Passes & Canyons Blog

Guess what? You are the biggest factor in whether you come home from your ride safely.

I’ve been looking at the crash statistics in the 2018 report from the Colorado Motorcycle Operator Safety Program (MOST). Previous posts are here and here.

The next table in the MOST report on 2018 motorcycle crashes focuses on the “First Harmful Event (FHE)” which I take to be the nature of the crash, more or less, after whatever actions occurred that led to the crash. Number one on the list, by a lot, was overturning. In a car, overturning would be big deal; on a bike, it has to be pretty much standard. This happened to 377 riders, 26.8% of all riders and 40.3% of MOST-trained riders.

Here’s what may be a surprising number two: front to rear collision (201 total). I’d have to wonder who was in back and who was in front. I’ve know more than one rider who got rear-ended but I don’t know anyone who hit the vehicle in front of them. We stop quicker. But this shows us that you do need to be alert to the guys behind you as well as those in front or on the side.

All the rest were collisions of various sorts: with curb, with wild animals, with guardrail, etc.

Then we get to the top human contributing factors with at-fault riders. This has got to be key, right?

The top factor was driver (rider) inexperience: 247 total (17.5%) and 24 MOST-trained (31.2%).

Again, that looks ugly for the idea of rider training unless the bulk of these are riders who crashed and then went for training. As MOST coordinator Chris Corbo said, we don’t know this time around whether the crashes were before or after the training. We would hope they were primarily before. That data will be tracked the next time around.

Number two on this list was aggressive driving (162). That should give you some idea of what not to do.

Number three was DUI, DWAI, DUID (110). I don’t think we need to say anything more here.

Number four is interesting: driver unfamiliar with area (95). I wonder if that means they did something such as a lane change that someone who knew the intersection (for example) would not have done, or if they were meandering trying to figure out where to turn.

These tables only include the top 10 but in this case by the time you get to number nine there are only two instances so number 10 is “Other.” There were 181 of those, which says there are a whole heck of a lot of things that can lead to a crash.

More to follow.

Biker Quote for Today

Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know. — William Saroyan

These guys are not likely to be guilty of most of the crash-causing actions included in this list, at least not on this ride.

Let’s continue looking at the stats on motorcycle crashes in Colorado in 2018.

The Colorado State Patrol (CSP) report breaks the data out into tables, with each table addressing one specific consideration. The first table is labeled, “Top Driver Actions among at-Fault Motorcycle Riders in Crashes, 2018.” That poetic, symbolic title sums up pretty well what the table has to tell us.

The number one driver action leading to a crash was careless driving. OK, now if there is one thing that is preventable it should be careless driving crashes. Drive carefully, you know? You life may well depend on it.

Careless driving was the primary crash factor for 446 riders, or 31.7% of them. Of those 446, 22 were MOST-trained riders. That looks like a very good figure except the next column is not so good. This included 28.6% of the MOST-trained riders.

Now here’s where the questions I raised last time factor in. If, as I speculated, this tagging of MOST-trained riders only counts those who received their training in 2018, and if many of those who received training were required to do so after they had crashed, then this does not look so bad. Well, I contacted Chris Corbo, the CSP guy who manages the MOST program and he gave me some answers. Yes, the riders counted as having MOST training only counts those trained in 2018. As for question of whether the crash occurred before or after the training was taken, here is Chris’s reply.

That is a great question and one that will be answered going forward. When the data was presented to the data analysis the date of when the rider took the BRC was removed and therefore a correlation of when a crash happened and when the rider took the BRC was not able to be made. We are hoping the crash was prior to the BRC, but cannot make any statements of that.

Pushing on now, the next biggest crash factor was excessive speed, or more specifically, “Exceeded Speed Limit.” Starting here and continuing I’ll give the break-outs as follows: Total riders / Percent of riders / Total MOST riders / Percent of MOST riders. So for speeding the break-out is 150 / 10.7% / 6 / 7.8%. One thing we need to note here is that these percentages do not add up to 100% because this is a list of only the top 10 actions leading to the crash.

Here is the entire list.

