Young skateboarders should wear helmets

The design of helmets fashioned after the likes of Tour de France cyclists might look snazzy but many young skateboarders are more likely to wear baseball caps. For their own good, they should wear helmets — a requirement that the City Council is proposing to put into law.

The Council Wednesday will start hearing two bills on the issue:

» Bill 30 would require all skateboarders to wear helmets while riding in the city’s skateboard parks. This measure makes good sense, given that these sites are specifically designed to attract skateboarders and provide them challenging slopes and terrain for their skills.

» Bill 31 would require all skateboarders to don helmets while riding on city streets, sidewalks, parks or in other public spaces. This measure requires more discussion, and perhaps makes more sense to be applied, for starters, only to youths under age 16, as is the state law governing helmets for youths on bicycles.

For many young people, though, prudent considerations such as safety are often not top of mind.

"Helmets suck," 17-year-old recent Farrington High School graduate Dev Lee told the Star-Advertiser’s Gordon Y.K. Pang. "They weigh you down when you skate."

Nevertheless, skateboarding without a helmet is dangerous. The Consumer Product Safety Commission says 78,303 children ages 19 and under had skateboard injuries in 2011. In Hawaii between 1999 and 2008, 12 people died from skateboarding injuries, according to state statistics. Most recently, 16-year-old Reid Krucky died while skateboarding in Hawaii Kai in April; in May 2011, Kameron Steinhoff, 21, died in a skateboarding accident in Kaneohe. Neither was wearing a helmet.

California enacted a law more than a decade ago requiring children younger than 18 to wear helmets while riding skateboards, scooters and inline — Rollerblade — skates, with violators facing fines of $25. Oregon’s 1994 law requiring children under 16 to wear a helmet while bicycling was extended in 2004 to include skateboards, scooters and inline skates.

The Honolulu proposals are regardless of age, but an age condition should be considered, just as helmets are required for those under 16 when riding bicycles. After all, while not all severe falls involving the head causes death, many do cause long-lasting traumatic head and brain injuries.

Skateboarders should be expected to follow disciplines of a fun but sometimes risky activity to discourage "a culture where wearing a helmet isn’t cool," said Mike McFarlane, 50, who was among the community members in the late 1990s who advised then-Mayor Jeremy Harris when the city’s skateparks were being created.

Both of the City Council proposals were introduced by Councilman Joey Manahan, who said he began skateboarding as a youth and skateboarded as a mode of transportation while attending University of Hawaii at Manoa.

"What people are doing nowadays with skateboards I would have never imagined doing when I was riding a skateboard a few years ago," Manahan said.

Indeed, and now the city has a responsibility to require helmet use within its skateparks, which basically invite users to hone and push their skateboarding abilities.

As for street and public-places skateboarding, a city ordinance should require children to do what parents already ought to be insisting for their minor’s safety and continued good health: Wear the helmet.