If a person who is riding a motorcycle get’s struck by lightening, is it the same as if he were just walking and struck (i.e. he get’s dead) or does sitting on the bike and holding on to the metal handlebars somehow make a difference?
I imagine it’s the rubber tires that would make the difference.
If you are hit by lightning it makes little difference whether you were riding or not. Chances are you won’t survive, although some people do. The cycle will make no difference.
While I agree that taking a lightning hit with your body will probably kill you whether your riding a bike or walking, there is something to be said for the OP. After all, doesn’t lightning have a tendency to go for metal objects? So I guess we could rephrase the question: if lightning hits your motorcycle frame, will you get zapped just for being on it? Will you get zapped when you, after the impact, make contact with the ground?
I’ve been in a car that got hit by lightning. A very loud, explosion-like sound, a huge flash of light. Various electrics on the car failed, the lights went out. My father, who was driving, proceeded to gently tap a street lantern with the (luckily!) iron fender. You could see sparks coming from the fender when we were at a meters distance from the lantern! After that, the car was “neutral” again and we could get out with no harm. The car had substantial damage to its electrics, and needed a roof respray. Other than that, it was fine.
Of course, gently tapping a lantern with a motorbike is gonna be slightly more difficult…
A car that gets hit by lightning acts like a “Faraday cage”, i.e., the energy runs along the outside.
A motorcycle doesn’t have the same pleasant attribute. To make matters worse, the riders head will generally speaking be the highest point. Lightning looks for short spark gaps, IIRC. A presumably wet rider is quite conductive enough, if there’s juice enough to go through the rubber tires anyway.
But it sure makes for a hell of an excuse. “Well, I would’ve smoked that poser on the Gixer 1000 easily enough if I hadn’t been struck by lightning”.
S. Norman
A problem easily cirumvented by purchasing a Buell X1 Lightning, Spiny.
What’s in a name, eh? 
Norman is correct, I had heard it before but just did a google search for “motorcycle struck by lightning” to get cites and came up with 14 pages of them. A good number of people have been killed over the years riding in storms.
BTW Coldfire, a BSA Lightning would work too if your into older bikes.
What Spiny said. The rubber in the tires has virtually no effect at all for determining the ultimate path of the lightning. Your body sticking up on a flat surface through the air (which is a pretty good insulator itself) is the bigger factor. And as far as safety - it is the Faraday cage effect that saves people in cars - although a strong enough bolt can have “leakage” enough to kill you anyhow.
And I opened this thread thinking it was going to be about the Vincent motorcycle company’s Black Lightning from the early 1950s.
Just to clarify about the rubber: Sure, rubber is an insulator. But then, air is an even better insulator, and a lightning bolt passes through what, a mile of air or so before reaching you or your vehicle.
Once the current reached the metal frame, most of it would pass through the metal, but your heart is probably higher than the bike, so it’d take the full jolt. Even if it didn’t, even a fraction of a lightning bolt could still easily be deadly.
To add to Chronos statement, most tires have steel belts so they would conduct even better to the ground. The “cage” principal is what saves you in a car not the tires.
I knew someone who was hit by lightning while riding a motorcycle [no permanent harm]. I guess it is the skin effect. Lightning hits the wet helmet and travels down the outside. Although the crotch of his underwear had a hole where the lightning went from him to the steel gas tank then frame. So the lightning did flow along his skin, not just the outside of his wet clothes.