Bicycle safety is as important for adults as it is for kids of all ages. Traumatic brain injury, commonly known as TBI, is the result of nearly 25 percent of bicycle injuries in California in one year alone, according to the California Department of Public Safety. Traumatic brain injuries leave thousands of individuals hospitalized or diagnosed with permanent brain injury caused by accidents and falls.
Types of Traumatic Brain Injury
Concussions are the most common type of traumatic brain injury, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, which children 5 years of age or younger at the highest risk due to their soft and still developing skull structure. Brain injury may also include compression fractures, closed head injuries that cause bleeding in the brain whether fracture is present or not, and penetrating head injuries, caused when some type of object penetrates the skull and enters the brain.
Statistics
The Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute has compiled alarming data of traffic safety regarding bicycle accidents and deaths from one year alone. In 2009, the last year for published safety data information, states that more than 50,000 bike riders were hurt in bicycle traffic accidents and that the vast majority of those riders were younger than 14 years of age. More than 13,000 younger than 15 years of age were injured, and nearly 100 of those died.
Costs
Costs for treatment of a single traumatic brain injury patient injured in a bicycle accident can reach millions of dollars. According to the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute, the costs related to bicycle accidents that resulted in death for children and teens amounted to just more than $1 billion in a three-year period.
Brain Injury
Young children are at the highest risk of dying from traumatic brain injury and injuries to the skull such as crushing or fractures, according to Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute, with nearly 63 percent of deaths to children caused by a head injury resulting from a collision between bikes and cars. According to statistics collected by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, 8 percent of bike riders wearing helmets died as a result of a bicycle accident, while nearly 91 percent not wearing a helmet died.
Risk
According to the Consumer Product Safety Review of 2006 in regard to Sports Head Gear, the numbers of children hospitalized with head injuries, with and without helmets, ranged from more than 10,000 bicycle riders as compared with roughly 760 skateboarders. The number of children hospitalized for baseball and football sports averaged 1,335. However, the estimated number of head injuries of children not hospitalized was more than 150,000, which helps define the benefits of wearing a helmet for bike riding, as well as any contact sport.
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