Another Reason to Wear A Bicycle Helmet

Brooks Schuelke

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As a parent, I'm pretty good at nagging my kids to wear their bicycle helmets. But this morning, there's another reason to do so.

Earlier this week, in Montana, a middle school teacher was riding his bike at about 25 miles per hour when he spotted a bear in the road. He didn't have time to stop, and he T-boned the bear. The bear fell on the cyclist's head and cracked the helmet before running off. The teacher escaped from this bicycle accident with minor scratches in large part because he was wearing his helmet.

That's unusual, right? Maybe not. Last September, another cyclist was doing some mountain biking when his dogs, who were running ahead of him, barked. The cyclist got off his bike, worried that the dogs were barking at another cyclist, when he was attacked by a black bear. He sustained relatively serious injuries before escaping, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. The bear tried to bite the cyclist's head, only to get a mouthful of helmet.

So the next time I'm nagging my kids, I've got two more stories to tell them.