The city is going to hand out free bicycle helmets - and you'd better wear one.
Officials also are looking into a possible law to make helmets mandatory as the city aims to reduce deaths and injuries on its streets, according to a report released yesterday.
State law now requires kids under 14 to wear protective headgear while pedaling. Lax parents may get $50 tickets if their charges are spotted violating the law.
The city will "explore the utility of legislation as a means to increase helmet use," according to the report put forth by four city departments: transportation, parks, health and police.
Nearly all the cyclists who have died in accidents over the past 10 years - 97% - weren't wearing helmets, according to the report.
A spokesman for Department of Transportation Commissioner Irish Weinshall couldn't immediately say yesterday how many free helmets the city plans to distribute.
The city's leading advocacy group for bicyclists said the Bloomberg administration would be making a wrong turn if it sought legislative permission to crack down on helmet-less riders.
As the number of cyclists increases, the less dangerous it becomes because drivers become more aware of having to share the road with two-wheeled travelers, Transportation Alternatives said. Mandating helmets would discourage some people from riding, the group argued.
"Everything the city does to encourage cycling makes bike riding safer, and anything the city does to discourage cycling and make it less convenient will make riding more dangerous," said Noah Budnick, Transportation Alternatives' deputy director of advocacy.
Advocates and cyclists, meanwhile, cheered the Transportation Department's vow to create 200 more miles of onstreet bike lanes and routes over the next three years.
Just one of the 225 bicyclists killed in collisions between 1996 and 2005 occurred in a bike lane, according to the report.
The city now has 216 miles of bicycle paths, striped lanes and signed routes.
Doubling that will complete the backbone of the city's planned bicycle network linking the five boroughs, Weinshall said.
"Our goal is to reduce traffic by getting more people biking, but biking safely," Weinshall said.
