Pediatric Motorcycle Injury in Taiwan---The Injury Pattern, Injury Severity, and the Risk Factors for Head Injury

About two thirds of child road traffic deaths in the world occur in the South-East Asia and the Western Pacific regions. In Taiwan, motor vehicle injury is also one of the leading causes of deaths in children. Whiles lots of studies have reported the patterns of motorcycle injury and the effectiveness of helmet types in adult motorcyclists,little is known whether the above results can apply to children. Despitethat the mandatory helmet law has been enforced since 1997, a recent study reported thatchild riders not onlyhad lower helmet usage than adult riders on the same motorcycle (59.9% vs. 99.5%) but also were exposed to other risky behaviors from their parents.Therefore, the purposes of this study are to describe patterns and severity of pediatric motorcycle injuries and identify risk factors for head injury in motorcycle child passengers in Taiwan. We plan to construct a pediatric motorcycle injury registry by recording medical information of injured motorcycle child passengers and interviewingadult motorcyclistsfor crash information at an emergency department of hospital. Weexpect to recruit 130 children over a 3-yearstudy period. Moreover, we will perform a large scale of questionnaire survey of motorcycle crash in childrenby interviewing the parents ofelementary students nearby the hospital. From a survey ofabout 8,000 questionnaires, we expect to collect 120 children with a previous motorcycle crash in past year. Finally, a case-control study will be conducted to identify the independent risk factors for head injury in motorcycle child passengers(cases: children with head injuries from the emergency department; hospital controls: children without head injuries from the emergency department; population controls: children having the motorcycle crash experience but no head injuries from the school survey). This study willnot only raise the public attention to the motorcycle safety in children, but also provide the scientific evidence to the government for the further development of prevention strategy in pediatric motorcycle injury.