WA State Motorcycle Safety Report

Yep. but that's true for all vehicle types.



It'll likely never happen in the States because of our bigger is better, freedom first view of vehicle ownership, but from the logical view of experience to rider/driver relationship tiering makes sense.



Unfortunately, so many people are driving and riding here in the States without licenses, I suppose that's moot. Why should I have to jump through hurdles in testing and pay the government more to ride a higher performance machine when they can't adequately test, license or enforce people now.



So, despite liking the tiering idea, I think it's worthless here in the States for bikes and cars until we can truly enforce the laws (see as one third where unlicensed in the report). It penalizes the lawful, when it's likely promoting better testing, safety and awareness is the more viable option.

Sooo....the major causal factors in one vehicle Motorcycle accident fatalities are alcohol use and unlicensed riders. We are already bombarded with the "dont operate a motor vehicle while drinking" message and I assume that folk riding without a valid mc license are folk less likely to take advantage of available training. So no matter how much we raise fes and spend public funding on motorcycle training(and I certainly endorse more and better training programs) we still will not have significantly addressed the 2 major causal factors. Unfortunately,the only way to address these two issues are by stepped up enforcement and increased penalties. In other words, we dont need new laws,we need better enforcement of existing ones. This puts us on the slippery slope of :"are we jeapordizing the personal freedoms of the majority to punish the minority scofflaws " and "is the cost worth it?" Not being as omniscient as some MOrons, I dont know all the answers ; but in this case I think the cost is worth it.

Looks like the biggest factors are improper lane positioning and speeding. I wish they'd have gone into a little more depth with how they interperate lane errors. Does that mean running wide on corners or crossing the center line?



All in all a good report and it puts the ball squarely where it belongs: 21~25 year olds speeding and minimal skills in multi-vehicle accidents. Guess the newbies on sportbikes really do off themselves more. It's surprising that alchohol is such a factor in the under 28 crowd but there it is. Followed very closly by alcohol in the over 40 crowd presumably the stereotypical rebel without a clue on his shiny new cruiser.



It all comes down to riding sober within you and the roads limits,same as it ever was. Oddly enough it looks like riding in the rain in winter is statisticly the safest time to ride.

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