[Mike AI]

Originally Posted by JR

ahem!!!... well, being someone that has always had a sport bike or two laying around, i would go as far to say that motorcycles themselves are not inherently dangerous anymore than a gun in a closet is dangerous. it requires an ignorant dipshit to make it dangerous. it takes someone who doesn't possess the skills, the knowledge, the general sense of awareness and the respect you have to have when you ride around others.

most fatalities by far (over 80% in washington state for example) are young kids on liter class sportbikes (1000cc), with no motorcycle license and without proper gear (leather boots, leather gloves with knuckle protection, pants, helmet, jacket (pants and jacket with armor)... usually they are doing wheelies down residential streets at 60-100mph or something stupid on the freeway and going down and getting plowed over by 5-10 cars before anyone realizes, running into the car that pulls out in front of them because they decided to ratchet through the gears on a side street and hit a car at 100mph, or whatever and are almost ALWAYS riding well beyond their own ability.

when you remove the obvious idiots from the equation, i doubt that stats for fatalities or injuries on motorcycles would really stand out at all.

No kidding - but because there are dangerous drives out there, it is a fact of life, it makes motorcycles dangerous.