"Oh no, not again."

[kyburg]

select *
from MEMORY
where MEMORY includes "motorcycle"
and ent_date > '11/14/1960';



You don't say motorcycle around my mother. She turns a shade paler, and gives you That Look. Mom worked emergency rooms and intensive care as a bedside nurse, and then as a nursing supervisor, for more years than she'd like to admit. I think it was in the fifty of years or more when she finally retired.

Jim's mother, who did emergency room with the military as a registered nurse before retiring with PTSD, is only a little better. She gives you a semi-Look, but you'll hear soon after "you're not planning to get one of those things, are you?" It'll be somewhere in the conversation. Watch for it.

Hell, Cookie McFuckup nearly did himself in on a motorcycle, back in the day - and you'll hear that he'd be dead right now if that paramedic squad hadn't been right there, coming back from another call when he did the deed on the offramp of the freeway.

You hear it, and it passes through you like air. He's still here. It didn't kill him, so really - it's not that big a deal.

But the nurses who are mothers in my family won't discuss motorcyles without grieving.

Keep in mind, my experience with motorcycles is entirely a positive one - hell, I used to run around with the MMA back in the day. Some of my happiest memories are being on the back of a bike, riding around Hemet & Idyllwild on summer nights.

However.

You can't get away from the statistics, which are very very clear. It never fails to amaze me the kinds of auto accidents people survive. You ride a motorcycle long enough, however, it will kill you.

You can't be careful enough or smart enough or brave enough or anything enough. Something gets in your way for any reason - or doesn't see you - and hits you - and you don't have a chance. You're dead. Safety equipment only goes so far.

But motorcycles are helluva fun. There's nothing like it - so how does my head cope with the danger?

One, I don't think motorcycles are really suited for highway driving where there are more than three lanes, and the traffic is such that you have to "line dance" to keep your air-cooled engine from exploding. (That's most of California.) There are backroads, and open highway - where the risks are still there, but the additional traffic is not. Go ride in Hawaii on the freeways - with your friends. But I don't recommend making the motorcycle your primary mode of transportation if you live in a really congested big city. Or if your commute is over 15 miles (and that's pushing it). Take public transportation and save the bike for the weekends. You'll live. (It also goes that you should never make a motorcycle your primary and only source of transportation with no backup. You'll be sick one day. Or tired. You goof, you die. You gonna risk that?)

There are bikes you ride, and bikes you wish you could ride. Really. I think someone put it very well when she said that 120 was plenty fast for a car - anything faster, and you had no business driving it outside a racetrack. Me, I'd put the top end for motorcycles at about 65. Yeeeeah, and see above. You want to tangle with the SUVs on the 405, you go for it. I see very few motorcycles in the diamond lanes on the freeways down here. You have to cross all the lanes to get to it - and cross all the lanes to get out to exit. I don't care if that thing'll do 90 in a blink - it only takes a tap on their part, and you're road pizza.

I think it boils down to being realistic about it. It's a calculated risk, like everything else you do getting out of bed in the morning. It's just that riding a motorcycle will kill you if you do it long enough. And long enough is different for everyone.

Erring on the side of caution, that's me. Your mileage (*cough*) may vary.

Me, I'd rather be able to enjoy it. I'm picky about the where, when and with who. And the so not getting cocky about it. It's a dead serious business, riding. Forget it, and die. Literally.

I've been reading about motogrrl all day today. So many of her friends are on my FL - and she's another one of those people I'll only get to know through them, because we never met.

And it isn't just that they lost her. It's been a while since I've seen heart's blood flowing like this - if you ever wonder if you'd be missed if you just disspeared, go open my friends list natively and check it. I am so very sorry for all of you, and I've been thinking about you all day.

She didn't do anything wrong. I know it. It was just bad luck, and motorcycle accidents are not forgiving. And that's all it was - an accident. *sighs*

With gas prices inflating at the rate they're going, I know more people will be going to motorcycles for transportation - with the predictable outcome. I can only say that I keep hearing Esterhaus in my head....

