On motorcycle safety

As a motor­cy­clist I’m fre­quent­ly faced with the claim (some­times out of con­cern and oth­er times from judg­ment) that rid­ing a motor­cy­cle is unsafe. It’s true that a two-wheeled vehi­cle is inher­ent­ly less sta­ble than a four-wheeled one, and that rid­ers are more vul­ner­a­ble to impacts that one would be pro­tect­ed from inside a car. Look­ing at the sta­tis­tics one can clear­ly see that the fatal­i­ties-per-mil­lion-miles and injuries-per-mil­lion-miles are much high­er for motor­cy­cles than for automobiles.

Sev­er­al fac­tors make these sta­tis­tics look much worse than they are, how­ev­er. When one looks at the com­mon fac­tors in motor­cy­cle acci­dents, the two biggest killers seem entire­ly pre­ventable. As much as motor­cy­clists like to talk about oth­er dri­vers being the threat, the biggest pre­dic­tors of an acci­dent are intox­i­ca­tion and inex­pe­ri­ence. Inad­e­quate hel­met use is a big one, too, but some states don’t even require hel­mets, and in those rid­ing with­out a hel­met is a delib­er­ate choice. It’s not some­thing that will change.

How­ev­er, there are things that can reduce motor­cy­cle deaths and injuries:

If you’re think­ing about get­ting a motor­cy­cle, take the MSF course. If you have a friend, rel­a­tive, acquain­tance, or even meet a stranger who is think­ing about get­ting a motor­cy­cle, make the MSF course the first thing you men­tion, and bad­ger them to take the course until they either do or nev­er want to talk to you again. The Motor­cy­cle Safe­ty Foun­da­tion runs motor­cy­cle safe­ty class­es in all fifty states at rea­son­able prices. In some states (like Cal­i­for­nia) it’s the most con­ve­nient way to get your license, as you get to take the rid­ing test imme­di­ate­ly after get­ting coached on the tech­niques you’ll need. You’ll still need to go to the DMV and take the writ­ten test, but that’s a lot eas­i­er than deal­ing with get­ting an appoint­ment to take the rid­ing test and wait­ing in yet anoth­er line at the DMV. The MSF Rid­er­Course pro­vides fun­da­men­tals nec­es­sary to be a safe rid­er, it only takes two days and one evening, and for any­one who likes motor­cy­cles it’s fun and inter­est­ing. It’s just stu­pid not to take the course.

Low­er the DUI thresh­old to 0.05%. In every US state a 0.08% blood-alco­hol con­tent means you are «under the influ­ence.» in New York there is an addi­tion­al cat­e­go­ry: «Dri­ving While Abil­i­ty-Impaired» for dri­vers caught with 0.05% BAC. DWAI car­ries much lighter penal­ties, but it’s a lot harsh­er and more effec­tive than let­ting some­one with a 0.07% BAC off with a warn­ing. The biggest prob­lem with drunk dri­ving is the increase in reac­tion time. Extreme­ly drunk dri­vers can (the­o­ret­i­cal­ly) dri­ve hun­dreds of miles with no trou­ble at all, but as soon as some­thing unex­pect­ed hap­pens, they fail to react in time, with trag­ic results. Reac­tion time starts increas­ing after 0.05%, and that’s where the like­li­hood of caus­ing an acci­dent starts. 0.05% as the thresh­old for pun­ish­ment, whether DUI or DWAI, makes sense.

Zero tol­er­ance for motor­cy­clists under the influ­ence. Many states have a «zero tol­er­ance» lev­el for BAC, 0.01% or 0.02%, usu­al­ly for dri­vers who have not reached the age where they can legal­ly buy a drink. Get caught dri­ving with detectable alco­hol if you can’t legal­ly drink, you get pun­ished. Those pun­ish­ments vary from state to state but again, any­thing is bet­ter than just a warn­ing. Apply the same stan­dard to motor­cy­clists. Motor­cy­cle rid­ing requires all the sens­es to be sharp, but unlike dri­ving a car, bal­ance, judg­ment, and fine motor con­trol skills are crit­i­cal. Any­one who gets on two wheels after drink­ing any alco­hol at all is sim­ply a moron, and it would be bet­ter to sus­pend their license before they kill some­one else or force some unfor­tu­nate emer­gency respon­ders to clean up what’s left of them.

