Assigning Blame, Taking Responsibility

A blast from my past called this weekend, wanting to talk about his summer’s misfortunes. We’ll call him “P” to protect his ego and our relationship. In early August (2019), P was sailing down a country two-lane, minding his own business, and assuming that Minnesota country roads are, somehow, safer than urban freeways and byways. (Statistics consistently demonstrate that this is a motorcyclists’ delusion. In 2018, for example,31 of 57 or 54% of the state’s motorcycle fatalities were in areas with populations under 10,000 and the majority, 22, were in rural, unpopulated areas. 913 motorcyclists were injured that year and 49% of that total were injured on those same low population roads.) 2 motorcyclists were killed and 102 were injured in the state’s over-250,000 cities; the Twin Cities, in fact. P, oblivious to the hazard of country roads, was riding somewhere between 55 and 65mph on a sparsely-populated stretch of the road, when a pickup pulled into his lane, partially shielded by a downed tree next to the driveway the pickup was exiting from. Mayhem resulted and P ended up with a multitudinous-fractured femur, a broken back, and a separated shoulder.

Fortunately for P, he was wearing actual motorcycle gear including a full-face helmet and armored jacket. As he said, “I didn’t spill a drop of blood.” Unfortunately for P, he has a long recovery ahead of him and he is not fond of physical therapy. He’s been here before. Several year ago, he was riding in fairly congested traffic and, bored with the pace of movement, he was occupied trying to read the call sign of a passing small airplane when he struck the stopped car in front of him. He flew over the car and, while he was airborne, he decided, “I don’t want to hear Tom lecturing me about not wearing a helmet while I recover from this” and he shielded his head with his arms just before tumbling into a ditch. The end result of that crash was a severely massacred pelvis from which he has yet to fully recover. To his credit, P took total responsibility for both that crash and his less-than-complete recovery. He also started wearing a full-face helmet and, at least, an armored jacket when he rode. A life-long Harley guy with a long history of spectacular crashes, the bike he crashed on the last two times was a big BMW touring bike.

I’ve ridden with P, maybe twice, but definitely once. We met at a small town a few miles from his place, for a Fourth of July fireworks show. Afterwards, for whatever reason, we decided to go back to his house before I headed back home. Both of our spouses were riding passenger on that trip. P immediately took off in the dark, on familiar country roads, putting some distance between us. I made a half-hearted effort to keep him in sight, but I do not ride fast, ever, with a passenger and since I knew where we were going I was not particularly upset to make most of the trip “unguided.” Since then, he’s often reminded me of that incident and of the fact that he was a “lot faster” than me on those mostly-gravel country roads. I do my racing, when I do it, on closed courses and I am never impressed with people who imagine racing on public roads is something to brag about. My wife would make short work of me if I ever play-raced with her on the bike.

Like many motorcyclists and bikers, P’s problem is that he imagines that he is seen, because he is a big guy riding a “big bike.”  While P’s BMW didn’t have loud pipes, P has ridden bikes with minimal muffling for most of his life and always deluded himself into thinking physics is his friend when it comes to sound and defensive riding, he suffers the false idea that people are looking for motorcycles. Even in a fairly motorcycle-friendly state like Minnesota, there aren’t enough motorcycles on the road any given day for a typical cager to have any reason to be watching for them. When we don’t amount to 0.001% of the total traffic on good days, asking drivers to “Start Looking for Motorcycles” is as silly as asking them to watch out for unicorns. Bicycles, pedestrians, old men on power wheelchairs, and kids on tricycles are far more likely things to be looking out for than motorcycles; especially motorcycles approaching a blind intersection (or driveway) at 60-65mph.

This is exactly the kind of situation where motorcyclists have to be watching out for everyone else. Even if, as in P’s case, the cager gets the blame for the crash, P might still be crippled-for-life or dead . . . but in the right. The price for being right is higher than I want to pay. To be clear, I am not afraid of being dead, but I practically terrified of being maimed and crippled. During the brief period when the MSF’s Basic Rider Course actually talked about risk management, I used to tell my motorcycle students that any crash short of a tree falling on you or a tornado blowing you to Kansas was the motorcyclist’s fault for not anticipating and avoiding the situation. If you think everyone else is looking out for, or responsible for, your safety, you will be disappointed and, probably, hurt or killed.

Stereotypes and Typical Behavior

A few weeks ago, on a warm Saturday, my hometown was infested with the usual collection of bozos on bikes. Traffic on Old Main Street was jammed up and loud as a 1950’s drag strip. Driving through that section of town is usually miserable on a warm summer afternoon and if I didn’t have business there I would never venture down that street weekends. That day, I had business so I was stuck.

