Motorcyclists 27x more likely to die than auto drivers

No no. 33% +33% +40% = 106%. Thus, you will never have any accidents​ at all, ever. It’s that extra 6% I’m worried about. Does this mean you will cause cars in your vicinity to have 6% more accidents than normal? Or will your bike somehow become less dented and damaged over time? Like the Motorcycle of Dorian Grey?

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To which I must obviously reply, Four wheels good, two wheels better.

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Compared to a speeding drunk driver in a car with no brakes? Probably.

Don’t have to dismiss that as smugness - cars absolutely have a layer of protection that motorcyclists and bicyclists don’t have; there’s no denying it. I’m painfully aware of how vulnerable I am on a bicycle even though I don’t have the added issue of traveling at a speed sufficient to kill me. There’s no way I’m going to drive a motorcycle.
Drivers of automobiles freak me out with how nonchalant they are - they should be sweating bullets every time they get behind the wheel, given the possibility of killing another human being while they’re there. The moment it stops being stressful is the moment drivers stop driving with sufficient care.

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The Hurt Report, published in 1981, has pretty much the same results as this study.

Motorcycles are dangerous. They become orders of magnitude more dangerous if you drink or don’t wear a helmet, but no amount of caution on your part will stop all the SMIDSYs. Some people are just unobservant.

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Given your use of kph, I’m going to ask what country you’re in. Because motorcycling culture is vastly different in different countries. (Apparently European riders are somewhat more responsible than those in the US or Australia.) Sometimes also within different countries. (Florida is a Mecca for shirtless, helmetless, beer-waving riders; California riders gear up excessively then race each other home from the bar.)

It’s a truism, too, that traffic works best when everyone goes with the flow, and those who do not stick out excessively. Would you necessarily notice a staid motorcyclist driving within the speed limit entirely within their own lane?

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in a mature and upfront fashion.

That part I found disturbing, everything else was Okie Dokie.

For the record: 50 years in the saddle and still kicking.

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The Hurt Report (Oh, how I love that name!) is generally thought to be outdated, however, as the demographics of motorcyclists have shifted considerably since then, as have the number of distractions for car drivers. A new study is in the works and has been releasing findings as they’re confirmed. Last year’s bombshell: lane splitting is slightly less lethal than not splitting and in facts speeds up all traffic, not just the motorcyclist.

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Interestingly, bicycling and walking have apparently pretty comparable levels of risk (one or other will come out at higher risk depending on whether the numerator is deaths or injuries, and whether the denomerator is trips, hours spent, or kilometers travelled, and on the specific location and years under study).

And yet we focus heavily on how irresponsible it is to ride a bicycle without high vis clothing and a helmet - then do things several times more dangerous without any PPE and think it totally normal.

Like, literally, if you’re about to ride your bike home, and a lateral-thinking puzzle troll jumps out and says you can take the helmet or the bicycle but not both, you’re probably about as likely to die on the trip home if you bicycle bare-headed, or if you walk helmeted.

37x more likely if no helmet. Using the same data.
Do motorcycles have antilock brakes?

Or “Four wheels generally destroying the planet’s climate via overblown CO2 emissions, two (bicycle) wheels good?” :wink:

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Surely, you have to be special kind of moron not to wear a helmet while riding a motorbike. Perhaps those people would have mostly met an early death in other ways had not their riding delivered them to the grave first?

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Orwell was pithier than that. :wink:

(I used the word “motorised” deliberately. I cycle too.)

Perhaps of interest.

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Clearly. Not feeling especially pithy today… :slight_smile:

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Some do (BMWs, for instance), most don’t.
(In fact, this is the only thing I’d change about my Africa Twin if I could.)

a) everyone dies. NO ONE, not me, not you, not him, not her, NO ONE gets out of this alive
b) cars take up more resources
c) driving drunk is bad, no matter what

if you personally feel the risk is not worth the reward? Don’t drive, ride, bicycle, walk, leave your house
BUT! Do not impose your view as law to govern my choice of transport

As the late great Burt Munro said?
“You live more in five minutes on a bike like this going flat out than some people live in a lifetime”

Every time I put on my helmet, I wish it was MY CHOICE to put it on.
I would still choose to wear it, but wish it was my choice.
(ya’ll are Pro-Choice, right? it applies across the board kinda… or is it just for things you like today?)

every time I start my bike, I KNOW some distracted driver will be busy: eating, texting, talking on phone, playing with radio, reading the freakin newspaper, or any of 1000 other things, instead of paying attention to piloting the car they are in.

EVERY single time, I know I may not make it home.

but I cannot imagine a life without the opportunity to ride.

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Alternately:

“There’s more to living than just breathing in and out” &

“A bad day on a bike still beats a good day in a car”.

20+ years on two wheels, never broken a bone or shed a drop of blood.

Riding bikes is not particularly dangerous. Learning to ride a bike is incredibly fucking dangerous, and it requires about five years of regular riding to achieve.

Ridden right, a good bike will safely carry you through situations that a car can’t handle. But the advantages of a bike only work if you actively use them; ain’t none of that passive-defence even-while-snoozing crumple zone bullshit.

Stay alert, stay alive.

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Wouldn’t the ones who didn’t be behind you somewhere? :smirk:

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You don’t say?

So, this refers only to accidents where the motorcyclist had a highway accident and was
1 - dead, and
2 - at fault for their death
…right?

Because another vehicle is often involved …

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