Feb 21, 2012

USA - No helmet means less freedom



The Trauma Center at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville saves lives. I have been a trauma surgeon at UT since the center was started 25 years ago.

During that time, the center has cared for more than 80,000 East Tennesseans severely injured in car crashes, motorcycle crashes, falls, shootings and other unexpected events. Over 95 percent of those injured survived because of the surgeons and physicians, nurses, techs, pharmacists, chaplains and other members of the trauma team who are available 24/7.

Level One trauma centers have another job besides helping injured patients: providing education about trauma prevention. We know that the best way to have a good outcome from trauma is to never have those injuries occur. We often can return the injured person to normal. With some injuries, however, we save the patient, but they are left with permanent disability. The most common injury that causes this is traumatic brain injury.

Once again this year, the Tennessee legislature is considering a bill to repeal the requirement for motorcycle riders over age 21 to wear helmets. Once again, as trauma-care professionals, we are opposed to this repeal.

The trauma centers in Tennessee have testified before the legislature many times over the past several years, presenting scientific data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that supports motorcycle helmet use. Studies in Arkansas and Texas demonstrated that when helmet laws were repealed, helmet use fell in half and motorcycle deaths rose by 20-30 percent. Conversely, when helmet laws were enacted in California, Maryland, Oregon and several other states, motorcycle deaths dropped by one-third, and hospitalization for brain-injured motorcyclists dropped by half.

Proponents of this bill choose to ignore or discount the scientific data and talk about the proposed economic benefits of helmet repeal or personal freedom of choice. They cite increases in motorcycle registrations, motorcycle purchases and in tourism because of the desire to ride without helmets. Economic data from Pennsylvania show some of this is true. The data also show that the cost increases are greater than the economic benefit, partly due to changes in law enforcement needs but also the increase in health-care costs.

New, inexperienced riders are more likely to have a crash. Without helmets, riders are more likely to have brain injuries that are costly to treat, require rehabilitation and long-term nursing home care, and eliminate the victim from being a taxpaying member of society.

Riders often state that if they are killed in a crash because they are not wearing a helmet, that that should be their choice. I support freedom from outside interference, as long as your personal freedom does not impact that of others. Your death impacts your family. The impact may be even worse when they learn that your brain injury was not fatal, but left you unable to communicate, unable to care for or feed yourself, or unable to live at home.

That impact is very hard on your family, but it is also hard on trauma-care professionals like me, because we are the ones who have to tell your family that you lived — but you will never again be the person you once were.

Dr. Blaine Enderson
The Tennessean

Dr. Blaine Enderson is medical adviser for emergency and trauma services at the University of Tennessee Medical Center and professor of surgery at UT Graduate School of Medicine in Knoxville.



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