exit ramp posted speeds are probally a good indication of how fast you should go....and thats at ideal conditions....no rain...no leaves on the ground....no oil on tires from lst toll plaza, etc.

 

No Jim Beam either

 

Get struck by lightning...that's an accident....everything else is human error...same with bikes...operator error. The riders overinflated sense of riding ability is probably the underlying root cause in most incidents.

 

What are we doing wrong?

We are buying more bike than we can handle. We are starting out on what should be our 3rd or so bike. Harleys are not first time bikes.

 

Thanks for your input Jon....yesterday.

 

Several of you hit the nail on the head....slow down, pay attention, don't ride like a idiot. I work a lot of MC accidents. Most of the ones after dark are alcohol related, but they only account for less than 5% of our accidents. Most of the one vehicle accidents are the result of one of the factors mentioned above. Most of the one vehicle fatalities are riders not wearing helmets. I see this live and in color so don't try to convince me helmets aren't a good thing. (For the record, I don't like to wear them and very occasionally don't.)

I am NOT for government mandated riders courses. We have way too much government in our lives now (seen the news lately?) Should people take advantage of the riders courses out there? Sure, that would be a smart thing to do. But you can also teach yourself, especially with the materials that are available now days. A good dose of common sense, a little self education and some pointers from more experienced riders have taught most of us. Leave the government out of it!!!

 

The problem is it is too easy to buy a bike and get a license. Just look through these forums to see all kinds of posts about not touching the front brake, not using any brakes in a turn, running car tires on a motorcycle, riding faster than the flow of traffic at all times on the interstate, running loud exhaust to save your life, full face helmets will break your neck, throwin $hit at cars that cut you off is cool, etc... The proliferation of bad info/ half truths is staggering.

Not to mention the ratio of threads about how to make a bike faster compared to how to upgrade the brakes.

It seems everyday there are another few posts by folks who dropped their bike doing something silly. Yes accidents happen but if folks are routinely dropping their bike they probably should sit in the garage and make vroom vroom noises instead of hitting the open road.

IMHO opinion, you learn to ride by buying a $500 enduro and spending a few years riding gravel roads. You do not learn to ride by buying a pile of DVDs and doing low speed figure 8's in a parking lot.

 

No one has mentioned our aging society. It's a lot more likely that someone that is between 50 and 70 to have an medical emergency.
My brother rode by an accident that happened this weekend up here in Wa., on Stevens Pass. He said they figure the 61 year old rider from Canada had a heart attack, went across 4 lanes into the guardrail, and then was thrown 150 feet down an embankment.
This accident happened on a fairly straight stretch of the pass.

A few years ago I was riding with a guy that was really overweight and in his sixties in 104* weather. Luckily when the heat stroke hit him and he passed out, we had just stop for gas. If it happened 5 minutes earlier, he could have wrecked, and taken one of us out with him.

 

Your going to go, where your looking.

 

I know three people who have driven straight through a curve. ALL were beginners! One was on his way home from the dealer, on a brand new Wide Glide. One crash was fatal. And the other took a ride in a helicopter. One admitted to me that he "just couldn't turn the handle bars"! I'll bet the other two were trying to physically turn the bars also! So it's just my guess....but i'd bet that over 50% of single vehical motorcycle crashes are due to INEXPERIENCE!!!