IS RIDING A MOTORCYCLE IN THE U.S. MORE OR LESS DANGEROUS THAN IT WAS 20 YEARS AGO?
By Ben Sessions on October 27th, 2016 in Car / Auto Accident
IS RIDING A MOTORCYCLE IN THE U.S. MORE OR LESS DANGEROUS THAN IT WAS 20 YEARS AGO?
If you watched “Sons of Anarchy” and really wanted to go buy a motorcycle (yes, the thought crossed my mind more than once),
you should have a good idea about how dangerous motorcycle riding really is, and before you make that purchase, give your local insurance agent a call to buy that term-life policy that you have been procrastinating over. Is riding a motorcycle in the U.S. more or less dangerous than it was 20 years ago?
HOW MANY MOTORCYCLISTS WERE KILLED IN THE U.S. FROM 1994 TO 2014?
The number of motorcycle deaths that occurred in 2014 was approximately double the number of deaths that occurred in 1994. Over the period from 1994 to 2014, the number of motorcycle fatalities in the U.S. peaked at 5,312 in 2008.
But knowing the number of motorcycle-related deaths over a period of time tells us very little, unless we know whether there were more or less motorcycle rides during that period of time.
*It should be noted that there is some conflict in the data regarding the actual number of fatalities to motorcyclists:
Motorcycle Death Statistics
ALTHOUGH THE NUMBER OF MOTORCYCLIST DEATHS INCREASED FROM 1994 TO 2014, THE PROBABILITY OF BEING INVOLVED IN A FATAL ACCIDENT ON A MOTORCYCLE IS ROUGHLY THE SAME IN 2006 AS IT WAS IN 1994.
The number of motorcycles registered is a good measure of the number of motorcycles owned by the public in the U.S. The number of Motorcycle registrations in the U.S. have grown each of the past 10 years from 3,826,373 in 1997 to 6,678,958 in 2006. That is a 75-percent increase. If motorcycle ownership continued to increased at roughly the same rate from 2006 to 2014, that rate of increase is very close to the rate of increase in deaths over the same period of time.
So, while we would like to see the number of deaths to motorcyclists stop declining, the rate appears to be fairly consistent with the rate of ownership. It’s not the safest activity for you to engage in, but riding a motorcycle does not look that much more dangerous or less dangerous than it did 20 years ago.
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