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Austintown effort peddles bicycle safety to kids
By Elise Franco
AUSTINTOWN
Tips for parents
Help your child establish the habit early by getting them a helmet with their first bike.
Be a role model, and wear one yourself.
Talk to your children about the potential dangers of not wearing a helmet.
Inform them that most professional athletes wear helmets.
Praise them for putting their helmet on without being asked.
Be consistent and don’t let them ride without a helmet.
Use peer pressure in a positive way by encouraging your child’s friends to wear a helmet.
Source: Austintown Police Department
With school out and the official start of summer fast approaching, township police want to increase bicycle-safety awareness among children and their parents.
Police will be on hand from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. June 26 at Greenwood Hummer, 4695 Mahoning Ave., to give away a free bicycle helmet and an ice-cream cone to children who stop by.
Jeff Toth, the township’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education officer, said Start a Safe Summer is another way for the department to help keep children as safe as possible.
Austintown police need to be involved in “any child-safety programs to protect our children from injury, abuse and criminal activity,” he said. “We have a responsibility to keep our children safe.”
Toth said DARE helped purchase about 100 helmets and plans to pay for the ice cream. He said police tried to get word out about the program to as many children as possible.
“We delivered between 1,500 and 2,000 letters and pledges to all Austintown schools that last day of school,” he said. “They were distributed to every kindergarten through third-grader in our township.”
Toth said that if a specific size runs out or helmets run out completely, he will take down names and telephone numbers and have the helmet delivered.
Police Chief Bob Gavalier said the program, which is sponsored by AAA, has been successful in the past. Gavalier said the department decided to tweak it this year.
He said that under the AAA program, children who are seen by police wearing a helmet are “ticketed” and given a voucher for a free ice cream. Gavalier said the department expanded the program to all children this year to better promote bike safety.
“We feel here, just like with our DARE program, that education is the main highway to get these kids informed,” he said. “The more young kids we can educate, the better off they are. It’s going to be a safer community.”
Toth said the point is to reward the children who are already wearing a helmet while educating the ones who aren’t.
“Children who are not wearing need to understand the consequences of a brain injury,” he said.
Gavalier said statistics prove that helmets reduce the risk of head injuries and brain damage by 85 percent.
The police chief said officers also will perform free car-seat checks, and a bike-safety course will be set up for children to ride through.
“We’ll set up stop signs and yield signs and other traffic signs,” he said. “It’ll teach them how to obey traffic laws.”