Face Behind the Statistics : Fewer Young Bicyclists Hurt in ‘94, but Juan Pedroza Among Injured

Ignoring his mother’s warning, 10-year-old Juan Pedroza slipped out of his North Hollywood home one evening in January and, wearing no helmet, rode away on his bicycle to a friend’s house.

As he returned home, he was struck by a car while trying to cross Oxnard Street at Lankershim Boulevard. One of the vehicle’s wheels crushed his head, leaving the boy with a fractured skull and serious brain damage.

Juan’s mother, Patricia Rodriguez, said she was well aware of the new law that requires children under 18 to wear helmets while riding bicycles on public streets and trails. She even forbade her son from biking because he did not have protective head gear.

“We did not let him ride the bike because he had no helmet,” Rodriguez, 26, said. “We could not afford a helmet.”

With a hard shell on, she added, “at least his head wouldn’t have been damaged. That is the worst part of his injuries.”

In the San Fernando Valley and citywide, the number of youngsters seriously injured or killed while bike riding is down compared with this same time last year. But authorities are unsure whether the new law has been a factor.

Officers are issuing only verbal or written warnings to violators, and some say it is much too early to tell what kind of effect the legislation is having. Police computer records do not indicate whether an injured or killed bicyclist was wearing a helmet.

In the three months since the law went into effect Jan. 1, two serious injuries and no deaths have been reported in the San Fernando Valley involving youths on bicycles.

That’s a slight decrease from 1993 figures, when there were four serious injuries and no fatalities for the same period.

“You can do anything you want with the stats,” said Sgt. Paul Modrell of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Valley Traffic Division. “To me, the difference between two and four is an insignificant number.”

Citywide, the margin is wider. There have been six serious injuries and no deaths of youngsters on bicycles so far in 1994, according to the LAPD’s Traffic Analysis Unit. Last year, 11 minors had been seriously hurt on bikes and two, both 9-year-olds, were killed.

The state helmet law has a one-year grace period in which violators are only issued a warning by police. In 1995, officers will begin issuing citations and fines of up to $25 per offense.

Steve Barrows, a spokesman for the California Coalition for Children’s Safety and Health and an early supporter of the legislation, said his group needed a year to inform the public about the law before it goes into full effect, and to set up programs for getting helmets into the hands of low-income families like Juan’s.

Most of the fines collected from violators will go to safety programs and to loans and grants that help families buy helmets.

Barrows said his office in Sacramento could have referred Juan’s family to local agencies willing to donate helmets.

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A helmet may have lessened the injuries Juan received in the hit-and-run accident Jan. 28, said Detective Jim Mann of the LAPD’s Valley Traffic Division. But, he added, “it’s hard to say.”

Police are still looking for the driver of the car--possibly a blue or black Buick sedan--that struck the boy and dragged his small red bicycle a couple of blocks away from the accident scene. He also suffered a broken hip, foot and leg.

Doctors at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles say he is walking again, but will never regain full strength on the left side of his body.

“He’s slowly rehabilitating,” Rodriguez said. “At least the worst is over. But he has not accepted what happened to him. He keeps saying, ‘Why did I go out that day?’ ”