Epidemiology of Bike Accidents: How to Avoid Losing your Head

Melanie

Many of you in SPH might have seen me around the last couple of weeks hobbling around in crutches due to my recent bike accident. Although my sprained foot still has some pain, what tugs at me more is the horrifying thought of what would have happened if I was not wearing that funny-shaped thing on my head called a “helmet”. That’s right. Helmet. Ever heard of it? Yes, it pretty much saved my life. But for some reason, I still see so many bikers out there (yes, even bikers in Public Health) that are not wearing helmets, or worse, talking on a phone while riding their bike. If you think it can’t happen to you, it CAN happen to you.

This leads me to bring up an often down-played but nonetheless important topic in public health: injury prevention. According to Dr. Pietro Tonino of the Loyola University School of Medicine (Washington Post , June 19, 2006), bicycling accidents constitute the second highest reason for ER visits among sports-related injuries. A study in NY (http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/episrv/episrv-bike-report.pdf) showed that a high 74% of fatal bike accidents involved a head injury and that 97% of bicyclists who died were not wearing a helmet. And statistics from Safe Kids USA (http://www.usa.safekids.org/content_documents/Bike_facts.pdf) says that 75% of bike fatalities among children could have been prevented if they were wearing a helmet.

“Could have been prevented” is the key to that last statement. Prevention is where we as public health students and faculty come in. I do not think I need epidemiologic statistics to state the obvious problem at hand. There are numerous public health injury prevention interventions taking place in these issues and if you are truly interested, then get informed and get involved. Use your mind to help others save theirs!