The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Helmets can help bring down deaths in motorcycle crashes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 07, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Helmets can help bring down deaths in motorcycle crashes

Sahana Charan

Study says that a person riding a motorcycle is 27 times more likely to die in a crash

Bangalore: A helmet can make a difference between life and death. For Srinivas, life changed after he suffered serious head injuries in a motorcycle crash. He was not wearing a helmet at the time of the accident.

Though he survived, Srinivas, working in a senior position in a private bank, started having headaches and delusions, which affected his work. Branding him "mentally unstable" his employers asked him to quit.

Every day, many such persons meet with accidents on the road, and of them many either die of their injuries or are permanently disabled.

According to World Health Organisation, deaths from all types of injuries are projected to rise from 5.1 million in 1990 to 8.4 million in 2020, with road traffic injuries being the major cause for this increase.

Studies and surveys in various countries point to the fact that helmets can bring down the incidence of deaths from injuries due to motorcycle crashes, say neurologists.

A study done in the United States in 2002 revealed that a person riding a motorcycle is 27 times more likely to die in a crash than a person riding any other vehicle. It also said that a motorcyclist without a helmet is 47 per cent more likely to suffer a fatal head injury than a person wearing a helmet.

"Research shows that helmets undoubtedly bring down the incidence of death in motorcycle accidents. In the case of serious crashes, wearing a helmet may not help, but it certainly reduces the impact and the severity of the injury. Often, I have come across persons who tell me they were saved because they were wearing a helmet," said Arun Nayak, consultant neurosurgeon at the Hospital for Orthopaedics Sports Medicine, Arthritis and Accident Trauma (HOSMAT).

HOSMAT receives about 25 accident cases in a day of which around five to seven are head injuries. Last year, the HOSMAT Institute of Neurosurgery got 500 patients with head injuries and of these, 400 had suffered them because they were not wearing helmets

In Victoria Hospital, 16,875 emergency cases were received last year, of which 3,120 accident cases were attended to.

Moreover, a NIMHANS report says that a study on traumatic brain injuries in 23 hospitals covering 41,091 road injury victims showed that motorcyclists were involved in 42 per cent of deaths and 43 per cent of injuries. It also said that the death rate could be brought down by 30 per cent to 40 per cent and injuries by 20 per cent to 30 per cent through a mandatory helmet rule.

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