Al-Hikmah University Journal

There are various regulations and safety rules guiding commercial motorcycle operations in Nigeria. The commercial cyclists often violate these rules with impunity causing road crashes and eventually leading to loss of lives and properties. The objective of this paper is to examine the use of crash helmet among commercial motorcycle riders in Kwara state Nigeria. The study used structured questionnaire administered to 1, 197 randomly selected commercial cyclists across the rural-urban divide in Kwara State. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data. The results revealed that 96.93 percent of the commercial cyclists comply with the rule of safety helmet usage while 3.1 percent do not comply with the rule in the urban areas. The noncompliance and compliance rates of rural commercial motorcycle operators stand at 14 percent and 86 percent respectively. Results from the survey showed further that all the commercial motorcyclists in Kwara State, Nigeria are males. This indicates that women are not into commercial motorcycle business probably due to the nature of the job. Okada riders who operate on full-time basis constitute 62.19 percent of the total respondents while the rest operate on part-time basis. Commercial cyclists who have secondary education are in the majority. The study therefore recommends that road safety enforcement agents should educate the rural riders in order to enforce compliance.