Motorcycle fatality and injury statistics don't control for a rider's skills, experience, or attitude. Add to that the fact that motorcycles tend to attract a large number of young thrill seekers on crotch rockets and counter-culture types on choppers--neither of which put much, if any, level of effort into safety--and you get studies and statistics saying that motorcycles are basically two-wheeled insta-death machines.

Yes, a motorcycle rider will never be as protected as a person in a car surrounded by a steel frame and airbags. That should go without saying. But it would be nice if we can acknowledge that people who actually make an effort to wear their gear and maintain situational awareness generally aren't well represented in the statistics.

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Workaccount2 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's been probably over a decade since I dug into this, but IIRC, if you have a motorcycle license, insurance, a registered bike, and wear a helmet, your fatal accident chances drop by 70%.

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snozolli 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Simply not drinking and riding wildly improves your odds. ~20 years ago, MCN published that 70% of single-vehicle motorcyclist fatalities involved alcohol.

	▲	Workaccount2 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Ah yes, that too!

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philwelch 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s equivalent to saying that if you don’t have a motorcycle license, don’t register your bike, don’t have insurance, and don’t wear your helmet, your fatal accident risk increases by over 3x. Put that way, it’s not surprising, nor does it actually tell you anything about the base rate safety of lawful motorcycling. By way of analogy, you could just as easily say “not dousing yourself in gasoline reduces the risk of death by smoking by 98%”, which is both true and useless.

	▲	Workaccount2 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I totally get what you are saying, but if you ride motorcycles and have been around motorcycle groups, the stat is clearly saying "as expected, it's the dumb kids doing the dieing". The comment is written for other riders, I left out a lot of detail for it to be a general comment.
	▲	shkkmo an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> That’s equivalent to saying that if you don’t have a motorcycle license, don’t register your bike, don’t have insurance, and don’t wear your helmet, your fatal accident risk increases by over 3x. That's not really how statistics work. Since the reduction was probably calculated against the population average you need to know the relative size of the groups to calculate the risk increase for the inverse group. Additionaly, the group you specified is not the inverse group since you exclude those who have some, but not all, of the safety signals. Your calculation would be accurate if almost nobody took all safety precautions (that would mean the average risk rate would be affected much by that group) and everbody else took no safety precautions. What you have calculated is a rough lower bound for the risk increase given unknown population behavior ratios. > nor does it actually tell you anything about the base rate safety It doesn't by itself. What it tells you is given a base of rate of 3x more deadly per mile, those who follow all the rules are as likely to die as an average driver (which still isn't an fair comparison.) To be fair, you'd beed to compare agaisnt driver who have a license, registration, insurance and are wear a seatbelt. (Or maybe helmet..)

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tshaddox an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s also very possible that if you ride a motorcycle and believe you are “one of the safe ones” you are simply mistaken.

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xnyan an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> But it would be nice if we can acknowledge that people who actually make an effort to wear their gear and maintain situational awareness generally aren't well represented in the statistics.

The data says you are 25 times more likely to die per mile driven versus a car. If we were talking about personal experience, my motorcycle training instructor with 3 decades of experience was killed a few years ago by someone in an SUV making a left turn. It was broad daylight, they had all the gear, they were doing everything right, the person in the car was not paying attention and made a last second left with no time to react.

Even doing everything right you are still significantly more likely to die on a motorcycle in a car per mile driven. again, I ride motorcycles and I accept that risk.