CNN piece on Super Sport Bikes & Helmets

http://www.iihs.org/

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's latest report that says "Super Sport" bikes. “...made up less than 10 percent of registered motorcycles in 2005 but accounted for over 25 percent of rider deaths. Their insurance losses were elevated, too.”

The piece showed a motocycle hitting a car that turned left in front of it!! to illustrate how dangerous motorcycles are! Then a shot of two bikes going down canyon riding.

The piece then asked if high performance bikes should be allowed to be sold. It goes on to compare the ZX-6 hp to a Harley.

Would your non-motorcycling friends consider your VFR a "Super Sport" bike? A "Crotch Rocket"? A danger to society?

The IIHS is working hard to get this story out since the Squids are costing them money.

the second part of the piece was on a national helmet law.

Nozzle's bottom line:
The Squids are impacting your ability to ride, whether you like it or not. Ride responsibly... and tell CNN their piece showed how dangerous cars are.

 

One of the few things that I genuinely hate about capitalism is that it gives buttholes like the IIHS an excuse to say that me hurting myself hurts someone else, by way of money.

 

All In Consideration, Its Compare To The Rider. I Mean If The Rider Is Stupid Then The Saying Is Stupid Is, Is What Stupid Does. They Can Always Try To Compare A Sport Bike To A Harley Or A Sport Tourer To A Crotch Rocket Or What Ever !but I See It As The Riders Responsibility For Speed.

 

Yes, many of my non-rider friends and family consider my VFR a sport bike and see no difference in that to a CBR600RR.

And the car turning left in front of a bike does show how dangerous a bike is compared to a car. Typically when that happens the rider is thrown from the bike and sustains some injuries. Maybe minor, maybe serious, maybe life threatening, maybe even deadly. We all undertake this increased risk evertime we ride. In that same situation, if the rider was in a basic car, their chance of death would be greatly reduced as would their risk of injury. Heck there is a good chance depending on the speeds (with a left turn scenario, I am assuming non freeway speeds) that the car driver would walk away with out a scratch. The chances of a bike rider walking away with no bumps or bruises, are very low. In the video that CNN showed, was the car driver injured in anyway? Without seeing it, or hearing the copy that went along with it, the point of the clip could have easily been "even when not at fault, motorcyclists are in increased danger./"
One of my neighbors recently smacked into a left turning truck on a road I take pretty much twice a day. His injuries were so severe, that a life flight helicopter had to be called in. Was it his fault as the motorcyclist? From what I understand of the accident, no, it wasn't. It was somebody trying to get home 30 seconds earlier, and not coming to a complete stop before they made their turn and not allowing the vehicles in front of them to get far enough away that they could clearly see the opposing lane. Does any of that diminish the motorcyclist's injuries? No. Would he likely required hospitalization if he were driving a Camry at the time? No. Riding a motorcycle is dangerous.

 

Let's face facts. When we talk about the "Big 4" Japanese manufacturers, Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, and Kawasaki, the word "Sport" in the title of a bike is what sells many of them. I don't know what percentage of their sales are "Sport", "Sport Touring", "Dual Sport", etc. but I'd suspect it to be a huge percentage.

When a kid looking for his first bike walks into a bike shop that sells those brands, the vast majority of the time he is looking for a "Sport" bike. Not a small naked learner bike, but a big sport bike. The dealers are more than happy to sell him anything he can afford, and so are the manufacturers. I was talking to a dealer earlier this year who told me that he has seen many instances where someone will buy a brand new ZX-10 or ZX-14 and barely make it out of the parking lot (admittedly their parking lot is gravel!). In one instance they sold a new ZX-10 on a Thursday night and when they got to the shop on Friday morning it was wadded up in a ball where the wrecker had dropped it off.

It is things like this that make me feel like a graduated license like some other countries have might not be a bad idea. Sure it's inconvenient to a new rider for the first couple of years to be stuck on a 250 trainer, but it just might keep them alive long enough to learn how to ride to. Like helmet laws and other things I have mixed feeling about graduated licenses, but I think it's something worth considering.

