old peeps on bikes

[boyoboy]

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I'm not sure if you'd call the new thing for older drivers, a "vision" test, but God willing, you'll be doing it soon enough.

my glasses got thicker this summer...lol my dad still has excellent uncorrected vision...at 87, go figure.

 

[PLau]

Roadghost nailed it - these articles don't take into consideration the number of miles traveled.

The young crowd with the sport bikes might travel 3000-5000 km in a good season, where as the older financially secure / retired guys might ride 20,000+.

It should be needless to say that the person riding four times the mileage (or possibly much, much more) is at a much higher risk of an accident, but that doesn't mean that they are somehow unsafe or unskilled.

Insurance rates speak for themselves.

I suspect the average older rider rides as few km as the average younger rider. There will, of course, be outliers.

Equating mileage to anything is not a good measure. It is much safer/easier to ride many kilometers on the highway or empty back roads then to ride them on city streets. I remember meeting a rider many years ago that rode 40000km a year. I was very impressed and figured he would be a very skilled rider. Turns out that pointing your motorcycle down an interstate and riding all day did not equate to skill.... Go figure....

I can hear the insurance rates speak.. they are saying "lies, damn lies then statistics..."

+1 ddusseld

There are going to be young riders and old riders that ride less than 2k kms a year, and some will ride 20k+ kms per year.
Seat time and kms ridden can only do you so much... You'll learn the basics of riding a bike and learn to shift and brake without thinking about it.

If you don't go out of your way to learn more technical riding skills, you likely won't learn those skills (or will take very long to).

Riding in traffic often will get you used to reading traffic and potential hazards, however if you're spending 80% of your riding in no traffic/highway riding, you won't develop the same skills.

In the end, it really comes down to the individual but typically young riders on SuperSports just want to go fast, and older riders (that have a lot of time on their hands) enjoy the open highways. As mentioned, there will always be those few exceptions where a young rider would ride a high number of kms on the highway and an older person enjoys learning more technical skills and rides fast.

 

[J_F]

generalities definitely can lead to conclusions that will be disputed
as far as speed vs. distance preferences

after the initial thrill of operating the machine wears of a bit, but never completely
some maturity is inevitable, and most riders start to focus on where they're going
not the vehicle that is getting them there
don't think you need to be old to make that change

the die hard speed demons end up at the track, or they should anyway

 

[giddyup]

the die hard speed demons end up at the track, or they should anyway

^^^^this

 

[ReSTored]

The article in the 1st post is so poorly written it would be hard to draw any meaningful conclusions on the info presented.

I think everyone could agree that new riders are at greater risk of an accident in the first two years of riding and, all other things being equal, a 60 year old guy is probably going to be at greater risk of injury in an accident than someone who is 25.

Other than these very general things there is not much else in the article presented with any stats or info as credible backup.

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