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Motorcycle fatality rates have been trending upwards, not downwards[1]. Brake lights on helmets may illuminate one of the culprits: An ever increasing number o

• mithametacs 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • unaindz 1y ago
    lol what?
    • justinrubek 1y ago
      I assume this is indicating that it's a pipe dream in the US under the current regime.
• lelandfe 1y ago
  I recently had to frantically wave at a driver about to turn right over a child in the crosswalk. He literally could not see them from his vantage point in his giant SUV.
• kjkjadksj 1y ago
  Some “militant” urban cycling commuters do things like attach a pool noodle horizontally and vertically to create space and visibility. I’d probably hazard a guess that avoiding highway miles also lowers your risk profile substantially.
  • radlad 1y ago
    Freeway driving tends to be the safest driving, in any vehicle. This is because speed deltas are typically low, and there are no cross-streets or stopping. https://safetrec.berkeley.edu/2023-safetrec-traffic-safety-facts-motorcycle-safety https://safetrec.berkeley.edu/2023-safetrec-traffic-safety-f... (Ctrl+F "Crash Location of Motorcycle Fatal Crashes")
    • doctorpangloss 1y ago
      Complex thing to analyze, no? Most Americans use freeways, and most do not use motorcycles. It's always hard to compare a rare thing to a common thing, it always has surprising problems. It's like when people on Reddit worry about radon in their basement, but the incidence rate of whatever cancer it was associated with is so low anyway. What about agency? "Don't worry about kids choking on Legos, kids don't die from choking on Legos" - but that's because parents well informed and really vigilant about it, compared to say batteries. Motor riders avoid freeways.
      • radlad 1y ago
        I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. There are plenty of statistics available showing that freeway driving is the safest driving vehicles do. There's not as much available for motorcycles specifically, which is why I dug up a relevant link and shared it. It seems to hold true for MCs too (and I have no reason to suspect it wouldn't.)
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • alamortsubite 1y ago
      I think the confusion may be that you commented on freeway safety, whereas the comment you replied to discussed highway safety. Freeways are limited access highways; not all highways are freeways.
      • daleswanson 1y ago
• barbazoo 1y ago
  Fatality rates are actually pretty flat I would say if you look at the relative numbers.
• haiku2077 1y ago
  When I am sitting on my motorcycle I am taller than most people's sitting position in their trucks. While filtering I can look down into their vehicles and see what they're doing on their phones.
  • nandomrumber 1y ago
    At first glance I want to strongly disagree, but who am I to argue with your experience. What bike do you ride, and what vehicles are you calling trucks? Specifically.
    • haiku2077 1y ago
      An F750GS and a DRZ400SM are my main bikes (out of an entire garage full of stuff). For trucks I'm talking about F-150s and similar.
      • nandomrumber 1y ago
        Do those two bikes have a higher / more upright riding position that a typical sportbike?
        • haiku2077 1y ago
          Sportbikes are lower, but they're not typical. Sportbikes sales trended way down over the past decade, with models being discontinued entirely in some regions. Current sporty-style bikes are generally more upright seating and share engines and platforms with non-sport models. Dual sport/off road bikes have trended upwards, even for riders who never go off pavement, because they're cheap to run and very practical as general purpose motorcycles. More recently, there's been a trend towards large touring bikes as well. https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/motorcycle-industry-q1-2024-takeaways https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/motorcycle-industry-q1...
          • nandomrumber 1y ago
            I see, thanks for the info. I’m licensed but haven’t owned a bike in years. Do we have stats on whether more sports bike riders are involved in crashes that bikes with better visibility?
• godelski 1y ago
  What's interesting is fatality rates are increasing but injury rates are decreasing. Seems like something else might be at play. If it is more SUVs and Pickups then I think a brake light helmet would do a lot considering the danger those cars present is being harder to see those below them. But if it is something else, then maybe not as good of a solution.
  • terribleperson 1y ago
    Vehicles with a tall, flat face are more likely to kill instead of injure, from my recall of previous discussions on HN. That's been a trend in vehicle design for a few years now.
    • stickfigure 1y ago
      Fortnine did a video on Grilles That Kill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU They're hideous too.
    • cogman10 1y ago
      We desperately need vehicle safety regulations which consider pedestrians and cyclists. Trucks in particular are apparently being purposed built to kill.