After I finished my Saturday transaction and tried to back out of my parking space, I discovered that another noisy pirate parade was in progress. Since the cops had conveniently found donut shops at the other end of town for their day-long break, the bikers were trawling the street making it almost impossible for anyone with a life to get on with it. After waiting for several minutes for an open space, I found one and backed into my lane. About the time I was straightened up and in forward gear, a pair of nitwits on hippobikes came wobbling down the street in the opposite direction and one of the crossed the center line about 20’ from the front of my pickup. Realizing that a solid object was in his random path of travel, the biker managed to weave back into his lane and barely missed both my left fender and the other half-wit who was no more skilled or in control of his geegaw-disabled vehicle. I caught the raised finger of the first nitwit in my rear view mirror.

Driving toward downtown on Highway 61 (Yeah, that “Highway 61.”), a large full dress ubiquitous black cruiser of some unknown brand passed me on the left. At first, I was impressed that the bike wasn’t obnoxiously loud and that the rider wasn’t dressed in pirate underwear. He was even wearing something resembling a helmet, open face, but not a total toilet bowl. However, he sped past me and the Suburban in front of me, swung into the right lane, and immediately came to a near stop in front of the Suburban before waddling into a filling station; bringing all of the right hand lane traffic to a near stop in the process. It was pure luck, on his part, that he wasn’t rear-ended by the Suburban. Of course, if he had been the SUV driver would have been blamed and more biker crash statistics would be skewed incorrectly away from faulting motorcyclists.

Yesterday, on my way back from the Cities near the UofM, I saw an AGAT biker on some sort of adventure touring bike. It was one of the many “bikes with a beak” and I can’t tell one from the other: coulda been a Triumph Tiger, a newer V-Strom 650 or 1000, a BMW F800GS, or some other wanna be I have yet to meet. The guy was wearing motorcycle gear and I was initially impressed. However, when we came to a stop light, he passed me and the two cars in front of me in the bicycle lane, and jumped the light gambling that no one in the opposite direction would be turning into his path. Again, pure luck that any number of things he couldn’t see or react to didn’t arrive in that intersection when he did.

Because I see so much cruiser/biker incompetence around my hometown, I tend to stereotype “idiot bikers” as characters on cruisers and other hippobikes, but mostly too many of the idiots riding two wheels appear to be mentally deficient with the riding skills of a kid who just came off of the training wheels or a tricycle; brand and species of motorcycle be damned..

The industry is hurting, again, these days. Dealerships are closing, dealers, importers, and manufacturers are reducing their motorcycle inventories. Rider training programs are shrinking to small fractions of their peak years, only a decade ago, and you see even fewer motorcycles on the road outside of occasional pirate parades and stacked up in front of bars. If there were a time when reducing motorcycle access to public roads would be easy, this is fast approaching that moment.

Motorcycle manufacturers, on average, aren’t doing much to slow the regression, either. The average motorcycle is less efficient, fuel-wise, than the average mid-sized car; even SUVs! Toyota’s 2019 RAV4 gets 40mpg, which is as good as all of the liter adventure touring bikes and better than all of the sportbikes over 600cc and as good as most of the 600cc sportbikes. Some cruisers get not-awful economy, but their owners “fix” that with aftermarket exhaust systems and lame attempts at performance enhancements that kill fuel economy and pointlessly multiply the exhaust emissions. Outside of that lame “image” bikers imagine they are sporting, practical reasons for riding a motorcycle are disappearing.

I “retired” from the Minnesota motorcycle safety training program last year (2019), after I reviewed the new, grossly dumbed-down MSF program. It was pretty lame before, but it really became focused on putting butts on seats in the newest iteration. No more “adult education” tactics, now we’re just supposed to be hand-holding prospective motorcyclists through the test so there is practically no way they can fail to get an endorsement. In every class, for the past 18 years, there was always at least one “student” who slipped through the cracks, passed the overly-easy “test,” and got an undeserved and unexpected license. I’d caution them that driving on a closed-course at 15mph was nothing like riding in traffic and that they really needed to keep working on their skills if they were going to survive, but I know those words went in one ear and out the other.

In demonstrations like the ones I described in the first four paragraphs of this article, I see the results of our foolishly easy motorcycle licensing and the incredibly stupid fact that once you have a motorcycle endorsement you have it till you die. All it takes is a few bucks for the endorsement renewal fee every time you reup your license. You can even transfer a Minnesota motorcycle endorsement to a California endorsement for a little money. Crazy! If you think knowing how to wobble down a Minnesota or Wisconsin country road is in any way useful experience on the 405, you are delusional. So on we go, down the path of becoming a piece of motoring history; like horses and buggies and go-carts and street legal ATVs. Yeah, those were all things; long ago. And now they aren’t.

