SEVERAL days after a motor vehicle collision in Trelawny, biker Brenton Smith woke up in hospital with a broken jaw, half his teeth gone and a broken nose. That was five years ago, and the 29-year-old believes he’s alive today because he was not wearing a helmet.

“Helmet bruk neck,” Brenton, who has been driving motorcycles for more than 10 years, shared with the Jamaica Observer as he recounted the fateful day in 2019 when a trip to a gas station on his bike resulted in a collision that sent him flying over the car and left him unconscious for days.

“The doctor himself look on mi and tell mi say if mi did have on a helmet mi wouldn’t deh here right now,” recalled the young man.

But, international helmet expert and road safety specialist Dr Terry Smith has denied that helmets break necks, dispelling the notion as a myth.

In fact, he said the protective hat does not contribute to the risk of neck injury.

“A full-face helmet would’ve protected that jaw, would’ve protected those teeth; it would’ve been a barrier against all of that,” Dr Smith, who has a PhD in head injury biomechanics, told the Sunday Observer. “If you think about all the energy that went into his face to create those fractures, that’s likely why he didn’t sustain a serious brain injury because the teeth, the jaw — all the structures of his face — absorbed all that energy.”

Acknowledging that some medical doctors don’t believe helmets help, the “helmet nerd” said, having seen many different accidents — from decapitations to helmet crushing — there has been only one “bizarre accident” in which the helmet may have contributed to the fatality.

“A rider fell off his motorcycle doing probably about 80 to 100 km; his torso struck a tree and his head ended up whiplashing around the tree. And so, if you think about the physics of an additional mass on, that may have contributed; however, I would argue that you’re not going to survive an 80-100 km impact into a tree anyway,” Dr Smith reasoned.

Like Brenton, other Jamaican bikers believe that wearing a helmet can result in neck injury.

Clive Hawthorne, who is from Grange Hill in Westmoreland, shared that helmets are both good and bad.

“It save your head from if you get a likkle injury, [but] it depends on how yuh get the lick, because the helmet can crick your neck as well, depending on the type of helmet that yuh a wear,” said Hawthorne.

He admitted, too, that he sometimes drives without a helmet.

Since 2012, more than 1,400 motorcyclists have lost their lives on Jamaica’s roads. According to the now six-month-old JN Foundation National Helmet Wearing Coalition, more than 80 per cent of motorcyclists who received fatal or severe injuries in crashes were not wearing helmets.

“This highlights the urgent need for increased awareness and enforcement of helmet use to help reduce these preventable deaths,” said Sydoney Preddie, project manager for road safety and road users at JN Foundation. “Motorcycle-related fatalities make up about 30 per cent of all road crash deaths in Jamaica in 2023.

“One of the key factors contributing to these tragic numbers is the low rate of helmet use among motorcyclists,” she said. “Certified helmets reduce the risk of death by over six times and reduce the risk of brain injury by up to 74 per cent.

“Additional studies have shown that wearing a helmet can reduce the chance of a fatal head injury by up to 42 per cent,” Preddie added.

In his budget presentation in 2022, Prime Minister Andrew Holness committed to distributing 10,000 helmets free of cost to riders in Jamaica. Earlier this year, he noted that the distribution has already begun, with 2,000 helmets already sourced for bikers.

According to a Helmet Survey commissioned by JN Foundation and conducted by Market Research Services Limited last year, 86 per cent of motorcycle drivers, from baseline research, own helmets but only 40 per cent use them routinely.

While the survey found that destination and distance are the main factors that impact whether or not a helmet is worn, Brenton told the Sunday Observer that when he wears a helmet it has to be a half-shell helmet or what he refers to as a “bucket hat”.

Explaining that, in a typical crash, most riders fall from their bike for approximately 1.5 to two metres and strike the ground, or, like Brenton, they launch over the vehicle and, again, strike the ground, Dr Smith said this is where a helmet really proves its value.

“I’ve been looking at motorcycles crashes now for 25 years, and I’ve come to the conclusion that every motorcycle rider and passenger should be wearing a certified motorcycle helmet,” the helmet expert said, adding that different types of helmets are available but as long as the helmet is certified to an international standard, it is going to provide protection to the head in a crash.

“Full-face helmets cover your face, open-face helmets cover the side of your head and half-shell helmets cover less, but all of them will provide protection,” he said.

While pointing out that the data show that the level of protection from a full-face certified helmet is greater than a half-shell helmet, Dr Smith acknowledged that riders may have their own preference, but simply wearing a helmet greatly reduces the risk of serious brain injury in an accident.

“So it is important to get a certified helmet on our head,” insisted Dr Smith.

To those riders who still opt to operate a motorcycle without a helmet, the international helmet expert had this to say:

“Do it for your family. Your family wants you to come home tonight. They want you to ride safe; they want you to be safe and they want to see you at the dinner table. And if you get involved in a crash, you potentially are taking all of that away. A helmet is a small investment for your family.”