Motostats 2010

[DataDan]

Bay Area motorcyclist deaths dropped sharply again in 2010, falling 19% from 2009 after a similar decline from the highs of 2007 and 2008. The 48 rider fatalities in 2010 for the nine counties on the Bay + Santa Cruz was the fewest since 1998.

This good news for the Bay Area was even better than in the rest of California, which has also seen rider deaths decline for the past two years. Statewide fatalities are the lowest since 2002. The 2010 fatality rate is the second lowest (just slightly higher than 1996) in the 50 years of records I have.

US deaths barely increased in 2010--from 4462 to 4502--after a sharp drop in 2009 that followed a steady increase since 1997. US registrations reached another all-time high in 2010, topping 8 million. The 2010 fatality rate is the lowest since US DOT began publishing data in 1975.


The US DOT traffic fatality database for 2010 was released yesterday, and I'll be adding more posts with additional information as I plow through the data. For the moment, these compilations are a BARF/1Rider exclusive .

 

[YOUNGTHRILL]

wow

 

[Beauregard]

Huh.

Any speculation as to why?

 

[DataDan]

Any speculation as to why?

The sharp drop in Bay Area deaths 2009-2010 followed a sharp increase in 2007-2008. In fact the '07-'08 peak was one of the main reasons budman started 1Rider. The tragic stories we saw here nearly every week led to a positive response from BARF, appearances of the 1Rider crew at various events to get out a message about safer riding.

My theory is that both sides of the spike in deaths were related to credit availability. The rise was due to an increase in the number of young riders on sportbikes, facilitated by easy credit. Twenty-something riders could get the motorcycles they wanted without a lot of cash. Data presented in the thread Motostats 2008 shows that sportbikes and riders under 30 accounted for most of the increase.

Beau, you know something about credit availability from dealers during that time. Was it as easy am I'm making it out to be, or am I full of shit again?


The other side is the sudden drop in 2009, when credit suddenly dried up and people were losing jobs. Again, it was young riders and sportbikes that were affected. Here are age distributions for Bay Area, California, and US motorcycle deaths 1985-2010. I'll have more on the distribution of motorcycle type in another post.

​

 

[Beauregard]

Beau, you know something about credit availability from dealers during that time. Was it as easy am I'm making it out to be, or am I full of shit again?

Dan, in 2007 I could finance anything, including sea life, provided they had tentacles and could sign their name. Lots of squid were financed this way.

 

[planegray]

any chance you could overlay the fatalities on a graph of the "economy" ?

 

[morthrane]

Beau, you know something about credit availability from dealers during that time. Was it as easy am I'm making it out to be, or am I full of shit again?

Dan, in 2007 I could finance anything, including sea life, provided they had tentacles and could sign their name. Lots of squid were financed this way.

Stupid easy doesn't even begin to describe it, from what I saw across the country, and secondhand from dealers and managers.

Some of the terms I saw were beyond laughable, and reading between the lines, the financial pulse was optional.

 

[CaptCrash]

Back in 07 we had 3 kids at our high school show up with brand spanking new sportbikes. Turns out that if they bought through a bank loan they would have to carry full insurance coverage. By buying with with a motor co. credit card they could avoid the need for full coverage and just buy minimum PD & PL. So, when the first one pitched his across the intersection in front of the school they all got a lesson in what 'minimum' coverage meant.

The other killer was if they were late on 2 payments the interest would balloon to some ungodly number like 23%...not that starting at around 13 is any kinda deal...

 

[DataDan]

Involvement by motorcycle type

Among motorcycles in fatal Bay Area crashes, the number of sportbikes was virtually unchanged from 1999 to 2006 while the number of cruisers steadily increased. But in 2007-2008, the sharp increase was almost all sportbikes. From my previous post, this can be seen to parallel the increase in deaths of riders under 30.

Statewide since the low point in 1998, sportbikes increased somewhat faster than cruisers in fatal crash involvement, but both showed substantial increases. However, when deaths dropped off dramatically in 2009, sportbikes accounted for most of the decrease.

Across the US, cruisers have increased more than sportbikes in fatal crash involvement since the mid-1990s, and the two categories have decreased in similar proportion since the peak year of 2008. (Note that the US chart does not yet include 2010 data).

NOTES ON THE DATA: Motorcycle type is based on model ID, which is derived from the VIN. However, since VINs were standardized only in 1982 it isn't generally possible to decode model ID before that. So in earlier years, there's a greater proportion of "other", which would be more accurately called "other and unknown". Prevalence of that category is greater in earlier years because pre-82 model years were more often involved. In California since 2001, pre-'82s have comprised < 10% of the total.