My Weird Audience

It has become discouragingly obvious that my life goal of having 1,000,000 views on this blog is going to take longer than I'm likely to live. A friend recently asked me, "How do you attract readers to a blog?"

My answer was obviously, "How the hell would I know? I've been writing three blogs since the beginning of this century. Cat videos on YouTube get more hits in a day or two than I've managed in almost two decades." Whine, whine, wimper, wimper, and so on.

Looking at the stats here, there are some surprises. I am amazed that my most visited review was the one of the Yamaha XT350 and #2 was the TU250X review. The XT350 hasn't been in production for years and Suzuki's TU250X was pretty much a bust, sales-wise. I'm really happy to have drawn almost 20,000 people to the Aerostich Darien review, because that is a product that I will always be glad I've owned and recommend the suit and the company to anyone who asks. The friendships that developed from my MMM and Aerostich experience are some of the best things that has come from living in Minnesota and 20 years of writing about motorcycles and the people involved in motorcycling.

61,402 Russian pageviews is either confusing or disturbing; mostly the 2nd. Am I getting hacked? Are there secret messages slipped into my blog convincing you to vote for Trump/Putin and buy a Harley? Everyone else, I'm glad you're here and thanks for reading my words. I am really grateful for the half-million views from my US friends.

About three years ago, I could see the handwriting on Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly's diminishing page count and wrote a piece that I thought sounded the end for the Geezer with A Grudge. Looking back at what I've written between then and now, I'm sort of amazed that I've kept on keeping on. The feedback I've had from you, the fearless readers and riders, keeps me in subject matter and I really appreciate that. I have essays scheduled out to, at least, early 2020 without me having to write another word. Three years ago, I figured that would be enough. "Surprise, surprise," as a goofy American TV character used to say (you're old if you know who).

#141 Ride Like the Killer Robots Are After You

All Rights Reserved © 2014 Thomas W. Day

A friend, Scott Jarrett, who has had a storied and impressive career as a professional musician once told me, "If you can imagine making a living any way but through music, you should." For years, I took that as a semi-friendly put-down. It felt like he was telling me that, since I had regularly left the music world for a more predictable income from electronic engineering or education, I shouldn't consider myself committed to being "a musician." I have no excess of confidence regarding my musicianship, so I took that advice and when someone asks me if I play or if I'm a musician I always say, "sort of" or "no, but I own some music instruments."

Recently, Scott was explaining to me his current financial dilemma that is mostly forced by the serious competition he receives from his past and current music students. These kids have the advantage of having had him as a step-up into music and the music business, plus they have the motivation, energy, and commitment and the advantage of of being young, footloose and unencumbered by obligations. He simply said, "I can't keep up anymore. I can't do the practice time or put in the hours to keep these kids from getting the jobs I used to own." 

Scott described his situation as being similar to a scene in Douglas Adam's Life, the Universe and Everything, where Arthur Dent, Slartibartfast, and Ford Prefect were watching some robots destroy a planet. Ford was explaining why the robots would win and destroy the universe while the three of them stood idly by observing their own demise.

"We're not obsessed by anything, you see,'' insisted Ford. "And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win.''

"I care about lots of things,'' said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoyance, but partly also with uncertainty.

"Such as?''

"Well,'' said the old man, "life, the Universe. Everything, really. Fjords.''

"Would you die for them?''

"Fjords?'' blinked Slartibartfast in surprise. "No.''

"Well then.''

"Wouldn't see the point, to be honest.''

When I heard that, "If you can imagine making a living some way other than as a musician, you should" suddenly made sense to me, in a non-insulting way. Scott is not the kind of jackass you know me to be and I had always assumed that he meant this as a parable; unfortunately a parable that was simply beyond my comprehension. But I get it now. I was obsessed by music and, particularly, playing music on my guitar for about ten years of the fifty-plus years I pretended to be a musician. Not nearly enough to count for the kind of obsession required to be a professional musician.

In the United States, motorcycles account for 15% of highway deaths and an equally disproportionate number of serious injuries. If, as I've argued more than a few times, we amount to no more than 0.01% of highway traffic and, more likely, closer to 0.001%, the odds of dying in a motorcycle crash are somewhere around 1,500 to 15,000 times greater than in a cage. I know that traditional media claims the number is somewhere between 18 and 37 times more likely, but I think their math skills are suspect. 15% is 1.500 times greater than 0.01%. For motorcycling to be 37 times as dangerous as driving a car, we would have to drop our fatality contribution to 0.37% of total highway fatalities.

