http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/02/AR2009120204013.html? Leading expert on motorcycle crashes, safety
Harry Hurt was the principal investigator of the Hurt Report, which lead to national and international changes in motorcycle safety. (Don Kelsen/los Angeles Times)
By Susan Carpenter
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Harry Hurt, 81, one of the world's foremost authorities on motorcycle crashes and their causes, died Nov. 29 at a hospital in Pomona, Calif. He had a heart attack after back surgery.
Mr. Hurt was the principal investigator of the Hurt Report, an investigation of 900 motorcycle accidents in Los Angeles in 1976 and 1977. His research, published in 1981, continues to form the basis of many U.S. motorcycle safety programs and is credited with saving countless lives.
Mr. Hurt was a professor of safety science at the University of Southern California in the school's Traffic Safety Center in the early 1970s, when about 10 percent of U.S. highway traffic fatalities were attributed to motorcycle accidents. In 1975, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asked Mr. Hurt and the university to develop an accident investigation methodology and study that would determine the causes of motorcycle crashes and injuries.
Among the study's major findings were that speed was not a factor in most crashes; that helmets were effective in preventing brain injuries and deaths; and that two-thirds of motorcycle crashes involved cars and two-thirds of those accidents occurred when a car driver failed to see the motorcycle and violated the motorcyclist's right of way.
