One group--we're talking a single-digit number of BARFers--thinks luck can be ground down to nothing. They believe that with skill and experience, random shit can be eliminated as a motorcycling risk factor. This is what philosophy geeks would call a "non-falsifiable hypothesis". There is no experiment, no observation of reality that could disprove it. If you crash, you clearly lack the needed crash-prevention trait. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.
A similarly small second group sees reality as a sequence of preordained events orchestrated by external forces. We can call an outcome "lucky" or "unlucky", but that's just personal spin on what was meant to be and couldn't have been otherwise. They say "when it's your time, it's your time" but don't object to skill development or protective gear, so maybe they're hedging just a little.
A third group--don't know how many, but it seems like a lot--thinks luck plays a considerable part in motorcycling risk and that it's constant across the population. Riding safely is part skill and protective gear, which can be improved, but the remainder is intractable luck. If you disagree with them and believe instead that luck is a variable that can be improved, you're as deeply in denial as the first group. They find their view comforting because no one can be safer than they are, with their above-average bike handling skills (like the children of Lake Wobegon) and designer-label gear. And it's low-effort because trying to improve luck by learning from experience would be a waste of time with the riding environment so vast and unpredictably random.
A fourth group--which includes me and, I think, a majority of BARF--sees luck as a variable that can be developed. Through directed effort, I'm a luckier rider today than I was 10 years ago, and I hope next year to be luckier still. Each new wrinkle learned about motorcycles and roads and traffic can be put to use. But we acknowledge that safety will always be part luck. That includes "unknown-unknowns", things we don't know and don't know that we don't know, and also "known-unknowns", things we are aware could go wrong, but which we choose not to adopt countermeasures against. Known-unknowns are what I call "falling dog" problems. Thirty years ago my sister, worried about my taking up motorcycling, sent me a clipping about rider who was killed when a dog fell from an overpass. Whatever. If it happens, it happens, but I'm not taking precautions against it.
As a longtime adherent of the fourth view, I'm fed up with being accused of holding the first view. An example of a skilled and experienced rider who crashes doesn't contradict the view that luck can be improved; I don't claim the role of luck can be eliminated. And one rider's acceptance of a certain risk in order to enjoy a reward doesn't mean that that risk is inevitable for all; I may choose not to accept that risk. And is it hubris to think that one can improve his luck by working to understand a certain crash and adopt a countermeasure? Really?
