02Evidence A

Wearing a helmet and fastening the strap while riding motorcycles or e-bikes

Among motorcyclists involved in accidents, deaths and head injuries are markedly less common in those wearing a helmet with the strap properly fastened. The strap must be tightened; a helmet that simply hangs loosely on the head does not count as being worn.

Cost

A helmet costs between 100 and 300 yuan. It takes just 5 s…

Benefit

Cochrane pooled data from multiple studies. Deaths and head injuries were markedly less common among motorcycl…

Cost

A helmet costs between 100 and 300 yuan. It takes just 5 seconds to put on each time.

Benefit

Cochrane pooled data from multiple studies. Deaths and head injuries were markedly less common among motorcyclists wearing helmets. The odds ratio for death was 0.58 (OR 0.58; 95% CI 0.50–0.68). The odds ratio for head injury was 0.31 (OR 0.31; 95% CI 0.25–0.38).

Original sources

Liu BC 等 (2008). Helmets for preventing injury in motorcycle riders. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD004333.pub3

Open source link

Book note

The helmet strap must be fastened; hanging it on the handlebars does not count as wearing it. The data above is from motorcycles. There is no direct research on electric bicycles; they are extrapolated because the manner of head injury after a collision is the same. For wearing helmets while skiing, snowboarding, or cycling, see Section 22, Item 12 (wearing helmets while skiing and mountain biking). For the age threshold for children riding on the road, see Section 30, Item 20 (riding an electric bicycle on the road while under 16 years of age).