In addition, the specialization of motorcycles into sportbikes, cruisers, etc., etc. is a phenomenon that took off in the late 1980s. In earlier years, the standards, sportbikes, and cruisers were all pretty much the same bike with different styling cues. Except for truly special models, I categorized all as "standard".

 

[Beauregard]

So Dan, correct me if I'm interpreting this graph incorrectly, but I read it as: of the nearly 100 motorcycle fatalities in the Bay Area in 2008, about half of them were sportsbikes.

 

[DataDan]

So Dan, correct me if I'm interpreting this graph incorrectly, but I read it as: of the nearly 100 motorcycle fatalities in the Bay Area in 2008, about half of them were sportsbikes.

Correct. Here's the full breakdown since 2005:

Motorcycles in fatal Bay Area crashes 2005-2010

[table=head]type|2005|2006|2007|2008|2009|2010
cruiser|25|27|29|26|20|13
dirt|1|1|0|0|0|0
dual-sport|0|1|1|4|2|2
motard|0|0|0|3|1|0
police|0|0|0|0|1|0
scooter|1|2|0|2|1|1
sport|32|28|56|50|28|23
sport-touring|0|0|2|2|1|0
standard|5|6|2|7|1|5
touring|7|4|3|4|0|5
unknown|2|2|5|2|5|2
total|73|71|98|100|60|51
[/table]

For info, the "police" bike in 2009 was an FXRP, but it did not involve a police officer.

 

[budman]

Good to hear it is going in the right direction. Thanks as always Dan :thumbup

I think the $$ and availability of them there $$ to get the spr0tbile of choice does have an impact on your stats unfortunately.

It sure would be interesting to know the % of folks getting training on the moto.
The reason I say that is because of the cruiser section going up in #'s. I would assume by this assumption :teeth that all would have basic training. I know it is not true, but follow me.

I think sport bikes would likely have a higher level of training.. given trackdays and such. I don't see this number as crazy high by any means, but I see sport type of riders seeking out better skills more often that cruisers. That also likely means they are putting themselves at risk developing these skills (assuming all development is not always on a closed course) and the general nature of "sport" is to challenge yourself to get better at the sport.

 

[Skidmarx]

A bright side to the recession?

"The Bad Economy Saves Lives!"

Now there's a headline.

 

[morthrane]

h

Correct. Here's the full breakdown since 2005:

Motorcycles in fatal Bay Area crashes 2005-2010

[table=head]type|2005|2006|2007|2008|2009|2010
cruiser|25|27|29|26|20|13
dirt|1|1|0|0|0|0
dual-sport|0|1|1|4|2|2
motard|0|0|0|3|1|0
police|0|0|0|0|1|0
scooter|1|2|0|2|1|1
sport|32|28|56|50|28|23
sport-touring|0|0|2|2|1|0
standard|5|6|2|7|1|5
touring|7|4|3|4|0|5
unknown|2|2|5|2|5|2
total|73|71|98|100|60|51
[/table]

For info, the "police" bike in 2009 was an FXRP, but it did not involve a police officer.

Need population data to go with those numbers... not that I have any suggestions on how to get it. Per capita wouldn't work right, given the uneven nature of motorcycle ownership. Bottom line, is the growth(decline) in riders/owners changing at the same rate as the death rate?

 

[DataDan]

Riders killed when running from police

After two recent deaths of riders running from police, BARFers might want to know how often motorcyclists are killed in pursuits and what they have in common. Because the US DOT traffic fatality database identifies drivers running from cops it's fairly easy to analyze these cases. In this post I present data about California and Bay Area riders killed in pursuits (not included are crashes like the recent one in Palo Alto where someone else being pursued hit and killed a motorcyclist). If you're interested in other factors, post up your question, and I'll answer it if I can.


From 2005 to 2010, 51 California riders died while running from police, 14 in the Bay Area. Nearly all were on sportbikes. Of the California total, 42 rode sportbikes while most of the rest were on cruisers. In the Bay Area, 11 rode sportbikes. Gixxers were most common statewide, but in the Bay Area it was the R1/R6.

The median age of runners killed (half younger, half older) was 29 in both California and the Bay Area, compared to 38 for all motorcycle deaths in the same period.

Only one of the bikes involved in these 51 California crashes was stolen, and it was in the Bay Area. But just 33% of the riders were on motorcycles registered to them. The rest were on bikes owned by someone else or were unregistered. The proportions were similar in the Bay Area. For comparison, in all California motorcycle deaths 2005-2010, 70% of riders were on their own bikes.