Careless Driving: 446 / 31.7% / 22 / 28.6%

Exceeded Speed Limit: 150 / 10.7% / 6 / 7.8%

Followed Too Closely: 140 / 9.9% / 7 / 9.1%

Lane Violation: 124 / 8.8% / 7 / 9.1%

Reckless Driving: 72 / 5.1% / 7 / 9.1%

Fail to Yield Right of Way: 34 / 2.4% / 1 / 1.3%

Improper Turn: 25 / 1.8% / 1 / 1.3%

Failed to Stop at Signal: 24 / 1.7% / 1 / 1.3%

Improper Passing on Left: 16 / 1.1% / 1 / 1.3%

Improper Passing on Right: 8 / 0.6% / 0 / 0%

So these are the primary ways in which we are harming ourselves. We can rail against drivers texting all we want but we also need to take responsibility for our own actions. Of course, that’s what rider training is supposed to lead to–safer, better riding.

Biker Quote for Today

While cagers continue to conduct their affairs while driving, to the detriment of their driving, those of us on motorcycles are (should be!) totally focused on safely negotiating our way amongst them. That deadline at work is not a priority at this time.

Crashing is a bad thing, OK?

I recently acquired a trove of motorcycle crash information for 2018, put together by the Colorado State Patrol (CSP). This is going to take several blog posts to present.

The report starts with a summation, presenting the overall stats up front. I’m just going to copy/paste that summation here.

• Statewide in 2018, there were approximately 120,000 motor vehicle crashes and 2,206 (1.8 percent) of those crashes involved motorcycles. There were 111 MOST students (from fiscal year 2018) involved in a crash in 2018.
• Of the 2,206 crashes involving a motorcycle, 522 crashes resulted in a serious injury and 97 crashes resulted in a fatal injury.
• The motorcycle operator was at fault in the crash 63.8% of the time (1,408/2,206). Among the 111 motorcycle operators who were MOST students in 2018 and had a crash, 77 were at fault in the crash (69.4%).
• In 2018, there were 141 crashes where alcohol or drugs were suspected among motorcycle operators at fault in a crash. 116 of the motorcycle operators were suspected of alcohol use only, 6 operators were suspected of drug use only, and 19 motorcycle operators were suspected of both alcohol and drug use. Only six MOST students were suspected to be impaired by drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash.
• In 2018, among all motorcycle operators and passengers involved in a crash, 49.5 percent (1,223/2,470) were properly wearing helmets.

You’ll notice that these stats tell us how many and what percentage of these crashes involved riders who had received rider training through the Motorcycle Operator Safety Training (MOST) program. This is the first year this information has been tallied and it came following a request from ABATE of Colorado. ABATE thanks you CSP.

The one thing I’m not clear on–and maybe I can get this answered at the next ABATE D-17 meeting–is that this reads in a way to suggest that we’re only talking about MOST students who took the training in 2018. Is that really the case? Did 111 2018 MOST students crash? Like, in their first year riding after taking the training? I’d like to know how many riders MOST trained during the year. What percentage is this? And then what about the tally if you consider all riders who have ever had MOST training? I have, but not in 2018. I also didn’t crash in 2018.

The one number above that really strikes me is that third bullet. It says that the rider was at fault nearly two-thirds of the time, and a bit more than two-thirds of the MOST-trained riders were at fault.

Wow, what does this say about rider training? Or what does it say about the riders being trained? I have no concrete answer to those questions but I can relate anecdotally some information I have heard. That is, many of the riders being trained are there because they have to be. They were caught riding without being licensed to do so and in order to avoid worse punishment they agreed to take rider training and get accredited to ride a motorcycle. Maybe for them it was just a formality and they then went back to their wild and crazy style of riding that got them stopped in the first place. Makes you wonder.

Or here’s another thought. Those numbers don’t show if the crash happened before or after training. Perhaps a lot of riders crashed, were found not to have accreditation, and took the course afterward to minimize penalties. I’m going to need to talk with Chris Corbo, the MOST coordinator, and ask some questions.

On the more positive side is that fourth bullet that says 141 crashes involved drugs or alcohol but only 6 of those were MOST-trained riders.

There’s a ton more information in this report. Y’all come back now, hear?

Biker Quote for Today

I used to think I’d go out with a bang, on the back of a Harley, racin’ a train. — Joe Nichols