Hospital Emergency Services Director Begins Comprehensive Survey of Moped Accidents

By COLE LOUISON

Mopeds are dangerous. Or aren't they? Or, why, where, when and how are they dangerous?

Starting Jan. 1, the director of emergency medical services at Martha's Vineyard Hospital began the most comprehensive study yet undertaken of two-wheeled vehicles on the Island. The study will conclude Dec. 31, 2000.

Dr. Alan Hirshberg gives a one-page survey to each person admitted to the emergency room because of accidents on a two-wheeled vehicles - these records include bicycles and motorcycles, although they have an injury rate far lower than mopeds, he said.

The results aren't yet in, but already some of the numbers are food for thought: Over the Memorial Day weekend, for example, Dr. Hirshberg surveyed 12 people who visited the emergency room as a result of moped accidents, an average of four injuries a day.

Once all the data is gathered, the numbers will be put into a database where they can be looked at in comparison to each other.

From these comparisons, Dr. Hirshberg hopes to develop information about what keeps causing these injuries. He hopes that when his findings are presented to the public, something might be found to help prevent accidents in the future.

The idea for the study came to Dr. Hirshberg soon after he started his position last August, when he noticed a number of patients' injuries were moped related.

Sometime in September or October, he plans to present a preliminary report of his findings; a final report should be submitted next spring to the six towns of the Island. From this information, he hopes, can come some useful insights.

"Maybe there's some simple things that can be done to lower the rate of injury," he said.

The questions Dr. Hirshberg asks on the form search for patterns in moped accidents that no one has bothered to keep track of before. Tire width, how the injury occurred, the patient's age, residency, the amount of training the patient received before he or she was allowed to hit the roads, how much experience had the patient had before, where on the Island the injury occurred, was the patient wearing a helmet, and the number of people on the vehicle - all these factors are being tracked in the new study.

The most common injuries resulting from moped accidents are abrasions and contusions, or scrapes and bruises. They aren't the only injuries, however. Last summer a moped rider was fatally injured in a crash; Sunday afternoon, another rider was seriously hurt when a car apparently swerved into his lane and hit him head-on.

The data yielded by Dr. Hirshberg's study will also be compared to data on automobile accidents to look at other questions of public health risk, from frequency of accidents to severity of injuries.

Dr. Hirshberg emphasized, in his conversation with the Gazette this week, that his study is still in its early stages. But he did observe that in general, he has found that victims of moped accidents tend to have had "very minimal training" and that they tend to be tourists planning to stay on the Island for under a week.

So far his data does not bear out the popular sense that most moped accidents occur in Chilmark and Aquinnah. Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs, where the vehicles are rented out, see the most, he said.

There are also factors to keep in mind before making conclusions from the data. A lot of minor accidents that result in cuts and bruises for the rider go unreported because the victims of these minor mishaps never go to the hospital, Dr. Hirshberg said.

Data and common knowledge say the most moped accidents occur in July and August, but that is also the time where the Island is most crowded. So is it the crowds that cause the accidents, or the tourists, or the hot weather?

Dr. Hirshberg insists that he does not want to jump to conclusions. He just wants data that he hopes will offer solutions to an Island problem.

"We see this as a public health issue," he said.

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