A majority of motorcyclists wear helmets while riding their bikes. Riders sometimes make the mistake of thinking that if a helmet protects them completely from suffering a head injury an external injury to their scalp or skull , then it must also protect just as completely against brain injury. That is not the case. Even if the scalp or skull suffers no damage in a crash, the force of an impact can cause the brain to twist, deform, or shift inside the skull, resulting in damage to brain tissue, blood vessels, and nerves.
One critical purpose of a helmet is to absorb and redistribute enough of the force of an impact to prevent this harmful movement of the brain inside the skull. However, even the best helmet may not necessarily deaden the impact enough to prevent at least some brain injury.
Instead, the hope that it will limit the severity of the injury so that the rider does not die or suffer catastrophic brain trauma that results in life-long physical, cognitive, and emotional impairments. A rider thrown from a motorcycle onto the ground in an accident also faces a high risk of spinal cord injury.
A helmet can provide some indirect protection against this injury by shielding the base of the skull and upper part of the spine from impact.
However, riders can still suffer injuries to their spines and spinal cords in an impact. In some crashes, the motorcyclist falls from the bike, or gets pinned under the bike, and slides for a distance along the roadway. This is one reason why face shields on helmets can make an important difference for rider safety.
Severe road rash resembles a severe burn in many ways. It damages the skin and the tissue beneath it, causing agonizing pain and exposing the rider to the danger of deadly infection.
Road rash injuries can take months to heal, and leave disfiguring scars. Injuries to the lower extremities are the most common injury approximately 47 percent sustained by motorcyclists in crashes. The other major injury risk is a laceration from either the bike contacting the leg or from road rash. Nearly one in seven motorcycle injuries are to the thorax, or chest area, including the sternum and the ribs.
These injuries can be dangerous because the ribs can puncture internal organs, leading to infection and severe health complications. Many people resist wearing a helmet. After Federal penalties were eliminated in for States failing to have a universal law, about half the States repealed their laws. Several States have enacted or repealed helmet laws since then.
Most other States had laws covering only riders under a specified age, typically 18 or 21 [IIHS, a]. The U. General [Accounting] Office GAO reviewed 46 methodologically sound studies of State helmet laws published before Studies since confirm these results Cummings et al. Some States have helmet laws that only cover young riders. Helmet use is generally low in these States GAO, , and non-comprehensive laws do not translate into meaningful reductions in young rider fatalities rates [D.
Houston, ]. A reduction in fatality rates among all ages was estimated for partial coverage laws compared to no law by [D. Moreover, when Florida eliminated the requirement that all motorcycle riders 21 and older wear helmets, there was an 81 percent increase in motorcyclist fatalities [Ulmer and Northrup, ].
Fatalities even increased among riders under age 21 who were still covered by the helmet law. Hospital admissions and treatment costs have also increased following repeal of universal helmet laws Derrick and Faucher, ; GAO, Almost half of all motorcyclists admitted to hospitals lacked sufficient health care insurance or were covered by government services, so the public ultimately shares many of these costs, as well as a greater long-term burden of care Derrick and Faucher, ; GAO, Hence, the preponderance of evidence is that universal coverage laws provide greater safety and cost benefits than laws that cover only a specific age group.
One study using the National Trauma Data Bank, a large national database with trauma registry data, confirmed that helmet users in motorcycle collisions had lower injury-severity scores, mortality, and resource utilization than nonusers. Weiss, Agimi, and Steiner, , used data from the to State Inpatient Databases of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project and found 38 percent more TBIs among young motorcycle riders in states with a partial helmet use law for only riders under age 21 than young motorcycle riders in states with a universal law.
A comparison of three states with no motorcycle laws New Hampshire, Iowa, and Illinois and three states with partial helmet use laws for those age 17 or younger Connecticut, Indiana, and Wisconsin found no significant difference in average fatality rate per 10, registered motorcycles or helmet use in youth motorcycle-related fatalities, indicating that a partial law has no public health benefit over no law at all Brooks, Naud, and Shapiro, In another study, the partial helmet use law in Connecticut was also associated with low helmet use The effectiveness of helmet use laws is typically measured by changes in different motorcycle-related fatality metrics.
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From to , helmet use increased among riders in states that have a mandatory helmet law. According to the survey data, that rose in those states from 83 percent to In all other states—those that only require helmet use for specific riders—helmet use stayed statistically about the same going from On a regional basis in , riders in the West see which states are in which region below helmeted up most often, with helmet use noted among The south was next at Having a passenger aboard is an apparent factor in increased helmet use by the driver, with The survey methodology considered several factors, including typical weather conditions, traffic conditions, and regulatory factors such as mandatory helmet usage laws.
At the time of the survey, 19 states and the District of Columbia required all on-road motorcyclists to wear helmets. Twenty-eight states required helmets for only specific riders, such as those with instructional permits, under 18, 19, or 21 years of age, or passengers only.
Three states had no helmet requirements. They do not stop or interview motorcyclists to gather the data—only observation in the riding environment is done.
In the most recent survey in CY , motorcyclists on motorcycles were observed on the road between June 2 and June 17 at 1, sites. The observations were made in the northeast, Midwest, South, and West regions; urban and rural settings, weekdays, weekday rush hours, weekends, high-speed traffic, medium and slow speed traffic; heavy, moderate and light traffic volume; clear and non-clear weather conditions.
According to the description of the observation methodology, the observers attempt to also distinguish between helmets being observed that are DOT FMVSS compliant and those that are not.
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