If caught DUI while rid­ing a motor­cy­cle, in addi­tion to any oth­er penal­ties under state law, sus­pend the motor­cy­cle endorse­ment for the license until the rid­er can prove a year’s sobri­ety. That is, if the rid­er wants the motor­cy­cle endorse­ment back, he or she will have to wear an alco­hol mon­i­tor­ing anklet for a year. There should be no addi­tion­al penal­ties if he or she choos­es to take a drink but the clock would reset to zero. The year of proven sobri­ety would be option­al and can start at any time he or she is out­side of prison. The reg­u­lar dri­ver’s license can be rein­stat­ed accord­ing to exist­ing state law, but the motor­cy­cle endorse­ment would stay off until the rid­er wears the anklet for a year with­out a pos­i­tive result.

You might think I’m over­ly focused on alco­hol, but in more than one out of every four motor­cy­cle fatal­i­ties, the rid­er is found to have been legal­ly intox­i­cat­ed. If you include low­er-than-ille­gal BAC val­ues, that num­ber is clos­er to one out of every two. To me, that means that almost half of motor­cy­cle deaths are prob­a­bly pre­ventable. Obvi­ous­ly each case has its own set of cir­cum­stances, but it’s quite clear: remov­ing alco­hol from the equa­tion is more crit­i­cal for motor­cy­clists than for auto drivers.

If peo­ple would just not drink before get­ting on a motor­cy­cle, deaths-per-mil­lion-miles for motor­cy­clists could be 25 or low­er instead of over 40. For cars that num­ber is 1.5. Yeah, see­ing 25 per mil­lion ver­sus 1.5 per mil­lion will still make par­ents wor­ry, but it makes me mad that idiots who drink and ride are screw­ing up the sta­tis­tics for the rest of us.

Increase the dif­fi­cul­ty of dri­ving tests for all dri­vers, and retest dri­vers with each license renew­al. It’s too easy to get and keep a dri­vers license. It requires only a rudi­men­ta­ry knowl­ege of traf­fic law. And what’s the point of hav­ing the license expire and require renew­al if the only thing we test for is the abil­i­ty to wait in line at the DMV? If reg­u­lar dri­vers got the same kind of edu­ca­tion that motor­cy­clists get when they take the MSF Rid­er­Course, the streets would be safer for every­one. It’s not just about keep­ing unsafe peo­ple off the streets, but about edu­cat­ing them to be bet­ter drivers.

Keep the most pow­er­ful bikes away from inex­pe­ri­enced rid­ers. Many coun­tries have tiered licens­ing, where rid­ers have to jump through dif­fer­ent hoops to get to ride more pow­er­ful motor­cy­cles. Too often these tiers are based on the dis­place­ment of the motor, which is by itself a ter­ri­ble pre­dic­tor of how fast and pow­er­ful the motor­cy­cle is. My pro­pos­al is sim­pler: pro­hib­it the sale or loan by deal­er or pri­vate indi­vid­ual of any street motor­cy­cle with greater than 80 horse­pow­er or 75nM (55 foot-pounds) of torque (or maybe base it on pow­er-to-weight ratio) to any­one with a motor­cy­cle endorse­ment less than 1 year new. Or even six months. That still leaves plen­ty of room to get an awe­some­ly pow­er­ful first bike. We don’t even have to audit deal­ers. Just take a look at the mod­el of bike and length of time the rid­er has had their motor­cy­cle endorse­ment at the scene of any acci­dent. If the com­bi­na­tion of pow­er and inex­pe­ri­ence is dis­cov­ered, then find the bill of sale and chase after the sell­er. The inves­tiga­tive costs would be neg­li­gi­ble, and deal­ers would­n’t have any addi­tion­al red tape. They would self-police to avoid the chance of liability.