So, with those lousy odds in mind, how obsessed with riding a motorcycle are you? If you are absolutely convinced that magic and your biker stare are going to rescue you from lousy riding skills and your distain for motorcycle protective gear, you're an idiot and one of the many reasons we are so overrepresented in highway crash statistics.

Motorcycling requires a similar obsession to being a professional musician. A motorcyclist is someone who constantly works on all aspects of his riding skills. She keeps her motorcycle in excellent condition by regularly inspecting the machine and spending the necessary money to keep it all in order. He reads books and magazines about riding, maintenance, and takes regular skills refresher courses to stay sharp and on top of his game. She rides as soon as the ice is gone in the spring and doesn't put her bike away until the snow falls in the winter. He would rather ride his motorcycle than drive a car, ride a bicycle, walk, take the bus, or fly. She keeps herself in good physical condition so she has the strength, stamina, flexibility, and physical capacity to ride competently. He is obsessed with going places by motorcycle. When she rides, the only thing she is thinking about is riding a motorcycle safely, competently, and because it makes her feel more alive than any other thing she does.

Anything less than that is an unacceptable risk for minimal reward. If I thought it would help, I would repeat that sentence.

To paraphrase Mr. Jarrett, "If you can imagine going from point A to point B any way other than by motorcycle, you should." I do not encourage people to become motorcyclists. I train people who think they want to ride a motorcycle, but I don't give them a lot of encouragement. I am not a motorcycling cheerleader. I didn't try to put my wife, kids, or my grandkids on a motorcycle. When they asked about it, I told them to get really good on a bicycle and get back to me. Neither of my daughters or my grandson made it past being pretty fair on a bicycle. None of them tried BMX or even bicycle road racing. My wife tried off-road motorcycling for a few years, but never had any interest in street riding. They all had a few biking crashes, lost some skin, and decided that was fast and dangerous enough. I agree with that decision. If I didn't work at turning my kids into motorcyclists, I'm sure not going to try to convince a stranger or, even, a friend to take on riding. It is dangerous, expensive, complicated, and a lot of hassle. If you are not obsessed, you should take the bus, ride the train, drive your cage, bicycle, or walk. They are all much safer and cheaper than motorcycling. If you are obsessed, I will try to help you in any way I can to become a better, safer motorcyclist. If obsessed people were the only people on motorcycles, we would drive that 15% down to 0.37% and keep pushing it lower until we approach zero.

Published in MMM Issue #170 October 2015.

This Isn’t A Question of “Be Careful of What You Wish For”

Barry Strang wanted to be a Harley owner his whole life. After 38 years of wishing, he bought one and killed himself on it within a few minutes of riding it off of the dealer’s lot. The local newspaper reported his crash and death, “He was riding his long-awaited Harley Davidson northbound on Highway 789 when he negotiated a right-hand curve and, for unknown reasons, collided with the drive axles of a truck tractor, according to Wyoming Highway Patrol report. Strang was ejected from the motorcycle and went under the tractor-trailer. His helmet flew 30 feet away.”

I suspect everyone who reads this blog knows that Mr. Strang was not killed by his 38 years of wishing, but by his lack of motorcycle training and experience. Nothing in the article says he was in any way a trained or skilled motorcyclist. In fact, the article implies that he might not have been legally licensed. “Officials said the collision may have been because of Strang's unfamiliarity with his new motorcycle.”

He was following a semi pulling two tanker trailers and plowed into the back of the second trailer in a curve. It’s an easy-to-visualize crash, especially given the low state of rider awareness and skill exhibited by an overwhelming number of bikers. It was avoidable in multiple ways. Strang’s son imagines that “Dad died with a smile on his face.” Those of us who have had jelly-side-down moments know that is a happy fantasy. Barry Strang’s last moments were filled with panic. All of his reactions to that panic were wrong and that builds momentum to the stress and fear. Supposedly, he died instantly and that is probably the best we can hope for him.

It’s a sad, too often repeated story. I wish motorcycle ownership had worked out better for Mr. Strang. No one deserves the pain and disappointment his family and friends are feeling now. There should be some accountability from the dealer for sending this man into traffic with minimal safety gear (His helmet “flew” off?) and, possibly, no license, from the state for having such lax vehicle sales and dealer licensing laws, and, even, from the manufacturer for promoting a lifestyle instead of being responsible about including the risk and injury statistics in their advertisements. Automobiles and motorcycles and bicycles are dangerous devices and they require skill, concentration, training, and they should only be for sale to those meeting appropriate standards.

I’ve said it before, a motorcycle is not a fuckin’ wheelchair. You can get into more trouble faster on a motorcycle than any vehicle I know of. That ought to be the message so-called motorcycle safety organizations are shouting to the rooftops. Screw “Start Seeing Motorcycles." Fuck “Loud Pipes Save Lives.” And everyone who is wasting air arguing against helmet laws ought to have to scrape up one of these catastrophes for every time that stupidity is uttered. Our ads ought to say “get trained or get killed,” “AGAT or DOA, your choice,” and a battery of nasty crash pictures should follow to emphasize the point. Stuff like this is bullshit and anyone who minimizes the risk and responsibility deserves a world of hurt and misery.

Yeah, I’m pissed off. Deal with it. I suspect I would have liked Barry Strang and I’m pretty sure I would have liked his family. He deserved better treatment from motorcycling, but he didn’t get it.

Liars, Damned Liars, and Statistics

One of the things that I'm enjoying the most about The Geezer with a Grudge: Average Mileage spreadsheet is the arguments about how invalid the data is. NHTSA, the states, the AMA, and insurance companies simply make up the data they use for motorcycle fatalities per mile traveled because they are too lazy to get real data. If they wanted real data, all they have to do is use the information we're all forced to provide every time a motorcycle is sold: the manufacturer, VIN number (which can easily be linked to model, engine size, year of manufacturer, etc.), and mileage at the time of the sale.

The fact is, what the database is showing so far is about what I expected to see; the average motorcyclist could get by with a 100cc scooter. With the big mileage riders skewing the data to the high-side, average miles/year is moving towards 1500/year. Still, it's hard to justify more than 250cc if that's all you're going to do with a motorcycle. This is what statisticians call a "fat-tail curve," though. There are going to be a few bikes on the right side of the curve and a crap-load of bikes on the low side. I'm not even a little surprised.

All of my life, I've bought my motorcycles by cherry-picking the 80% of motorcycle buyers (Note: I did not call them "motorcyclists."). Using good old Pareto Principles, 80% of the people who buy a motorcycle are unlikely to use it for much. Apparently, based on our current data, the more the bike costs the less likely it is to be ridden. More importantly, for me, the trendier the bike the more likely it will be found super-cheap a year after the trendiness wears off.

For example, my 1999 Suzuki SV650. I bought that bike in mid-2000, after the press had raved this bike into unobtainium for two years. My local dealers had no SV's in stock and were asking a slight premium for next year's 2001 production. However, I kept an eye on Craigslist around the Midwest and found about a half-dozen for sale for about 1/2 list price with less than 100 miles on the odometer. A young "motorcycle buyer" fell for the hype, bought a new SV for full list-plus, put the recommended farkles on the bike, dropped it in his driveway, and decided motorcycles were too dangerous. Five years and about 30k miles later, I sold the SV for slightly more than I'd paid for it and bought a year-old 2004 V-Strom (the "next big thing") for the same amount with less than 1,400 miles of local use (owned by an old guy who dropped the bike once and gave up). Well-used V-Stroms were going for serious money in 2005, but I waited for the usual suspects to show up and was not disappointed. I expect to unload my 2004 V-Strom for close to what I paid for it 50-some-k-miles later.

As our data is demonstrating, most motorcycle owners are not motorcyclists.

Motorcycle Miles Traveled

One of my least favorite aspects of motorcycle safety statistics is the wildly optimistic "miles traveled" numbers that seem to be spouted by everyone from the dreaded AMA to the MSF to NTSA. I do not believe the average mileage traveled by motorcyclists is anywhere near 10,000 miles per year. But how do we get real numbers?

It struck me this morning that we have a ready source of data, CraigsList and eBay. So, I started paging through CraigsList ads this afternoon, copying down the bike year and miles advertised, tossed them into a spreadsheet, and did some calculations.

Observation and experiences are powerful tools. I realize that what appears to be isn't always what is, but I also realize that people making political claims are often motivated to tell less than the truth about . . . anything. One of my least favorite statistics is the "miles traveled" numbers that are used for motorcycle safety data. I simply do not believe that there are nearly as many motorcycles on the road as the industry, safety organizations, and, even, the government claims.

The Kelly Blue Book, for example, posts the following statement, "Obviously mileage will vary from year to year and model to model. A simple guide could be to consider the type of bike you are looking at: If the bike is a sportbike 600 c.c. to 999 c.c., and since these bikes are traditionally weekend only bikes, you can expect to see lower miles, about 3,000 miles per year. Tourers or Sport Tourers usually see a lot of miles, but these are generally freeway miles, between 5,000 to 6,000 miles per year." Those are silly numbers, based on fantasy. NHTA is considerably more conservative with an estimate of 1,943 miles per year for the average motorcycle. I'm not sure I buy that, either.

When people sell their motorcycles, they are pretty much forced to provide credible mileage numbers, so places like CraigsList, eBay, and local newspapers are pretty useful resources. In about a half-hour on two different days, I collected data on 60 motorcycles. So far, my data indicates the average mileage is about 1,425/year with a standard deviation of 863 miles. So far, there are some radically low-mileage outliers. The most annual mileage I've seen is 4,700/year over a 12 year lifetime. My own mileage tops that, but I'm trying to ignore anecdotal data and only collect "for sale" data to keep the information consistent and believable.

I created my own data gathering tool, a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, that allowed me to enter data that I found in various locations and make some statistical assumptions from that information. Because I'm lazy, old, half-blind, and don't feel some kind of compulsion to do all of this on my own, I' originally posted the spreadsheet on my website for others to play with. A much smarter guy, William Wahby, transferred my Excel sheet to a Google Docs format:(Geezer with a Grudge: Average Mileage) where any of us can add data. If you want to add some bikes from your region, you'll see we've included the following data entry fields for you to work with:

State

Date Sampled

Make/Model or Description

Year

Miles

These are all data entry fields. The rest of the data fields -- Miles/Year, Miles Driven, and the statistical analysis fields -- calculate mileage automatically when you enter data into the Year and Miles fields. Please just enter the traditional two-letter State designation into that field. The date format is automatic: DD/MM/YYYY. I'll take pretty much anything for Make/Model. 

This is the kind of data collection that you'd think/hope NHTSA and the states would be collecting and using for analysis proposes. From what I've been told, they don't bother.  To the right is a charty of what our data looks like, so far. Pretty disgusting, don't you think? One thing this absolutely points out is that the overwhelming majority of riders don't need a bike bigger than 150-250cc. Any damn bike will hold up for less than 2,000 miles a year and how fast do you need to go if you're only going to be on the bike for less than twenty hours a year?

The Problem with Statistics

I'm reviewing Pat Hahns' new book, Motorcyclists Legal Handbook: How to handle legal situations from the mundane to the insane, for MMM. As always, I ended up with too many words for the magazine publication. As always, I'm dumping the extra verbiage here, because it's something I want to say. Before I go into full rant mode, I want to be clear that this is a useful, well-written book that most of us can use. Like all of Pat's books (except, maybe, Maximum Control: Mastering Your Heavyweight Bike, which is unintentionally hilarious considering the subject and the author who has used my term "hippobike" as often as me), Legal Handbook is practical, helpful, technically excellent, and damn near necessary for anyone who travels interstate. In fact, I'd recommend it as required reading for the IB folks.

Here's my only conflict with the book, and my excess 400 review words: My biggest disagreement with the whole book is about the state "rideability" rating. Rideability is a statistical evaluation of the "ratio of multi-vehicle motorcycle fatalities to single-vehicle motorcycle fatalities," plus the population density and law enforcement density. Pat claims that "a high ratio, such as 75/25, is bad, as it shows in a fatal accident in that state, it is more likely that the rider got hit by another vehicle rather than simply having an accident on his or her own." I disagree with this conclusion on at least two points.

When I first glanced through a few of the states' evaluations, I took that particular ratio completely differently. I would argue that a low ratio, such as 25/75, is bad because it shows that most of the state's bikers may be drunks and incompetents and tend to ride off of the road on their own accord. Plus, simply noting that a crash was a multi-vehicle event doesn't release the motorcyclist from fault for the crash. 

Second, since most Minnesota motorcycle fatalities occur on rural roads and in small towns, I don't put much into population density as a "rideability' evaluator. Having lived in L.A., where I experienced high population density, I apply even less credibility to the density issue as a riding negative. Nebraska has a really high "rideability" rating, but some of the most insane and incompetent drivers I've ever witnessed were in that state. Driver competence is more important than population density.

 I do agree with the inverse connection between rideability and law enforcement population. However, Iowa's 5th place (lower numbers are better) in law enforcement population does not reflect my Iowa experiences. As best I can tell, every third Iowegn is in a police car. I do anything possible to avoid Iowa, even if I'm travelling to Missouri. The whole state is "erratic," to use Pat's term for unusual laws or enforcement. Texas' relatively benign rideability number must reflect the near-absence of motorcycles from the streets and roads of that state. I lived in Dallas and west Texas in the 60's and 70's and the place was hell on wheels for motorcyclists then. My daughter and her family live in Dallas and I visit fairly regularly. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of motorcyclists I've seen in the time I've been in Texas in the last ten years. In all, I'd have to put minimal value on the book's rideability estimates. Somewhere in the mix, there would have to be a miles-driven/motorcycle crashes value for that kind of evaluation to be useful.

