The ugly truth.
 

This statistic may be a bit old (source is from 1998), but it's probably not far off:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221759351.jpg

It's the kind of thing we're all aware of, but don't like to think about it. Lately I find myself thinking that traveling every day to work on the bike maybe isn't as fun as it used to be and the safety factor is starting to weigh on my head.

That's it then, I'm going to have to do a lot less walking.

i'm selling my bicycle.
friggin' death trap!

LOL!

Walking probably includes many other dangers that are not traffic related, like getting mauled by a bear and such. :)

You'd be a fool not to look at things like this.

Because the vertical axis on this graph is on a per distance traveled basis rather than a per trip or per hour basis, it penalizes walking and bicycling a lot because these activities travel much shorter distances. For example, these statistics say you're 3x more likely to get killed riding a motorcycle across the US rather than a bicycle, but since the bicycle would take 250 hours rather than 50 hours, the bicycle on an hourly exposure basis is actually much safer than these statistics imply. Even more so with walking which looks unduly hazardous on a distance traveled basis. But who walks across the US or does a 60 mile round-trip commute walking? If you did this commute, you'd spend 18 hours a day walking to/from work vs. 1.5 hours driving and you can certainly see how this level of exposure could tilt the odds towards a walking accident.

OTOH, these are average statistics which include a lot of Harley riders riding drunk with no helmets. My guess (that's all it is) is that you can reduce your risk exposure in motorcycling by a factor of 2x or 3x by following a few simple rules: wear a good helmet, don't ride after drinking, don't ride in groups who like to compare penis size, don't ride quickly in traffic, avoid riding at night or in the rain, etc. Do all these things and your motorcycling risk is probably 10x a car vs. the 40x that these statistics say. Of course, you can also do these same things to reduce your risk in the car so, relatively speaking, the car risk is potentially always going to be a small fraction of the motorcycle risk.

And I bet the flying risk is "scheduled commercial service". Fly your own plane and you're back to the left of this chart. (As an aside, I think the ridiculous money we spend on further reducing the minuscule levels of flying risk is stupid. But no politician is going to get elected on the platform of making commercial air travel less safe.)

- Mark

So if we don't walk or ride our bike we might be okay?

...you'll live forever!

I can guarantee that over the last 1 1/2 years more people have been killed in Southeast Utah in tour bus and airplane crashes than riding motorcycles...

So the lesson is that if you are going sight seeing in Southeast Utah, be sure to follow the Ralf methodology and go via a GS instead of a Bus.

I'm not even counting the illegals in their white Dodge vans that are always rolling...

...how dangerous is it when I walk, and holding my bicycle...??

The numbers I've seen put flying light aircraft on par, risk-wise, with riding motorcycles.

Same sort of deal though. Cut out the loons and idiots that run out of gas(!), or buzz their girlfriend's house then pull up fighter pilot style, stall and spin into the ground, or decide that it's worth flying through towering thunderstorms because they want to get home so badly only to discover that their airplanes fly about as well as their car keys when the wings are torn off, and the risk doesn't look so bad.

Ultimately it comes down to educating one's self about the risks, then managing them.

I think the comparison would be more fair if they compared the modes of transport on "per billion-hours of operation" instead of "per billion-kilometers of operation".

From a "I want to do an activity to have fun" recreational POV, I agree. But from a utilitarian "I want to get from Point A to Point B" transportation POV, the distance basis makes more sense. Both viewpoints are valid. And whichever viewpoint you choose, I can guarantee you that motorcycling is going to look bad.

- Mark

I'm buying an aeroplane. Just a wee one.

fwiw - a coppa mate of mine said that he figured half the deaths on motorbikes were the fault of the rider - no figures to back it up but it wouldn't surprise me.

69.8%... Duh! :d

Sure there's figures. I'm not going to look them up right now, but it's the old story:

Drinking & riding.
Drugs & riding.
Excessive speed.
Riding at night, or too fast at night (beyond headlights).
Failure to negotiate a turn.
Target fixation.
Animals.
Running off the road.
Killing your passenger due to inexperience.

I'd bet 75% are the riders "fault.." Just because you legally can ride at night does not make it equally as safe as riding in the daytime. Or, you hit an animal, it may be considered your fault.

I'm not even going into the atgatt aspects.

The list goes on and on. It seems endless due to miscalculations or brain farts or poor judgement. Be aware, be very aware.


