A 2006 study showed that “280,000 people in the U.S. receive a motor vehicle induced traumatic brain injury every year” so you would think that wearing a helmet while driving would be commonplace. Race car drivers wear helmets. But since almost no one wears a helmet while driving a regular car, you probably fear that if you wore one you would look silly, attract the notice of the police for driving while weird, or the attention of another driver who took your safety attire as a challenge. (Car drivers are more likely to hit bicyclists who wear helmets.)
The $30+shipping Crasche hat is designed for people who should wear a helmet but don’t. It looks like a ski cap, but contains concealed lightweight protective material. People who have signed up for cryonics, such as myself, would get an especially high expected benefit from using a driving helmet because we very much want our brains to “survive” even a “fatal” crash. I have been using a Crasche hat for about a week.
The cited stat ultimately comes from
As you surmised, the car stat includes everyone related to cars:
Fortunately, they also break out the numbers for both TBI injuries and deaths by those subcategories:
"Table 10. Average Annual Numbers, Rates, and Percentages of Traumatic Brain Injury-Related Hospitalizations, by Age Group and Specific Motor Vehicle–Traffic (MVT) External Causes, United States, 1995–2001" (subcategories: "MVT—Occupant", "MVT—Motorcycle", "MVT—Pedal Cycle", "MVT—Pedestrian")
MVT-Occupant: average annual rate of 42,000 hospitalizations/injuries ("Note: In-hospital deaths were excluded.")
"Table 15. Average Annual Numbers, Rates, and Percentages of Traumatic Brain Injury-Related Deaths, by Age Group and Specific Motor Vehicle–Traffic (MVT) External Causes, United States, 1995–2001"
MVT-Occupant: 8,819 deaths
They note generally there is underreporting; another paper, after noting that there don't seem to be any decreases in TBI rates post-2001, says that 25% of TBI cases who are knocked unconscious don't seek medical attention, and 14% of those cases seek attention where it wouldn't be recorded in the stats. So that's >42000 injuries and 9k deaths to people inside a car.
Some further reading:
"Traumatic Brain Injury in the United States: An Epidemiologic Overview", Summers et al 2009 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Karen_Schwab2/publication/24219748_Traumatic_Brain_Injury_in_the_United_States_An_Epidemiologic_Overview/links/09e4150f45b4328311000000.pdf?inViewer=0&pdfJsDownload=0&origin=publication_detail
OK, so 42k injuries/9k deaths is sobering, but does it justify wearing a driving helmet? I've been curious about this topic and also walking helmets for a while and now that I have my own car again (ironically, given the datasets here, an old 2000 car), the topic of reducing car risks is also of some personal relevance. I'm going to give a stab at a quick and dirty decision analysis here to get an idea of how the case for driving helmets look.
First, we want to convert the absolute numbers to a probability of injury/death per mile driven: