I am doing my research project on the safety of children while on motorbikes. I found this topic interesting because I noticed that most young children do not wear helmets, but that they do tend to where some combination of face-masks, sunglasses, sun-hats, mosquito nets and safety-belts. I have been doing research on this by sitting on park benches and taking photos and notes about what safety items are being used by the children who pass me on motorbikes. I take photos of the first 15 motorbikes with child passengers who pass me during each sitting. The things that I note are how many children are on the bike, how many adults, how old the kids are (1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12) and then I go through a checklist while looking at the photos to mark what safety items are being used. The items I am looking for are helmets, sun-hats, face-masks, safety belts, sun-glasses, baby-chairs, mosquito nets and safety-belts. I am not done collecting this information yet, as I hope get information on a minimum of 100 motorbikes, but so far I have only 45. Some interesting trends I have noticed so far is that kids who are wearing helmets tend to have helmets as their only piece of safety equipment, whereas kids who are not wearing helmets tend to have at least 3 safety items. I also found it interesting that many motorbikes with multiple child passengers had the younger child without a helmet even when the older child was wearing a helmet.
From the articles I have read for this project I have learned that in Ho Chi Minh city, where I am doing my research, only 30% of children ages 3-9 wear helmets, whereas over 90% of adults in the same city where helmets. According to many of these articles, some of the reasons why parents are hesitant to put helmets on their children are because they think helmets can hurt the child’s neck, that they can’t be fined for not putting helmets on the child and that the children do not like wearing them.