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Canadian study suggests road cyclists should wear body armour as well as helmets

"Cyclists were often injured after being struck by a motor vehicle," says researcher...

A study of injuries to road cyclists and mountain bikers in Canada has concluded that both groups should be urged to wear body armour as well as helmets.

The study, published in a recent edition of the Canadian Journal of Surgery, looks at incidence, risk factors and injury patterns over a 14-year period among 258 severely injured cyclists in southern Alberta.

“Trauma to the head is still the No. 1 injury in both cycling groups, which underscores the importance of wearing a good-quality, properly fitted helmet,” said Dr Chad Ball, the senior author of the research paper.

“At the same time, almost half of the injuries we noted were either to the chest or abdomen, suggesting that greater physical protection in those areas could also help reduce or prevent serious injury.”

The study examined riders with severe, multiple injuries from 1995 to 2009, as recorded in the Southern Alberta Trauma Database, which tracks trauma patients admitted to Foothills Medical Centre.

In that period, 209 road cyclists were severely injured, and 49 mountain bikers.

“Street cyclists were often injured after being struck by a motor vehicle,” said Dr Derek Roberts, lead author of the study.

Some might therefore think it odd that the surgeons suggest protective equipment rather than improvements to cyclist road safety. In the words of a commenter on Calgary TV’s coverage of this story: “Maybe governments should start doing their job and make streets safe for people to cycling on. Networks of separated bike lanes would be a good start.”

As for the idea of wearing body armour, Dr Roberts told CBC News there's not much research around chest pads, but it is something for cyclists to think about.

He said: "Although we don't know exactly how effective they are, I think that they are something we can give to bicyclists that they can consider to use."

According to the study, the cyclists sampled were just 2.2 percent of 11,772 admissions with severe injuries in the study period. The majority of the other 97.8 percent were probably pedestrians or motor vehicle occupants so it’s curious that the researchers chose not to direct their attention to the road users who might most benefit from being studied.

Researchers say that helmet use frequency could not be determined from admission statistics. However it seems likely that most riders would have been wearing helmets, especially the mountain bikers. It’s therefore interesting to note that researchers found the incidence of traumatic brain injury was identical to a 1975 study in Calgary, well before the widespread adoption of cycling helmets.

Here's Dr Chad Ball talking to CBC News about the study. To be fair, in this clip, he does point out that he thinks it's unreasonable to ask road cyclists to wear body armour.

 

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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45 comments

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3cylinder | 10 years ago
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The 26-68x injury rate per kilometre cycling vs motor vehicle stat is the kind of thing that gets quoted around and feeds the "cycling is dangerous" mindset. These numbers have to be carefully controlled though, and these smack of an apples to oranges comparison - a km to km comparison of car vs bike incidences (including large numbers of motorway kms for a car, and large numbers of tiny bike kms for kids) is clearly meaningless.

The source of the numbers are in many ways flagging Toronto as worse than other places (abstract below). Also the fact that they find falls & injuries are more common on sidewalks suggests to me that they are including kids cycling to school on the pavement/sidewalk, short distance, low skill, many accidents. If you lump these into your commuter cyclist accident rate it's no wonder the data looks crazy.

"This analysis uses data from a survey of Toronto commuter cyclists that collected information regarding accident history as well as regular commute route to work or school. By relating the route information of the 1196 respondents to facility attributes in a Geographic Information System (GIS), defensible estimates of travel exposure on roads, off-road paths and sidewalks were developed. The rate of collision on off-road paths and sidewalks was lower than for roads. The relative rates for falls and injuries suggest these events are least common on-road followed by off-road paths, and finally most common on sidewalks. The rate of major injuries, an injury that required medical attention, was greatest on sidewalks and the difference between paths and sidewalks was negligible. These rates suggest a need for detailed analysis of sidewalk and off-road path bicycle safety. The absolute event rates per bicycle kilometer were found to be between 26 and 68 times higher than similar rates for automobile travel, re-confirming the urgent bicycle safety crisis. Examination of rates for sub-groups of cyclists suggest that experience is an important factor in bicycle safety. The same survey conducted in Ottawa, Canada found event rates much lower than Toronto. This result may confirm urban form, traffic levels and attitude do affect bicycle safety. The analysis also demonstrates a successful method to quantify bicycle travel exposure information and should be considered for further use as complement to other existing techniques."

