> but if it is not combined with training and of course a sound attitude, you may sooner or later find yourself in an undesirable situation.
I ride motorcycles, so this is not a argument against it, but even with all the best safety gear and perfect habits you’re still significantly more likely to die in an accident compared to a motorcycle per mile driven.
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.
> 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.
I'm sorry to hear about your friend but an anecdote is not data. And my WHOLE position is that skill and experience and not represented in motorcycle fatality data.
I rode motorcycles most of my life. I stopped during the pandemic and I'm sort of thinking of maybe getting another bike. Trying to balance the fun with the realities of riding.
Anecdotally, I've been to the funeral of a fighter jet pilot years ago who died on a motorcycle after a bus cut him off, in the city. This would be someone at the top 1% of skill, attitude and experience. The reality of riding a motorcycle is that you are completely exposed/unprotected (leather vs. a metal box) and there are many situations you can't predict/control.
I've had a few crashes myself, including a high speed one, possibly some I could have avoided but for whatever reason didn't. People make mistakes, have poor judgement, and can't always be 100%. My worst crash was when someone T-boned me in the city doing an illegal left turn across three lanes. If I had been paying more attention I could have predicted/avoided/seen it but I didn't. I even had my visor open and got the handlebar in my face. I walked/drove away from that one just like all my other crashes with some minor injuries.
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%.
Simply not drinking and riding wildly improves your odds. ~20 years ago, MCN published that 70% of single-vehicle motorcyclist fatalities involved alcohol.
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.
> 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..)
My interpretation of the original claim was that, on a per capita basis, the rate of fatal accidents among motorcyclists with license, registration, insurance, and helmets is 30% that of motorcyclists who have none of those things, with no particular claim implied about motorcyclists who fulfill between 1-3 of those four criteria. I know that wasn't necessarily the only possible interpretation but I think it's a reasonable one.
> on a per capita basis, the rate of fatal accidents among motorcyclists with license, registration, insurance, and helmets is 30% that of motorcyclists who have none of those things
When presented with unsourced statistics on the web, probably best to assume the weakest interpretation.
Maybe, but I was also assuming good faith, which entails assuming that Workaccount2 is neither dishonest enough to intentionally share misleading statistics nor completely ignorant about the more basic and obvious ways that statistics can be misleading. If you always assume the weakest interpretation you spend a lot of time quibbling over basic points.
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.
There are safe (and unsafe) drivers contributing to both car and motorcycle statistics. Is this an argument that the skill curve for motorcycle driving is skewed towards highly unskilled drivers but cars are more evenly distributed?
I don't remember much about my statistics classes but even if you're a 99th percentile driver can't you still say there will be a large increase in your own personal probability of a fatality if you jump from the car curve to the motorcycle one?
> Is this an argument that the skill curve for motorcycle driving is skewed towards highly unskilled drivers but cars are more evenly distributed?
Yes! Cars and motorcycles share the same roads but in North America at least, nearly everyone is a car driver and most people drive at _roughly_ the same skill level because we all drive for mostly the same reasons and have all had lots of time behind the wheel. (Of course there are outliers for all of these.) The vast majority of us wear our seatbelts, buy cars with good safety systems, and drive safely because even though it happens occasionally, none of us want to die at all, let alone due to something as mundane as a traffic accident.
But motorcycles are entirely recreational. People buy bikes for different reasons but the most popular ones are seeking thrills, looking cool, and trying to fit into a certain peer group. Safety is not a top concern for most motorcyclists, and is often something that even scoffed at. I personally know guys who refuse to wear a helmet because (to paraphrase their words), "I'd rather die as I am than end up half-alive as a paraplegic or vegetable." Nevermind that wearing a helmet makes the latter MORE likely, not less, but saying so would not have changed their minds anyway.
Those of us who DO take safety seriously are out there, wearing full-face helmets, armored jackets, pants, and boots. We practice our low-speed maneuvers and focus on situational awareness. We NEVER ride drunk or tired. We know we are not invincible. We acknowledge the risks but we try to push the odds more in our favor as much as we can. But we are a small minority and are severely underrepresented in injury statistics that non-riders like to tout on the Internet.
* Have a license
* Wear appropriate gear
* Follow speed limits
* Don't drink and ride
* Aged somewhere 30-50
* Have more than a few months experience on your bike
* etc.
You are statistically "one of the safer ones". Not safe, you are never truly safe when in traffic.
Kind of a strange reply. I would suggest reading my comment again because I think you missed the point of it.
I do not believe I am "safe." If I wanted to be safe, I would spend my weekends sitting around the house instead of getting out and seeing some of the world in a way that I find interesting and fun to me.
I ride motorcycles, so this is not a argument against it, but even with all the best safety gear and perfect habits you’re still significantly more likely to die in an accident compared to a motorcycle per mile driven.