Every person is different when it comes to chances of suffering injuries as a result of a traffic accident. As we get older, chances of dying that depend directly on our own vulnerability increase (2.6% per year). Riders of motorcycles are almost twice as likely to die (1.8 times more likely) as riders of mopeds. In both cases, the rider is more vulnerable than the passenger.
These figures were obtained from the thesis «Mortality Risk Factors in Car, Motorbike and Moped Traffic Accidents», conducted by the Departament for Preventive Medicine and Public Health (University of Granada) and written by researcher Carolina Donate López. The study was supervised by the professors Pablo Lardelli Claret, Aurora Bueno Cavanillas and José Juan Jiménez Moleón. They studied the chances of dying and the chances of suffering a head injury in a traffic accident for riders of both motorcycles and mopeds, according to the distribution of the analysed characteristics -for the individual, for the accident, for the type of vehicle and for the environment.
To do so, 311606 motorbike and moped accidents between 1993 and 2002 were analysed. Data were provided by the computerised traffic accident registry of the Spanish Department for Transport.
A study of number of deaths and head injuries
311606 accidents were initially studied – motorbike and moped accidents that caused victims where the number of people on the vehicle was not more than two. Two new patterns were then established: the first one studied the number of deaths, the second one studied the head injuries, selecting those riders whose death or head injury was registered. The result of both patterns was 309626 and 249080 respectively.
Carolina Donate’s research offers some interesting conclusions. The first one is that men’s relative death risk – that means, the risk an individual exposed to a particular factor faces compared to someone not exposed to that same risk – is 1.6 times higher than women’s.
The reason for this is that motorcycle and moped accidents are 1.5 times more dangerous if the vehicle is driven by a man. On the contrary, women are 1.4 times more vulnerable than men. As a consequence, they are more likely than men to die if the accident is just as serious.
Helmet use
The use of the helmet was also analysed in the thesis. Riders who wear a helmet are twice as likely to survive if they suffer an accident. However, the researcher pointed out that “the protective use of the helmet is shadowed by the fact that it is associated with more serious traffic accidents (25% more serious)”.
Death is twice as likely in frontal collisions as in frontal-lateral collisions, followed by those accidents where the vehicle leaves the road (1.6 times more risky), and followed by collisions with parked cars or other obstacles (1.5 times more risky). The chance of dying increases as the number of vehicles involved increases. It doubles when that number is three or more.
Two other factors associated with traffic accident deaths are where the accident happens, and the time when it happens. Riding a motorcycle on a motorway means a 5.5 higher risk of dying than riding on the roads of a city with a population of around 100 000 inhabitants.
In urban areas, the risk of death increases as the inhabitant number decreases. Riding at night is also a risk factor, especially between 3am and 7am.
