Low-income families in Montreal could soon get help to pay for kids' bicycle helmets

As more and more cyclists take to the road, the Opposition at city hall wants Montreal to make sure kids in low-income families have access to helmets.

Ensemble Montréal is proposing a subsidy program similar to what already exists in the northwestern Saint-Laurent borough. That program funding bikes and equipment purchases has been so popular the borough has already reached its spending limit for the year.

"The idea is in fact to allow families that usually don't have the means to actually have access to appropriate equipment," said Alba Zuniga Ramos, the party's critic for active transportation and youth.

Magali Bebronne, the program director at cyclist advocacy group Vélo Québec, says she welcomes the idea. She says helmets can be an added cost some families struggle to afford. They need to be replaced at least every five years, after a crash and as the child grows. 

"Chances are that helmet that was working when the child was three years old will not be working when they're five years old," said Bebronne. "So that maybe adds to the financial burden of making sure children are protected."

Low-income cyclists are twice less likely to wear a helmet than their high-income counterparts, according to Quebec's public health institute (INSPQ.)

For that reason, mandating helmet use, like some other Canadian jurisdictions have done, is "counterintuitive and inequitable," said Bebronne. According to her, tightening the rules would more often than not penalize low-income people without addressing why they don't own helmets in the first place. 

In Quebec, helmets are worn on a voluntary basis except in the municipality of Sherbrooke where helmet use has been mandatory since 2011. Some studies have shown that mandating helmets has increased the use of these by a maximum of 80 per cent. On the island of Montreal, the independent municipality of Westmount also requires helmet use.

Bebronne says a subsidy program could help kids develop good biking safety habits at an earlier age. 

"It just needs to become a standard and a social norm that when you hop on a bike you wear a helmet," said Brebonne.

Helmets help prevent between 50 and 69 per cent of head injuries among cyclists, according to the INSPQ. And it says head injuries account for nearly two thirds of deaths in biking-related accidents.

A spokesperson for the City of Montreal says the administration has proved its commitment to making roads safer and that the bike helmet motion will be debated at City Hall.

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Zuniga Ramos says the details of the motion, like how much money would be put aside, still need to be worked out. 

"It's hard to put a number on the safety for children," she said. "Different boroughs have different needs.... We do need for the administration to give at least the boroughs the opportunity to come up with these programs."

Bebronne adds that the best way to prevent cycling-related injuries is for elected officials on all sides to support more and better bike paths.

"Basically, what we're hoping is that any elected official who makes these kinds of proposals and who supports this kind of proposals will also be consistent and when it comes reallocating space in the city to create safe networks."

A spokesperson for the City of Montreal says the administration has proved its commitment to making roads safer and that the bike helmet motion will be debated at City Hall.