Every­one has heard of rid­ers who buy a new Huyabusa and ride it off the lot nev­er hav­ing rid­den a motor­cy­cle before, only to be found dead a quar­ter mile away because they could­n’t con­trol the 200 hors­es on the hair-trig­ger throt­tle. It hap­pens sur­pris­ing­ly often. There’s a strong argu­ment to be made that this is sim­ply dar­win­ism at work, but again that hard­ly seems fair to the peo­ple that have to clean the corpse off the side of a barn. And that one death in a quar­ter mile seri­ous­ly skews our deaths-per-mil­lion-miles stats.

Sor­ry, it may seem heavy-hand­ed but it would take the pres­sure off of sales­peo­ple. If some­one walks into a deal­er look­ing for the most pow­er­ful bike in the world because they got their license the pre­vi­ous day and now it’s time to par­ty, the respon­si­ble thing is to steer them to a less pow­er­ful bike or refuse the sale. But then they have to explain to their man­ag­er why they let a cus­tomer with mon­ey in hand walk out the door to buy some­where else. If the deal­er next door won’t sell that pow­er­ful a bike to that cus­tomer either, the deal­er will more like­ly keep the cus­tomer. Even if the cus­tomer walks, the sales­per­son can tell their man­ag­er that they were pro­tect­ing the deal­er­ship from liability.

Hel­met laws: enforce ’em or repeal ’em. Every day I see some guy (yeah, it’s always a guy) on a motor­cy­cle wear­ing a hel­met that is obvi­ous­ly not DOT-approved. If it looks like no more than a plas­tic beanie, sor­ry, there’s no way it’s legal.

If the point of such inad­e­quate equip­ment is that hel­met laws suck, fine. Maybe we ought to repeal hel­met laws. Yay free­dom and all that. But if the laws are on the books, they are there to keep the deaths-per-mil­lion-miles num­bers down and they ought to be enforced.

(The NHTSA has recent­ly made changes to the labels required on new motor­cy­cle hel­mets. That ought to help, but not if the police nev­er both­er to check dur­ing a traf­fic stop or nev­er pull a rid­er over for wear­ing black paint on a bald head.)

At times dur­ing the writ­ing of this post, some lib­er­tar­i­an part of my brain has leapt up in shock. I have to admit that yes, I’m advo­cat­ing rules and laws more dra­con­ian than those we have in place. Stump­ing for less free­dom instead of more. Maybe these ideas aren’t the best ones and I invite the read­er to make alter­nate sug­ges­tions in the comments.

The best pos­si­bil­i­ty, of course, would be if rid­ers would vol­un­tar­i­ly stop drink­ing when they ride, pay more atten­tion, get more train­ing, and make san­er choic­es when purchasing.

Most rid­ers I know are among the safest, most atten­tive, most care­ful motor vehi­cle oper­a­tors on the road. Take away inat­ten­tion, intox­i­ca­tion, and inex­pe­ri­ence and motor­cy­cles will still be sta­tis­ti­cal­ly dan­ger­ous com­pared to auto­mo­biles, just like auto­mo­biles are sta­tis­ti­cal­ly more dan­ger­ous than bus­es and bus­es sta­tis­ti­cal­ly more dan­ger­ous than air­planes. But it is hyp­o­crit­i­cal (even though it is true) to point the fin­ger at dri­vers for how often their cell­phone use, tex­ting, and gen­er­al obliv­i­ous­ness puts us motor­cy­clists in dan­ger when such a large num­ber of motor­cy­cle deaths and injuries are eas­i­ly pre­ventable by motor­cy­clists themselves.