Citation

Hurt HH, Ouellet JV, Jennings G. Proc. Am. Assoc. Automot. Med. Annu. Conf. 1984; 28: 237-246.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1984, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Recent research on motorcycle accidents reported that contemporary crash bar use was essentially without effect in reducing leg injuries: 18% of the motorcycles observed in traffic were equipped with crash bars, 18% of the motorcycles in accidents were equipped with crash bars, and 18% of the leg injuries occurred on motorcycles equipped with crash bars. The effect of crash bars may have been obscured by coding redundancies within AIS-76 which were resolved by the improved AIS-80. The original injury data were reviewed and recorded in accordance with AIS-80. In addition, all 900 cases were carefully reviewed to apply more restrictive definitions of crash bars and further corrections were made to improve quality. The improved and reconstructed data show that crash bar-equipped motorcycles were 15.7% of the accident population, and account for essentially the same proportion of minor and moderate severity leg injury. However, 20.4% of the severe and debilitating leg injuries occurred on crash bar-equipped motorcycles. The rate of debilitating (AIS-3 or greater) injuries is .206 injuries per motorcyclist for crash bar-equipped motorcycles while the rate is .146 for non-equipped motorcycles. Other trends in the improved data are: 1) ankle and foot injuries are less frequent on crash bar-equipped motorcycles severe lower leg, knee and thigh injuries are more frequent, and 2) severe leg injuries are less frequent on crash bar-equipped motorcycles in single vehicle accidents but more frequent in multiple vehicle accidents.