Helmets Loss among Khon Kaen University Students

Abstract

Background: Traffic accident is an important problem which causes mortality every year in Khon Kaen University Campus. Campaigns for helmet-usage has been done, but many students don’t use. Some of them complaint about the loss of helmet.

Objectives: 1) To determine the rate of helmets loss and the rate of being arrest for riding without wearing the helmet and the financial loss by these problems.

Method: Descriptive study was done. The study population comprised of student who owns motorcycle. Subjects were randomly selected by systematic random sampling from the time-location sampling from5 common parking places. Self-administered questionnaire was employed and the in-depth interview was also used in this study.

Results: From 350 subjects, 99.1% of them were response, 56.5% were female, and 31% and 28.4% were the first and second year students, respectively.  The engineering student and management science student accounted for 18% and 10.8%, respectively.  About 3.7% of the subjects never own the helmet.  The rate of helmets loss is 0.3987 helmet/person-year (95%CI: 0.4, 0.5) and the rate of being arrested is   0.4 time/ person-year (95%CI: 0.4, 0.5), which cost 165.6 Baht/person-year or 3,949,891.2 Baht for total KKU Students in a year.  Most of the helmets were stolen at the owner’s dormitory (26.1%) and at the owner’s faculty (25.6%). Most of the students did not know the exact time of the stealing (37.2%), while 28.9% happened in the afternoon. When study the securing the helmets on the day it was stolen, 90% of them were left unlocked at the motorcycles and 3.9% were locked. For prevention of the helmet lost, 66% of the subjects asking the university to build the lockers for the students.

Conclusions: Two hemets were stolen and 2 were arrested because of not wearing helmet for each 5 KKU students during on year.

Key words:  helmet, loss, KKU, stealing, locker