African-Americans bikers 1.5 times more likely to die in crashes: Study

African-American victims of motorcycle crashes were 1.5 times more likely to die in crashes, even if they wore helmets, says a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

"For reasons that we are still trying to figure out, one size of injury prevention does not fit all groups of people and just wearing a helmet is not enough," said Adil Haider.

Previous studies have attributed these racial disparities to lack of health insurance, reduced access to care, poorer quality of care and a greater number of pre-existing illnesses or injuries.

More research is needed, he said, to determine what role, if any, these issues may play.

Even after controlling for factors such as insurance status, gender and injury severity, black crash victims were 1.5 times more likely to die from their injuries than similarly injured white victims, the study results showed.

The research also found that whites, who were not wearing helmets were less likely to die than African-Americans who were wearing helmets.

Haider said that more focus should be placed on injury-prevention programs that go beyond imploring motorcyclists to wear helmets, since they alone do not appear to be doing enough to protect some crash victims — particularly African-Americans — from death.

The findings are published in the August issue of the American Journal of Surgery.