Motorcycle Safety Cycle Logic, Cycle Safety 1967 US Air Force Training Film TF-5990

more at http://quickfound.net/

'This program demonstrates the safe operation and handling of motorcycles. It shows how to start, clutch, brake, and accelerate. It explains anticipation riding in entering intersections, taking curves, changing lanes, keeping safe distances and avoiding wrecking too often.'

Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_safety

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Motorcycle safety concerns many aspects of vehicle and equipment design as well as operator skill and training that are unique to motorcycle riding...

Travelling on a motorcycle carries a much higher risk of death or injury than driving the same distance in a car. In 2006 US motorcyclists had a risk of a fatal crash that was 35 times greater than that of passenger cars, based on 390 motorcyclist deaths per billion vehicles miles and 11.1 car fatalities for that distance. In 2016 this rate was 24 times that for automobiles.

When looking at all reported accidents regardless of injuries, the accident rate for motorcycles in the US in 2016 was 6.31 per million miles driven, significantly higher than the rate of 3.28 accidents per million miles driven for cars and similar vehicles. However the primary reason for the higher rates of injuries and fatalities among motorcyclists is that cars provide more effective crash protection. For automobiles, 31% of crashes result in injury but only 0.29% of accidents are fatal. For motorcycles 78.3% of reported crashes result in injury and 4.24% of crashes are fatal.

Statistics from other countries confirm the US data. The UK Department for Transport indicated that motorcycles have 16 times the rate of serious injuries, people either killed or injured, compared to cars. UK data for casualties, i.e. the total of all injuries and fatalities combined, showed 6,043 casualties per billion miles traveled on motorcycles in 2017, 25.4 times the rate of 238 per billion miles travelled for cars. In the UK in 2017 there were 116.9 motorcyclist fatalities per billion passenger miles, 61.5 times the rate of 1.9 fatalities per billion passenger miles for occupants of cars. UK data shows a wider disparity between cars and motorcycles than US data in part because it is based on fatalities per passenger mile while US data is based on fatalities per vehicle mile.

A national study by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATS) found that:

Motorcycle rider death rates increased among all rider age groups between 1998 and 2000

Motorcycle rider deaths were nearly 30 times more than drivers of other vehicles

Motorcycle riders aged below 40 are 36 times more likely to be killed than other vehicle operators of the same age.

Motorcycle riders aged 40 years and over are around 20 times more likely to be killed than other drivers of that same age.

Bicyclists and pedestrians are also unprotected in collisions with cars on public roads. In 2017, there were also 5,604 bicyclist casualties per billion passenger miles or 23.5 times the rate for cars, compared with pedestrians having about 7.6 times as many casualties per distance traveled. However bicycles and pedestrians travel at much lower speeds so the risk they incur per hour of travel is only a fraction as great. In contrast, the rate of fatal accidents for buses is lower than for cars, about 0.83 times as many.

The article on Motorcycle fatality rate in U.S. by year indicates that the number of motorcycle fatalities in the US has remained about 5000 per year for most of the past decade. In 2006, 13.10 cars out of 100,000 ended up in fatal crashes, while the rate for motorcycles was 72.34 per 100,000 registered motorcycles...

A major work done on this subject in the United States is the Hurt Report, published in 1981...

The Hurt Report concluded with a list of 55 findings...

notable findings in the Hurt report...

75% of accidents were found to involve a motorcycle and a passenger vehicle, while the remaining 25% of accidents were single motorcycle accidents.

In the single vehicle accidents, motorcycle rider error was present as the accident precipitating factor in about two-thirds of the cases, with the typical error being a slide-out and fall due to overbraking or running wide on a curve due to excess speed or lack of side bite.

Almost half of the fatal accidents show alcohol involvement.

Injury severity increases with speed, alcohol involvement and motorcycle size..