NHTSA motorcycle accident statistics for 2008

[mrlmd1]

This just came out - it takes 2 years to gather and collate this data.
It was brought to the attention of another site I frequent, by David Hough (author of Proficient Motorcycling, etc, etc,) and has some good info about motorcycle fatalities, helmet use, and is the latest data published.

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pubs/811159.pdf

[alantf]

Quote - one out of four motorcycle riders in fatal crashes in 2008 were riding their vehicles with an invalid licence.

This means that three out of four motorcycle riders in fatal crashes were riding WITH valid licences.

Solution - Stop all riders with valid licences riding, & immediately reduce fatal accidents by 75%. :whistle:

[mrlmd1]

That's exactly what I keep saying about playing with statistics and manipulating/interpreting data as you see fit. (Although that's not why I posted that).

It's like George Carlin used to say - the odds of there being a bomb on a plane is 1/1000. The odds of there being 2 bombs on a plane is 1/10,000. So, every time you travel, you should carry a bomb with you.

Nevertheless, the statistics are interesting and the discussion more food for thought.

[Easy Rider]

Solution - Stop all riders with valid licences riding, & immediately reduce fatal accidents by 75%. :whistle:

This is a good parallel to my favorite: In 40% of all fatal motorcycle crashes, the rider was not wearing a helmet. Wow, terrible.........mmmmmm.....but wait a sec.; that means that 60% of the fatalitites WERE wearing helmets.

You don't even have to manipulate the numbers; just the way they are quoted is often enough to skew the readers impression.

Another of my favorites: Oh my God, the politicians want to increase the top marginal tax rate from 30 to 40%. Sounds like a big chunk BUT.......what nobody EVER explains......and I don't see WHY because I would think it should make a BIG difference with the perception......IS that the top rate does NOT APPLY to all the income. Just for example (numbers are not accurate; made up for illustration):
Everybody pays the same 0% rate on the first $15K
Everybody pays the same 8% rate on the next $15K
Everybody pays the same 15% rate on the next 30K
(Now we are up to 60K)
Everybody pays.........on and on until you actually hit the "top marginal rate" which may only apply to income OVER $500,000 or more. The opponents of "tax the rich" try to make it appear that the 40% applies to ALL the income and that's just not so. What I can't figure out is why the media and the "other party" lets them constantly get away with it.

(oops, sorry for the rant. Got carried away. It burns my butt though.)

[burkbuilds]

50% of all statistics are just made up. Is that true? Yep, 75% of the time.

[Dupo]

Solution - Stop all riders with valid licences riding, & immediately reduce fatal accidents by 75%. :whistle:

Reminds me of George Carlin "If the odds of a bomb on a plane is 1 in 1000 and the odds of 2 bombs on a plane are 1 in 10,000 .... you have a better chance if you carry a bomb every time you fly".

(something close to that)

[alantf]

Sounds like an echo in here :whistle:

[dhgeyer]

I read through the article, but don't have time to analyze it right now, as I am too busy getting ready for my cross country motorcycle trip. I am now a small number of days away from being ready to leave. Excited? OH YEAH! But I digress.

What struck me about the article is that they, correctly I think, set forth and quantify a number of contributing factors to motorcycle accidents, injuries, and fatalities: Speeding, drinking, other cars turning left (the largest single cause of MC accidents), and so forth. They missed one huge one - training, although that is increasingly but not entirely reflected indirectly in the percentage of invalid licenses. And all the banners, and the final conclusion deals with helmet use only. It's the same old mantra. By their own statistics helmet use is effective only 37% of the time. If we could get people to get trained, stop drinking and taking stupid chances, and start respecting the most significant single danger of other drivers not seeing us, we could save a lot more lives.

The other side of the coin, of course, is training other drivers to start seeing us. This means making it part of driver education, and it also means vigorous prosecution of at fault drivers who cause injury or death to motorcyclists. The AMA has been campaigning for this for years now. As a very personal example, the young driver who pulled out in front of us 3 years ago, putting me in an impossible situation, and disabling my wife for the rest of her life, didn't even get a summons for failing to yield the right of way. We were on a heavily traveled US designated 2 lane highway, and she pulled out of a side road with a stop sign. She was absolutely 100% at fault, as admitted by her and her insurance company. And she caused serious, life-altering injury to a motorcycle passenger. And no summons. No legal consequences. Her parents' insurance premiums may go up, or they may not. As long as this continues to be the norm, and I think it pretty much is the norm, people are not going to have the motivation to pay attention and looking for us. The "Motorcycle are Everywhere" bumper stickers aren't going to do it, folks. The system needs teeth.

I also happen to believe that the present training program in the USA is totally inadequate to prevent accidents beyond the first 6 months or so. This has been documented somewhere. The problem is that virtually all US training programs are designed, and some are run by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation. The MSF is, just coincidentally, run by the exact same people who run the Motorcycle Industry Council, the industry trade group. It's exactly like putting a consortium of car companies in charge of giving out drivers' licenses to new drivers. Their real motivation is to get people licensed to drive, and thus buy cars, or in this case, motorcycles. If you analyze the MSF program, pretty much everything about it is geared to mass producing motorcycle licenses. Other countries don't follow this model, and their statistics are way less grim than ours. Changing this is going to be very hard, if not impossible, since the MSF heavily subsidizes the programs, which is very attractive to the states. Also, American culture being what it is, making it harder to get a motorcycle license, and then placing tiered restrictions on the licenses depending on experience level, would be a very hard sell.

I personally believe very strongly that more serious training for motorcyclists, tiered restrictions on size of bike based on experience, and eliminating the virtual open season on motorcyclists for other drivers would save an awful lot more lives than making people wear helmets.

