Middle aged accidents are frequent as it’s when many people can afford to ride now that kids/house is dealt with.
|
|
|
OPP 2020 crash stats TL: DR most fatal bike crashes are single-vehicle
- Thread starter GreyGhost
- Start date
HarleyHare
Well-known member
I laughed when I read this, but seriously no one could possibly possess all these traits in one person. That's the fringe, but so are rice-rocket riders, and they have their "test-dummy" pilots too. I remember when I crossed into New Hampshire from Vermont and shocked to see easy-riders with their helmets mounted on their sissy bars. Some people like to look death in the face because they feel invincible and immortal while riding. I guess that's why you don't see any Priuses with skull and crossbones but you do see a culture of death (skulls and stuff) with some in the biking community.
Priller
Well-known member
This was just holding up a mirror to flip from from one broad-brush set of stereotypes to another, really.
I suspect if someone were to do a genuine in-depth study of motorcycle incidents in Ontario (like the Hurt Report, not some dashed off OPP press release full of agenda-based reporting), it wouldn't come back with a clear picture of a specific group falling off more often per km ridden.
In fact, I'd be willing to wager that nobody has a deep enough data pool to make those kinds of conclusions, even the insurance companies who love to bill so-called 'supersports' riders through the nose. I genuinely think most of those rates are set by gut feeling, stereotype and bleeding a captive niche market than actual claim data. My only evidence for this is the wildly varying rates from one insurer to another, with some using displacement, others using category, and others seemingly rolling some dice and going from there. I could be wrong, but I haven't seen any unbiased evidence that sportbikes generate more claims than other equivalently powered bikes, and vice versa, I've only seen anecdotal evidence that old farts on cruisers are a particular problem. Certainly nothing specific to Ontario, because if anyone is tracking this stuff in a meaningful way, they're not sharing their info with the rest of us...
HarleyHare
Well-known member
Ya was wondering how this statistic makes total sense. "37 out of 42 fatal bike crashes had no other vehicles involved" Can we really be that poor riders? That's 90%. Sure weather, wiping out in a bend, inattention or an animal darting out in the road could be possibilities, but what about a vehicle causing the rider to veer off in avoiding an accident and the driver driving away because he was either totally clueless or didn't care and left the scene? Forget about video cams in cars, how about them being mandatory for bikes?
HarleyHare
Well-known member
True. Motorcycles are intoxicating, they almost defy gravity, even when you are not speeding (just saying). That is for the pure rider, I know some who ride out of need not out of love, even riding a 100cc scooter is a positive ride. But precisely for that reason, that they are intoxicating is why there is always that bit of doubt from police or others as to how a rider may have screwed up (his entire or partial fault). I ride an all-purpose bike that I know I can ride rings around most vehicles but on some occasions, I was able to ride my son's CBR600F4 and later his GXSR1000 and was literally shaking after dismounting from the rush of adrenalin I was experiencing. The Honda sounded like a Formula1 engine that I couldn't help revving, the sound was so beautiful and the Suzuki I was up to 80 in second gear at the flick of the wrist. Did I want to push these bikes? Ya! I was drunk on the performance and sound. Would I probably be dead by now if I owned those bikes? No doubt.
Sure cost of insurance is driving the sportbikes away but no one can tell me some of the high cost is not from accurate statistics. The problem is that in Canada we have too small a pool of motorcycle risks, and that means as an insurance company results are all over the map depending on the year. But of course, when it is bad, rates go up, and even if next year is better, they never go down. I know someone in Virginia who has 3 insured bikes, two of them a Triumph Tiger and a BMW310, and he pays $300 annually. Liability in the USA might be on the light side, as I think you need to buy a minimum of $50K coverage, which is a joke. So the reasons for cheap insurance there, is that the pool of vehicles is much larger (I'd say a minimum 10 times larger) and liability minimums are tiny in comparison to Ontario. Large numbers mean smooth results and no erratic up or downswings. So the industry in Canada digs deep and needs to wring every conceivable number out of every model which sometimes results in an exaggeration of the blame on certain classes of bike. And so who gets hit with the brunt of the blame but young sportbike riders. Solution is to move to Florida and ride all year at cheap rates, and literally pick bugs out of your teeth all summer.
caje
Well-known member
I just looked through the 9 articles I had posted again (fatal accidents involving another vehicle in OPP territory), and 7 of those articles specifically mention (or have photos that demonstrate) contact between the motorcyclist and the vehicle. The other two articles include the word "collision", so even though they don't specifically mention contact, I think it's a pretty safe bet it happened.
So even in the most generous definition of "single vehicle accident" where a driver cuts off a bike and causes them to crash without contact, the numbers still don't add up.
Blacque Jacque Shellacque
Well-known member
Have a look at the OPP homepage. There is a tab for "what we do" Investigating vehicle accidents is not listed. Its obviously just an after thought. I doubt whether that really care that much about accurate reporting. (unless they can use it to increase their budget)
|
|
|
|
|