Those freaking death stats are such BS....
82 Deaths, huh. Okay, so how many of those were guys that got run over by cagers? Probably like 75. So 8 others crashed themselves due to 'improper lanes', 'inattention' etc.
Most motorcycle deaths are not driver error. They are someone getting flattened by a cage.
cdog,
That was the case for most of my life; the vast majority of motorcycle deaths and serious injuries were the result of failures by cage drivers. However, while that is still the single largest contributor, the percentage due to motorcycle rider error has been climbing for the past 10 years or so. There are several theories floating around about why, and the ones I place the most credence in are:
1.- Baby boomer's who haven't ridden since the '70's finally got all the kids gone, and decided to revisit their childhood. Bought the biggest, baddest thing they could find and proceeded to hit the road with no refreshing/updating of skills that hadn't been used in 30 years.
2.- Proliferation of the "street legal racing bikes" that any kid with $10k worth of credit can walk in and buy at the friendly Suzuki/Kawasaki/Yamaha store. Remember back to when you were a teenager with your first bike, one of the first things you had to do was see how fast that sucker would go. Well, some of these bikes nowdays can do 180
+ straight off the showroom floor, and these kids are going to try it just like we did back in the day. Of course, back in the day 100 mph was a stretch for most stock bikes.
I think ignoring our own shortcomings or potential failures and placing all the blame on cagers is a serious mistake. Complacency has no place on a motorcycle.
Jerry