Bicycle helmet safety pamphlets
Summary: How to get our helmet safety pamphlets on paper, on disk or by email. Some from other sources,
too.
Our Own Pamphlets
We provide our pamphlets free for non-profit reproduction and distribution in four ways:
On
the web formatted as web pages
As a file for local printing in .pdf format
As a file for local printing in Word format (readable by most word processors). Some computers are not set up to
download a Word file, and you will get just an error message. If that happens, use the .pdf files above. To save a Word
file to your local hard drive:
- right click on the title below
- select Save Target As
- the Save dialog comes up, and you save the file to your word processing area
- Open the file with Word or your word processor.
If you just left click on the title the way you normally do for web files, some browsers will try to display the
file, usually doing a lousy job of it. Some will just stall out. Here are the files:
On actual paper by postal mail
We can mail high resolution duplicating masters (produced at 1200 x 1200 dpi) to you on paper, but we need your
postal mailing address. Send us your postal mailing address by
email or write to us
at:
Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute
4611 Seventh Street South
Arlington, VA 22204-1419
USA
and include a postal mailing address. We will mail the pamphlets on heavy white paper, unfolded, normally within 24
hours. There is no charge for the pamphlet masters. We also include a sample of the CPSC pamphlet described below.
Non-profits are free to add their logo or a sentence telling the reader that this pamphlet was provided through you. But
if you want to make changes in the text please just do that and take all of our info off, making you responsible for the
content.
Commercial users should contact us to ask about adding anything. You are not permitted to charge for our pamphlets. Local
bicycle shops are almost non-profits anyway, so we encourage you to duplicate any of our materials to hand them out in
your shop.
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 any of the text smaller to fit things in. It is small enough already to discourage many readers!
Occasionally we get a message from someone whose browser will not download the file for them. If that happens to you,
send us an email and we can send you the files attached to a return email. We can even send
them to you by postal mail on a CD. If you need a CD, you may want to just request our Toolkit for Helmet Promotion
Programs, including our web page on a CD, our pamphlets, and four DVDs with videos. We do not charge for the DVDs, CDs or
the Toolkit. The costs are minimal and our consumer donations cover them.
US DOT Pamphlets on Paper
The Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration has a website up with materials for teaching kids to ride safely, but it's hard to find, so use a
Google search. They also have pamphlets and materials available for campaigns, and classroom materials for teachers.
Here is
a page describing most of them.
Their stuff is all free, but "in limited
quantities." (50 pamphlets, 25 posters). Ordering on the NHTSA website is best. Or contact Safety Countermeasures Div.,
NHTSA, Dept. of Transportation, 400 7th St. SW, Washington, DC 20590-0001. If you know what you want to order you can fax
an order directly to the warehouse: 202-493-2062.
Here is one sheet that NHTSA no longer distributes, but we think it's still relevant. It's called "Prevent Bicycle
Crashes" and covers both sides of a standard flat sheet of paper. You can download it to print out in either
word format if your system allows downloading word files, or
in PDF
format if those work better for you. We include it in our Toolkit.
US Consumer Product Safety Commission Pamphlets
CPSC has
a web page where you can order their pamphlets on bicycle
and helmet safety. When we last checked in January, 2023 it had disappeared from that page. It is CPSC Pub. 349. We have their
Which Helmet for
Which Activity pamphlet as a .pdf file. Unless they have changed the link it is now
a
page on their website. It can be printed out on legal-sized paper (8.5" x 14"). It is extremely useful as the only official source of advice on using helmets certified for a different activity if there is no specific standard for a sport or activity.
State of California Pamphlets
The California
Department of Health Services has a very useful site up with many materials for school-based helmet promotion
campaigns. Their
Safety Curriculum
for Fourth-Fifth Grade has lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations and one pamphlet in Spanish. We have the files on
the CD in our Toolkit.
City of Madison Pamphlets
The City of Madison has produced a nice flyer on fitting your helmet. Here is
the .pdf version for printing it out. We include it in our Toolkit. They also developed a pamphlet
titled How Children See Traffic.
Comic Book Character
Captain Super Safe is a 16 page
comic in .pdf format with a story of lost helmets solved by Captain Super Safe. If printed out in black and white it
would make a good coloring book. Unfortunately you have to log in to Facebook to access it.
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.
First Wheels, First Helmets
The Monroe, WI, Safe Kids Coalition developed a program called First Wheels, First Helmets to encourage parents to put
helmets on kids from the first wheeled vehicle they get, usually a tricycle. They put together
this tri-fold pamphlet. It can be printed out in color or black-and-white and the photos still look
good. For two sided printing, use the "flip on short edge" setting.