Airman Doors, USAF - I’m sorry for the loss of your friend.
If there’s a bulletin board at your work, I would recommend printing out a page from this site - the Pennsylvania Motorcycle Safety Program and posting it up - or at least emailing your coworkers with the link if they haven’t already taken a course. If their egos need massaging (I’m not a beginner! I don’t need no stinkin’ course!) then point out the experienced rider course offered.
What I said and what you inferred are two entirely different things; your inference being the one that’s disingenuous. I’m well aware of the risk factors of riding a motorcycle, seeing as my husband commutes 60 miles a day on one, and I occasionally ride with him for pleasure, as well.
On the one hand, “poorly designed” is an out that you could twist to fit whatever you need. But, I would be very interested in seeing data on that. I feel safer in a (well-designed) bike lane, and don’t see why they wouldn’t be safer than sharing a lane with a car (and I assume you’re talking US - in Europe, where the bike lane is at a different grade - it’s gotta be safer, right?)
Love to see data on that as well. I’m also undecided whether fatalities per hour or fatalities per mile would be more relevant. I’m leaning toward fatalities per mile, since I’m going to point X, whether in a car or on a bike, and will bike or drive for however long it takes me.
http://www.seniorjournal.com/NEWS/SeniorStats/4-09-02Bikes.htm
Wrong interpetation of statistics, this does not prove your point at all.
Its a classic case of misleading information and allows the reader who is ignorant of statistics to infer completely wrong conclusions.
If you actually take a look at motorcycle accident figures, in absolute terms, the highest group for fatalities is the younger group, period.
Insurance quotes reflect this.
The number of fatlities in the older age group, whilst increasing, is still very much smaller than the younger group.
Irs great that the number of fatalities in the younger group has reduced, but the actual total number of fatalities is still very much higher, a small decline from a high figure is not the same as a large increase from a small figure.
This is an extremely misleading and badly written report, for example,
Are we to assume from this that younger riders are safer on higher capcity, and therefore more powerful and heavy machines, are safer riders than the over 40’s ?
Of course not, every instinct and common sense value suggest this is not true.
What is most likely happening is quite simply, younger riders do not ride larger capcity machines, and this should come as no surprise, becasue the insurance premiums for a young rider on a large machine is prohibitive.
Why are younger riders priced off big bikes ? Insurance companies make them pay more because they are at a much greater risk of crashing.
This sentence confirms it, younger riders do not ride large capacity machines.
Its also noteworthy that this relates to report that is 8 years old, and the bike market has almost certainly changed since then, in the UK bike legislation and requirements to ride have changed considerably, so in fact this report is only very limited in its usefulsness.
You should also note, an increase in the number of motorcycles in itself is almost meaningless, because the important number is the number of incidents per mile ridden, most usually this is quoted as incidents per 10k or 100k miles.
What is happening is that although more bikes are being sold, the number of miles ridden on each machine is falling, but not in all age groups, and certainly not evenly across age groups.
Experience has been shown to be an indicator of incident liklehood, the fewer miles ridden, the less experience, there is a good case to make for stating that far from motorcycling becoming less safe, the change from regular motorcycling to leisure motorcycling leads to reduce mileage thus reduced experience and hence more crashes.
This is noted in seasonal figures, unsurprisingly in seasons of poor weather, motorcycle accidents go down as the number of mile ridden decreases and experience shows that, actually, the weather tends not to play much part in motocycle crashes.
When the good weather comes, there is a sudden surge of crashes, and this then reduces after a month or so, which is widely taken to mean that motorcycling as a skill needs to be maintained continuously, a period of a few months off makes you more vulnerable when you get back on, until you have brushed up a bit.
It must come as no surprise that during Daytona week, accident increase as individuals pull their machines out for the week its on and put them away for another year when its over.
The OP was expressing regret at the death of his friend and the suspicion that the deceased had not performed adequate risk assessment.
I believe the stain comment was addressed to those opting to purchase a motorbike for the purposes of looking cool or doing whatever. It was not pointed directly at the deceased. I can’t say I exactly agree with such sentiments, but it doesn’t seem like a nonconstructive point to begin a conversation.
