Older Motorcyclists Linked with More Serious Injuries: Grandpa Spending More Time in the Emergency Room

It's always good to "get your motor running," but for the older generation, this can mean more serious motorcycle injuries.

A Brown University study published Wednesday in the journal Injury Prevention, found that bikers age 60 and over were 2 1/2 times more likely to wind up in an emergency room with severe injuries than were riders in their 20s and 30s.

Middle-aged riders were somewhat less likely to suffer an accident than their counterparts, but were still 66 percent more likely to sustain serious injury than were younger bikers.

"There are always some risks involved with motorcycles," said lead author Tracy Jackson, a doctoral student of epidemiology at Brown's Public Health Program. "But there may be some physical factors that make older riders more prone to being in an accident, or more prone to injury." 

Reports also listed that older and middle-aged adults were also more likely to suffer internal organ injuries, most commonly including brain injuries. However, younger riders were more likely to suffer less serious injuries, including but not limited to contusions, abrasions, strains or sprains.

Bone fractures were the most common injuries among all groups of riders. However, the groups highest at risk for the most serious kinds were older.

"The greater severity of injuries among older adults may be due to the physiological changes that occur as the body ages," the authors wrote. "Bone strength decreases, subcutaneous and visceral fat distribution may change, and there is a decrease in the elasticity of the chest wall. ... Other factors such as delayed reaction time, altered balance and worsening vision may also make older adults more prone to getting into crashes," the authors wrote.

Statistics show that a quarter of motorcycle riders in the U.S. are 50 or older.

Previous regional studies have shown that injuries among riders who were 65 or older increased 87% between 2001 and 2007, while fatalities in that same group increased 145 percent.

And overall, authors found that the older riders had a higher risk of hospitalization at 35 percent, while the middle-aged riders had a rate of 25 percent and younger riders only had a rate of being hospitalized at 15 percent.

"The highest rates of hospitalization were for injuries to the head/neck, upper trunk and lower trunk, with older adults being hospitalized approximately half the time they sustained injuries to these sites," the authors wrote.