Many child cyclists wear helmets wrongly

More and more children are donning protective helmets when cycling but most wear them improperly, exposing them to possible head injury, researchers said on Monday.

A study of 479 children aged 4 to 18 at a Falmouth, Massachusetts, clinic found 73 percent reported they "always" or "almost always" wore a helmet when cycling. Helmet use has steadily risen from 18 percent of child cyclists in 1991.

But a four-minute test found only 4 percent, or 20 of the children, passed the criteria for proper helmet fit.

The three main difficulties were that the helmet rested too high on the forehead, the strap did not fit around the ears in a "V" shape, or the helmet slid too easily forward or backward on the head.

"All of these factors expose the frontal region, the most common site of impact in bicycle head injuries," study author Gregory Parkinson wrote in the journal Pediatrics.