VietNamNet Bridge – Strict fines would be imposed on parents who did not make their children wear helmets on motorbikes, said Colonel Nguyen Van Tuyen, head of the Road and Railway Traffic Police Department.

At the workshop “Assessing 2011 Achievements and Planning 2012 Activities on Child Helmet Use”, held in Ha Noi on Monday, Dec 12, Tuyen said a total of 63 million fines had been imposed for helmet violations in 2011, 1 million of which involved children.

Only 16 per cent of children wear helmets when riding motorbikes with their parents, according to a study conducted by the Viet Nam National University in Ha Noi and the Child Care and Protection Department under the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.

The study pointed out that the failure to wear helmets has proved fatal for about 1,800 Vietnamese children each year.

It also revealed that many parents see helmets as an actual threat to the child’s safety. Twenty-six per cent of parents believed that helmets negatively affect children’s health, worried that they cause spinal injuries, for example. Parents also identified inconvenience, lack of affordability, and concerns about appearance as reasons for not putting helmets on their children.

Alarmingly, the younger a child is, the less likely he or she is to wear a helmet.

According to a report by the Ministry of Education and Training, the lack of schools’ attention to child helmet use and their inadequate co-ordination with parents also contributed to the situation.

Also, traffic safety education in general is subject to a number of constraints such as insufficient teaching time, absence of specialised instructors and lack of funds.

Deputy Minister of Transport Le Manh Hung said his department would initiate a campaign to dispel misinformation and encourage helmet safety, in conjunction with increasing punishments for adults carrying children without helmets on motorbikes.

Lotta Sylwander, Representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund in Viet Nam (UNICEF Viet Nam) said: “The sight of children wearing helmets as they travel with their parents is rare, which is of genuine concern as motorcycles are the main form of family transport in Viet Nam, and road traffic injuries are the second leading cause of injury-related mortality for children.”

Sylwander added that safety education and legal enforcement were two critical areas to work on in order to promote child helmet use.

Lotte Brondum, senior representative of the Asian Injury Prevention Foundation (AIP) said the foundation would run a three-year campaign entitled “Children also need a helmet” in co-operation with the Ministry of Transport, UNICEF and other Vietnamese and international organisations.

“If an adult head needs a helmet, then surely a child’s head needs one too,” said Brondum, stressing that there was no minimum age below which children were exempt from donning helmets.

The campaign would focus on the three large cities of Ha Noi, Da Nang and HCM City. Its activities include flyer distribution, agency workshops and family events to communicate safety information and refute the myths about child helmet use.

Behavioural change would be promoted through powerful social marketing messages featured in television spots and on billboards and posters.

The workshop was organised by the Ministry of Transport and UNICEF, and facilitated by AIP Foundation.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News