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For a number of days prior to writing this article, I wrestled with the content, as so much has been rattling ‘round in my head. Normally this space would be more about legislation, but this time around it’s going to be heavy on commentary. Lately, I’ve read an unusually serious load of e-mail content from around the country, much of it about motorcyclists being killed or injured and the subsequent calls for mandatory helmet laws; the “statistics” and percentage increases, people writing in to their local newspapers expressing their outrage about the so-called “public burden” of motorcyclists and how they are paying riders’ medical and rehabilitation bills, how motorcyclists have a “death wish” riding high-powered machines over which they have little control, condemning the forthcoming motorcycle crash causation study as essentially a foregone conclusion and sham to benefit the motorcyclist, etc., etc., ad nauseum. First of all, what I perceive going on in this new round of media coverage is a concerted effort by the so-called “safety advocates” organized in each of the states, in cooperation with our old “friends” at NHTSA, to stir up the public emotions and bring more legislative pressure to bear. It is true that motorcycling fatalities have gone up, way up to 4000 last year. What has also gone up, way up – are the sales and registrations of motorcycles. The logic dictates that as more motorcycles are on the roads, more incidents are going to occur. This is true with any mass of vehicles; 42,000 car/truck/SUV fatalities are the recent nationwide norm per year (ten times more than bikes), and it’s holding steady. This is also a national tragedy, in spite of the fact that these vehicles have integrated “safety systems” and equipment. So how about the numbers of “accidents” (four wheels or more) involving injury, or property damage? Has this statistic held level or increased? Where’s the stats? I would suggest that they have increased enormously. As far as fatalities, stats are based not only upon the number of vehicles using the roads (registrations) but includes another necessary component – annual Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT’s.) Various states report their VMT’s to the Federal Highway Administration (or not) and then this data is used to calculate the incidence of fatalities, based upon miles traveled, by way of the Fatality Reporting Analysis System (FARS). There’s a problem though. States don’t consistently report VMT’s for a number of years, therefore how can the un-included motorcycle miles traveled give rise to accurate data to calculate fatalities per million miles traveled? A recent news release from our friends at the Motorcycle Riders Foundation ( We need to remember that fatality numbers proffered to the public are meant as “shock value” and so they elicit public concern. For comparison’s sake, here’s another example of a national tragedy: 100,000 deaths annually caused by ‘medical mistakes’! That’s 25-times the deaths of motorcyclists. Somehow, this seems to be more readily tolerated among the public psyche. Where’s the outrage on this?
The cry for mandatory helmet use is again the misguided cure for reducing fatalities for motorcyclists and supposedly will take care of everything that happens to/for/against the rider. Not correct. Because, every accident involving a motorcycle where no helmet is worn must, by the nature of just being on a bike, include a head injury – right? And because we ride a motorcycle, too many times we are classified as also being malingerers. We ride recklessly with no insurance and cause all of our own troubles. If we “go down” due to a myriad of possibilities (right-of-way violation by a car driver, maybe? Some 85 percent of all bike accidents are the cause of motorists.) and require medical attention, are we a “public” and “social burden.” To hear what complaining people have to say, you’d think we are literally reaching into their pockets and removing their cash. Well, the truth is this: motorcyclists have jobs, homes, and families; pay bills, and taxes like anyone else, including paying into health and vehicle insurance plans at an average percentage level higher than the general public. Income tax is a public burden, so is fuel tax, property tax, sales tax, and any other tax. Insurance premiums, Social Security, Medicaid – Medicare, unemployment and a Welfare state are public burdens. How many more burdens can you think of? How many classes of recipients of the public largesse could be singled out as being “burdens?” Another truth is that the higher cost of everything is borne by everyone. When “safety advocates” start to place particular blame for costs on a certain segment of road users, they are deliberately placing fault and therefore causing divisiveness, by design, to achieve their own regulatory agenda. I could almost laugh at the irony, when I hear medical professionals offer up testimony on the costs to society of medical procedures and treatment, and at the same time it is their field that establishes the prices! Of late, it’s been reported over and over again how the demographic of the motorcycle rider has changed due to increasing average age, and therefore likely as a less-skilled operator. It’s been stated that the older rider is involved in a disproportionate share of accidents. While there may be truth to this, the correlation has yet to be validated as fact. In addition, it’s also being stated that lack of control over high-powered machines is a contributing factor. Motorcycles are not exclusive to this - there is hardly a vehicle on the roads today that does not have the available power and potential to well exceed maximum posted speed limits anywhere. Speed and power control is a function of throttle control by the operator, for any vehicle. The machine doesn’t drive itself. Possession (or the lack) of experience, education, skills, and training run the entire gamut of the age of riders, the same as it does for all vehicle operators. No one outside of motorcyclists cares more about safety than motorcyclists themselves – this is why we continue to train and educate ourselves at all age levels. We can and do, improve ourselves. Compared to the majority of the motorists who obtain a license once upon a time, don’t volunteer themselves for “refreshers”, nor are exposed to knowledge or skill evaluations as time moves along. Motorcyclists should continue to increase the expectations of training and awareness among themselves while at the same time foster those expectations on all road users. Therein lies the problem: we are constantly on the defensive as safetycrats insist we are the problem and our own worst enemy. Yet they refuse to consider that the public is amenable to personal improvement, opting instead to “dumb down” the driver by incorporating survival equipment features into the vehicle as “safety”, when collision and accident avoidance via operational skills and education are the key. More mandates and laws are their answers. To verify this for yourselves, visit Find ‘em if you can… --Dave Christy --from Rogue
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