I ride both and I agree.

If you want to ride a motorcycle and have some safe fun... stay off the highways and roads...
Get an off road MX and go up and down little hills... it is a thrill without being unduly risky.... I am not talking about what you see on TV.... I mean just putting around in gulleys and in woods ...with a spark arrestor of course..
I rode on the roads about 10 years.... when my 1974 Superglide got stolen I took that as an Omen.... LOL
The bottom line is that you can not trust car or truck drivers to see you.

Can't trust the riders either.

Someday I'll tell y'all what it is like having an inexperienced crotch rocket rider strain themselves through your left front headlight doing 80. I had a mili-second or two to react and got moved right just enough. Had we hit centered I would have been wearing the bike and rider, a little more left and they'd have come through my door. I can say that a light weight crotch rocket will rip the front suspension from the mounts on a 2007 Hemi Charger.

Fortunately you were alert. Boot to the as#..tire-iron to the skull-cap>Too harsh.
Will suggest 'Cranial-rectotomys' in this case.

Wasn't There a Post About a Plane and Car Colliding? :D


Five years after a crash-landing prompted Larry Pine to completely restore his 1972 Chinese military trainer, he's back to square one.

A Maserati driven by a 21-year-old Phoenix man crashed through a secured metal hangar door early Saturday at Mesa's Falcon Field where Pine's vintage plane was stored, causing extensive damage to the nose gear, a cowling beneath the engine and one of the wings.

I heard about an incident where a government owned sedan hit a parked F-16 at an Air Force Base. Supposedly, the USAF personnel in the sedan were a male and a female and engaged in, shall we say, activities that are inadvisable whilst driving.

That's an expensive crash!

Too many people think they're in their living room while driving. Just way casual about it - familiarity breeds contempt and all that. Not far from here, a toddler was killed by a young woman texting while driving. She had been crossing the street with her mother who was badly injured as well.

And then some bike riders don't help matters. Yesterday, a guy whizzed by my driver's side mirror with a good 12 inches to spare, easily doing 15+ mph more than me. Window open - made me jump. He did the weave with a few more cars and then settled in about 10 feet behind a truck, waiting for the next good opportunity to continue the weave thing. Good thing too, as I suspect he got to his destination at least 5 to 10 minutes sooner that way.

I know its not a current fact but I remember that when I had crashed my first M/C @ 17 I had read that you are 16 times more likely to die in a M/C accident than an auto accident. That wreck didn't keep me from riding but it did teach me a painful lesson about how quickly things can go wrong. I am a much safer rider now with tens of thousands of miles under me on 3 successive motorcycles.

I do not assume anybody can see me. For all intents and purposes I ride like I am invisable. I do not take for granted that someone looking directly at me will process that information and act accordingly. It's casually called "the blind guy theory" among motorcyclists. A dump truck driver once illustrated the concept, stating that over his career 3 people had pulled directly out in front of him causing accidents. All 3 had looked directly at him in his enormous dump truck but their brains did not process that information. The point being is that no matter what you are driving / riding you can not count on being seen. Factor in the 16 times more likely to die and you have to modify your riding style or suffer consequences. People think it is easy to ride, and yeah maybe it is. What is difficult is figuring out your "escape route" at every intersection. It's difficult analyzing every driver in front of and behind you and knowing what you are going to do when they come right at you. It's difficult to do all of that and still analyze all of the potential other hazards..ie dogs, debris on the road, ect while still concentrating on operating the motorcycle (front brake, clutch, gear change, rear brake, throttle, turn signals, check mirrors, check instruments) FWIW I won't ride behind people towing trailers, panel vans, or obviously distracted drivers. People think riding is an enjoying, relaxing pastime but riding safely is a very mentally exhausting endeavor.

I'm not in a helmet law state and every time I see someone riding without one, I just think to myself "They don't get it"

I don't ride MC's but I do ride bicycles. When a rider splits lanes (on the highway, or on surface streets) I move aside if I see him or her early enough to give them more space.

There are just some riders who increase the risk for them too (like driving faster while splitting the lanes). What if somebody in a car had to evade another motorist and just got in the way of a MC splitting lanes?

Some riders also have VERY bright lights at night. I can understand they need to be seen more, but this also adds to the risk riders pose on car drivers.

We have a "ride to work" day held recently, and a friend co-worker commented, "they're promoting the use of MC's probably because they wanted to get rid of employees"

I like to ride mine to work. I have three choices each morning: I can burn less than one gallon of RUG for my round trip commute, or about 1 2/3 gallons of diesel, or 3 1/3 gallons of premium. Which would you pick?

I think that a motorcycle rider should know when to quit, I saw this guy that must have been 70+ yo and he forgot to put his feet down at a red light. I think that elderly motorcycle driver should be tested every year once they hit 70 yo.