There's an unfortunate rider in the Salt Lake Tribune today who was following a slow moving truck. He couldn't take it and tried to pass the truck on the right. Unfortunately, the trucker decided to pull over on the right just at that point in time; killing the rider by knocking him down and running him over with the rear truck tires.

So, what are my chances of being killed by a stock market crash.

So the ultimate question here... is do you want your last breath to be riding a motorcycle... of in a plane/train/automoble??


Nail.... depends on how much you lose and what floor you jump from. :)

Yeah,
15% first floor
25% second floor
60% third floor
99.9% fourth on up. May as well go to the top.

No one gets out alive, so do what you like and take the best precautions under the current circumstances.


"Get my broker, Miss Jones." "Yes sir Mr. Nail. Stock, or Pawn?"

How many stockbrokers can you fit in the back of a pickup truck?
Only two, you have to leave room for the lawn mowers.

I ride my motorcycle to my hangar to work on my airplane project. Does that count?

I'm pretty certain most of the distance I have traveled by foot, pedal, or plane has been exceeded 10 fold by my motorcycling. So that should mean I'm already dead and this is all just afterlife.

The graph looks like something produced by an Insurance Company...the source is not cited here but I'd guess as much if not an Airline Marketing Service that is paid to produce information favorable to the Airlines. If this graph is to be believed none of us should still be here. What a load of crap...IMO.

tee hee :D

This is so simple, just wear a helmet when you walk and skew the graph back in our favor. There seems to be very little data on this.

Best sig line I've seen all morning SmileWavy

I'm coming from neither of those angles. If you think of life in terms of lifespan as in total years lived....then you'll get to a time based comparison. Most people don't measure life by kilometers traveled. (here come the iron butters with their wise cracks). Also, an airplane can cover 400-500 miles per hour, that's like 10 miles per minute. I would think a 1 min flight (so many factors, maintenance, take-off, landing, pilot error, weather, chances of survival) has a lot more risk than a 1 min motorcycle ride. But that's looking at the whole thing from a very high level.

they MUST be talking about commercial flights.
back when i used to fly to races for 30+ weekends a year, i got to the point where commercial flights were making me really nervous...it's the same feeling you get if you jump on the back of someone's bike for a ride. not good.
so i decided to "save myself" and get a private pilot's license.

big mistake.
instead of squid riders on the ground, you had higher-income squid flyers in the air.
doctor "somebody" in a porsche-driven Mooney aircraft almost took out my little putt-putt plane on his way home from work.
mr. cessna 340 "thought" he had room to take off long before we got there to land.

didn't take long for me to get back on the big commercial bus and let them fly, because i also learned that even the biggest private planes tend to stay away from the gonzo-aircraft.

all those levels of skill we find in motorcycle riders also exist up there in the air, although from my experience, they're a lot heavier on the "newbie" side up there.

i swear, there are people out there who KNOW they don't have the coordination to ride a bike....so they go fly planes instead.

i'll stick to my lowly little ground-based motorcycle, fly commercial, and on occasions where i'm feeling invincible, i'll go up for another wild ride with Bob "if a wing doesn't snap off, it's a good day" Hannah.



and as far as that chart being accurate, if you toss in swimming in the ocean with sharks, why aren't there WAY MORE fatalities in triathalons? you'd think it'd be a blood bath.

Since we've broached the topic of flying little airplanes...

I've got enough similar stories, accumulated during my days of flying little Cessnas around the SoCal area, to max out the message length.

In aviation, newbies stay newbies longer simply because most people don't fly enough to truly stay proficient. They may have a fat total hour number in their logbook, but it's been accumulated too slowly.

And then there is the guy I met who told me (another Mooney driver, interestingly) that he was a lousy driver, so he took up flying instead.

Still, I can't get it out of my blood. And, in an admission of additional risk-taking, I'm building a plane, a Vans RV-7, which means I'll finally be flying something that has the capability of going faster than the motorcycle I ride to the airport.

Lastly, the P-51 that Bob Hannah raced at Reno is hangared a few doors down from me. The owner occasionally pulls it out and does a few hot laps around the Sacramento Valley. Fun to watch.

While on Topic!
 

THE TALE OF THE ARAB FLIGHT CREW

Written by "To The Point News"

The brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sat in its hangar in Toulouse , France without a single hour of airtime. Enter the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the ground, such as engine runups, prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi .

