Empirical analysis of the effectiveness of mandated motorcycle helmet use in Taiwan

Abstract

Motorcycles have been the most popular transportation mode in Taiwan. However, each year over 1,000 people lost their life in motorcycle accidents. The high accident risk and high risk of severe injury associated with motorcycle riding have not drawn considerable attention until a few years ago. In order to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities in motorcycle accidents, traffic authorities adopted the mandatory helmet use law on June 1, 1997. One-year motorcycle accident data were collected to analyze the injury severity and helmet use characteristics and also to evaluate the effectiveness of the mandatory helmet use law. These analyses were done by applying logit modeling approach and before-and-after comparisons. The estimation results of logit models uncover important relationship between various risk factors and injury severity and identify a broad range of factors influencing motorcycle helmet use. The before and after comparisons further show that effort to reduce motorcycle casualties by adopting mandatory helmet use law is justified.