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Interested in riding a motorcycle?
Motorcycle Safety
When you learned to ride a bicycle, you fell down a few times. When you learn to ride a motorcycle, you're going to tip over a couple of times. Trust me, this will happen. If you get a brand new $20,000 motorcycle and tip over on it, the chances are excellent that you're going to have a repair bill of $1000 or more. It's far better to get a smaller inexpensive bike and ride that for the first six months.
More than half of all motorcycle accidents involve riders with less than 5 months or 500 miles of experience. The USC Hurt Report found that two-thirds of all motorcycle accidents involved riders who were unlicensed, or riding a borrowed motorcycle, or riding during their first 12 months. It's very easy to get over-confident with your riding abilities after a couple months. Don't. Motorcycles are reasonably safe to ride, but very dangerous to learn.
If you take a passenger for a ride within your first 6 months, you are just asking for some very bad karma.
Riding a motorcycle is about managing risk. Motorcycles must be balanced, or they tip over. In a crash you have far less protection than in a car. Other drivers are looking for things that can hurt them, and so they mostly don't even see motorcycles. In a survey in California, it was found that 85% of all drivers rank themselves as above average, and 50% rank themselves as in the top 10% of all drivers. No one thinks they're an inexperienced or below average driver, yet half of everyone is below average: that's what average means. No one expects to crash, but the reality is that there are over a hundred thousand traffic accidents every year. Most beginners say "I won't fall down, I'm going to be careful," then they fall down anyway.
When riding a motorcycle you are far more connected to your environment than in a car. There's no heat or air conditioning. If it rains, you're going to get wet. If it snows you can be in real trouble. If you fall down, you're going to get scraped up. There is special motorcycle riding gear to help with these problems - armored jackets with vents that open and seal and removable liners, pants with knee and hip protection, electrically heated clothing; boots, gloves; earplugs, and most important of all, helmets. There are sections in this web site devoted to each of these.
Most motorcycle accidents happen within 5 miles of home. One out of five motorcycle accidents result in head or neck injuries. It's important to wear a helmet essentially all of the time, especially when you're just going down to the store for some milk. In most crashes, most of the damage to your head comes from the fall, not from any sliding. People have died from tipping over motorcycles while at a complete stop, by hitting their head on the pavement or on a nearby car, truck, or curb.
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