 

Scraig:

I am with the you on the graduated license idea. It only makes sense. In addition, in many bike accidents the rider do not have his/ her endorsement. in Delaware the fine for that is something like 25-50 bucks?!?! What the hell? So there is no incentive to get properly trained and licensed for the road. Instead of Draconian laws that ban sportbikes, how about very stiff penalties for those poeple riding without a license, insurance, etc. Make it so the incentive is to do it the right way.

BZ

 

Who's more at fault?

1) The fuktard squid who insists on buying a 180HP GcXzR-11111 as a first bike.

OOORRR

2) The fuktard dealer scum sales puke who is more than happy to sell the squid that 180HP GcXzR-11111.

I think anyone who buys a full bore race replica as a first bike is mentally retarded. On the flip side of that coin, sales scum at dealers should be going out of their way to NOT sell a 180HP missile to a guy with ZERO hours experience on bikes. They only do it to make the sale & therefore their commission. Who cares if they guy will most likely end up in a closed casket? He made his commission so you can bet the sales guy wont care. I will come right out & say that a person SHOULD NOT be able to buy a full race replica without some provable experience. How to document that in the US is a difficult task.

I like the way it's done in Germany. When you start out, you ARE NOT, IT'S AGAINST THE LAW, to buy anything bigger than 400CC. After X time, you get to move up to 600CC, then on to 800CC, then to 1000CC & finally unlimited displacement. I don't remember if you have to take a test for each level but I will find out next week when I'm in Germany for Oktoberfest. If you get caught on a bike you don't have the required experience to ride, you go to jail & lose your license. This may sound pretty harsh but considering Germany most likely has the best drivers & best roads in the world, they must be doing something right.

KC-10 FE out...
lane:

 

I do not understand why the Insurance Institute doesn't just use their statistics to set higher rates for the higher risk riders/machines. The IIHS seems to be trying to get the manufactures to make bikes I don't want instead of charging insurance rates based upon their risk data.

What am I missing here?

did anyone else see the piece?

 

I've been riding for a little over a year and my first bike was a 2005 vfr800...I think its the person riding the machine, not the cc's on the bike...bottom line, if you are bad in a car and a bicycle chances are you are going to get hurt bad on a motorcycle....Also people buying those bikes probably rate with a much lower IQ, and therefore they will make bad decisions on the bike.

 

That's the American way ... Don't fix the problem, change the rules so that the problem is circumvented. Additionally, statistics are meaningless. All statistics. They can be twisted to prove any side of any argument. My favorite is the one that says "Most accidents happen within 10 miles of home." Well, Duh! Maybe it's because most of your driving is within 10 miles of home!

And, no, I didn't see the piece.

Pretty much the same here. When I took the ERC last year one of the people in the class said he had been riding for 20 years without a license. The only reason he was getting one now was that his oldest kid was getting his driver's license and complained about having to take the test for the license when "Dad doesn't have a license for his motorcycle!"

It *IS* the person on the bike, but a fast bike with a lot of power makes it a lot easier to get into a lot of trouble in a hurry. Any moron can twist a throttle and shift gears, but learning to handle curves, slick roads, traffic, and all the other stuff we deal with every day isn't that easy to learn.

How about a kid who buys a GSX1000R and plays it safe for about 1 week. Then he decides to open it up just a little on a straight section of road, only to find out the road curves sharply and he doesn't know how to handle it. To late to learn now. If he had been on a little 250cc machine he wouldn't have been able to go that fast, and he probably would have made that corner. An 18 year old former student of a guy on another forum. He didn't make the corner, nor did he live to learn how to do them right.

I can think of several things wrong here; parents shouldn't have let him have a bike like that, dealer shouldn't have sold it, etc. But the bottom line is he got it, he couldn't handle it, and he got killed on it. It *IS* the person, but we were all young once and did foolish things.

 

KC - problem I have with the IIHS report, and the lazy reporters who regurgitate it with videos of cars being dangerous, is that IIHS's solution is to have the motorcycle manufactures not sell the powerful performance bikes!

The IIHS target is not laws for education, or intelligent sales, but at the availability of the machines in the marketplace.

Funny thing on the report brochure.... it shows a Kawi Ninja over and over, and does not show a single Suzuki 'Busa or GSXR! I guess the graphics department wanted to go with evil green.