    • potato3732842 1y ago
      It's more complex than that. The bulbous styling on your average "we would have called this a station wagon 40yr ago but now we call it an compact SUV because stupid laws" vehicle is driven in large part by a need to have big floofy plastic moldings full of airspace for a "soft" place for a pedestrian to land. On the other hand you've got stuff like the Chvey 2500HD trucks that everyone screeches about that aren't designed that way and will propel a pedestrian back onto the pavement.
  • kelnos 1y ago
    That seems unfortunately unsurprising. With shorter vehicles (sedans), when you get hit (as a pedestrian, bicyclist, motorcyclist), you are more likely to be pushed over the hood of the car. But with a taller vehicle (truck, SUV), you're more likely to either be propelled forward after hitting the high, flat face of the grille, or get pulled and dragged under the vehicle. While going over the hood is going to hurt, and can kill you, the other options are much more likely to kill you.
• markbnj 1y ago
  As an almost-daily motorcyclist with 15k miles on my current machine (Suzuki DL650), I absolutely agree that the increased proportion of pickup trucks on the road increases the risks for riders, however I suspect it is mainly because the larger, heavier vehicles aggravate the effects of a general deterioration in driving skills and attitudes. One thing about riding a motorcycle is that you are, unless you have a death wish, an active and observant participant in what you are doing, which alone separates you from a seeming majority of those driving cars and trucks. You become much more aware of what others on the road are doing, and what they are doing, in large numbers, is acting like twits. Driving crazily fast in residential areas, rolling through stop signs, blowing off yellow and even red lights, ignoring turn signals, aggressively tailgating cars, trucks, even motorcyclists like myself, tapping away at their phones and steering with their knees. I think I see just about every variation of all of these things at least several times a week, to the extent that I have thought about the idea of creating some kind of org or foundation or even just a blog to advocate a return to taking driving seriously. I don't have a lot of confidence that I could make a difference though. I suspect a lot of the problem is simply many more cars on infrastructure that we haven't put enough money into for decades, but I'm no expert.
  • NegativeLatency 1y ago
    It's a really complicated issue, but you might find some of stuff related to Strong Towns, 15 minute cities, and sorta general modern urbanist things interesting. If we had better transit, more connected communities etc, people who are less interested in driving and driving well would have other options than hours long commutes.
    • rkangel 1y ago
      [Answer scope limited to the US] The problem is that these people want to drive, and don't care about it. They want to drive for sociological reasons - driving is seen as a symbol of American independence and financial stability. Look at the people who get weird reactions because they chose to walk to work, or schools that object on spurious grounds when they walk their kid to school. The car is seen as an assumption, a bare minimum. And any attempt to replace it is taking away a personal right.
• bob1029 1y ago
  > Perhaps its time to start regulating for better visibility I argue we should start with the A-pillar. It's not just the big fat American trucks. Every car that is allowed to roll onto the streets is required to have a certain amount of airbag and the push for this seems to have really bad side effects on aspects of safety for everyone not inside the vehicle. Look at the visibility difference in a 1980s pickup truck and compare it to 2024 model year anything and you would likely feel claustrophobic pretty quickly.
  • xtiansimon 1y ago
    > Perhaps its time to start regulating for better visibility I wish my town in NY would ENFORCE laws for tinted windows. It’s epidemic. As a moto rider I rely on being able to see the driver, because if you can’t see their face, they can’t see you. Of course you can’t see the driver’s face if their car windows are blacked out.
• spacemark 1y ago
  >Sitting on a bike, you're even shorter than a pedestrian and more likely to be completely out of sight. Not true at all except for the lowest-sitting cruisers. Most bikes put you eye level with an SUV driver and taller bikes above.
  • crazygringo 1y ago
    Can you explain why? I see other people saying the same thing, but it totally defies my intuition. Isn't the seat in an SUV objectively much higher up than the seat of a bike? Aren't your feet much higher on the floor of an SUV, than on a bike? What am I missing here?
    • ars 1y ago
      They are not. You step up over the sill to get into an SUV, then your feet go down into the footwell. Your eyes end up slightly lower than a person standing (and much lower in a sedan), while a motorcycle is very close to exactly standing (they have to be able to put their feet down when stopped).
