By Fatu Kamara with New Narratives

SINKOR, Monrovia – Amos Kollie sits sadly in front of his house here on a recent sunny morning. Amos once spent his days plying the city’s streets on his motorcycle. But since a serious accident in 2022 the 29-year-old has no job prospects and depends on handouts from his parents and friends. 

The accident left Kollie with a severe concussion. He now suffers from constant severe headaches. 

He was one of thousands of victims of motorcycle accidents in Liberia in 2022. In that year 180 motorcyclist deaths were reported to the Liberia National Police and 1200 were injured. In 2023 200 died. Like most of them Kollie was not wearing a helmet. 

“That bike was my only means of living, like paying my rent, food, clothes, and other stuff,” he said.

Riding a motorcycle without a helmet is extremely dangerous according to the World Health Organization. Helmets reduce the risk of fatal head injuries by about 42% and brain injuries by 69%. Without a helmet, riders are far more vulnerable to traumatic brain injuries.

“Head injury is a silent epidemic,” warned Amos Nah Doe, a neurosurgeon at John F. Kennedy Hospital, Liberia’s biggest hospital, in Monrovia. “The head carries your brain, and your brain controls every activity in you as a human being. What happens is that when you fall from the bike, your head comes in contact with the ground causing a shock wave. If you have the helmet on, it reduces the shock on the brain. And if you sustain brain injury, the results are not good without the helmet.”

He warned Liberia’s fragile health system, with only one practicing neurosurgeon, does not have the capacity to treat head trauma.

“We have some equipment to open the skull, but we have been having challenges so have been using the old versions that required time because we have to make many holes on the skull like the ancient days,” he said listing the challenges. “And if you come with a broken neck, we help to stabilize it, and if you can afford, we help you to be evacuated to another country. Our ICU needs attention because we have a ten bedded ICU and that capacity is small.”

The benefits of helmets led the new administration of President Joseph Boakai, in May 2024, to enforce a 2008 law that requires motorcycle riders to wear helmets.

Police concede that active enforcement of the rule was only in place for May and June, but data supplied by the police showed that the death rate fell in that period. However, the death rate immediately returned to high rates in July and August. And it had been lower in February, March and October that year when the enforcement was not in place.

“Though we agree helmets do not prevent accidents, they help prevent major injuries and instant deaths due to head injuries,” said Shedrach Brown, communications director at the Ministry of Transport. “Looking at the statistics from 2024, we have observed that the death rate has dropped, and we believe it is because of the regulation.”

The reduction in severe accidents was seen immediately in the trauma department at John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital according to Doe. 

“Three months before the introduction of the regulation, the hospital recorded over two hundred cases of head injury caused by accidents,” Doe said. “Three months after the introduction, the records reduced to a little over one hundred and fifty with moderate injuries and less time in the hospital’s care.”

The World Health Organization highlighted the cost-effectiveness of helmet programs, noting a return of up to $20 in healthcare savings and productivity for every $1 spent. A study in Nigeria found that unhelmeted motorcyclists were three times more likely to suffer severe head injuries, while helmet users had lower hospital admission rates and treatment costs. 

Doe has been disappointed to see numbers rise again as the police dropped intense enforcement. “Those guys are still not wearing helmets, and even the passengers are not. In a given week, we receive over fifty cases of head injury related to the spine; of those cases, over thirty-five of them were motorcycle-related accidents.” He urged riders and police to continue enforcement.

Alphonso Bindah, chief of traffic for the police insisted “there was not a relaxation” in enforcement. “We needed to evaluate ourselves to see whether the measures put in place were working. So this is the evaluation period and after this we will continue from where we stopped.”

The enforcement faced strong resistance from riders. Many complained about the cost of helmets, required for themselves and passengers. At Masarco Auto Service, a Monrovia importer, helmets cost $20 to $30. Riders also need to pay yearly costs of $25 for bike registration and $35 for a license. 

Brown says the government has made efforts to mitigate the financial impact in some counties. 

“We went to Nimba, Bong, and Margibi and conducted road safety training for five thousand motorcyclists,” he said. “We did not just train them, but we certificated and provided each motorcyclist two helmets, one for the rider and another for the passenger. And we can say that the cyclists were in compliance with the regulation.”

Since the laws were enforced, more than a two hundred motorcyclists have seen their bikes impounded according to John Kenyon, president of the Merged Motorcycle and Tricycle Union, about the same rate of impoundment as under the Weah administration. 

Kenyon said he has appealed to the police to release these bikes, some of which he says were stolen from their owners before being seized. But reuniting bikes with riders will be difficult as few carried identification. 

Many Motorcyclists Understand the Need to Wear Helmets

Amos Kollie’s experience has been a lesson for his friend Josiah Smith. He always reaches for his helmet now. 

Smith also knows he runs a high risk of losing his bike if he is caught.

“When you don’t wear the helmet, you will not run traffic that day,” Smith says. Police will impound his bike if he is caught, jeopardizing his ability to provide for his fiancée and three-year-old daughter. “And you know I have a family to feed, so I was forced.” 

But he too is unhappy about the costs.

“$US60 is not small money to get, especially for a motorbike rider,” Smith says. “Then the helmet money adds there, that’s $110, because the helmet we were buying it for $50 for two by that time. It is my monthly earning. How do I get that money while trying to feed my family?”

Passengers have been angry too. The helmet requirement has come as the police are trying a range of measures to force safer behavior among motorcyclists. Bikes were banned from Tubman Boulevard – a major thoroughfare into Monrovia – in February when bikes were linked to crimes and theft.

It is not the first such ban: in 2013, motorcycles were temporarily prohibited in Monrovia due to riders carrying up to four passengers. Unlike the 2013 ban, which forced many to walk to schools and workplaces, the 2024 ban has led to a reduction in motorcycles and an increase in taxi and tricycle fares. 

Reports and photographs of police officers riding motorcycles without helmets, further undermined public support for enforcement.  

Solidarity and Trust for a New Day, a civil society organization, has filed a petition with the Supreme Court to overturn the ban. The court has yet to rule on it. Laraamand Nyonton, deputy minister of youth and sports, told an Okay FM interviewer in April that he did not expect the ban to be lifted any time soon. 

Nyonton said the government is trying to reduce the number of motorcyclists by creating alternate employment for them such as electricians and plumbers.

For now, Kollie spends his days sitting at home wishing he had listened to the law enforcers. “It’s painful,” he said. “All I can do now is sit down because there is no hope.”

This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. Funding was provided by the Swedish Embassy in Liberia which had no say in the story’s content.