit by a car on these roads is adjacent to zero. I agree that being hit by a car is pretty much game over regardless of roll cage etc.
I can see the helmet coming into play if I've forgotten to secure the 5-point hardness and there's a flip.
I do like taking them pretty regularly - perhaps 2x a week?
Great thoughts, thank you!
Oh I didn't consider a flip. Yes in that case a helmet would definitely help, even if they are harnessed.
What I think would happen is that we'd first get into a minor flip and perhaps I'd reconsider the whole idea of pulling them for a whole hour. It probably depends on the terrain because with 4 wheels and quite a bit of weight on the back, I don't really see that thing flipping, but I have a very casual experience with it.
Gotcha - FWIW the hour is cumulative (30 minutes there, then we hang out at the playground till they're tired, then we head back).
Getting it to flip would be really difficult in my experience. There's a flex joint that prevents it from doing so if the bike falls down, and I'm not exactly hopping curbs or speeding around corners.
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