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 The first statewide investigation since Michigan loosened its law in
2012 also showed a shift in the severity of head injuries diagnosed
in emergency rooms, with more skull fractures and fewer mild
concussions after the state allowed most bikers to ride without
helmets.
“As an emergency physician and a public health researcher, I worry
that the law (change) had a negative impact on the health and
wellbeing of the people of Michigan, and I think that the data bears
that out,” study lead author Dr. Patrick Carter said in a phone
interview.
“Policymakers need to decide whether the effects of this type of law
change are what they want to see,” said Carter, who is a professor
of emergency medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Dr. Jayson Aydelotte, a trauma surgeon at Ascension’s Seton
Healthcare Family and University Medical Center Brackenridge in
Austin, Texas, views compulsory helmets as analogous to seatbelts.
“It’s like when we first started wearing seatbelts. It’s not a
burden, at least it wasn’t for me,” he said in a phone interview.
Aydelotte, who wasn't involved in the new research, rode motorcycles
for about a decade but stopped when he decided it was too dangerous,
even with a helmet.
Carter and his colleagues compared rates of helmet use, deaths and
head injuries for one year before and after Michigan lifted its
helmet law for riders age 21 and older who pass a safety course and
carry $20,000 in medical insurance.
Lawmakers promoted the repeal partly in an effort to increase
motorcycle tourism into Michigan. But the study showed no uptick in
the number of out-of-state motorcyclists involved in accidents,
leading Carter to believe the helmet repeal failed to boost the
number of visitors, he said.
Ironically, a sponsor of the legislation who promoted it as a
tourism draw, state Representative Peter Pettalia, R-Presque Isle,
died in a motorcycle crash in September.
The 61-year-old former emergency medical technician had bemoaned the
fact that Michigan was surrounded by states that allow bikers to
ride without headgear. He was wearing a helmet when a truck hit him.
Carter’s team analyzed 7,235 police-reported accidents as well as
1,094 reports of head injuries among patients hospitalized at trauma
centers.
Though prior studies found that repeals of helmet laws increased the
number of motorcycle accident deaths, the new study showed no
increase in fatalities, as reported in the American Journal of
Public Health.
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But it did find that bikers without helmets were nearly twice as
likely to die in a crash compared to helmeted riders, and three
times as likely to suffer a head injury.
Intoxicated riders appear to be the most vulnerable. Their helmet
use dropped 35 percent in one data set and 47 percent in another.
“Drinkers were the population most likely to take off their helmets
(after the law was repealed), and they already are in a high-risk
pool if they’re going to ride intoxicated,” Carter said.
Aydelotte believes that statewide death rates from motorcycle
accidents likely will rise after the one-year period Carter and his
team studied.
Head injuries are the leading cause of motorcycle accident deaths,
according to the authors. They say motorcyclists died in 14 percent
of U.S. traffic fatalities in 2014, although only 3 percent of
registered vehicles were motorcycles.
Prior research has found that helmets cut head-injury risk by more
than two-thirds, according to the study.
Three states have no helmet requirements; 28 states require some
riders to wear helmets; and 19 states and the District of Columbia
require all motorcyclists to wear them.
A previous study of one Michigan hospital found that deaths and head
injuries rose sharply among bikers treated at one hospital in the
three years following repeal of the helmet law.
Deaths at the crash scene more than quadrupled, and deaths in the
hospital tripled, the American Journal of Surgery study found.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2gIgoXs American Journal of Public Health,
online November 17, 2016.
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