As Usual, Motorcycle Fatality Rates Less Than Meets The Eye
Thursday, May 9th, 2013
It just stands to reason that when you have more people riding motorcycles there will be more motorcycle crashes.
There have been dozens, if not hundreds, of stories all over during the last few weeks following the release of a report from the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) that says motorcycle fatalities were up again last year. Most of the so-called reporters who rehashed the press release dutifully echoed the claims that this increase is tied to states eliminating their mandatory helmet laws. It’s just not that simple.
Also as usual, the Motorcycle Riders Foundation followed up with a more balanced response.
The gist of what Jeff Hennie, the MRF’s vice president of government reations and public affairs, had to say is simple: the biggest reason motorcycle fatalities are up is that ridership is up.
Still the GHSA paints a very morbid picture and uses this false platform to push for mandatory helmet laws. After all motorcyclist fatalities are up. What they never mention is, so are registrations for motorcycles.
The study’s author James Hedlund, formerly of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, had this to say in an interview about the study, ‘I found that over the past three decades, the number of registrations tracks closely with the number of deaths’.
The long-term fatality flow chart used in the GHSA report would echo this if the registration numbers were also posted. As expected, those numbers were not included.
What started off as a promising report on valid reasons for the increase in motorcycle usage, ended up as an attack on the freedoms of all motorcycle riders in this country.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe in wearing a helmet and I do wear them. But I also believe in letting the rider make his or her own choice. What is so annoying though is how the bureaucrats always go straight to the conclusion that making helmets mandatory would solve the problem. It wouldn’t. And couldn’t we at least compare apples to apples by pairing fatality numbers to rider numbers, as Hennie says?
Biker Quote for Today
You know you’re becoming addicted to riding when you find your self leaning closer to the open window in a car than you normally did.
