Increasing age and experience: are both protective against motorcycle injury? A case-control study

Abstract

Objectives-To assess the associations between age, experience, and motorcycle injury. Setting-Motorcycle riding on nonresidential roads between 6 am and midnight over a three year period from February 1993 in Auckland, New Zealand. Methods-A population based casecontrol study was conducted. Cases were 490 motorcycle drivers involved in a crash and controls were 1518 drivers identified at random roadside surveys. Crash involvement was defined in terms of a motorcycle crash resulting in either a driver or pillion passenger being killed, hospitalised, or presenting to a public hospital emergency department with an injury severity score >5. Results-There was a strong and consistent relationship between increasing driver age and decreasing risk of moderate to fatal injury. In multivariate analyses, drivers older than 25 years had more than 50% lower risk than those aged from 15-19 years (odds ratio (OR) 0.46; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.26 to 0.81). In univariate analyses, a protective eVect from riding more than five years compared with less than two years was observed. However, this protection was not sustained when driver age and other potential confounding variables were included in the analyses. Familiarity with the specific motorcycle was the only experience measure associated with a strong protective eVect (OR (>10 000 km experience) 0.52; 95% CI 0.35 to 0.79) in multivariate analyses. Conclusions-Current licensing regulations should continue to emphasise the importance of increased age and might consider restrictions that favour experience with a specific motorcycle. (Injury Prevention 2000;6:32-35)

Risk factors for injury accidents among moped and motorcycle riders

“…In common with the majority of studies, we identified an excess risk of accident involvement among novice PTW riders (Chang and Yeh 2006;Evans 2004;Harrison and Christie 2005;Lardelli-Claret et al 2005;Lin et al 2003;Mullin et al 2000;Reeder et al 1995;Rutter and Quine 1996;Ryan et al 1998;Skalkidou et al 1999;Yannis et al 2005). This may be due to a combination of young people's inexperience and risk-taking (Chesham et al 1993;Ryan et al 1998) as well as risk exposure (Harrison and Christie 2005;Yannis et al 2005).…”

How similar are two-unit bicycle and motorcycle crashes?

“…A survey of adult Queensland cyclists found that 26% of respondents had only been riding regularly in the last two years (Haworth and Schramm, 2011). Inexperience has also been shown to be a major factor in motorcycle crashes (Mullin et al, 2000;Rutter and Quine, 1996). Inexperience appears to contribute to crash risk by means of lower levels of vehicle control skill and lower levels of hazard perception and responding (Bellet and Banet, 2012;Habibovic and Davidsson, 2012;Hosking et al, 2010), both leading to poorer ability to avoid crashes.…”

Road injuries and relaxed licensing requirements for driving light motorcycles in Spain: a time-series analysis

“…In other studies driver inexperience with motorcycle riding has been shown to be a risk factor for motorcycle collisions. 15,16 Research on licensing programmes for motorcyclists suggests that specific restrictions, such as being under adult supervision, driving only in daylight and enforcement of a zero blood-alcohol level tolerance limit, are factors associated with a reduced number of collisions. 17 A direct association between motorcycle sales and mortality rates has been reported previously.…”