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Originally Posted by thulfi
I don't really think a valid conlcusion can be reached simply by looking at 55 fatal accidents over 3years in one specific area.
Riders are accountable for 42% of the accidents, and the drivers 44%
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Maybe, maybe not, not. The key difference between that study (which looks interesting BTW, I'll print out and read later) and the one I quoted is that mine only looked at FATAL accidents. We all know how often stupid cagers knock us off, but very few of these accidents are fatal, or very serious injuries and hence in my book anyway, not that dangerous. Most of these accidents also happen in town and there are just as many involving pedestrians and cyclists. I accept a few trips to hospital in a lifetime as being part of riding a bike, what I need to avoid is widowing my wife, orphaning my son and upsetting my mother.
55 bikes when you are talking fatal accidents only is nearly 10% of the annual total for motorbikes, so it's a relatively sizeable sample, much more than would be called "conclusive" for many other studies and hence the 92% figure won't be that far from the truth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thulfi
I think by dangerous, most people aren't talking about 'likelihood of an accident' but more the 'danger to one-self should an accident arise'. This IS much higher on 2 wheels than in a cage wether we like it or not.
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I think we already agree about this...
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Originally Posted by -Ralph-
Obviously once the accident happens you may be hurt more badly than in a car
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But that's only true for slower speed accidents. At 30-40mph you may get a grazed nose off an airbag as opposed to a few broken bones on the bike, by the time you get to 60-70mph or more, crashing a car, especially if you hit something solid or something coming the other way, can just as easily be fatal.
Quote:
You're riding on a country road at night. Lights on. No bends or anything. Just straight open road. A car with lights on is coming down the opposite lane. Everything looks ok - last minute - literally just as you're about to pass the car, it swerves into your lane - no time to dodge it - you come off and get paralysed or die. Police find out later the driver was drunk of his face.
Now suppose you were in your car. The likeliness of this happening is EXACTLY the same, wether in a car or on a bike. The likeliness of getting seriously injured or hurt however is much more significant - and this is where the danger lies.
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I don't agree with this though. I'm guessing you don't have that much 1st hand experience of bike accidents? I don't think it's that simple, if you have a head-on collision at 60mph (120mph closing speed) you are pretty much dead in a car.
It's not crashing on a bike that kills you, it's what you hit after you've crashed. It short it's not the speed, it's the stopping quickly that kills you. Racers come off at 100+mph and slide on their backside for 200yds, before jumping up and running away.
I've experienced a couple of high(ish) speed bike accidents (50-70mph), and I think I'd actually rather be on the bike in the scenario you describe. On a bike you have a much smaller profile and so have a much better chance of avoiding the car coming into your path, then some chance of landing in a nice muddy field. I was doing 55 when I came off in November, landed in a muddy field and got away with a couple of broken ribs and internal and external bruising.
OK, your body might hit a tree and you die, but I'd rather take that chance than be strapped into a car, with nowhere to go, about to stop instantly following a 120mph closing speed impact.
My Dad always used to tell me that on a bike, if you are going to have a high speed accident, you probably won't stop, so leave you brakes alone and concentrate on avoiding the other traffic, then get hard on the brakes and start choosing the softest thing to crash into.