Howzat wrote:Sad to see cyclists overrepresented, but you have to wonder just what it is that puts motorcyclists so far out there.
There is the obvious influence of speed, increased vulnerability and an ignorant and incompetent driving population.
However, never underestimate the influence of the influence of population bias. In automobile fatalities young risk males are massively over represented. Those that love risk seem to get themselves killed at a phenomenal rate. And guess who are the main people who take up motorcycle riding? So simply by the population bias we would naturally expect a significantly higher accident and fatality rate than the objective riskiness of motorcycling. If the bulk of the population rode motorcycles/scooters you would expect a significantly lower death and injury rate.
This is the danger of looking at statistics and assuming it represents the objective riskiness of the activity. Likewise cycling in Australia would be similarly biased (though not to the same degree) as there is still a strong bias toward high speed higher risk riding.