This has got too dull....Sighs...

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fatty | 10 years ago
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Result of study: Cyclists should start driving cars instead

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ch | 10 years ago
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Bicycle riders need to be endowed with supernatural powers to enable the cars of dangerous and rude drivers to be lifted up and safely placed nose down in a ditch.

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cidermart | 10 years ago
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CanAmSteve read Crazy-Legs post further up. But yes it is an 'Merican' flag

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paulfg42 replied to Some Fella | 10 years ago
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Some Fella wrote:

Horse riders are already wearing air jackets so im sure its only a matter of time before we are being pressured to wear them too.
Does the assertion from this horse rider also sound tediously familiar?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23983566

They're not mandatory though.

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CanAmSteve replied to cidermart | 10 years ago
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Thx - still the wrong country, but the flag is "flying into battle" correctly

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BBB | 10 years ago
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Why are doctors and other self-appointed "experts" on traffic safety so obsessed with cyclists?
What about pedestrians? Should they be wearing body armour, too? No doubt it would save even more lives.
The idea would be incredibly popular with general public.

The whole study is just a waste of time and a distraction from the real problems.

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batch | 10 years ago
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The best improvement in road safety would come from removing all seat belts and air bags from cars and installing a large and lethal spike in the centre of the steering wheel in place of the horn button. Might make drivers a little more respectful of road conditions.

Batch.

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Leviathan replied to batch | 10 years ago
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batch wrote:

The best improvement in road safety would come from removing all seat belts and air bags from cars and installing a large and lethal spike in the centre of the steering wheel in place of the horn button. Might make drivers a little more respectful of road conditions.

Batch.

'I am sorry m'lord but the cyclist swerved in front of me so I ran over him instead of braking and impaling myself.'
See I can be facetious too.

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rggfddne | 10 years ago
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The helmet lot seem unusually quiet on this one, given there doesn't seem to be any objective difference between the suggestions here and their ideas.

Why do I get they'll have conveniently forgotten this next time some oppurtunity to tell someone about how you split yours in two once comes up.

Maybe the next step should be making Wiggo wear armour. After all if he doesn't he's got no one else to blame? Am I right?

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PhilRuss replied to batch | 10 years ago
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batch wrote:

The best improvement in road safety would come from removing all seat belts and air bags from cars and installing a large and lethal spike in the centre of the steering wheel in place of the horn button. Might make drivers a little more respectful of road conditions.

Batch.

[[[[ Yup...and balsa-wood bodywork.
P.R.

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FMOAB | 10 years ago
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All new cars should be made of marshmallow, that way you could combine a collision with a quick snack  26

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Bigfoz | 10 years ago
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Some great research conclusions there...
"“Trauma to the head is still the No. 1 injury in both cycling groups, which underscores the importance of wearing a good-quality, properly fitted helmet,” said Dr Chad Ball"

Followed by
"researchers found the incidence of traumatic brain injury was identical to a 1975 study in Calgary, well before the widespread adoption of cycling helmets."

So they're obviously making a difference then...

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Ciaran Patrick | 10 years ago
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I do worry about this safety culture that is thrown at us. My kids use power tools to build stuff ride there bikes - invented skeleton skateboarding down our close.

Maybe I should just wrap them in bubble wrap, sit them on a chair and place an exclusion zone round them which allows for nothing to enter the zone.

i wonder where the balance is

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Mikeduff replied to jova54 | 10 years ago
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jova54 wrote:
crazy-legs wrote:
jova54 wrote:

In other news.....your picture is back to front  4

No it isn't! US flag (when worn on sleeves as in that pic) is always worn with the stars & stripes upper forward corner. Stems from the days when flags were carried into battle, streaming out behind the flagpole, that's the direction the flag would take when seen from the right.

/fascinating fact of the day

I stand corrected

The flag might not be the wrong way around, but it is WRONG for a caption about Calgary, Alberta (where I grew up). NOT in the USA.

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