Citation

Graves JM, Pless IB, Rivara FP. Am. J. Public Health 2014; 104(11): e6-7.

Affiliation

Janessa M. Graves is with the College of Nursing, Washington State University, and the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center (HIPRC), Spokane, WA. I. Barry Pless is with McGill University, and the Injury Prevention Program, Montreal Children's Hospital, Montreal, Québec. Frederick P. Rivara is with Seattle Children's Hospital and the University of Washington, Seattle. Frederick P. Rivara is also with HIPRC.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, American Public Health Association)

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.2014.302215

PMID

25211729

Abstract

We thank Salomon et al. and Cowling for their interest in our article on head injuries in cities with public bicycle share programs (PBSPs). Because these data were not based on exposure to bicycling (since such data do not exist), we purposely did not focus the analysis on changes in the rates of absolute number of bicycle-related head injuries. Instead, we examined the proportion of injuries to bicyclists that involved a head injury relative to other bicycle injuries. Salomon et al. in fact highlight why we stand by our data: in bike share cities there was a larger decrease in the number of nonhead injured bicyclists than in head injured bicyclists. Although Cowling calls attention to the decrease in the total number of bike injuries in the PBSP cities, her conclusion that bike safety has improved after the institution of the PBSP is not warranted without denominator data. Nor is there foundation for her speculation why the number of bike injuries in these cities may have decreased. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print September 11, 2014: e1. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2014.302215).

Language: en