Mandatory Helmet Use and the Severity of Motorcycle Accidents: No Brainer?

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Magdalena Blanco, Universidad de Montevideo; José María Cabrera, Universidad de Montevideo; Felipe Carozzi, London School of Economics; Alejandro Cid, Universidad de Montevideo

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
Helmets_Uruguay.zip application/zip 13.8 MB 03/30/2022 03:29:PM

Project Citation: 

Blanco, Magdalena, Cabrera, José María, Carozzi, Felipe, and Cid, Alejandro. Mandatory Helmet Use and the Severity of Motorcycle Accidents: No Brainer? Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2022-03-30. https://doi.org/10.3886/E166441V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary We study the impact of mandatory motorcycle helmet use laws on the severity and volume of road accidents in Uruguay by exploiting a change in the enforcement of the traffic law. Using a difference-in-differences design based on an unexpected change in policy, we report a sharp increase in helmet use and a five percentage point reduction in the incidence of serious or fatal motorcyclist accidents from a baseline of 11 percent. The benefits of helmet use are disproportionately borne by groups more likely to experience serious injuries, such as males or young drivers. We find no evidence of other responses in terms of either the volume or type of accident, suggesting that motorcyclists’ behavior did not respond to differences in risk. We show that additional costs of enforcement for the relevant government agencies were negligible and estimate the health benefits of the policy.



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V1 [2022-03-30]

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