Traumatic Brain Injury- Georgia Motorcycle Accidents

In November of 2000, while ballots were being counted in Florida, I stood in the trauma unit of the Orlando Regional Medical Center with my daughter who had been assaulted. Over the month she was there, one helicopter after another landed on the roof of the trauma unit delivering victims of automobile accidents and motorcycle accidents with severe injuries. Many of them died and many of them sustained severe brain injuries. Many of those traumatic brain injuries occurred because the person riding the motorcycle had no helmet on at the time of the collision. Georgia has a mandatory helmet law requiring all people operating or riding motorcycles to wear helmets – no exceptions. Florida law does not require the use of helmets if you are at least 21 years old and “covered by an insurance policy providing for at least $10,000.00 in medical benefits for injuries incurred as a result of a crash while operating or riding on a motorcycle.” Four states still have no helmet law whatsoever, Illinois, Colorado, New Hampshire and Iowa. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta publishes statistics on traumatic brain injuries by state and the numbers, while high, are not surprising when comparing the two states. For example in 1998, the number of nonfatal TBI hospitalization cases in Georgia was 5,581. The number in Florida was 12719, more than twice that of Georgia!