The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area. Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with a virtually empty aircraft. Not having read the run-up manuals, they had no clue just how light an empty A340-600 really is.The takeoff warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit because they had all 4 engines at full power. The aircraft computers thought they were trying to takeoff but it had not been configured properly (flaps/slats, etc.)

Then one of the ADAT crew decided to pull the circuit breaker on the Ground Proximity Sensor to silence the alarm.This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air.The computers automatically released all the brakes and set the aircraft rocketing forward. The ADAT crew had no idea that this is a safety feature built in so that pilots cannot land with the brakes on.

Not one member of the seven-man Arab crew thought to throttle back the engines from their max power setting, so the $200 million brand-new aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totaling it.The extent of injuries to the crew is unknown, for there has been a news blackout in the major media in France and elsewhere. Coverage of the story was deemed insulting to Moslem Arabs. Finally, the photos are starting to leak out...http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221839073.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221839081.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221839087.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221839095.jpg

Stats like that are a good start and as many have commented, the real wisdom comes when you "drill down" by asking questions about risk in terms of exposure and so on. It makes no sense for any of us seasoned bikers to apply those raw stats to ourselves uncritically.

I think it is fair to bring one's own personal questions to the data: (1) as I unlock the garage, am I facing a risk (probability x cost) in excess of my benefits and (2) how can I fudge the probabilities... as I strap on my helmet?

For sure, we all know some of the answers to (2) and that's what matters most.

Here's one of my favorite stats, although a few years old - from the insurance industry who are pretty good with such stats. Mortality is pretty awful for new riders. These days there are a whole lot of incompetent, physically borderline older riders buying bikes; that makes "the ugly truth" so awful but this shouldn't make the older older stat in this paragraph any different. But at 5 yrs experience, the curve asymptotes to the same as car drivers and stays there. The same!

I hope many find that comforting.

PS: it means you have to learn something during those 5 yrs of riding, not just get older.

hahahahaha The image cracks me up.

ah yes, air racing...the King of Hairball Sports.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221843595.jpg


a favorite commercial flight story:
After a real crusher of a landing in Phoenix, the attendant came on with, "Ladies and Gentlemen, please remain in your seats until Capt. Crash and the Crew have brought the aircraft to a screeching halt against the gate. And, once the tire smoke has cleared and the warning bells are silenced, we'll open the door and you can pick your way through the wreckage to the terminal."

another one, after a ground-slammer, old lady asks smiling attendants while exiting the plane: "Was that a landing, or were we shot down?"

this is the end of my airplane hijacking of this thread (can you say those two words in a sentence anymore?).

Fortunately for today's private pilots, there is an abundant network of available catch fences located throughout the United States:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221844362.jpg

"You can fly a thousand perfect flights, but leave one silly door open just one time and everybody gets all upset!"


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221844409.jpg

"Um...Hi...say....are you the guy that owns that pretty white plane with the yellow, red and blue stripe? Yes? Well, Hi, i'm the guy who owns the plane that parks directly behind you and...well...this sorta funny thing happened as i was pulling out of my spot this morning....."


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221844508.jpg

Don't assume you are safe from aircraft just because you are on wheels, instead of in the air.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221847544.jpg

Ah, computers, what would we do without them?

the most common statement made by Airbus computer-controlled-fly-by-wire pilots:

'what's that $%ing thing doing NOW???'

THE TALE OF THE ARAB FLIGHT CREW

1 - That's what happens when you have more money than brains.
2 - reminds me when the US Navy sold a diesel submarine to Turkey. They proceeded to dive the boat without proper training, did not understand the concept of a "green board" for hull penetrations, sank at the pier and killed most of the crew. (that's not to say the US Navy is above such shinanigans - they aren't - two civilian shipyard crews conspired against each other to sink a nuke attack boat at the pier, too).
3 - Any of the religious faithful want to argue against Darwinian survival of the fittest?

Well OK Merv, I'll take the bait...none of us will make it through this life without some regrettable errors. And all of us will die the same as these so there's really no long term "survival of the fittest"...only that we can pass our genes along to the next generation which even the most mentally challenged among us can do.

R111S

Well said! But it is all about the genes. We are all, at a very molecular level, slaves of our genes. Not saying we cannot be more than the sum of our parts, but all too often I see people making no attempt.