While football tends to dominate discussions around sports-related head injuries, there are far more traumatic brain injuries occurring each year due to biking accidents. The American Association of Neurological Surgeons reports that biking accidents played a role in approximately 86,000 of the 447,000 sports-related injuries seen in ER’s in 2009. There were about 47,000 head injuries caused by football and baseball accounted for over 38,000 head injuries. In children under 14, biking was also the leading cause of head injuries, with about 40,000 injuries, close to double the number for football injuries.
Why are these numbers so high? Part of the reason is that riding a bike is so common – people of all ages can do it. According to Dr. Gonzalo Vazquez-Casals, a neuropsychologist at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in New York, people are also “cavalier” about taking precautions. When bike riders are not wearing helmets, and they collide with cars, serious head injuries often occur. About 90% of bicyclists killed in the U.S. in 2009 were not wearing helmets – a large percentage were middle-aged men. Another safety tip is to use a marked bike lane if the street has it. Streets that have them have 40% fewer crashes ending in death or serious injury. Dr. Robbins enjoys bike riding, though never wore a helmet until last summer. Now he always straps it on before heading out…… NYTimes.com 6/3/13