Federal statistics indicate that the vast majority of TBIs are a result of everyday life. Nearly half of all TBIs are the result of falls. Being struck by or against an object—getting hit in the head by a ball or standing up into a fixed object, for example—ranks second on the list. The third leading cause of TBIs is traffic accidents. Sports injuries, assaults, and self-inflicted wounds—generally from suicide attempts—also are leading causes. Motorcycle accidents, a small subset of traffic accidents, tend to result in more severe TBIs, especially when the rider is not wearing a helmet.
However, a federal study determined that modern safety equipment in automobiles has reduced the number of severe TBIs in car crashes while actually increasing the number of milder TBIs. You can stop the head from going through the windshield, but the skull still gets tossed around, and the brain bounces around inside the skull, resulting in TBIs such as concussions. Of the roughly two million TBIs suffered every year, about 1.1 million of those cases—including from traffic accidents—will involve only a mild TBI that doesn’t result in admission to a hospital.
