Safety on Bicycles, Skateboards, Scooters, and Skates

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Pediatricians should counsel families on ways their children can avoid injury on bikes, scooters, skateboards, and skates. Although some recommendations are based more on common sense than on evidence, the protective effects of helmet use for bicycle riders are uncontested. Each year in the United States, approximately 500,000 people of all ages are treated in emergency departments (EDs) for injuries related to bicycle riding. About 6% of these visits, 30,000 per year, lead to hospitalization, and close to 1,000 of the injuries are fatal. Facial injury, bony fractures, blunt abdominal trauma, abrasions, and lacerations account for most of the injuries. Although head injuries are involved in …