Media excerpt:
“[In the USA, there] were 1,661 motorcycle deaths of people 50 and older in 2015, according to a November 2016 report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. That’s an increase of nearly 7 percent, up from 1,553 deaths the previous year. That age group accounted for 35 percent of the total 4,693 motorcycle fatalities, the most for 2015.
“In the early 1980s, the proportion of fatally injured motorcyclists who were 50 or older started to increase, rising from 3 percent of all rider deaths in 1982 to 13 percent in 1999, and 35 percent in 2015, the IIHS study said.” [End of excerpt]
Source: Safety takes spotlight as fatalities rise among older motorcyclists, by Press of Atlantic city
ADoNA comments: Clearly this is an important topic, however there are other factors which undoubtedly affect the trend.
- In any walk of life, older people who are badly injured are less able to recover from those injuries than would be a younger person, and death is more likely;
- The fact that some states have laws which permit people to ride motorcycles without helmets is undeniably a major factor, as is the fact that some designs of American helmets cover a remarkably small area of the wearer’s head and are therefore not as effective as they could be (see the above photograph);
- Sadly, the USA has a very poor level of road safety and an overall death rate around four-times worse than that in the leading developed nations. This unarguably affects motorcyclists just as much as it does any other category of road user.
Eddie Wren, CEO & Chief Instructor – Advanced Drivers of North America
