The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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I'm thinking about getting a motorbike. As far as safety goes how much of the danger is due to the nature of mode of transport itself and how much is due to people being reckless?
Generally the death per passenger mile is about 28x, if you correct for gender demographics the rate drops to 18x. If we assume you'd be driving alone either way correcting for passenger miles brings it to 12x. The average driver in the US loses 0.33 years of life from fatal car accidents, so a reasonable ballpark estimate would be 4 years of life lost swapping that for a motorcycle.
Some other motorcycle fatality stats that are probably partially corrected for with the gender control: 66% had measurable blood alcohol concentration (vs 37% for cars) 36% the driver is not licensed to drive a motorcycle (vs 9% for cars) 47% involve no other vehicle (vs 22% for cars)
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With a motorbike, you are moving at car speeds in places designed for cars with a vehicle that provides absolutely none of the protection afforded by a car. No seat belts, no crumple zones, no mass to offset collisions, no frame to protect you from impacts. Your vehicle has worse visibility to other drivers and much worse stability. It is much worse at handling adverse conditions like rain, snow, bad roads or debris.
A lot of the additional danger is pretty clearly due to the mode of transport, and the additional danger is considerable.
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What put me off of ever wanting to ride a motorbike was a shock video posted on 4chan of a man flying over his handlebars and getting impaled on a wrought iron fence. The fence part wasn’t what put me off. It was the part where his genitals are effortlessly shorn off his body by the seat, as though they were made of naught but modeling clay. They then go undignifiably flopping off into the road. Bear in mind, when they talk about the risk of injury, 15 to 25 percent of those injuries are pelvic.
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Naively it's Approximately 30 times more dangerous than a car. But, of course, that's on a per billion miles basis, so figuring about 20k miles per year traveled, it would average a fatality every 230ish years if you only traveled by motorcycle. Assuming you have a 30 year riding career left, if you did all your traveling by motorcycle you'd have a lifetime ~1/8 chance of dying that way.
Now adjust for how many miles you'll actually travel on it. Then adjust for whatever percentage of accidents you think are attributable to recklessness above what you intend to stick to. So if you're only doing 5k miles a year, it becomes a 1/32 chance, and if you figure half of deaths are recklessness you won't demonstrate, then it's 1/64.
All numbers after the initial chart are from Myers Young Associated Statistical Surveys.
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Even without a motor, cycling is just much more dangerous per mile than being in car for obvious reasons. Make a mistake in a car at 20 MPH and you're in for an annoying morning. Make the same mistake on a bike and your life is in jeopardy. Worse still, it doesn't even have to be your mistake. One of the best things that ever happened to my future self was getting T-boned by someone that ran a stop sign and hit me when I was driving a small car in my early 20s - real lesson in the fact that you can just be minding your own business and have your life changed by some reckless idiot.
On a moto, you can quite often accelerate out of danger. Not so on a bicycle. On the other hand, I got dinged up quite a bit worse from other traffic (as opposed to a terrain/skills mismatch offroad) on the moto than I ever did on the bicycle, and the motorcycle bug doesn't seem to have stuck with me. Still love them both though.
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I rode a motorbike without owning a car for about 10 years.
Basically if you can control yourself (which is a big 'if' for most riders in their 20's) the largest risk comes from inattentive and reckless drivers in other vehicles. Think of the worst driving you've seen in a car where people don't effectively check mirrors, blind spots, or oncoming traffic. Now crank that up 2x or 3x. That's how often you will see people turning into your path from side roads or changing lanes directly into you. Some people train themselves on only noticing car sized objects or larger in their mirrors.
You need reasonable reflexes (or riding experience) to defensively react quick enough to this sort of behaviour. It's probably the main reason I gave up motorcycle riding.
If you do get a bike, remember to wear All The Gear, All The Time (ATGATT).
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