Effect of Wearing a Helmet on the Occurrence of Head Injuries in Motorcycle Riders in Benin: A Cohort-nested Case-control Study
DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-117833/v1
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Summary
This study investigates the effect of helmet use on the occurrence of head injuries among motorcycle riders in Benin, a country where motorcycles are the primary mode of transport and involved in over half of all road crashes. Motivated by the high burden of road traffic injuries in West Africa and the enforcement of a mandatory helmet law since 2014, the research aimed to verify whether helmet wearing reduces head injury risk and to identify other associated factors. The researchers conducted a case-control study nested within the TraumAR cohort, recruiting participants from five hospitals across northern and southern Benin between July 2019 and January 2020. The final sample consisted of 242 cases (motorcyclists with head injuries) and 484 controls (motorcyclists without head injuries). Data were collected via questionnaires and medical records, covering socio-demographic, behavioral, historical, and environmental variables. The study employed a descending step-by-step binary logistic regression model to assess the association between independent variables and head injuries, adjusting for potential confounders. The results demonstrated a significant protective effect of helmet use. Only 69.8% of subjects with head injuries were wearing helmets at the time of the crash, compared to 90.3% of those without head injuries. After adjusting for other variables, individuals not wearing helmets had 3.8 times higher odds of sustaining head injuries (95% CI: 2.5–5.7). Additionally, driving while fatigued or drowsy increased the odds of head injury by 1.9 times (95% CI: 1.2–3.1), while having no medical history was associated with 2.0 times higher odds compared to those with a medical history (95% CI: 1.2–3.3). Other factors, such as alcohol consumption, mobile phone use, and road conditions, were not significantly associated with head injuries in the multivariate analysis. The study concludes that failure to wear a helmet is a primary risk factor for head injuries among motorcyclists in Benin. The findings support the continued enforcement of helmet laws and suggest that public health initiatives should also target behavioral risks like fatigue. The authors recommend extending helmet mandates to passengers and educating riders to avoid driving while tired. These results underscore the critical role of helmet use in mitigating severe trauma in regions with high motorcycle usage.
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-25 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-26 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 6 | 2026-06-18 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-26; verification: verified.
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