{"id":11133,"date":"2022-09-12T12:06:40","date_gmt":"2022-09-12T18:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/?p=11133"},"modified":"2022-09-08T11:07:55","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T17:07:55","slug":"motorcycle-fatalities-way-up-this-year-in-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/motorcycle-fatalities-way-up-this-year-in-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Motorcycle Fatalities Way Up This Year In Colorado?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_11136\" style=\"width: 507px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/RiderDownSite.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11136\" src=\"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/RiderDownSite.jpg\" vspace=\"8\" alt=\"\" width=\"497\" height=\"317\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11136\" srcset=\"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/RiderDownSite.jpg 497w, https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/RiderDownSite-300x191.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 497px) 100vw, 497px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11136\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong><em>A screenshot of a portion of the Biker Down Facebook page.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n<p>OK folks, this is serious. Unfortunately, the data I&#8217;m able to come up with are unclear.<\/p>\n<p>I was on my V-Strom headed south on I-25 a few days ago and one of those highway message signs was saying something like &#8220;102 motorcycle deaths this year, be aware of motorcycles.&#8221; I swear it said 102 but now I can&#8217;t anything to support that number.<\/p>\n<p>But that fired me up to look at the latest numbers. I mean, it&#8217;s only September and if we&#8217;re at 102 that&#8217;s a lot because whereas in 2016 the Colorado fatality rate hit 125, it had dropped to just (just!) 103 in 2017, again in 2018, and a third time in a row in 2019. And as recently as 2012 the number was only 79. So 102 in early September is a lot.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not the whole story, though. In 2020 the number shot up to 140. That&#8217;s a lot! And in 2021 it was 137. Yikes.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the most recent information I can find is saying we were only at 75 at the end of August. Something just doesn&#8217;t jibe here. I swear that sign on the highway said 102. And various reports I found said we&#8217;re up this year from last year, so in that case 102 now would make sense. Only 75 now would seem to suggest a downward trend. I don&#8217;t get it.<\/p>\n<p>OK, I&#8217;m passing this along in real time. I just went to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BikerdownColorado\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Biker Down Facebook page<\/a> and they have a photo of the sign saying 102, along with the note, dated September 7, &#8220;2 weeks ago, BikerDown Colorado was interviewed on Fox 31 with year-to-date statistics that 85 riders had passed on a motorcycle. Heading to DIA yesterday, the total is now 102.&#8221; Holy smokes! What the heck is going on?!<\/p>\n<p>People, we&#8217;ve got to be careful out there. While it&#8217;s easy to point fingers at drivers on their cell phones there are riders at fault here, too. Jungle has always said that if you&#8217;re in a crash you were at fault. Yes, the other guy may have precipitated the situation but it is <em>your<\/em> responsibility to always be riding as though you are invisible and everyone else on the road is deliberately out to kill you.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s pretty hard to argue against that. Ride like your life depends on it. Because it does.<\/p>\n<h3>Biker Quote for Today<\/h3>\n<p>Cars have bumpers. Bikers have bones. Drive aware.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK folks, this is serious. Unfortunately, the data I&#8217;m able to come up with are unclear. I was on my V-Strom headed south on I-25 a few days ago and one of those highway message signs was saying something like &#8220;102 motorcycle deaths this year, be aware of motorcycles.&#8221; I swear it said 102 but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1263],"class_list":["post-11133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-safety","tag-motorcycle-fatalities-in-colorado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11133"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11137,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11133\/revisions\/11137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}