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Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute

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Bicycle Helmet Materials for Bike Shops


Summary: We are very pleased to provide our materials to bike shops. You can use the files with links below or email us for paper copies to duplicate.


Bike shop customers represent a big audience, and we know that you are as concerned as we are about getting out the message to ride a bike safely and use a helmet.

We also send a lot of materials to schools, police departments, health departments, clinics, hospitals, scout leaders and others who teach bicycle safety in their community.

If you are a bike shop owner who needs pamphlets for your shop, please send us an email with your postal mailing address and we will send you a free packet of pamphlets. What we send is flat duplicating masters of our pamphlets to be photocopied. You are free to duplicate as many of them as you need to use in your shop, and you have our permission to stamp on your shop name in the space on the back. When you run out of pamphlets, you copy some more, rather than having to order them. We update at least annually, so when things slow down in February you should send us an email for new masters.

We are supported by consumer donations, and do not accept funding from the industry or those involved in selling helmets, so we will not ask you for a donation, and in fact would not accept one if you sent it!

In addition to sending paper copies, we provide our pamphlets free for non-profit reproduction and distribution on the web in other ways:

As web pages



As a file for local printing in .pdf format



As a file in Word format

These files are large, and some browsers refuse to let you download them. They are quick on a broadband connection, but if you are calling on a slow modem line they will take a couple of minutes to download. To save them to your local disk, right click on the title and select Save Target As. When the save dialog box comes up, save them to your word processing area and then open them with Word or your word processor. If you left click on the title, some browsers will try to display the file, usually doing a lousy job of it.

Tips on Word Printing

Your copy of Word will treat the files a little differently from ours because it is almost certain that some of our default settings differ. The formatting of these pamphlets is necessarily tight. If you are using the Word version please be prepared to deal with little adjustments if you find that the page breaks are not right, for example, and you get three pages instead of just two (the front and back). You may need to fiddle with margins, page setup, or paragraph spacing, even though we have used standard fonts and spacing. Make sure you have selected the option View - Print Layout. We also recommend using File - Print Preview to avoid doing excessive printouts while you are fiddling. We do not recommend making the text smaller to fit things in. It is small enough already to discourage readers!

Occasionally we get a message from someone whose browser will not download the file for them. If that happens to you, contact us and we can send you the files attached to a return email. We can even send them to you by postal mail on a disk. We do not charge for the disks.
The Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has a website up with materials for teaching kids to ride safely, including a kids bike safety web page. They also have pamphlets and materials available for campaigns, and classroom materials for teachers. Here is the text of one of them. Their stuff is all free, but "in limited quantities." (50 pamphlets, 25 posters) Contact Safety Countermeasures Div., NHTSA, Dept. of Transportation, 4700 7th St. SW, Washington, DC 20590-0001, tel. 202-366-5399, fax (the best way for them) 202-366-2062. We include samples of the NHTSA pamphlets in our Toolkit.

City of Madison



Snell Foundation's Snell Safety Education Center


The Snell Memorial Foundation has full color pamphlets, buttons, posters, videos and other helmet promotion materials. They ask for a small donation and send you an invoice. You can contact them through their website or by postal mail to:

Snell Safety Education Center
3628 Madison Avenue, Suite 11
North Highlands, CA 95660

You can also call them. Their telephone number is (916) 331-5073. Or you can send them email at info@smf.org.