The influence of alcohol and lack of proper license were common factors among these riders. Nearly half of the California runners who died tested at .01+ BAC, all but a few above .08. Fewer Bay Area runners were drunk: 4 of 14, or 29%. Among all riders killed in California 2005-2010, 26% were at .01+.

In the 51 California pursuit deaths, 45% of riders had a suspended or revoked driver's license or simply had no license, and 25% had a valid driver's license but lacked an M endorsement. So 70% weren't properly licensed (57% in the Bay Area) while 33% of all riders killed in California 2005-2010 lacked a proper license.

Only 3 of the 51 runners killed, 6%, were both sober (BAC .00) and properly licensed, compared to 38% of all riders killed 2005-2010.

This chart illustrates these factors:

 

[DataDan]

I've updated the first post in this thread with US and California charts that include 2010 motorcycle registrations and fatality rate per 100,000 registrations (2010 Bay Area registrations and rate await publication of the annual SWITRS report by CHP).

The California motorcycle fatality rate is second lowest in the 50 years of records I have, only slightly higher than 1996.

The US motorcycle fatality rate is the lowest since US DOT record-keeping began in 1975.

 

[Beauregard]

Any speculation as to why the rate is the lowest since US DOT started keeping track?

 

[DataDan]

Any speculation as to why the rate is the lowest since US DOT started keeping track?

A short-term factor is the drying up of credit we discussed earlier, which helped drive down fatalities sharply in 2009. That's undoubtedly a factor in the much smaller 2010 decrease, too. But longer term, it's just a blip in the greater decline that began in the 1980s.

More to the point of your astute question about the longer term decline, I think we're seeing an overlay of three trends:

• Road traffic is becoming safer. My guess is that this is a combination of better road design, improved vehicles, less drinking and driving, and a generally more safety-conscious population. This flies in the face of the prevailing belief among motorcyclists that the highways have turned into Mad Max-land. But the data is unambiguous: The number of crashes per million miles of travel--of all severities and among all types of vehicles--has dropped by 40% in the past 20 years. Deaths of pedestrians and bicylists have dropped similarly. Though motorcycling has moved in the opposite direction recently, this is still an important trend: Factors that reduce the tendency of drivers to run into each other, pedestrians, and fixed objects also reduce their tendency to run into us.
  
  
  
• Riders are getting older. Simply put, older is safer. At the extreme that may not be true, but middle-aged people take fewer risks than young people, and the median motorcycle owner age increased from the high 20s in the 1980s to the low 40s today.
  
  
• Motorcycling enjoyed 15 years of unprecedented growth as the number of registered motorcycles in the US more than doubled. This trend, however, tends to drive the fatality statistics in the other direction. When motorcycling is growing fast, average experience in the population goes down, and risk goes up. On the other hand, when it is in decline, risk goes down.

So my narrative of the recent history of the motorcycle fatality rate (a wild-ass guess, at best) goes something like this: In the mid 1980s, motorcycling was a young man's pastime (it was and is overwhelmingly male), and all of the risk that young men take was present. Fatality rate was only slightly off its all-time high of the late 1970s.

Then, perhaps for demographic reasons, the bottom fell out of the sport as the number of registered motorcycles dropped by one-third in 10 years. At the same time, the riding population got older, aging from late 20s to mid 30s. The combination of older riders more experienced riders (due to lack of noobs) cut the fatality rate by 35% to its then-historical low in 1997.

But beginning in the mid 1990s, motorcycling surged. Sales took off, and registrations grew by 7% a year for a decade. This surge was driven by older riders, and median owner age climbed to the low 40s. So two opposing effects were at work on overall risk: older riders tended to keep it down, but the noob fraction tended to drive it up. The noobs won as the fatality rate climbed by one-third over the 1997 low. However, this was still far below the historical highs, even though registrations were setting a new record every year.

Finally the surge cooled off in the late 2000s, and the registration growth rate declined. We still had the older, lower-risk riding population, but with fewer high-risk noobs to offset its benefit. As a result, the fatality rate began to drop off slightly.

Then when the bottom dropped out of the economy in 2009, fatalities fell precipitously. But because of the trends that had been driving the rate for the preceding 25 years, they didn't have to fall that far to reach an all-time low.

 

[budman]

Good call I think. Makes sense to me anyways. In our safety committee there are more things coming that should help the roadways safer.

Paints used, sign improvements in road work area specific to motorcycles etc.
Small things to some, but all seem important when your the one on the ground.

 

[Beauregard]

As if on cue, two friends of mine, both in their late forties/early fifties, came to me yesterday asking for help picking out a bike. I believe your hypothesis holds water.