I love motorcycles and it's years since I've been on one. Despite their convience and other virtues I won't own one as I reckon I'm not competent enough to drive one safety—despite having an excellent safety record with four-wheeled vehicles.

Agreed, they're 'god damn dangerous' but where does that '30 times' figure come from? Where I am the generally accepted figure is seven times (or it was when I heard the figure a while ago).

Edit: for years I've thought that if motorcycles were a new invention they'd never be licensed these days. That they still are is historical legacy upheld by riders and the industry that makes the machines.

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buran77 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> I'm not competent enough to drive one safety

Underestimating your abilities in any vehicle is a good way to stay safe. In my encounters with motorcycles in traffic, as pedestrian, cyclist, or driver, even in those short few seconds while our paths cross, the motorcyclists almost always put themselves in some dangerous situation (cyclists do it even more often I'd say, but at lower speeds).

Every time I talk about this to acquaintances who ride they explain that "I do this all the time but it's fine because I know what I'm doing". Everyone is an above average driver or rider but drivers have a metal box filled with airbags. Motorcycle riders often play Russian roulette with 5 bullets in. Blaming another for when your luck finally runs out in on par with the belief most hold that they are above average.

	▲	hilbert42 a minute ago \| parent [-]
		"(cyclists do it even more often I'd say, but at lower speeds)." The behavior of cyclists where I am is a particular problem. Unlike motorcyclists, they're unlicensed and don't even have to know the rules of the road, and it shows. Trouble is, during an incident between a cyclist and a car driver the sympathy vote is in the cyclist's favor. Especially so in recent times where cycling is seen as 'green' and with many cities making car drivers feel as if they're guilty pariahs. To give you some idea how bad this problem has become where I live (Sydney, Australia) is to consider the street where I live. It's a one-way street (as it's narrow) but recently the Council has made it two-way for cyclists and painted bicycles on the street to indicate thus—for motorists it's still one-way. The lunacy of this decision is obvious even to those with a room-temperature IQ. For starters, drivers (usually visitors) often mistakenly drive the wrong way down this street and it's been the situation for years (from street arrangements and local geography it seems the logical way to go, and the sineage is poor and hard to see). It gets worse, there's a sharp bend in the road so two vehicle approaching from either side cannot see each other and there's nowhere to pull off in an emergency! Lunacy has no limits, now consider the same head-on situation between a cyclist and a vehicle, it's a miracle no one has been killed to date (but the change is recent—there's much time to go). Right, the trendy and electorally savvy, many-term Council has the ear of cyclists and no doubt this dangerous change was the result of cyclists' lobbying. Not if but when someone is killed then who's to blame? Even if a motorist is found not to be at fault (i.e. driving in the right direction) and is completely exonerated then he/she will have to live with the knowledge that he/she was the driver of a vehicle that killed a cyclist. What amazes me is that cyclists want this dangerous situation to continue to exist, it seems that sheer convenience takes precedence over their safety in both their minds and that of the Council. More to the point, cyclists seem to have overwhelming confidence in their ability to avoid an accident. Even more amazing is that this situation can exist in this overly safety conscious, horribly risk averse society. From my perspective it's high time this nonsense stopped. The first thing would be license cyclists—if nothing else, they'd at least know the road rules.