[mrlmd1]

Another post or two like that and you'll miss your trip.

Another misuse or misinterpretation of statistics is the statement, backed up by all kinds of data, that most motorcycle (and automobile) accidents occur within 10 or 12 miles of home. That may be the case, but no one thinks about why. Obviously, every time you leave the house or return to it, you must pass through that zone, you spend more time there than anywhere else. So the best way to avoid an accident is to take off and never return?
And most shark attacks occur within 2 - 3 miles of shore, less out in the middle of the ocean. Does that mean it's safe to swim 20-30 miles offshore or that most of the human bait (people swimming) are close to shore? Statistics may only be a description of what's happening, logic and reasoning will tell you why and how things work and the relationships between them.
We do need more severe punishments for negligence causing accidents and injuries. and in this litiginous society I don't know why that hasn't happened yet.

[music man]

The other side of the coin, of course, is training other drivers to start seeing us.



Let me ask everyone on the board something, Have any of you ever not seen a motorcycle because it was a motorcycle. What I mean by that is, have you ever been at a stop sign/intersection of any sort where there were no blind spots, no nothing that would impede you from seeing a normal sized car, and a motorcycle just came up on you without you seeing it, simply because it was smaller than a car and the driver had on dark clothes?

I can safely say I haven't, and I am going to bet that not many of you are going to say you have either. See the problem isn't that drivers don't see you because you are small, sometimes it isn't even that they didn't see you, a lot of people that drive just don't pay attention at all.

Both times that I have been seriously pulled out in front of, (like brakes locked up, almost laid my bike over) it was a very, very old person driving, and both times they did not look before they pulled out at all, which means what? It means that I could have been driving a day-glo yellow Army hummer with 16 strobe lights mounted on the front of it, and they would have still pulled out in front of me. Almost every time I have had a close call with a car almost changing lanes on top of me or pulling out in front of me other than those two, the person was on a cell phone or eating, reading a book, changing their kids diaper, or some other nonsense that people think they can do while driving. And sometimes you get the real asshole that will pull out in front of you looking right at you because he thinks he can pull out fast enough to not get in your way (and that same asshole would do it if you were in your car).

So being seen on a motorcycle is not the issue, because if you were to really pay attention to it, you probably have just as many close calls in your cage as you do on your bike, you just don't pay attention to it because it is not near as scary to have a close call in your car. If you know someone that is driving and they claim that they can't see a motorcycle because it is a motorcycle then that person doesn't need to be driving.

[bonehead]

+1 Music Man. People just don't pay attention to their surroundings.

[burkbuilds]

I'll have to agree with you music man, I've had more people pull out in front of me when I was driving my pickup truck than when I was on my motorcycle. As you point out, in the truck I lock up the brakes, blow the horn, roll my eyes at the idiot that just did that and a few minutes later I've forgotten all about it, probably because even if I hit him with my truck I'm not likely to suffer any major bodily harm, whereas on my motorcycle it would most likely kill me or at least seriously injure me if I were to hit him broadside.
On the opposite side, I'll have to admit that I have also pulled out in front of a car I didn't see a few times in my life while driving my car/truck. I think it mostly happened to me when I was a younger, less experienced driver who was also in more of a hurry than I am now-a-days, and when I was probably concentrating on something else other than driving the car. Having a few "close calls" like that and a few more years under my belt, plus having lived long enough to see the serious consequences of those type of poor driving habits, has helped make me a more aware driver. I also think that riding the motorcycle has made me an extremely more aware driver no matter what I'm driving. I find myself constantly appraising my driving situation and looking out for things that might happen and thinking about how to avoid putting myself in a bad spot no matter what I'm driving.

[BillInGA]

I also think that riding the motorcycle has made me an extremely more aware driver no matter what I'm driving. I find myself constantly appraising my driving situation and looking out for things that might happen and thinking about how to avoid putting myself in a bad spot no matter what I'm driving.

My thoughts exactly. Driving in Atlanta traffic for the past 15 years, I've learned that you have keep your head on a swivel no matter what you're driving and anticipate that someone may do something stupid at any moment.

[dhgeyer]

Perhaps I should have said "training drivers to pay attention". The conventional wisdom is that people are less likely to see motorcycles. This may be because they have a smaller silhouette from the front. My favorite theory is that you are more likely to see something if you are half expecting to see it, or if it's a more familiar or even threatening object. I have always assumed that the conventional wisdom is correct, but I don't know if that particular issue has been studied.

What we do know is that a lot of motorcyclists die or are injured because people don't see them. Whether they would have seen a car under the same circumstances is largely irrelevant to me.

I still advocate stiff penalties, enforced, for any driver who causes an accident with a motorcycle, bicycle, or pedestrian. I advocate this because we are more likely to be hurt or killed than another car driver, and it is therefor more imperative that people see us.

[mrlmd1]

That's why I put on the headlight and brakelight modulators on my S50 - to try and make myself as visible as possible to those who may not pay attention or don't see me for whatever reason. There's no excuse for that.

[Water Warrior 2]

Lots of stuff to agree with and comment about.
Better moto training, A one or two day training session is not enough.
Train cagers to see smaller vehicles
Make your bike as big as possible and as bright as possible. Modulators, driving lights, saddle bags and big wide crash bars. DayGlo colors if you are so inclined.
Stiffer penalties for those found at fault in all accidents. No-Fault insurance is another kettle of fish.
Far better and more stringent driver/rider tests for anyone wanting a license. Make people really earn that priviledge, it is not a right.
Part of the licensing process should be a graduated size thing. It works elsewhere so why not North America. Earn your ride.