Yes, I focused on the stupid part of the post, likening it to air travel. As if that's even comparable. Skydiving is a pretty much dead if you have an accident activity too, but its far more controlled and organized than riding a bike in traffic. Dumb comparisons are dumb.
Except it was in response to "if you travel this way and get into an accident you have a higher chance of being killed" so I then used a related reference of another mode of transportation. Which gives credence to my post and absolutely zero to yours.
I would probably ride one in Minnesota. We probably have more traffic in Miami at 2am than you have during rush hour.
And Michigan, yes. I wholeheartedly agree there are places I would be hesitant to ride. Heavy traffic in Miami, LA and places would be among them. I've been in Chicago during rush and I didn't mind it too much but I was very VERY aware of everything around me at all times.
My uncle is a dentist and calls soda "a liquid chainsaw" and I still drink it. (yes I get one is death and one is losing your teeth but again, everything has a horror story attached to it.)
Odds of dying in plane crash in U.S. are equal to being struck by lightning SEVEN times: expert?* - NY Daily News
Well, I consider skydiving and bungie jumping almost as equally as dumb-- somewhere along the lines of modern day Darwinism. However, at least in those hobbies you can pack your own chute and inspect your own tether, doing everything you can to internalize and minimize the risk. When you drive a motorcycle, with the exception of wearing a helmet and "paying attention", (which you should be doing anyways on any motor vehicle) it's about all you can do to mitigate your risk. The lion's share of your risk is still external-- namely the competence of drivers around you.
That's actually not nearly as bad as I would have thought it was. Not surprisingly it drops off quite a bit for riders who are 40+. Those statistics are also from the US, where there's a pretty significant minority of idiots who ride without helmets. That would certainly impact the statistics. In any case, yes there is risk in everything, but there's different levels of risk. Riding a motorcycle is a little over an order of magnitude more dangerous than driving a car. From my perspective, that's actually not that bad. But I also heli/cat/backcountry ski, downhill mountain bike, and run down the middle of the fairway with a 1 iron during a thunderstorm (If you are caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a... - Lee Trevino at BrainyQuote).
I've never understood not wearing a helmet. I was blown away when I moved to MN where no helmet law exists.
I enjoy the fact that when you post, you pick and choose which parts you choose to read and not read. It's really the most entertaining part of them.
