Motorcyclists urged to ride defensively by OPP after deaths | Page 2 | GTAMotorcycle.com

Motorcyclists urged to ride defensively by OPP after deaths

griff2 said:
Which is exacerbated when said cyclists insist on riding two- or more abreast.
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Two Abreast?? try ore like 3 - 5 abreast, with these large groups who think they are in the Tour De France on the roads in Durham and York regions. I wish the coppers would ding evey one of them that isn't in a single line formation especially now that we HAVE to give them a 1 metre space.
 
The OPP should do a real PSA with real facts surrounding these deaths, like the fact that most of the bikes are heavy Harleys with riders that have no training in safe stops.
Talk to one of these Wild Hogs, they still talk about front brakes as unsafe and when to layer' down.

There should be another license class for overweight bikes with poor corner clearance.
 
What's this? Another 'crisis' created by the OPP? What were they saying last year? Wasn't last year the "highest motorcycle fatality rate in 10 years" or something like that? Oh look, this year seems even worse than last year. Does it ever get better? Well if it does you'll never hear about it. Like fatality rates on bikes over the past decade have been the lowest in 50 years?

The OPP are fishing for more authoritarian legislation yet again. BTW, it was an OPP officer who damn near killed a rider last week. Wonder what the fine was there? *crickets*
 
conundrum said:
I came close to being taken out/injured yesterday afternoon. I was turning right onto HWY 7 off McCowan around 2-3pm, when a burgundy sedan who was next to me/on my left decided it wanted to go right vs straight, so it turned right in front of me, and into my lane/path of travel. I had to slam on my brakes and not drop my bike, and he probably cleared my front wheel by an inch or two.
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So you were in the sedan's blind spot and actually invisible? Could you have ridden differently?
 
griff2 said:
Which is exacerbated when said cyclists insist on riding two- or more abreast.
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In fairness, in this particular case, the bicyclists (two of them) were doing nothing wrong. They were in line adjacent to their white line. The BMW SUV driver was completely in the wrong by being completely in the wrong lane around a corner and over a blind crest, giving the bicyclists far more clearance than necessary (even with the 1 metre requirement). It was not necessary for that driver to move so far over, and if it was necessary to cross the center line ... they should have slowed down to bicycle speed until they could actually see that there was nothing coming in the other direction.

0.8ish metres bicycle handlebar width + 1 metre clearance + 1.8 metres vehicle width = 3.6 metres; a normal lane on a road like that is 3 metres wide. While it is necessary to cross the center line to give the required clearance, it is not necessary to have the whole vehicle across the center line.
 
hedo2002 said:
A few factors.

1. They represent largest age demographic, as they can afford bike insurance.
2. Some in this ge group ride 15+ years ago, and stopped but have just recently taken up riding again. But the world of riding has changed dramatically since they last rode.
3. They tend to ride larger less agile cruisers
4. Age slows reflexes.
5. Complacency. They have ridden for XX years without incident and think that nothing bad can happen.
6. They also likely ride a fai amount more as they have more free time then a guy in his 20's going to school, working 2 part time jobs and trying to juggle a gf....
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Which might all be true--but the OPP have no stats to back this up. Before highlighting fatalities in my cohort I want kms travelled per age group at the very least. Then stats on the crashes: speed; multiple or single vehicle; class of bike; time of day; cause?. Perhaps the (very wide) age group 45-65 is under-represented. And perhaps the average age of their bikes is greater so less ABS and worse suspension (and are ABS-equipped bikes under-represented anyway?). As it is all I know is that some people died and a bunch were in my age group.
 
Hmm, y'know if they really wanted us to be safe, they'd be encouraging filtering to avoid rear-enders. But logic is not something to be applied to the OPP I guess.
 
motorcycle.jpg


The chart above shows the percentage of annual motorcycle deaths represented by the youngest age group ( 29 years) and the oldest group (> 50 years), according to annual data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for the years 1975 to 2009. In 1975, 80% of motorcycle fatalities were in the youngest age group and that percentage fell over time; only 3% of the deaths were in the older age group in 1975 and that share increased over time (see chart). It’s interesting to note that by 2009, the share of motorcycle deaths for the older group (31%) exceeded the share of deaths for the younger group (26%) for the first time ever.

I assume these trends in motorcycle deaths reflect the popularity of motorcycles among the baby boom generation, who started driving motorcycles when they were younger and have continued to drive bikes as they age. Meanwhile, if motorcycles have become less popular among young people in their 20s, the two demographic trends would explain why the share of motorcycle deaths represented by the 50+ age group is increasing, and was greater in 2009 than the younger age group’s share of deaths.
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