Who’s #1 in People-per-Motorycle and Why?

The Motley Fool, of all places, recently published a sorted list of motorcycle ownership, by state (from a 2011 DOT report). Hillariously, South Dakota is #1 with 12 people per bike. I say hillariously because having ridden through that state a bunch of times what I take from that data is that SD citizens ride 2 blocks from their trailer court to the nearest bar, where the bike stays parked until they walk it home that night. I’ve seen thousands of motorcycles parked in front of South Dakota bars, but damn few on the highway going anywhere. The few spotted on the road are mostly in trailers or drooling fluids in pickup beds. Like southern New Mexico’s reputation for being “the place where RV’s go to die,” freighter-loads of motorcycles get abandoned in South Dakota, usually in August.

Second place is New Hampshire? I’ve only been to New Hampshire once, in August, 2008. I spent two days cruising the hills (Easterners cluelessly call these bumps in the road “mountains.”) and enjoying the mostly empty two lane roads. I rode through Portsmouth, Manchester, and Concord searching for a decent bike shop where I could buy a replacement for a scratched Shoei face shield (managled by a vandal when the helmet was locked on the bike in Portsmouth). Not only did I not find a shop that stocked Shoei anything, but I didn’t find any dealers that didn’t resemble a biker gangbanger hangout. I made it all the way to Cleveland before I found an actual motorcycle shop with motorcycle gear in stock. Needless to say, I’m not much of an east coast fan. I did not see a single motorcycle on the road at any time in New Hampshire and the weather was perfect and I left the state late on a Saturday afternoon. So, what gives, New Hampshire?

In 3rd place, Iowa is a different case and I don’t really know what goes on inside the heads of Iowegians. When I’ve passed through the state, there is occasionally a lot of motorcycle activity around Des Moines. It’s all cruisers, noisy as hell, the slowest moving packs of bikers I’ve yet encountered (I even had to pass them in our VW RV a couple of years ago because they were plodding along at a pace below tolerable even for that miserable semi-transportation appliance.) The Fool had an explaination, somehow connected to Polaris and the “famous Iowa Grand Motorcycle Rally” (which I have never heard of). I can sort of believe that their other justification, “this Midwest state's wide-open spaces make for a perfect landscape for Polaris' and Harley-Davidson's famous cruisers” could be true. You have to travel a lot of miles to find an Iowa curve that might cause one of those hippobikes to bottom-out and scrape chrome. Every Iowa motorcycle I’ve ever seen exhibited absolutely no tire sidewall wear. Hell, even Iowa dirt bike parks are pretty much straight and flat.

The Fool claims that the purpose in collecting this “data” was, “. . . for the first time motorcycle enthusiasts can truly see in which states they have the greatest chance of passing by a fellow rider. For the motorcycle companies this data gives them valuable information on where they can most easily reach the greatest amount of riders and customers.” Good luck with that. If you’re not riding near a Black Hills casino or one of the biker bar hangouts, you could ride 1,000 miles in South Dakota and never see anything on two wheels, unless it’s a camper trailer.

The bottom of the list is more interesting, I think. The bottom five (not counting the District of Columbia at dead last) states are Georgia, New York, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Makes perfect sense to me. Those three southern states are home to the freakin’ most aggressive, least skilled drivers in the US of A. Riding a motorcycle in Texas is pure suicide, unless you’re part of a gangbanger parade. I lived and rode in Texas for three years and I doubt that 10 miles of that was on Texas pavement. Texas drivers are homicidal toward any vehicle that is not a pickup or SUV or semi. Even when they are not intentionally trying to kill you, their incompetence makes motorcycle commuting unappealing. Louisiana is worse and I can only assume that Mississippi and Georgia are a combination of stupid and vicious. Remember Easy Rider anyone? Oddly, Mississippi and Georgia are two of the 19 helmet law states. I’ve often heard the poser crowd claim that they’d dump their motorcycles if they had to wear helmets. Maybe this is evidence that’s true?

Rank	State	# Bikes	Population	People per bike
1	South Dakota	69,284	816,598	12
2	New Hampshire	79,266	1,316,807	17
3	Iowa	173,929	3,050,202	18
4	Wisconsin	317,276	5,691,659	18
5	Wyoming	30,351	564,554	19
6	North Dakota	32,654	674,629	21
7	Vermont	30,070	625,909	21
8	Montana	46,996	990,958	21
9	Minnesota	240,288	5,310,658	22
10	Alaska	30,983	714,146	23
11	Idaho	62,576	1,571,102	25
12	Maine	50,318	1,327,379	26
13	New Jersey	330,470	8,799,593	27
14	Colorado	173,120	5,047,692	29
15	Delaware	30,494	899,792	30
16	Ohio	390,494	11,537,968	30
17	Oklahoma	127,140	3,760,184	30
18	Washington	220,856	6,742,950	31
19	Pennsylvania	404,164	12,717,722	31
20	Indiana	204,402	6,490,622	32
21	New Mexico	64,863	2,065,913	32
22	Rhode Island	32,989	1,052,528	32
23	Michigan	308,338	9,877,143	32
24	Florida	574,176	18,838,613	33
25	West Virginia	56,210	1,854,368	33
26	Kansas	81,354	2,859,143	35
27	Oregon	108,313	3,838,332	35
28	Nebraska	51,371	1,830,141	36
29	Arizona	178,890	6,413,158	36
30	Connecticut	97,960	3,575,498	36
31	Illinois	350,193	12,841,980	37
32	Alabama	127,255	4,785,401	38
33	Tennessee	168,408	6,357,436	38
34	Arkansas	76,293	2,921,588	38
35	Nevada	68,951	2,704,283	39
36	Virginia	195,722	8,023,953	41
37	Massachusetts	159,000	6,555,466	41
38	Missouri	140,936	5,995,715	43
39	North Carolina	223,209	9,560,234	43
40	South Carolina	107,864	4,637,106	43
41	Kentucky	98,475	4,347,223	44
42	Hawaii	30,098	1,363,359	45
43	California	801,803	37,338,198	47
44	Utah	59,355	2,775,479	47
45	Maryland	120,069	5,785,681	48
46	Georgia	199,586	9,712,157	49
47	New York	345,816	19,395,206	56
48	Texas	438,551	25,253,466	58
49	Louisiana	67,486	4,545,343	67
50	Mississippi	28,067	2,970,072	106
51	Dist. of Col.	3,523	604,912	172