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- Page navigation anchor for RE: Appropriate helmet use and health care cost savings-a debate worth having.RE: Appropriate helmet use and health care cost savings-a debate worth having.
Regarding the letter by Desipriya et al., unfortunately data about helmet use are not available in the administrative databases used in this study.(1) Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation keeps these statistics. They report 98% of motorcyclists in 2013 were wearing helmets at the time of their crash.(2) Due to mandatory helmet legislation (and near perfect adherence) evaluating the cost savings of helmet use would thus not be possible in Ontario, even if the linked data were available. Together with the limitation that our calculations did not capture costs of outpatient brain rehabilitation, the finding that each motorcycle incurs several times the medical costs each automobile (approximately 6x per vehicle, and 30x per kilometre travelled) is likely conservative compared to jurisdictions where helmet use may not be the norm.
REFERENCES:
1. Pincus D, Wasserstein D, Nathens AB, Bai YQ, Redelmeier DA, Wodchis WP. Direct medical costs of motorcycle crashes in Ontario. CMAJ. 2017;189(46):E1410-E5.
2. Ministry of Transportation. Ontario Road Safety. Annual Report 2013.Competing Interests: None declared. - Page navigation anchor for RE: Direct cost of motorcycle crashesRE: Direct cost of motorcycle crashes
As a retired physician whose first motorcycle licence was issued over sixty years ago, I read with interest the research article by Dr. Daniel Pincus at al which appeared in the December 2017 CMAJ. The numbers they mention are indeed sobering, but what is missing from the analysis is any consideration of incidents involving both cars and motorcycles. From what I can make of published statistics, somewhere between 30% and 70% of motorcycle accidents also involve cars, many of them cases where cars make left turns directly into the path of oncoming motorcycles.
It is difficult to draw conclusions about the costs of motorcycle accidents compared to those involving cars if one does not recognize that both are involved in a large proportion of such collisions. The authors fail to explain how such combined accidents (and there must have been many hundreds of them) were assigned to the motorcycle group or the car group, thus rendering the conclusions meaningless.Competing Interests: None declared. - Page navigation anchor for RE: Helmet usage and head injuriesRE: Helmet usage and head injuries
India has one of the highest rates of motorcycle injuries. Of the victims classified as "severely injured" , nearly 76 per cent sustain head injuries, a figure 25 times higher than that in developed countries. A Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) can lead to a range of problems-from mild concussion to paralysis, from personality changes to even coma. Because the brain cannot heal itself the way other organs do, an injury is often a lifelong problem. Therefore motor cycle acidents form the greatest threats and health hazards in India. Nearly 21 deaths occur for every 100 accidents. These accidents occur because of alcoholism and a craze amog youngsters to drive vehicles very fast carryng sometimes their lady friends. The vehicles that ply are fast track ones which are not suited to the normal higways of India. Most of the company do not adivise the buyers the do's and don'ts of driving such motor cycles.The vehicles are sold to persons with a bank account and guarantor. Advertisements and endorsements regarding such vehicles donot carry warning signals that advise the bikers how to use the bike safely ( safety measures including wearng helmets). Helmets with ISO trade marks do not suit everybody's taste and comfort. Many a time helmet limits the movements of neck and also acts as a barrier for joy rides. Therefore, many wear the helmets in front of the traffic place and as soon as they cross the check points remove them. There were also protests to fight...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared. - Page navigation anchor for RE: Appropriate helmet use and health care cost savings-a debate worth having.RE: Appropriate helmet use and health care cost savings-a debate worth having.
We read with interest the recent valuable contribution to road safety and injury prevention literature by Pincus etal (1). There is considerable evidence that appropriate helmet use alleviate the burden of motor cyclists’ injuries greatly. Previous studies also demonstrates that unhelmeted motorcyclists experience more severe injuries (including traumatic brain injuries), resulting in higher health care costs and an increased likelihood of requiring care beyond the hospital (2, 3). Therefore, it is appropriate and more sensible that we calculate and compare the helmeted motor cyclist injury cost to our health care system with unhelmeted motor cyclist. There is definitive evidence that helmets reduce mortality, traumatic brain injury, and hospital expenditures (3).
The main limitation of Pincus et al., study (1) is that the authors failed to separate the cost according to protective device use of injured motor cyclist, despite a recent systematic review and meta-analysis shows that motorcycle helmet use reduces morbidity and contributes to significant health care cost savings (2) . According to previous related study the mean total hospital charge for helmeted motor cyclist was $4184.26 compared to $7383.31 for unhelmeted motor cyclist. If their cost data separated to address comparatively unhelmeted motorcyclists cost, it would have been contributed appropriately to answer the decade long debate on traffic safety value of appropriate helmet use (1, 2, 4).
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Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared.