Look I’m as much “fuck cars” as the next guy but riding a motorcycle on a highway is unironically suicidal. I personally know a guy who got in a bad crash on one but miraculously survived; he had a year long recovery period but will have various pain and dysfunction in his body for the rest of his life. I also know some people who did pathology rotations (state medical examiner office, autopsy basically) and the big three categories of bodies coming in were drug overdoses, suicides, and motorcycle crashes.
One of the facebook comments links to a seventh person who died a few days before these on June 18th: https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/motorcyclist-killed-sr-530-crash.amp
If you eliminate people riding without proper gear, people riding without motorcycle licenses, and people riding inebriated, the death statistics for motorcycles get cut by more than half. No doubt it’s more dangerous than driving a car, but if you’re sober, properly trained and experienced, and you wear all the gear, it’s not at all suicidal.
I changed my primary care physician a few years back because literally every time I went in he would waste time trying to convince me to stop riding a motorcycle.
if he succeeded in convincing you that would have done more for your long term health and risk of death than literally any other intervention so I don’t blame him for trying
I know a lot of medical providers and they see a lot of mangled bodies from motorcycle accidents.
And if I were making appointments for life advice he might not have been wasting his time, but it turns out it was an appointment for basic medical checkups not advice on how to live my life or how to get around. He certainly didn’t offer to buy me a damn car, pay for car insurance, pay for maintenance on the car, or pay for fuel, all of which are factors in my choice to get around on a motorcycle.
if it’s literally a matter of not being able to afford it then fine, but if you can afford it you are trading a very, very large amount of risk to save that money.
Surely you understand that everyone has different thresholds of acceptable danger? Do you think people who ride motorcycles don’t realize it’s dangerous when they’re doing 70MPH next to 20k lb 18 wheelers in heavy traffic? It’s just so weird and condescending to do this shit. It’s genuinely insulting to my intelligence, which is why I quit going to that doctor. No shit it’s dangerous, but thanks for telling me what I and everybody already know.
you came into a thread about how a lot of motorcyclists died and now are complaining about how condescending it is to be told that what you are doing is unsafe
I think you’ll find I came into a thread and shared some information about how to reduce the chance of injury or death on a motorcycle and you are now repeatedly stating obvious things to me as if the entire world doesn’t already know it. Do you feel the need to tell me the color of the sky, or perhaps how many days there are in a week?
Also, thanks for confirming that this does indeed come directly out of your condescension. Cool!
Not eating vegetables 200 micromorts
Drinking once a week 100 micromorts
Hate doing cardio 500 micromorts
Riding a motorcycle 27,000 micromorts
Bad sleep hygiene 300 micromorts
someone who is good at risk management please help me budget this i am going to die in two years
The fatality rate for motorcycles is about the same as small planes, anybody arguing that it’s safe is not very smart and they just want to be as annoying as possible before they bite it.
Nobody’s arguing it’s safe they’re trying to tell silly scolders that they understand the risk and are comfortable with it.
Your risk of death is 100%. I drive a convertible even though it is much more dangerous than a sedan in a rollover or T-bone. Many of us here shoot guns, do direct action, have no health insurance, etc. As long as they’re registered organ donors, why should doctors hassle bikers? Bikers know the risk better than the general population, they just want it more.
Your risk of death is 100%
I suppose bikers will go for routine checkups and respond to the doctor, “Jeez, I’ve been riding for ten years and nobody ever told me it was dangerous!”
The lessons are the same from every public health concern: risky sex, obesity epidemic, smoking. Badgering people is really fucking annoying for everybody involved - so annoying that they’ll have worse healthcare outcomes in general - and basically nobody will make lifestyle changes because of it. The most you can do with non-structural solutions is get people to take prophylactics or wear a helmet.
If you eliminate people riding without proper gear, people riding without motorcycle licenses, and people riding inebriated, the death statistics for motorcycles get cut by more than half.
Learning this fact was a huge reason I finally sent it on my dream of owning a bike. And holy shit am I glad I did, I haven’t had this much fun in years.
The fastest car can’t hold a candle to the pleasure of a motorcycle ride on a nice day
Cigarettes also feel good but they are also bad for your health. You don’t need a car to crash a bike into a tree.
I hate talking about motorcycles with people because they think I’m strange when I tell them I don’t want to ride one or be a passenger unless everyone has helmets, protective gloves, airbag vests, etc. It seems excessive, and I’m sure some of it may be snake oil, but some people really do think they’re epic stunt actors who just need a pair of shades and black jacket to be safe.
Everyone also thinks I’m overreacting when I tell them to wear a seatbelt in the back of the car. If you don’t value your life, fine, but I rather not have you break my spine and kill or paralyze me because you think physics make an exception for you just because you sit in the back. Fucking HATE passengers. Fucking HATE drivers of any vehicle. I want to drive a large one seat vehicle so people can’t bother me. A tank, i guess.
The motorcycle riders who refuse to wear any gear at all are ridiculous. I once caught a flat quite a ways from home on a tubed tire, didn’t have levers (or the willingness to fight that battle in 95F heat in a ditch) so I used AAA and got a ride in a flatbed home. The driver was a life long rider, she rode a hayabusa. With no gear, not even a helmet. She hadn’t even ever tried a helmet. I tried to explain to her how pleasant having earplugs and a shield over/around your head is at 80MPH and it was like she didn’t get it.
A close friend was desperate to peer pressure me into riding a motorcycle and I’ll serve crack before I’ll get on a bike.
If you join an outlaw biker gang you can engage in both activities at the same time!
this friend has less regard for your continued survival than a hitman on a fat contract to shoot you in the head
Me reading this after just buying a motorcycle
I do try and stay off multi lane highways as much as possible tho
If you haven’t done it, I spent the money and took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation basic course. I just started riding 3 months ago and that class taught me a lot of things.
It’s a very different mindset from driving a car and demands a lot of attention.
I don’t care if it’s 100°F out - I’m wearing all my protective gear.
Saw a dude riding a dual sport wearing sandals, cargo shorts, and a tank top. That’s it. All I could do was hope that he would end up laying down in a low speed turn and learn a lesson before he gets plowed into by a pavement princess.
I’ve spoken to some people from Vietnam where motorcycles are the primary transportation method. They tell me they think Americans are insane and would never drive a motorcycle here because the speed limit is too high compared to Vietnam.
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I’m genuinely in favor of making all cars throttle limited to 65 mph and as light as possible. Fuel savings, less dangerous in a crash both thanks to speed and mass reduction, and maybe people won’t drive around like complete assholes disregarding the life of everyone around them if they can’t feel an inhumane power of speed and heft.
But until then, riding on a motorcycle in this society is basically Russian roulette.
Cars are so closely related to the idea of freedom in Amerikkka that doing this would trigger some sort of revolution.
California drivers were already whipped into a frothing rage when their freedom to endanger the lives of everyone around them was threatened, so they watered it down to having the speedometer beep at them
Is it really any more dangerous than cycling?
I think motorbikes are great. Lots of developing countries where everyone drives them, and they are significantly less polluting than cars and a lot more fun.
It’s good to take risks sometimes, so long as they’re not inherently self-destructive.yes, it is more dangerous than cycling.
In places like southeast asia where the mopeds take over the road in swarms and there are only a couple cars that are not the dominant vehicular life form it is much different.
If I think about my times visiting the Philippines, traffic is so congested in Manila and even the smaller towns, that motorcycles can’t really Rev up to higher dangerous speeds.
And your other statement is correct, much fewer cars. Maybe some jeepneys, buses, and cargo trucks but no deranged private citizens zipping around in their Ford F-5000
Honestly as a cyclist in an area with poor cycling infrastructure, I would feel a lot more comfortable riding a motorcycle than I do on my ebike, highways excluded. Riding in traffic is much safer than riding alongside traffic, you are far more visible and that’s the single most important aspect of road safety.
I agree, I used to cycle all over the place on the road and I wouldn’t do that any more. Motorcycle gear + moving at the speed of traffic is far safer than spandex, a foam brain bucket, and differential speeds up to 40-50MPH
Bicycle deaths per mile: ~10 per 100M miles Motorcycle deaths per mile: ~20 per 100M miles
IMO this shows that they’re more dangerous, but primarily because you can go a lot further on a motorcycle. Basically 100% of the danger from riding a bicycle comes from cars. In contrast, it’s quite practical to kill yourself on a motorcycle without external intervention. So, if you have already chosen a mode of transportation, behavioral choices on a motorcycle offer much more control over where you fall within that mode’s risk spectrum. Wearing a helmet and taking a class make way more difference on a motorcycle, and that’s borne out by the contributing factors to fatal accidents /u/nat_turner_overdrive has posted elsewhere in the thread. Seems quite possible that the per-mile risk of a motorcycle rider doing everything right is comparable to that of the average bicyclist. Biking in cities is stupid dangerous of course, every cyclist I know has been hit, but that’s a problem with cars not an intrinsic thing.
A cyclist can pull over and shoot a guy who’s trying to run him down. A biker has to hope his motorcycle is faster to outrun the car
I personally know a guy who got in a bad crash on one but miraculously survived; he had a year long recovery period but will have various pain and dysfunction in his body for the rest of his life
That’s just the cost of going outside, so
OOC how many of them were driving the speed limit? IDK I’m open to there being a marginal increase in risk to motorcyclists but when 98% of the vehicles I see traveling faster than 150km/hr are motorcycles I do feel pretty skeptical that the risks to a motorcyclist are principally external.
A majority of motorcycle fatalities have one or as much as all of the following factors: No motorcycle license, no safety gear, and drunk.
Sounds like the bigger issue is cars and shitty drivers
Oh, in accidents, at first I thought this was gonna be a new Biker war. This is far less exciting
a new biker war?
There’s been several. The biggest one was in Quebec oddly.
Thank you for this fascinating information.
I have a bit of a morbid curiosity about outlaw biker gangs. Most dudes in them are pretty comfortably in the middle class (though usually the lower, more rural, more “redneck” subsections of it), yet they get involved with this rather complex organizations of drug smugglers and arms traffickers, not out of economic need or desperate survival, but like… they just kinda dig the lifestyle.
It’s like a very Boomer version of organized crime, a bunch of mediocre white dudes hang around drinking brewskies and doing macho shit, but unlike most LARPs it evolved into them moving meth across international borders and selling M16s to the cartel.
Motorcycles are how you get Americans to support non-car-oriented infrastructure. If we get rid of the cars, riding a motorcycle will be safer!
Fuck motorcycles purely from the standpoint that motorcycle culture is a hodgepodge of reactionary and antisocial behavior. Fuck motorcycles in that we place pedestrians on top of the transportation hierarchy, I guess wheelchair users and babies in strollers get preference over people walking, and trains I guess get preference over people, but I’m not here to argue about the specifics of the hierarchy. I’m here to say that motorcycles are motor vehicles and should be regulated out of existence like cars should be. Nobody should be going so fast on a bike that crashing means death. We should regulate regular bikes like do cars, cars like we do planes, planes like space craft, space craft double what we currently do now. We need to bump the seriousness we take of all transport up by one, except maybe trains and that’s only because whatever harm expanding train infrastructure as fast as possible which will lead to negating safety measures is better off for society in the long run. IDK the only bikers I like wear spandex.
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Rookie numbers, argentina namber wan
Maybe get the Olds off the fuckin road. Sware on me mum this country has a fetish for catering to the senile.
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I’ve thought about getting a motorcycle because they’re fun and fast and look cool and make cool vroom vroom noises and are cheaper than a car, but then I read about death statistics and decided against it. I personally have known one person who died on a motorcycle and two who were badly injured. Still might get an ebike tho.