It would be amiss for me not to mention this statement which is both responsible and constructive, IMHO.
Motorcycling is 29 times more likely to result in death than car travel, on a per mile basis.
Choosing to avoid extreme risks does not imply choosing to avoid all risks. To blur the two is inappropriate.
I really dislike the, “Anything can kill you: life is risky” argument. Hey, why not stick a knife into your wall socket? You might live! After all, anything can kill you, right?
That said, I’ll repeat my belief that cycle riding is a manageable risk, as distinct from an ignorable one.
I dislike it, too, but it does point out something important: Life is inherently risky and some of us enjoy it that way.
I had a 1985 Ninja 900R for about a day before I got rid of it and started riding quads offroad instead - My personal choice (and maybe I’ll go back to street bikes again one day). The important thing is that it’s my choice and not the choice of some jerk in government who wants to take credit for making the world safer. The notion of legislation has already been raised in this thread, and while I normally detest slippery slope arguments, this is precisely the type of crap you read right before some legislator decides he’d like to take away your choice in the name of the common good.
If the OP wants to call motorcycles “donorcycles” that’s fine. I’ll make no comment on that other than saying it’s an old and tired “joke.”
I don’t dispute that motorcycling is more hazardous than car driving, and a factor of 29 per mile sounds eminently supportable. But the other question I want answered is how many miles I can expect to travel before I suffer a serious or life-ending injury. See, if I can expect (random outta-the-ass figure) to travel 29 billion miles before I suffer a fatal car crash, then the fact that the figure’s only 1 billion for a motorcyclist would not upset me all that much. (I don’t know what the actual figures are.)
It’s not a question of arguing that all risk is survivable and therefore you should take no thought for your own safety. It’s more about the attitude certain citizens have expressed in this thread: motorcycling is more dangerous than car-driving, therefore it’s too dangerous and anyone who rides a bike is an organ donor on wheels, and anyone who doesn’t presently ride a bike shouldn’t consider it if he values his life. 'Tain’t so.
Sorry, but thats just silly. The reason we dont stick a knife into the wall socket is that for the risk there is no payoff. You take a risk in exchange for something. You leave your house and go to work knowing that you are 100% more likely to get in a fatal car accident if you actually ride in a car…because the risk of flaming death is worth it for the paycheck. you go out to the grocery store instead of ordering pizza, go to the movies instead of watching TV…all of it risk for reward.
I dont see a reward for the risk of shoving a knife into a wall socket, so I’m not going to do it. I do see a lot of reward in riding a motorcycle, and the risk is considerably less than shoving a knife into a wall socket so I do it.
“Something about giving up freedom for temporary safety, not deserving freedom…”
*:: There is nothing scarier than a do gooder with power. … *
Is that the “He who trades freedom for security deserves neither” line?
I don’t know how many women have jumped in here as happy bikers. Therefore, I am identifying myself as a woman, who happens to love my role as “his backwarmer”. I’m not here to argue or debate, but to offer my perspective. I have been riding as a passenger since I was 5 years old (so, over 30 years now). Before my husband, I’d had a few biker boyfriends. My mom, after my father’s death (in his van!), had a boyfriend who was part of an outlaw club. Yes, my mother was one of those crazy broads who rode up and down the steps of the PA Capitol building during the “repeal the helmet law” rallies of the 1970’s and 80’s. Her photo albums from that time show a motley crew of funloving, scary-looking people. I remember that they, for the most part, had hearts of gold (I’m not talking about the hardcore groups. I remember them too…).
My husband, who is 39 years old, has owned a motorcycle his entire adult life. He had a dirtbike at four years old. He is always cautious, and rides vigilantly. The only life-threatening accident he was ever in occurred while he was driving his pickup truck. We own a Harley, mostly because I encouraged him to buy it. We both wear DOT approved helmets (I simply don’t understand people who bother with “fake” helmets) on every ride. When we went to Hawaii in 1994, we rented a bike for a day and rode without. Yes, I do understand why some people want to ride without a helmet. There is no way to put it into words. I wear one because it feels right to me.
