National Highway Traffice Safety Admin Report on Cycle Crashes (http://www.accidentreconstruction.com/newsletter/oct06/motorcycle_fatalaties.pdf)
To break it down for everyone that doen't want to read it. The NHTSA breaks down crashes based on age, CC, type of bike etc.
The most dangerous and growing group is the Baby Boomers on Harleys that are drinking and riding without any gear
I really wish I could agree with you.
It would be so easy to blame all of our insurance woes on drunken baby-boomer Harley riders. And I won't deny that they are a growing problem area of the biker population.
However.....the 20-29 yr old group still gets the booby prize for highest accident rate.
from page 25 of the report:QuoteThese increases have been observed for the most part, in the over 40 age group. The percent of fatalities in the 20-29 age group has declined considerably between 1995 and 2004 and declines were also seen in the percent of fatalities in the under 20 and the 30-39 age groups during the same period.
However, there are still proportionally more fatalities in the 20-29 year age group than in the other age groups from 1995 to 2004. This indicates that the 20-29 age group is still the leading age group in terms of the number of motorcycle rider fatalities among all age groups.
Sorry.... :-\ Maybe you can find something else in the stats. But it seems that the only reason that the younger group's percentages went down is because they became a smaller percentage of the overall biker population. It's so easy to twist statistics into whatever you want to find. As an aside, I wonder what would have happened if the researchers had used horsepower figures instead of engine displacement to segregate bike classes.
So....Who wants first kick at me for spouting such sacrelige?? [cheeky]