Motorcycle Crashes Five Times More Deadly Than Car Accidents
November 21/2017
Motorcycle accidents caused three times the injuries, ten times the severity, six times the medical cost, and five times the deaths as car accidents, U of T researchers found in a recent study.
Daniel Pincus
“We know that the additional risk associated with driving a motorcycle has not translated into improvements in motorcycle safety,” says the study’s author, Daniel Pincus, a PhD candidate in Clinical Epidemiology at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. “So we hope that estimating the medical costs of care for motorcycle crashes may provide an additional incentive to improve safety.”
Pincus analyzed data from people who were hospitalized in Ontario for motor accidents between 2007 and 2013. Motorcycle drivers in accidents tended to be younger (average age of 36) and were far more likely male (81 per cent) than the average car driver who got into an accident.
The study, conducted using data from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, was published November 20 in the journal CMAJ.
Banner photo by Robin Kanouse via Flickr.