 

I just went and read that article, and I stand behind my comment that statistics are garbage.

First, thecrux of the article is about "Supersports" yet they classify as ZX-6R as being in that classification. If that's the case then what is in the "Sports" classification? They state that, "Among motorcycle drivers killed in 2005, 33 percent drove motorcycles with engine sizes larger than 1,200 cubic centimeters" yet there are only a couple of models of "Sport" or "Supersport" bikes with displacement that high. The two that come to mind are the Suzuki GSX1300R and Kawasaki ZX-14. Most of the other bikes with displacement over 1,000cc are "Touring" bikes.

It seems like they are just throwing out "Stuff" without regard to realities, and are simply trying to make things fit the way they want them to fit. Typical BS if you ask me.

 

The stuka man is right again!

Many motorcyclists are considered "experienced" because they have been riding for 10 plus years. As a MSF Coach I witness many of these so called experianced people in class and they have trouble completeing some of our exercises and almost everyone of them says at the end of the course how much they LEARNED in the past two days.

Riding in a straight line for 30 years does not make a motorcyclist experienced in anything other than riding in a straight line, which is really easy and a monkey can do it! But many of these riders before class thought they knew it all before class and it was going to be sooo easy.

My point is simple; many, many riders truly do not know how to ride a motorcycle or have a working knowledge of how one works. These people are easy to spot too. They say things like: What is countersteering? Never use the front brake, you'll fly over the handle bars, If you are going to crash, lay the bike down, etc. Yet, they have been on the road for years.

It was said best by, believe it or not, a 18 yr. old in class. his name was Kent and when Jeff (the other coach) and I asked at the beginning of class, why is everyone here? Kent replied: "Well, I am working on my pilots license too. And I think its ignorant to think just because I know how to drive a car that I can just jump in a plane or on a motorcycle and know what I am doing."

Jeff and I about shit...we had no idea what to say because to this date it is the most logical, intelligent answer he and I have ever heard in class.

Mandatory rider training with some tier system is obviously needed.

BZ

 

Reason I started this thread was to point out that there is a move that is on national news to *Ban the sale of certain classes of motorcycles*.

That scares me since it ignores the need for education.

( i hesitate to use this analogy, but I'll risk it and flame the thread stealers later )
This seems to parallel the gun industry debates... first they banned the bad looking guns, then instated mandator hunter training with a grandfather clause. The ban is soooo much more politically expediant and will happen to motorcycling if our community can not self regulate.
(you are once again free to steal the thread without risk of nozzle flamethrower activation)

Yes, the statistics are funked with - but would anyone expect less from the insurance industry? IIHS is there to represent the interests of the insurance industry... look at the member organizations... not the insurance industry's customers.

The problem is IIHS misrepresenting the problem so that their members, the insurance companies, can make a greater profit. If IIHS wanted to reduce the deaths in super sport motorcycles, they'd sponsor classes or testing, not squeeze this kind of report out.

Thanks, I feel better. :redface: vented..... My dog :yield: , who will now not be kicked, thanks you.

 

Nozzle, you are right, I did sidetrack your thread and I apologize. I did think it was related when I wrote it, but now that I see how things have progressed I realize that I was part of getting it off topic and I didn't intend it that way.

You are also right in that the two situations do parallel each other in scary ways. I'm a shooter and I love guns just as I do motorcycles. The methods used to try and "Regulate" firearms are just as foolish as trying to get the motorcycle industry to regulate motorcycles. It ain't the guns, it's the people behind them and it ain't the motorcycle manufacturers, it's the people riding them.

See, I told you I had mixed feelings about a graduated license. Now I'm arguing with myself!

 

I hate hate HATE it when people say there's no need for something. There's no "need" for -any- motorcycle on the street, and I'm sure there's a butt-ton of soccer moms who will agree. A want, and the money to buy it, is all that is required and, more importantly, is all that should -ever- be required in a free society. Your comment, IMO, stuka, while obviously intended to be targeted at one subset of motorcyclists, is an insult to all. Taking the hammer away the monkey (or the Gixxer away from the squid) doesn't make him any less a monkey (squid). It just means he has to find something else to break things with.