Personal Injury Law

Motorcycles - Do helmets hinder or help?

By Steve Lombardi

I've received several comments critical of my posts about motorcycle helmets and increased insurance coverage. Different in many respects they all have one argument in common. They argue there are many more collisions in cars that lead to brain injury and therefore the argument is made that if those riding motorcycles should be required to don a helmet then so should automobile drivers and passengers. Of course this argument is specious due to it ignoring the incidence of accidents for each type of vehicle and the miles each drives on an annual basis. Incidence meaning, how many cars are there on the highway as compared to how many motorcycles and the miles each use the public highways each year. Clearly there are more cars and trucks on the highways than there are motorcycles and motorcycles are not driven as many months or miles per year on the public highways. So we would expect to see more traumatic brain injuries in cars and trucks than for motorcycles. But that ignores which type of vehicle is more likely to be involved in a wreck that will lead to a head injury with brain damage. And that is where their argument falls short. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has studied this very issue and the argument is for all practical purposes resolved.

Compared with cars, motorcycles are an especially dangerous form of travel. Per mile traveled, the number of deaths on motorcycles in 2004 was about 34 times the number in cars.1 Motorcyclist deaths have been rising in recent years -- more than doubling between the all-time low in 1997 and 2005. Motorcycles often have excessive performance capabilities, including especially rapid acceleration and high top speeds. They are less stable than cars in emergency braking and less visible. Motorcyclists are more prone to crash injuries than car drivers because motorcycles are unenclosed, leaving riders vulnerable to contact hard road surfaces. This is why wearing a helmet is so important. Helmets are the principal countermeasure for reducing crash-related head injuries, the leading cause of death among unhelmeted riders.

Several comments argue helmets themselves cause an increase in accidents. And so the next question is whether helmets increase the incidence of injury or death for riders and passengers?

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on January 28, 2008 (boomark / email).