Helmets Protect Your Head!

Doctors all want you to know about this one weird trick to reduce head injury.

North Carolina requires motorcyclists to wear a helmet at all times.

South Carolina requires helmets only for those aged 21 and younger.

This creates a “natural experiment” where individual risk-taking behavior has less of an impact on the presence of a helmet when suffering motorcycling-related trauma – and a serendipitously-enriched data set due to low (~50%) helmet use in SC.

So, how do the helmeted vs. not helmeted fare?

You really don’t want to have a Head AIS more than 1. It’s a good way to end up in the ICU – and those patients spent more time in the ICU, on a ventilator, and had higher overall mortality (7% vs. 4%).

NC keeps trying to repeal their helmet law, but compliance with it is obviously saving lives and reducing taxpayer/health system burden.