Glad we could be of help?
Indeed. Why don’t we all live our lives based around the emotional responses of teenage girls?
Which obviously means that all motorbikes are deathtraps and if you ride one you’ll die in intensive care.
My opinions are based on emotion as well as fact. Wow. It’s almost like I’m a human being.
Please can you show me where I said that? I can’t seem to be able to find it. Odd.
All I said was that I hate them.
Does anyone else find it ironic that Barbarian trots out “the plural of anecdote is not data” while he carefully ignores the data and gives us some anecdotes?
Hilarious.
I’m sorry about your brother, but this can’t be right, or there is more to it than you are saying or you’ve confused your units or something. At 50km/hr (30mph) his stopping distance would be about 30 yards or less.
Really? Maybe your girl cousin was more distraught than my sister was when she rang me, having just learned that Bernice had been killed and she had to break the news to her husband, but I’m no stranger to the emotional aspect of road death. It’s just I base my life around decisions other than what a thirteen-year-old’s emotional reaction might be to an unpleasant event I intend to avoid.
Well, feel free to tell me what the point about the young bikers and your brother in intensive care actually was, then.
And all I did was examine whether your reasons for hating them might stand up to half a minute’s casual criticism. Aside from that, hate away. It’s just that if I quoted a story about a guy I know getting mugged for his expensive camera in Acton by a couple of black guys, I would draw no end of flak if I therefore declared I hate all… fill in the blank.
‘Merkin gubmint lyin’ 'bout kids:
[‘Merkin gubmint lyin’ 'bout 'sicles:](http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/portal/nhtsa_static_file_downloader.jsp?file=/staticfiles/DOT/NHTSA/Traffic Injury Control/Articles/Associated Files/TSF2006_810806.pdf)
'Merkin gubmint’s lying. Truth be, 'sicles is safe fer kids.
Jeeps aren’t the safest four-wheeled vehicles but they’re much safer than a bike.
Few teenage girls can resist an offer to ride on the back of a motorcycle, and few teenage girls would turn down a drive in a Wrangler with the top down. The difference is that a bike can only hold one girl. A Jeep can hold three. Enough said.
True, however none of the three has her arms around you and her legs apart. I’ve owned both motorcycles and jeeps, and while they both are effective bait, the motorcycle is the surer route to getting laid. I attribute it to the physical contact involved in riding double and, possibly, the vibration.
And when the jeep with 4 girls hits the motorcycle of 2 girls what is your prediction of the outcome? The jeep has seat belts, air bags, and a steel frame designed to absorb impact. The motorcycle has people strapped to nothing, with no metal around them to absorb impact. The riders are effectively the airbag that absorbs the energy of a 4000 lb jeep.
My prediction is the 4 girls in the jeep get out and look at the 2 dead riders of the motorcycle. It doesn’t matter who hits who in this scenario.
Well, quite, and that’s wrapped the whole argument up. After all, if activity A is safer than activity B, what sane person would ever engage in B?
I guess all the motorbike haters therefore take care to eat sensibly and get enough exercise. I believe obesity and its associated health issues are a more practical risk for most people than biking would ever aspire to be.
Also, no non-essential journeys, even in a safe car; every minute you spend in a vehicle you’re incurring a risk you wouldn’t have to run if you were sitting safely in your armchair at home. Needs must when you absolutely have to travel, obviously, but any kind of recreational use is avoidable and stupid self-endangerment, not to mention wasting irreplaceable fuel and damaging the environment.
I’m glad that’s all settled. 
That’s a specious argument. Nobody is suggesting a lifestyle of total risk avoidance. We’re talking about a method of travel with a 400 % increase in fatalities in an accident versus a car. Combine that with the likelihood that a teenager will get in an accident. What should be settled is that it is a much higher risk of death. I’ll say this again, when discussing safety and probability it is the cost of failure that is important. The cost of failure on a motorcycle is much greater than the cost of failure in a car.
Wow. Did you really just compare my dislike of motor bikes to racism?
We’re done here.
Oh, well, that settles it.
He’s getting a lime green Gremlin.
You forgot to refer to Hitler.
Baby blue would also be an effective color.
Beware the innocent Gremlin. American Motors offered a 304 V8 as an option :eek:
No, I made a point about hasty generalisation - deliberately using an example which no-one would consider reasonable.
Because…?
And thus Muffin ably refutes me out of hand! :rolleyes: The point still stands though - if a mile travelled by bike is 37 times more dangerous than a mile travelled by car, and this is unacceptable, the mile travelled unnecessarily is infinitely more dangerous than the unnecessary mile abstained from, so I would certainly not expect to see the bike-haters travelling anywhere, by any means, unless it was absolutely necessary.
While I agree with over anecdotes, the data shows that motorbikes are more dangerous than cars.
Is it safer to take a phone call on a bike? 
All good drivers are constantly watching for problems.
The problems are a) the bike rider has no protection from the bike and b) most 17 year olds don’t drive like paranoid cowards. They like to speed, do wheelies and spins.
My Dad used to ride a motorbike to get to work on the cheap, but changed to a sports car when he wanted to attract women, try that one on him.
Want a match for that straw? People are just saying bikes are more dangerous, and they don’t think it’s a good idea to take the risk. You’re trying to pretend that they are saying something absolute because otherwise you have no argument.