Injury incidence in MX vs. Football

[robwbright]

The recent post about child custody got me thinking about injury incidence in MX vs. other sports. Here are a couple links and pastes comparing MX and Football - I have no idea how accurate or skewed the stats might be. It is interesting, though:

The incidence of motocross injuries: a 12-year investigation
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15133584

We retrospectively evaluated 1,500 accidents with 1,870 rider injuries out of a group of 15,870 athletes participating in European off-road competition from 1980 to 1991. . .

The overall incidence of motocross injuries in our study was 94.5 per thousand, while stadium cross competitions had a 150 per thousand rate and outdoor motocross a rate of 76 per thousand representing a risk of accident of 22.72 per thousand hours of riding. . .

Among the total of 1,870 injuries, 1076 were bruises (57.5% of injuries were bruises);

There were 450 fractures recorded (24% of injuries fractures),

Ligamentous lesions accounted for 344 cases (18.4%).

Head trauma was noted in 86 cases (5.7% of accidents) producing coma in 3%, and loss of consciousness in 14%.

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Incidence of injury in Texas high school football
http://ajs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/20/5/575

Based on evaluation of 100 high schools in the State of Texas during a single football season (1989).

[Note that ALL of these injuries required the athlete to miss all or part of a game or practice. Thus, it is unlikely that most bruises are included in the following numbers.]

A total of 4399 athletes in varsity football programs participated in the study.

There were 2228 injuries, as defined in the study, during the period of study, giving an incidence of injury of 0.506 injury per athlete per year.

Severe injuries--those requiring hospitalization--were found in 137 cases, for an incidence rate of 0.031 injury per athlete per year. The incidence of reportable defined injury was calculated to be 0.003 injury per hour of exposure per student athlete.

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Injuries in Pop Warner Football
http://www.popwarner.com/football/footballsafety.asp?lable=safety

The injury rate in Pop Warner Football is:

• less than one-third the injury rate in high school football
• less than one-fifth the injury rate in college football
• less than one-ninth the injury rate in professional football

• Pop Warner's age-weight schematic protects younger, lighter players, who do not have higher injury rates.

• Organized football among 5 – 15 year-olds has 12 percent fewer injuries per capita than organized soccer in the same age range

• Organized football among 5 – 15 year-olds has 50 percent fewer injuries per capita than bicycle riding in the same age range.

• Organized football among 5 – 15 year-olds has 74 percent fewer injuries per capita than skateboarding in the same age group.

The injury experience of 5,128 boys (8 to 15 years of age, weight 22.5 to 67.5 kg [50 to 150 lb]) participating in youth football revealed an overall rate of significant injury of 5%, with 61% classified as moderate and 38.9% as major injuries.

 

[High Lord Gomer]

That doesn't look good. Football's .003 injuries per hour translates to 3.0 injuries per thousand hours, as compared to the 94.5 per thousand attributed to MX.

 

[FruDaddy]

True, but it takes 3 hour to play a one hour football game, so now we are up to 9 injuries per thousand. Figure in the fact that the game is split into offense and defense (roughly 50/50), and we have to call it 18. Now we get to factor in the fact that only half of the game time is spent playing, the rest is tied up in getting in position and waiting. 36 per 1000.

Now take out the 57.5 percent of the motorcycle injuries that were only bruises, since the football stats don't include bruise only accidents. This brings the cycle injuries down to 40.16. That looks pretty close to me.

 

[whenfoxforks-ruled]

Depends on who's opinion of exactly what times a bunch of percentages 99.9% of the time don't mean squat when you are talking about people!,no assimov here! What about mental trauma from playing group events?

 

[150rguy]

Theres math at school, theres math at home, now every one on the web is talkin math. I dont understand, which according to this stuff is more dangerous, MX or fotball??

 

[Moose]

in my mind, you can't compare these sports. both are extremely irrelevant to one another. they each require different physical aspects and both are played differently. one's on a field for 5-45 seconds a play, while the other is 20 minutes per moto. they each have different objectives.

the info you provided does not provide a valid argument as to just how dangerous mx really is, there are just way too many variables for each aspect.

in the end, i still find it a sweet comparison comparing sports to one another. though i do not take the findings to be the complete truth about one sport.

if only i could find the project i did a while ago. which sport is more dangerous. basically took a bunch of statistics, did some comparisons, injuries per season, and averaged them out. that's how i learned about all the variables vs different aspects of each sport. (once the judges tore into us)

 

[knowiam]

Statistics

It has been said: "There are Lies... there are still bigger lies... and then there are Statistics."

:coocoo:

Ken

 

[placelast]

The way I read it (and you can read it any way you want) is: less than one-in-one-thousand MX injuries vs. five-per-one-thousand for (euro-soccer) football. Maybe I shoiuld reread the data, though it could be subjective since there is little in common between the two sports; one is group-contact and the other individual, non-intentional contact. Basketball and soccer are are closer to each other.

I remember getting just as injuried if not more in practice than actual games, physically, and surpisingly mentally as well since I never knew when one of the creeps was going to do something out of spite when the coach wasn't looking - well, he knew but ignored it and in so doing encouraged it. One creep got a bloody nose (served him well) wehn he met his match, and the other should be using a cane by now as he used to have to drain his knee! With moto it's a bit different as we are all adults and act accordingly.

Back on subject. I wouldn't let our sons play football as due to the relative high rate of head and other bodily trama; too many relatives including myself had/have lasting injuries. Our sons never brought the subject up as they, like me, are skinny and small, were not considered an asset, being in a large city. In my hometown everyone who went out was on the team!

Contact sports are a good and wholesome physical outlet for boys although correct prep, training, and oversight is needed to minimize lasting consequences.

 

[biglou]

I read/heard somewhere that the actual time the ball is in play in a football game is something like 5-10 minutes total. Three hours for a sixty minute game that has 10 minutes of "in-play" time. And MX is all "in-play" time. So extrapolate from that, IMO.

 

[biglou]

From a post on answers.com:

The actual amount of time during "plays" in a football game is much less than the other answers. So, I would have to say that the "actual play time" is the average play length ( 7 seconds) times the amount of plays in the average game (125 for the pros). That results in 875 seconds or 14 minutes and 35 seconds of actual play time. Intuitively, it is obvious that the ball is only moving about a quarter of the time.