Motorcycles are dangerous. So are: cars, trucks, bicycles, rollerskates, staircases, wet decks, boats, airplanes, cigarettes… ok, you get where I’m going with this. The simple fact is this: you are going to die, eventually. If I have to die young, I hope I die doing something I love (like motorcycling), and not something mundane (like tripping on the stairs on my way to the kitchen).
People die in accidents involving motorcycles. And cars, trucks, bicycles…
People driving ANY vehicle need to be vigilant. If you “can’t see” motorcycles, that means you probably can’t see deer, dogs, children, bicycles, or potholes either. If that is the case, you should stay off the road. It sickens me that the burden of responsibility is always heaved at the motorcyclist. Any driver who “can’t see” a bike needs to stay out of residential areas, where children (not equipped with headlights) tend to wander onto the street on occasion, or will chase the toy that just flew out into traffic.
If you’re on your bike, and I’m in my van, please know that you will be safe riding in front of me. I won’t ride up your ass, and I won’t let anyone get between us either.
Keep the shiny side up 
No, “poorly designed” is a very specific complaint. It means that if the design of the bike lane somehow enhances the danger to its users. For example, bike lanes that are in the “door zone” (where opening car doors pose a deadly danger to cyclists) or bike lanes that always hug the right side of the road, even if it is a right turn lane, or bike lanes that in any way expose the rider to dangerous road conditions are poorly designed. For what it’s worth, I don’t know of any data to suggest that bike lanes are safer or more dangerous than roads with wide outside lanes, or even normal width lanes. The burden of proof for this is upon bike lane advocates, I think. The tricky part is collecting useful scientific data on this question.
It’s worth pointing out that feeling safer does not necessarily mean that you are safer, and many believe that bike lanes are dangerous because they put bicyclists in an ostensibly separate travel lane from automobiles. This makes cyclists feel safer, but the truth is that there are still many opportunities for bicycle and automotive traffic to interact in confusing and potentially dangerous ways. After all, they are separated only by a couple of painted lines. Advocates of Vehicular Cycling believe that this separation results in a psychological kind of segregation that can make interactions difficult - for example, there is no generally understood protocol for dealing with situations where traffic must cross the bike lane, to turn right for example. Who yields to whom? Without a bike lane, the answer is completely clear: the bicyclist must wait for an opening to merge into the middle lane before the turning lane opens up. A bike lane just muddies the waters. VC advocates use examples like this to argue that bike lanes are more harmful than helpful. I’m not really a VC person (mostly because a large number of them are loonies, not because they’re wrong), but this position has merit. My personal position is that well-designed bike lanes are pretty harmless - unless a cyclist is legally required to use one if it is present. I am 100% with the loonies in believing that this segregationist attitude is bad for everyone, but especially bad (and dangerous!) for cyclists. If bicyclists are going to be on the same pavement as automobiles, it is foolish to pretend that they exist in a separate world. That will only cause problems.
As for Europe, I can’t really comment on that. Most European countries with extensive bike path systems have very different traffic histories, if you will, than the U.S., and lots of experience with this system. Are they safer? I don’t know. The biggest concern with separate cycling and motoring facilities is again interactions and intersections, where the vast majority of accidents occur.
Per mile is an exceptionally poor way to compare fatalities between bicycles and cars, due to the enormous gaps in average speed between the two types of vehicles. With the same number of hours of exposure, a motorist will travel considerably further. Even with identical hourly or user population-based fatality rates, per-mile fatalities would make bicycles look considerably more dangerous than cars - an impression that would be entirely flawed, since Americans travel a considerably smaller number of miles AND hours on their bicycles than in their cars. For this reason, hourly or population-based rates are far more meaningful ways to compare fatality rates between bicycles and automobiles.
Here’s some data and arguments from cycling advocate Ken Kifer, who was (ironically, I suppose) killed by a drunk driver in 2003: http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/health/risks.htm
Some NHSTA population death rates: http://www.massbike.org/info/accstat.htm
A an interesting quiz with some surprising answers (includes some motorcycling data):Test your Safety Perceptions
Sorry for the general lack of primary data; Google mostly turns up secondary stuff. Something to keep in mind: the large majority of cyclist fatalities are minors. Do we allow children to drive? I’m not saying that kids should be kept off bicycles (the exact opposite!), but that we should be looking to educating children in safe riding if we want to save lives, not to segregating traffic. Most children are killed on sidewalks crossing driveways and cross streets. Want to keep your kids safe? Keep 'em off the sidewalk!
