Remember kids... always wear a helmet. (The almighty bikeradar helmet thread)

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lazybeard

I got a reply from the Assistant head. I will be meeting with her on Thursday. Any tips appreciated.

Many thanks for your e mail and feedback. Although we appreciate that
cycle helmets are not a guarantee of road safety, we feel that
anything we can do to reduce risk to our students is a valuable
measure. Our policy will also include road worthiness of bicycles and
road safety awareness, which will be detailed in the letter coming out
to parents shortly. We also have a number of programmes coming up to
educate our students on road safety to show them why we feel these
changes are so important. In the last half term alone we have had
three RTC’s involving our students and feel that the situation is
becoming a serious safeguarding concern. Our policy is falling in line
with other local secondary schools and has the support of our local
policing team. Our intention is purely to make sure our young people
are cycling sensibly and safely rather than as a punitive sanction.
Students who bring bikes to school without a helmet will be able to
take them home once they return to school with a helmet or, parents /
carers will be free to collect them after school if they prefer. We
will however not be allowing any child to cycle away from school
without a helmet on. I would be happy to talk this through with you
in more detail if you would like to come in for a chat.

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Oliver Schick in reply to @lazybeard

Ask who they (or the police they're referring to) have been taking advice from. That letter sounds as if it's been the council's 'Road Safety' officer or a similar 'Road Safety' organisation. It's mostly utter nonsense and straight out of their playbook. The only effect it will have is that fewer pupils will cycle to school. They're probably panicking because they didn't do very much before the RTCs they mention and are afraid of legal action. Stable doors, etc. Point out that the school (as well as the council, obviously) ought to pursue a proper Road Danger Reduction strategy and that what they're following is a discredited ideology that's been very much complicit in getting us to where we are now.

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