Motorcycles and Safety – Rocketing to a Crash
Rocketing to a Crash
More and more people are picking up motorcycles for their recreational use, and for most there is never an incident with their new pleasure. For some though, whether they are picking up land cruisers or the so-called pocket rockets, their new joy ride ends in the worst way- with a crash.
With almost four million registered motorcycles in the United States, it is a reality that there are more and more drivers running the risk of crashing just by using this vehicle.
Over 1/3 more likely to be in a fatal crash
Motorcyclists have gone on record as having more crashes than most other vehicles on the road, leading people to believe that it could be a problem with the vehicle of choice as opposed to the problem. It has been shown that a motorcycle driver runs the risk of a fatal crash up to 35 times that of a passenger car per driven mile, furthered exampled that despite being only 2% of registered vehicles on the roadway motorcycles cause 5% of fatal crashes on highways each year.
60% more likely for a crash to be fatal
These motorcycles have a higher fatality rate due to the fact that the vehicle itself offers virtually no protection for the driver to protect them when they crash. This leads to almost 80% of all motorcycle crashes being fatal for the driver as opposed to the approx. 20% of passenger car crashes. This figure can be individually affected by which type of cycle a new driver buys. A study by Progressive Auto Insurance of 2 million registered cyclists gives an example of both the most wrecked cycles as well as the least wrecked. The most likely bike to be crashed on the roadways is the Suzuki GSX-R series, followed closely by the Kawasaki ninja, the Suzuki TLR, the Yamaha YZF, and the Honda CBR series.
Pocket Rockets
The consistent factor of these five cycles is that all of them are what is referred to as a pocket rocket; in that they are small framed bikes designed for speed. This may be due to a lot of people buying the bigger engine bikes without having a wealth of experience, which quickly leads to losing control of these and crashing. This is highlighted in the list of the least crashed bikes, which are all larger Land Cruisers designed for sustained use as opposed to speed.
A bit of advice it would seem that needs to be given to those thrill seeking on crotch rockets would be to learn to control your motorcycle in an effort to prevent becoming another statistic.