ArticleAccident; analysis and prevention2016
Motorcycle helmet use and the risk of head, neck, and fatal injury: Revisiting the Hurt Study.
Article in Accident; analysis and prevention, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- Motorcycle injuries: a systematic review for forensic evaluation.International journal of legal medicine · 2024Pooled it
- Do motorcycle helmets reduce road traffic injuries, hospitalizations and mortalities in low and lower-middle income countries in Africa? A systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC public health · 2022Pooled it
- Supervised and unsupervised techniques to analyze risk factors associated with motorcycle crash.European journal of trauma and emergency surgery : official publication of the European Trauma Society · 2024Article
- Effectiveness of road safety interventions: An evidence and gap map.Campbell systematic reviews · 2024Article
- Article
- Injury patterns and outcomes in motorcycle passengers.European journal of trauma and emergency surgery : official publication of the European Trauma Society · 2023Article
- Relationship between the use and types of helmets with facial injuries - a prospective study.Revista do Colegio Brasileiro de Cirurgioes · 2023Article
- Epidemiological characteristics of crashes and pattern of motorcycle injuries presenting to hospitals in Kisumu City, Kenya: a cross-sectional study.The Pan African medical journal · 2023Article
- Clinical assessment of head injuries in motorcyclists involved in traffic accidents: A prospective, observational study.Revista do Colegio Brasileiro de Cirurgioes · 2022Observational
- Helmet Wearing Saves the Cost of Motorcycle Head Injuries: A Case Study from Karachi, Pakistan.ClinicoEconomics and outcomes research : CEOR · 2021Article
- Effect of motorcycle helmet types on head injuries: evidence from eight level-I trauma centres in Taiwan.BMC public health · 2020Article
- Novelty helmet use and motorcycle rider fatality.Accident; analysis and prevention · 2017Article
- Outcome of head injury in motorbike riders.Pakistan journal of medical sciencesArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Most studies find strong evidence that motorcycle helmets protect against injury, but a small number of controversial studies have reported a positive association between helmet use and neck injury. The most commonly cited paper is that of Goldstein (1986). Goldstein obtained and reanalyzed data from the Hurt Study, a prospective, on-scene investigation of 900 motorcycle collisions in the city of Los Angeles. The Goldstein results have been adopted by the anti-helmet community to justify resistance to compulsory motorcycle helmet use on the grounds that helmets may cause neck injuries due to their mass. In the current study, we replicated Goldstein's models to understand how he obtained his unexpected results, and we then applied modern statistical methods to estimate the association of motorcycle helmet use with head injury, fatal injury, and neck injury among collision-involved motorcyclists. We found Goldstein's analysis to be critically flawed due to improper data imputation, modeling of extremely sparse data, and misinterpretation of model coefficients. Our new analysis showed that motorcycle helmets were associated with markedly lower risk of head injury (RR 0.40, 95% CI 0.31-0.52) and fatal injury (RR 0.44, 95% CI 0.26-0.74) and with moderately lower but statistically significant risk of neck injury (RR 0.63, 95% CI 0.40-0.99), after controlling for multiple potential confounders.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.