[NachtRitter]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

Just like for those "death trap" cars, here's some #s for bikes:

'07: 38.01 motorcycle fatalities per 100,000,000 miles, or 1 per 2,630,887 miles...

Unlike cages @14,000 miles/year, Kelly Blue Book says bikes accumilate 3000-6000 miles/year; NHTSA says 2411 for '00. Hmmm... well in the absence of better data I'll use the average 2411+3000+6000/3=3803... OK, 4000 miles/year, which is quite a bit more than I average.

2,630,887 miles/4000 miles per year = 658 years.

Bikes are about 10x worse than cages per mile (Car odds were 6,300 years of driving before getting nailed)

And yet, 658 years is how many lifetimes???

And that is why I oppose this proposed mandate as well. As always, wearing a helmet and other gear is always an option for those that feel the need.

Frank -

A few issues with your presentation of the stats:

• "Car odds were 6,300 years of driving before getting nailed" - while you can mathematically calculate it out this way, it is an invalid representation... it obviously can't be stated that way since no person or vehicle has been around that long and yet we still have fatal accidents now. Same with the motorcycle fatality rate... you're implying that a person would die of old age before getting into a fatal motorcycle accident, and yet all the statistics are for people under 600 years of age. The statistics are just that... not applicable to a single person, but applicable to the collection of all riders in all states under all conditions and all times of the day. An average, if you will. If we were to focus in on a rider that was killed at 16 years old, it would be a once in 16 year occurrence. If we look at a rider that is not killed as a result of a motorcycle accident (and dies of old age or any other cause), the motorcycle death rate is once in an infinite number of years occurrence (the rider was never killed due to a motorcycle accident during the year of the statistic, while adding to the motorcycle miles driven). Your own "chances" increase or decrease depending on how you ride, where you ride, what you wear, the weather, the time of day, the time of year, and so on.
• You're neglecting the non-fatal statistics. Traumatic brain injury resulting from an accident can be a worse fate than death itself. I can't claim that a helmet will prevent traumatic brain injury 100%, but stats do show it does help (see NHTSA report at http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811208.pdf).
• You're still using an argument "for" as an argument "against". As in "Yes, there were ~5,300 motorcycle related deaths in 2007, but that's not enough to make a law over." For you, that may not be enough deaths to be worth a law. For others, it may be far too many. Heck, some folks got their knickers in a knot due to 119 deaths attributed to the Ford Explorer / Firestone tires incident (Overview of The Crisis: Firestone Tire Recall-Ford Explorer), some for even fewer deaths. So if the goal of your post is to convince the reader that the proposed law is "bad", then IMHO you need a much stronger argument.

Operating a motorized vehicle in this country is not a 'right'. When you are issued a license, you are agreeing to abide by the rules, even if they change. Don't like the rules, you can either violate them knowing that you risk losing the privilege if you are caught, or you are free to give up the privilege.