MOTORCYCLE CRASH BAR EFFECTIVENESS: A RE-EVALUATION USING AIS-80

Recent research on motorcycle accidents reported that contemporary crash bar use was essentially without effect in reducing leg injuries: 18% of the motorcycles observed in traffic were equipped with crash bars, 18% of the motorcycles in accidents were equipped with crash bars, and 18% of the leg injuries occurred on motorcycles equipped with crash bars. The effect of crash bars may have been obscured by coding redundancies within AIS-76 which were resolved by the improved AIS-80. The original injury data were reviewed and recoded in accordance with AIS-80. In addition, all 900 cases were carefully reviewed to apply more restrictive definitions of crash bars and further corrections were made to improve quality. The improved and reconstructed data show that crash bar-equipped motorcycles were 15.7% of the accident population, and account for essentially the same proportion of minor and moderate severity leg injury. However, 20.4% of the severe and debilitating leg injuries occurred on crash bar-equipped motorcycles. The rate of debilitating (AIS-3 or greater) injuries is .206 injuries per motorcyclist for crash bar-equipped motorcycles while the rate is .146 for non-equipped motorcycles. Other trends in the improved data are (1) ankle and foot injuries are less frequent on crash bar-equipped motorcycles but severe lower leg, knee and thigh injuries are more frequent and (2) severe leg injuries are less frequent on crash bar-equipped motorcycles in single vehicle accidents but more frequent in multiple vehicle accidents.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference, Denver, Colorado, October 8-10, 1984. This paper also has an addendum.
• Corporate Authors:

  American Association for Automotive Medicine

  P.O. Box 222
  Morton Grove, IL  United States  60053
• Authors:
  • Hurt Jr, H H
  • Ouellet, J V
  • JENNINGS, G
• Conference:
  • 28th Annual Conference of the American Association for Automotive Medicine
  • Location: Denver Colorado, United States
  • Date: 1984-10-8 to 1984-10-10
• Publication Date: 1984

Media Info

• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: p. 237-246
• Monograph Title: PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE, DENVER, COLORADO, USA, OCTOBER 8-10, 1984. AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR AUTOMOTIVE MEDICINE

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Crashes; Emergency exits; Injuries; Injury severity; Leg; Measures of effectiveness; Motorcycles; Multiple vehicle crashes; Reduction (Chemistry); Single vehicle crashes
• Identifier Terms: Abbreviated Injury Scale
• Uncontrolled Terms: Effectiveness; Severity
• Old TRIS Terms: Crash bar; Multiple vehicle collision; Reduction
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment; I84: Personal Injuries; I91: Vehicle Design and Safety;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00395809
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• Files: HSL, TRIS, USDOT
• Created Date: Jun 30 1985 12:00AM