New Delhi: Going by the data compiled by Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Centre of AIIMS, more people injured in two-wheeler accidents were found to be wearing helmets in 2022 compared to 2021. There had also been a slight decline in the number of injured, travelling either as driver or as pillion, without helmets.
The data reveals that compared to 2021 when 18.6% drivers and 43.8% pillion-riders were injured for not wearing the protective headgear, the figures stood at 15.4% and 41.1%, respectively, in 2022.
In both years, however, two-wheelers were the most vulnerable vehicle to accidents as they accounted for 74% of all mishaps in 2021 and 74.3% in 2022. A total of 13,362 road traffic injury victims in Delhi-NCR, 84.3% of them men, reached the trauma centre in 2022 and 7,651, 85.9% of them men, in 2021. The majority of the victims were in the age group of 21-30 years — 35.7% in 2022 and 37% in 2021.
“In such (non-helmet) cases, the driver and pillion-rider mainly suffer head injuries that could lead to death or morbidity (any kind of disability),” said trauma centre chief Dr Kamran Farooque. Wearing a helmet is important, but ensuring that it is ISI-certified and complies with govt-approved crash protection standards is absolutely necessary, he pointed out. “If the helmet is not as per standard, there is no protection from it,” he said, adding that a helmet should not be worn without a strap as it will not protect the person during a crash.
According to World Health Organization, head trauma is the leading cause of death for motorcycle-riders and safe, quality helmets reduce the risk of death by over six times and that of brain injury by up to 74%. Yet the use of quality helmets in many low-and middle-income countries remains low even as the number of motorcycles increases rapidly.
Dr Farooque said the head injury patients often required ventilator support in ICU and might remain on ventilator for a long time. Due to this, many other patients who have better prognosis are deprived of ICU care with a ventilator, he added. He advised the best way to save lives of road accident victims was to take them to the nearest hospital with basic life-support facilities.
