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Saturday, July 12, 2003
Helmet law stats called surprise
By DAVID SANDS,
SUN MEDIA
EDMONTON -- Surprising stats suggest bike-accident head injuries
have risen since Alberta passed a mandatory helmet law.
Figures
from nine health regions show a sharp rise in the percentage of
bicycle-related head injury cases in their emergency wards.
And that spike peaks in the six months after the
government's mandatory helmet law.
"I would urge caution in
interpreting these statistics beyond anything more than, 'That's
interesting,' " said Dr. Louis Francescutti, a renowned injury-prevention
specialist.
"It's a very short timeframe for drawing conclusions,"
he said, adding the actual number of head injuries could be so small that
even slight increases lead to dramatic-appearing percentage hikes.
Stats were compiled by emergency room surveys from May to October
-- in each of 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002, when the helmet law, which
applies to riders under 18, took effect.
In the years 1999 to
2001, the percentage of head injuries among all bicycle-related injuries
stayed fairly constant at just above 5%.
By the end of October
2002, however, it shot up to above 10% for children, and just under 10%
for all age groups.
The stats are "a bit of a surprise," said
Alberta Transportation spokeswoman Leanne Stangeland.
"We did
introduce the bike helmet legislation and so it is a bit of a surprise
there would all of a sudden be an increase like this."
The figures
are "really suspect" and could be skewed by several factors, said Kathy
Belton, co-director of the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research,
which collected the stats.
"So you can't really say that bicycle
head injuries are going up. There's issues in terms of how the data is
reported because there's been a change in how the data is actually coded."
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