      • crazygringo 1y ago
        Thank you!
• AdrianB1 1y ago
  Sitting on my bike, I am taller than any pedestrian. I have visibility and I am visible over most European cars. Just saying.
• KennyBlanken 1y ago
  Fatality rates for all vulnerable road users have skyrocketed in the US. You're three times more likely to die if you're a pedestrian and struck by an SUV than a passenger car. They're also horrifically bad for congestion and pollution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo And trucks and SUVs continue to further dominate the marketplace with some automakers no longer selling sedans at all, making it increasingly difficult to not buy an SUV or "crossover." Those trucks and SUVs, particularly those made by American and Japanese companies, are focused on "aggressive" looks, which means a giant, angry looking, flat-face nose which is incredibly lethal when hitting a person. https://www.indieauto.org/2022/11/28/designer-of-2020-gmc-sierra-hd-strived-for-a-pissed-off-feel/ https://www.indieauto.org/2022/11/28/designer-of-2020-gmc-si... "The front end was always the focal point. The rest of the truck is supporting what the rest of the truck is communicating… we spent a lot of time making sure that when you stand in front of this thing it looks like it’s going to come get you. It’s got that pissed-off feel, but not in a boyish way, still looking mature. It just had to have that imposing look." And of course who do these vehicles appeal to? What kind of behavior do they encourage? Every time I'm tailgated it's some dickhead in one of these giant angry-faced trucks. It's taken the auto "journalists" a while to catch up but they're finally pointing it out: https://tech.yahoo.com/transportation/articles/mean-machines-reached-peak-angry-193406911.html https://tech.yahoo.com/transportation/articles/mean-machines...
• f001 1y ago
  Very much depends on the style of motorcycle. Sitting on my dual-sport BMW F650GS[1] I can see well over sedans on the road and this is with a slightly lowered version of it. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_G650GS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_G650GS
• briandear 1y ago
  The vast majority of motorcycle crashes are due to excessive speed and inexperience of the rider. Also a car turning into the lane and failing to see the oncoming bike causes many, many accidents. I ride in Spain, and I don’t know anything about “better visibility” requirements” compared to the U.S. — out here there are giant trucks everywhere: delivery vehicles, industrial trucks, and even Ford Raptors. My close calls have almost always been exclusively with small VW Golf and the SEAT equivalents — distracted, young drivers are (anecdotally) the biggest culprits. Also in the U.S., you’ll have some 18 year old kid on an R1 that has no business being on an R1, often killing themselves because they think they are Fabio Quateraro at 2am. I could be wrong, but I’m not seeing data suggesting that “big trucks” in the U.S. are causing more motorcycle deaths. When I drove a Suburban in the U.S., my visibility was far better than when I had a Maserati car. Being able to see over cars allowed me to see more easily when a moto was approaching from the front or rear. If you want to improve moto safety in the U.S., you need harsher laws against distracted driving, you also need potentially a graduated motorcycle license system like they do in Europe so you don’t have rookies running 1000cc bikes when ten minutes of riding experience. Trucks are not really the problem.
  • prmoustache 1y ago
    I think distraction and lack of experience is the main issue regardless of the vehicle. Also there is a big difference I think with proper motorcyclists who actually get teached how to ride a bike, anticipate drivers behavior and act as if you were invisible at all time, with people riding <125cc motorcycles and moped with a car driving license who just don't take proper safety measures. I see so many 125cc riders overtaking on the right side, splitting lanes at excessive speed without anticipating a driver deciding to switch lanes, etc. Whenever I see a motorcycle rider down in an urban area it is usually on a 125cc or lower scooter. Exception being the Yamaha T-Max users. They are supposed to have a motorcycle license but they all ride like complete retards with no exception. I think there is something in the nature of that bike, noise combined to instant throttle response and userfriendlyness of the clutchless/gear variator system that attract only the most stupid people of this planet. Yamaha should be ashamed of this.
  • Thedarkb 1y ago
• frereubu 1y ago
  > Motorcycle fatality rates have been trending upwards, not downwards Doesn't seem to be the case in the UK [1], but I don't think we have nearly as many large vehicles as in the US. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-motorcyclist-factsheet-2023/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-motorcyclist-factsheet-2023 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua...