and Prevention, between 2001 and 2008 in the United States, more than 1.2 million motorcyclists were treated in hospitals for serious injuries, and more than 34,000 died. In the same time frame, crash-related deaths involving cars and light trucks dropped to an all-time low. Motorcycles are only about 4 percent of vehicles on the road, but we rack up about 30 percent of all motor vehicle fatalities.
So, why hasn’t rider training had an effect on bringing down the fatality and injury numbers? Rider training was set up in the early 1980s to help new motorcyclists get a quick introduction to the sport. Training seems like a commonsense way to make motorcycling safer, and it did work until around 1997. But, since then, training has morphed from learning to ride a bike skillfully into an easy way to get a motorcycle license. The focus in rider training today is on getting more riders licensed as quickly and as easily as possible. The result of hundreds of thousands of people getting trained and licensed every year is that fatalities have risen to frighteningly high levels, and the fatality rate for motorcyclists is much higher than the rate for other motor vehicle operators.
If you’re an average motorcyclist, you are right around 30 times more likely to die when you are riding a motorcycle than when you are driving a car. That’s not 30 percent higher, that’s 30 times more dangerous!
That’s the dark side of rider training in the United States. Training introduces lots of people to motorcycling, including too many motorcyclist “wannabes” who just aren’t motivated to absorb what they need to survive. It’s very hard for instructors and rider coaches to accept the results. When you are putting your heart and soul into rider training, it’s heartbreaking to come to the awareness that you might be hurting more than you’re helping.
We call this field “motorcycle safety,” but we should really call it “motorcycle danger.” What I try to do is counsel riders to reduce their personal dangers as much as possible. And I know that, with serious attention, it’s possible to manage the dangers very well. One of my BMW friends, Voni Glaves, has ridden more than a million miles—without a single crash. I wish I could say the same. Most of us experience one or more injurious crashes during our riding career.
If you’re not really serious about motorcycling, consider giving it up. I’m not joking about this. Motorcycling requires full and complete attention. If you’re not willing to commit to lifelong study and practice, maybe some other activity would be just as much fun without all the danger. I know, you’ve seen lots of people riding motorcycles who don’t appear to be very concerned about the danger. But then, there are lots of ex-motorcyclists limping around with permanent injuries, not to mention the many who are no longer with us.
If you think you have the right attitude to become a proficient motorcyclist, it’s going to be hard work from here on out. You need to continually practice control skills until you can put the bike exactly where you want it to go without any wasted time or thought. Then you must learn how to spot trouble developing so you can get out of the way.
Let’s follow a fictitious rider we’ll call “Biker Bob.” Biker Bob may be fictitious, but he exhibits a lot of traits shared by many real-life riders. Bob started riding a couple of years ago, but hasn’t really done anything to improve his skills or knowledge. He just goes riding and assumes that he’ll eventually figure it out. One day, Bob rounds a blind corner at 40 mph and is shocked to realize that the pavement is tightening up into a decreasing radius. Bob tries to lean the bike further but just can’t stay with the pavement. The bike sails off the road and smacks into a big rock. While Bob is healing and his bike is being repaired, he decides he should take a track course to jack up his cornering skills.
Back on the road again after the track school, Bob marvels at how much easier it is to corner once you master a few skills such as countersteering, following “bike” cornering lines, and sneaking on the throttle during the turn-in. Six months later, Bob is zipping smartly around a blind turn at 60 mph and is startled to see a truck on its side, blocking both lanes. Before Bob can get the bike slowed, he crashes into the truck. What went wrong here? Why didn’t increased cornering skill translate into avoiding the second crash?
The answer is that Bob’s crashes were mostly a result of poor mental skills, not inadequate control skills. Training Bob to corner faster helped him to have more fun, but his basic problem was poor situational awareness. He just didn’t know how to look ahead, how to think about what’s not yet in view, or how to link speed to sight distance.
It’s essential that a motorcyclist learn the physical skills to control such things as balancing, turning, shifting, and braking. There are more than a few riders around who demonstrate their embarrassing lack of skill by dragging their boots on the pavement or paddle walking the bike around in a U-turn in a desperate attempt to keep the bike from falling. I’ve seen lots of riders banging down repeatedly on the shift lever because they don’t know how to shift smoothly and quietly. Lots of riders follow a “car” line through corners, wasting traction. But poor control skills don’t necessarily result in more frequent crashes, especially those that are a result of poor situational awareness. The important message is that you need to figure out how to control the situation as well as the bike.
One big part of controlling the situation is to learn how to look. You need to get your eyes up and reaching out well ahead of the bike, like a fly fisherman casting a line way out into the river and reeling it back in. For a motorcyclist, it’s not simply a matter of casting focus out and back, but of scrutinizing the situation for specific hazards, such as loose gravel, an oncoming car that could turn left across your path, or a bicyclist who might cause a driver to swerve across the centerline. The farther ahead you can spot a problem, the more time you have to deal with it. There is no point in looking down at the ground a few feet in front of the bike because that’s already history. No one can react instantly. When you’re riding along at 60 mph, you’re covering 88 feet per second. It takes a second or so to react to what you see, so there’s really nothing you can do about the next 88 feet. Successful riders learn to scrutinize the situation way ahead of the bike.
It’s not just a matter of a hazard being in front of the bike, but anything around you that could cause you harm. That includes vehicles changing lanes or coming up behind you. The story goes that a motorcyclist was riding home from work and stopped for a red light. A car driver was going the same way, several seconds behind the motorcyclist. The car driver failed to notice the red light or the stopped motorcycle and smashed into the bike without slowing. The motorcyclist died. The woman driving the car was found to have been painting her nails while driving. The lesson here is that, even if you are obeying the laws and not even moving, you can’t afford to turn off your “mental radar.”
Likewise, you need to comprehend trouble spots even when you can’t see another vehicle intruding. For example, alleyways are almost as dangerous as intersections and more likely to result in fatal collisions. You need to be motivated to think about what might happen if a car zooms out of a narrow alley into your path. Maybe it would help to ease on a little front brake to slow down or to move over to the left side of your lane. Nine times out of ten, there won’t be a car emerging from an alley. But if a car does appear, you’ll be ready.
The point here is that it’s not enough to be on high alert waiting for something bad to happen and then reacting to the emergency. You need to use your brainpower to predict what might happen, so that you can position yourself to avoid possible hazards, whether it’s a car behind you zooming out of a parking lot, a diesel oil spill, or a missing manhole cover.
I’ve offered a number of “unbelievable” scenarios at different seminars and training courses over the years, and none of them ever turned out to be as fictional as I had imagined. A few years ago, I was giving a presentation at a big motorcycle event in Minneapolis. My topic was deciding on emergency actions to avoid hazards. “Here you are, riding down the freeway near Minneapolis, when suddenly you spot an elephant escaped from the zoo and lumbering across the highway. What would you do? Brake? Swerve? Accelerate? Open a bag of peanuts?”
I thought I was offering a ridiculous situation that might stimulate some dialogue about the different evasive tactics we might use, with a little humor thrown in to entertain the audience. After the seminar, a rider came up to talk with me. “Dave, you’re not going