Motorcycle Helmets - Economic Implications

The WHO Helmet Initiative was established was to promote the use of helmets as an effective and efficient way to decrease mortality and reduce the number of head injuries throughout the world. Helmets – for motorcycle and bicycle riders – could be used universally, in high-income as well as in middle-income and low-income countries.

Adnan Hyder and his colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the USA, have reviewed some of the economic and policy implications of motorcycle helmets laws in low-income and middle-income countries. Because road traffic injuries are increasing worldwide – they’re expected to be the third leading cause of death and disability by 2020 – interventions like helmets are particularly important.

According to Hyder and colleagues, there is no doubt that continued transfer of effective interventions for road traffic injuries is necessary from high-income to low-income and middle-income countries. The historical effectiveness of universal helmet wearing laws make them particularly attractive for low-income and middle-income countries. Considerable benefit cost ratios have been demonstrated from motorcycle helmets in high-income countries, and these effects may even be more pronounced in low-income and middle-income countries. This is because many of the road traffic injuries in these countries occur in people younger than 45, an age group that is the most economically productive segment in the population.

Hyder and colleagues believe that evidence specifically relevant to middle-income and low-income countries needs to be generated and this evidence is essential to the development of policy and intervention strategies.

Hyder AA, Waters H, Phillips T, Rehwinkel J. Exploring the economics of motorcycle helmet laws – implications for low and middle-income countries. Asia Pac J Public Health 2007;19:16-22.

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