Sorry for the major hijack, I just wanted to address the claim that “bicycles are just as unsafe as motorcycles, but no one is raising a fuss about them!” This is patently false. Motorcycling is significantly more dangerous than bicycling in practically all statistical categories, possibly even including per mile. So leave us innocent bike riders out of this.
Thespos: I like your formulation a lot more. And Malacandra had a solid followup. Picking nits:
I see little wrong with such gallows humor. As an aside, I understand that it’s a standard phrase in hospitals because -well- they treat accident victims and harvest organs. Then again, doctors also a fairly rich assemblage of slang expressions.
Nah, I still don’t think it’s silly. Firstly, kids do stuff like that all the time, just to see what happens. More to the point, this is a reductio ad absurdum argument: the observation that “Life is risky”, doesn’t amount to squat. Sure it’s risky: and the noninsane will therefore weigh the degree of risk against the degree of benefit.
Merely observing that life is risky skips the former step altogether. I agree though that certain benefits are intangible and that intangibility is not the same as nonexistant.
So what? Motorcycles are 29 more deadly than cars per mile travelled. (Return to top of post. 
)
Um, how won’t you let anybody get between you if you aren’t riding their ass? (My approach to motorcycles is essentially to evade them: give them room on the highway and -er let them drive near somebody else. Hm.)
I was a lot more clueless about safe sharing of the rode with motorcycles before I read certain SDMB threads (thanks ExTank!). Some will roll their eyes, but I think there should be a public education campaign. Why? Because the message is probably rather simple (treat motorcycles with a small amount of additional deference) and it might save a nontrivial number of lives.
There’s a background point: people are lousy at weighing small risks: the ancestral environment just didn’t prepare us for it. Intuitively we think something along the lines of “avoid stress and fear”, which leads some of us to not think particularly hard about uncertainty. And most of us will often weight small unfamiliar risks (eg nuclear radiation) heavier than larger familiar ones (poor diet, etc).
Hey, I’m not any better: it’s part of the human condition.
Oh I understood the reductio ad absurdum bit, its just a piss poor example of it.
you are comparing apples to toaster ovens. Nobody here, I believe, has said life is risky and left it with that (I could be mistaken, I’m going to go back and read it all again), we have all qualified it with something about degree of risk and benifit. You are comparing an action that serves no benifit (and the min post age here is 14 IIRC) to something that obviously has at least some real benifit. bad comparison/analogy…
Ok, bdgr, but the point remains: “Motorcycles are dangerous, same as cars, trucks, unattended wall sockets, glass-eating, using a washing machine and sword juggling”, is a bogus argument, because it ignores the varying magnitudes of these assorted risks. It’s a dodge which I’ve seen more than once in this thread.
No, it’s just that you are missing the point entirely.
Its not that all those things have the same risk level, of course they don’t…it’s that everyone takes risks of some sort…what risks you are willing to take is matter of choice and just saying “its dangerous” is without meaning…of course its dangerous. most things are… in one way or another. Some things are more dangerous than others and they are often in turn worth that risk.
No, most things entail risk, but not all things are dangerous. There is a meaningful distinction between safe and dangerous activities, just as there is a difference between tall and short adults. Sure, there are borderline cases. But that doesn’t make the distinction invalid.
Risk is as ubiquitous as “height”: danger is not.
Again, I’m all for individual risk assessment. It’s just that saying that “Everyone takes risks”, ignores the rather meaningful gap between (say) playing scrabble and tightrope walking without a net. The former is not dangerous: the latter is.
dangerous
adjective
Involving possible risk, loss, or injury: adventurous, chancy, hazardous, jeopardous, parlous, perilous, risky, treacherous, unsafe, venturesome, venturous. Slang hairy. See safety/danger.
Yeah, scrabble we could safely leave out, but most things in life are dangerous at least to some extent.