Lane Sharing Study

Steve Guiderian has published a study, "LANE SHARING: A GLOBAL SOLUTION FOR MOTORCYCLE SAFETY, which compares the safety record of the only state in the US that allows traffic filtering and lane sharing with the abysmal record of the rest of the country. This is, as far as I know, the only study that uses data instead of emotion and speculation to look at the safety of this traffic management tactic. His conclusions found that "California does have a lower rate of fatal rear-end motorcycle crashes when compared to other similar motorcycling states. This figure also shows that the rate of fatal rear-end collisions in California is also lower than the national rate, which includes many states with a limited riding season and fewer motorcycle riders." Guiderian also found that "California has fewer motorcycle deaths involving a motorcycle rearending another vehicle, and significantly fewer deaths from a motorcycle being rear-ended by another vehicle."

One aspect of lane sharing that Guiderian does not address is the fact that lane sharing increases the viability of motorcycle commuting, which would increase the visibility of motorcycles in typical traffic which could also result in an improved motorcycling safety record. If you have ridden in California, you know there is no downside to lane sharing. Superstition, fear of the unknown, and conservative timidity is all that prevents all 50 states from allowing lane sharing. Claiming safety as one of the restraints is unbelievable.

My Picture of Over-40 Riders

For a year, I subscribed to Motorcycle Consumer News. I like the concept of this magazine and I really wanted to like it, but I mostly was disappointed. Many of the articles are poorly written, some are as silly as the advertiser-based magazines, and a couple of the regular writers are downright irritating (kettle calling the pot "black," I know). However, some of the reviews are not only super-detailed but MCN will look at bikes the other magazines barely notice (like this month's review of Suzuki's TU250X).

As I was digging through the crap in my MSF classroom bag, I stumbled on an old issue that cemented my disinterest in renewing my subscription back when that subscription was about to run out: "A Portrait of the Over-40 Rider." This article, written by Wendy Moon, was supposedly an analysis of a survey pasted inside a previous issue. The survey received 122 respondents and Moon makes some amazing conclusions from the results. This was a survey placed in an out-of-the-way spot in the magazine a few months back. So out-of-the-way that I had to paw through my old issues to find it. I hadn't even noticed the survey while I was reading the magazine.

With her tiny collection of responses from MCN's odd group of subscribers, Moon attempts to dispute the findings of NHTSA's crash data (and several other studies) from previous years. According to her survey results, 57% of motorcycle riders are in their 50s and 23% are in their 60s, leaving 20% of riders for the 16-49 and 70-up year-old categories. I'm not even close to buying that. Since she concluded that such an overwhelming percentage of riders are geezers, the fact that 50% of all fatalities are old folks doesn't bother her. Her conclusion was that, "In contrast to the media's portrayal, they could be said to be the safest riders on the road."

A statistic that is missing in all of the significant studies' data is miles driven, but Moon's average of 11,968 miles per year is so far from NHTSA's 2,411 and anything any reasonable person could believe that the rest of the article loses what little credibility it might have had. A substantial number of her polled riders claimed an average of 50,000 miles per year on their bikes. Hell, I don't even believe NHTSA's 2,600 mile estimate. I think most US bikes barely collect 2,600 miles before they hit the scrap heap. Asking a bunch of geezers how many miles they ride is as useful information as asking SUV owners about their gas mileage. People lie and people really lie about stuff that they think points out superior strength or weakness.

Moon and MCN's other conclusions were:

• 83% "always wore a helmet"
• full-face helmets were the "overwhelming" choice
• 75% said they "never" drank and rode
• 85% were self-taught and 60% had "some kind of training"
• 70% rode year-round in spite of the weather
• only 14% rode with a group of any kind
• 54% claimed to be daily commuters
• 40% claimed to be crash-free

Somewhere in all that silly data, common sense was totally lost. In everyone else's data, many of the douchebags getting killed on motorcycles are over the alcohol limit. While it's true that the majority of motorcyclists in the US are over 40, I doubt that they contribute much to NHTSA's average 2,600 miles traveled per year. The garage candy crowd aren't dressed well enough to experience more than a 2 month riding season in most of the country, It's tough to put on big miles when you have to self-medicate yourself every 50 miles because of your crappy suspension and awkward riding position.

Like hearing the mpg data from an SUV owner, I put very little faith in the big mileage claims of most cruiser characters. The best someone claiming 50,000 miles a year can expect from me is a polite smile. I work on that expression often. I am a firm believer in disbelieving practically amazing story I didn't witness. [How's that for a convoluted sentence?]

