Helmet can be a life saver for e-bike riders
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A police service station in Jinshan District to educate e-bikers on the importance of wearing a helmet. It is one of 16 such stations in the district.
Chen Huizhi / SHINE -
A police officer explains to a passing e-biker who is found not wearing a helmet about the hazard of not wearing one. The e-biker is asked to watch a short educational film.
Chen Huizhi / SHINE -
E-bikers who are not wearing helmets can rent those for free at the service station.
Chen Huizhi / SHINE -
Different kinds of helmets are displayed at the service station where police also instruct e-bikers on right helmet choices.
Chen Huizhi / SHINE -
The helmet on the right with more protection for the back of one's head is considered to be more favorable.
Chen Huizhi / SHINE
Were it not for her helmet, she might not have live to see this day, Xu Meiqin said.
The 49-year-old Jinshan District resident had a serious traffic accident when riding her e-bike last year, and her helmet saved her life.
She hopes Shanghai’s latest regulations which mandates helmets for e-bikers will finally make people realize their importance.
Xu was riding her e-bike on Mengshan Road N. on May 13 last year and turning left to Longhang Road when she was in collision with a car.
She was thrown to the ground. She suffered a broken leg and bruising but her head escaped injury though her helmet was cracked.
“I always wear a helmet when riding the e-bike, because I know it keeps me safe,” Xu said. “If I’m killed in a traffic accident, my family would suffer a lot.”
Xu, a native of Anhui Province, lives with her husband in Shanghai. They have an adult son.
She is one of the district’s 420,000 e-bike riders. Before 2020, a third of the traffic accidents in the city happened in the district and three in five of those involving a death involved e-bikers.
Wearing a helmet when riding an e-bike is not compulsory under the national traffic law, nor in Shanghai previously.
Some statistics show that 60 percent of people who suffer traffic accidents fall on their heads. According to a World Health Organization report, wearing helmets reduces the death rates of motorcyclists and serious injuries in traffic accidents by 40 percent and 70 percent.
Jinshan was the first Shanghai district to launch an awareness campaign about wearing helmets in April last year.
Xia Binfeng, a police officer from Shanyang Police Station who handled Xu’s case, said the urgency for such a campaign was probably higher for a suburban district than for urban ones.
“We have larger streets with less congestion, and motorists tend to drive faster,” he said. “For bikers and e-bikers, this could be a greater danger.”
On a thoroughfare in Shanyang’s industrial zone, residents soon found the small police service stations at street corners different than before.
A TV screen placed outdoors plays a short film about the hazard of not wearing a helmet, with a few chairs and an parasol to provide shade. Beside the station there is a large cabinet with yellow helmets in glass-windowed boxes.
The police service stations have been turned into education points for e-bikers who don’t wear helmets.
Here, e-bikers are told to watch the short film and offered helmets to rent for free. Police officers and their assistants take their contact information and call them later to ensure they have turned their new knowledge into action.
There are currently 16 such police service stations around the district.
Police also advise on which helmets to choose.
“Some workers on construction sites often wear their work helmets when riding e-bikes, but such helmets prevent injuries from falling objects more than from falling on your head,” said Wang Yaojun, an officer with the public education squad of Jinshan traffic police.
Police are also targeting different groups in raising awareness of the need to wear a helmet, such as workers in the manufacturing sector and on construction sites and school children.
Zhou Jianzhong, president of the workers’ union at Shanghai QiFan Cable Co, said his company had purchased over 1,500 helmets for its workers last year. About two in three of the company’s workers ride e-bikes to work.
“Two of our workers have been killed in traffic accidents when e-biking since our company moved here in late 2019,” he said. “After we started to require our workers to wear helmets when commuting, none.”
In the district, 17 companies and 23 construction sites have started to offer free helmets for rent to their workers, police said.
Police have also talked to e-bike dealerships about stepping up the offering of helmets to customers. At e-bike plate application spots around the district, applicants can purchase an insurance policy for free helmets.
The results are encouraging.
Now, over 97 percent of e-bikers in Jinshan wear helmets, and the number of e-bikers killed in traffic accidents between April 2020 and April this year was down 39 percent from the previous 12-month period, police said.
