10 Great Reasons to Wear a Helmet:

Helmet use saves lives

Increasing helmet use promoted as an effective method of reducing road injuries and deaths.......

10 Great Reasons to Wear a Helmet

1. There are 85 million bicycle riders in the US. Most of them will fall at some point.


2. 770 bicyclists died on US roads in 2006, down just 14 from the year before. Over 90 percent died in crashes with motor vehicles.


3. The "typical" bicyclist killed on our roads is a sober male over 16 not wearing a helmet riding on a major road between intersections in an urban area on a summer evening when hit by a car.


4. About 540,000 bicyclists visit emergency rooms with injuries every year. Of those, about 67,000 have head injuries, and 27,000 have injuries serious enough to be hospitalized.


5. Bicycle crashes and injuries are under-reported, since the majority are not serious enough for emergency room visits. 44,000 cyclists were reported injured in traffic crashes in 2006.


6. 1 in 8 of the cyclists with reported injuries has a brain injury.


7. Two-thirds of the bicycling deaths are from traumatic brain injury.


8. A very high percentage of cyclists' brain injuries can be prevented by a helmet, estimated at anywhere from 45 to 88 per cent.


9. Direct costs of cyclists' injuries due to not using helmets are estimated at $81 million each year.


10. Indirect costs of cyclists' injuries due to not using helmets are estimated at $2.3 billion each year!

Posted in: health