How does a wide range of motorcycle riders manage to put on 11,000 miles a year and while 40% of them manage to avoid any sort of crash? Not buying that, either. If you ride, you crash. If you ride a lot, you crash a little more.

She also quoted a study that concluded, "those individuals who took beginning rider training courses were more likely to be involved in an accident than those who did not, and that those who took the beginning course more than once were much more likely to be involved in an accident."

Now, that I believe. If you can take the MSF BRC and fail the test afterwards, you are incompetent as a motorcyclist. The test is insanely simple. Honestly, I suspect that most folks who are forced to take the BRC to get their license are a bit handicapped in the hand-eye coordination skills territory, anyway. There is no such thing as a "difficult DMV" test in these United States. If you can't pass that test, you are either riding a worthless pile of crap or you are not capable of managing a motorcycle. The test ought to be 200% tougher, if anyone ever really wants to reduce motorcycle deaths. For those of us over 55, it ought to be re-administered ever couple of years to check the decay of our skills.

What MCN proved is that getting useful motorcycle data is tough and that publishing sketchy data is a formula for losing credibility.

Who Wears What on Their Head?

I know, stereotyping people is politically incorrect and the people who most hate political correctness seem to scream the loudest for it when their ox gets gored. Helmets, being the personal and fashion statement that they are are prime candidates for an exercise in profiling. Being the crotchety old bastard that I am, I can't resist the opportunity.

My first and most consistent observation about helmets is, "Those who need it the most object the most strongly."

In a typical basic motorcycle training class, "students" are supposed to show up with their own, DOT-approved helmet. Anything with "DOT' stamped on the back will suffice and the DOT will stamp any damn thing. I have no idea what criteria the DOT uses for coverage, but I suspect the top of the head is all they bother to protect. If a very soft space rock were to fall from the sky and land on top of the owner of one of these sad jokes, it might protect him/her. If the same sad jokester were to flip from his motorcycle, landing on top of his head, skidding to a stop while still balanced on top of his head, this helmet might provide sufficient protection. In any real crash, you might as well be wearing a plastic beanie. Want to take a guess what kind of prospective "motorcyclist" (other than Carrot Top) wears this kind of comedy paraphrenalia?

I'll save you the effort. The owner of this comedy prop is usually 50+ years old, 150 pounds overweight, as uncoordinated and physically incapacitated as South Park's Timmy and missing a mental connection or eleven million. If it's true that a crash is 49% likely to result in a faceplant this kind of helmet is all but worthless. Every once in a while, someone looking just like the dude in the picture makes an appearance. He's always totally confident of his riding ability and is only in class because he can't get his hippobike through the DMV's course. Remember him?

Dropping the bar to ludicrous, we have the Nazi bowl fans. Even dumber, some of the clowns piss on patriotism by putting an American flat sticker on their facist totem. If my father were 40 years younger, I'd like to introduce these clowns to someone who sacrificed a good bit of himself to stomp out this symbol and the evil it represents. As it is, I make it a point to remind them of who they are celebrating and my best guess why and let them babble their excuses for worshing evil. Honestly, I'd rather these characters didn't take a training course because Darwin ought to have a clear shot at them. Enough said.

It's hard to say anything seriously bad about a half-helmet. We've probably all owned one, especially those of us over 40. They've probably saved our asses and brains a few times, if we've put any miles on at all. They are protection and they protect some of the most vunerable areas. If claustrophobia is your problem, this is the helmet for you. There are some really good half-helmets and they provide most of the protection that you need.

Lots of BRC students show up in a half-helmet and many of them are ready to be convinced that a real helmet would be a better bet against injury. In the classroom, I always offer bo smash my face (while encased in my helmet) against a table while a student does the same wearing their toilet bowl or half-helmet. Nobody takes me up on it, though. I'm not kidding, I'm up for it if you are.

Of course a "real helmet" is a full-face helmet. Anything less is a compromise. Flip-ups included, since the hinge is a clear weak-link. A full-face helmet provides all the protection a helmet can give. racers wear nothing less. Today, even trials riders are wearing full-face hats. Mine saved my face from being ground into hamburger on the Dempster Highway two years ago and I will always remember the look of that fiberglass ground down to where bits of foam was showing through the shell. That could have been bone.

A few years back, a friend's boyfriend bragged that everything about a helmet prevented him from being a safe rider. A few weeks later, he parked his face on the freeway at 40mph and is still undergoing reconstruction surgery. I'll put my opinion and experience against his any day.

Thomas Day

Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly Magazine

http://geezerwithagrudge.blogspot.com/

thomas@motorbyte.com