"Let's be careful out there."

And may her memory bring peace.

Comments

[kshandra]

For whatever reason, lane-splitting is legal in CA - when the flow of traffic is under 35MPH. I see far too many people forgetting or ignoring that last clause.

But yeah. Another one here who didn't know motogrrl, but I'm definitely in the minority in my social circle. And I'm watching the overlap in fascination - the filkers, the bikers, the magickal folk....

There is no "will be" about it - she is missed.

[lysana.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of that clause. Do you have a cite for that?

[kshandra]

I thought it came from the DMV handbook, but I appear to have misremembered.

http://www.calhsta.org/library/cacode.html

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

You can legaly have as many vehicals in a lane as will fit safely. There is nothing about motorcycles at all in the law.

Every time some legislator introduces a bill to explictly ban it, the head of the CHP says no, and that kills it.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Welcome to California. Anybody else in another state have something like it?

its sad...

[n6vfp.livejournal.com]

I'll try to be careful so you don't have to write memories in my journal. I'm riding a motorcycle again. I know they are dangerous, and I've got over 250,000 miles under my saddle, but I still ride. I'm going to read more of her journal, she sounds remarkable.

Re: its sad...

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Hon, her friends are devastated. If there were words, which frankly, there aren't.

She's just...gone. Poof. People aren't supposed to do that. NOTHING is supposed to do that.

Re: its sad...

[n6vfp.livejournal.com]

I did a bit of reading and she was a very talented woman. I always have beleved that when your time was up, your time is up. I was told once (when I did 'die' in a hospital- long story, and I did travel to the 'other side') that my time was not up, so I was returned to life. Having a full life is a gift, and from what I can see, she lived life. She will be missed, but not forgotten. Yes, she's gone, but lives on in the hearts and memories of her friends.

[lovebug.livejournal.com]

My cousin died on hid moterbike suddenly, on his every day route to work. a large lorry turned into a street which is was on his way through, it didnt see him and he died instantly. :/

It isn't nice.. He was a good and careful driver, but it really is batteling with odds. Stay safe yourself, as best you can :)

[(Anonymous)]

About a year ago a dear friend lost her best friend via cycle, it was 2 weeks before this woman's daughter's wedding. Total devastation!!


Powerful post & all too true! I too ran with the MMA for a time way-back-when! I was really young then & I remember my mom's repeated concerns (I was emancipated & a distance away)It was a different time & place & I had no fear or worry.Now,years later, I travel in cars at reasonable speeds. I
think sometimes it's a reckless youth thing & sometimes--as you said--just accidents happen.

[foogod.livejournal.com]

Statistics say a lot, but they never say everything.

Are motorcycles more dangerous than cars? Yes. There are some accidents that will kill you on a motorcycle that wouldn't in a car. But the question is how much more dangerous are they, really?

People love to quote statistics, and they always like to say how "clear cut" they are, but you know, really they aren't. How much of these motorcycle statistics, for example, is due to inherent danger of the device and how much is due to the people who ride them?

In my experience, a very large portion of the people who ride motorcycles are, frankly, morons, and I think this has a large impact on the statistics. Motorcycles by their nature tend to attract exactly the wrong people as riders. Thrill-seekers, young guys who think they're invincible, people who like to go fast and cut corners, and just plain bad drivers. These are the same people who get into lots of accidents in cars too. So really, it seems to me what all the statistics actually say is "if you're a bad driver, you're safer in a car" (well, duh).

My father has been riding motorcycles since well before I was born. For many years he commuted nearly every day to work on one. He goes out on weekends riding his motorcycle at relatively high speeds around twisty mountain roads other people would get tense navigating in a car. All of this, and yet in my memory (roughly 30 years) he's been in exactly two accidents (one of which due to mechanical failure, the other I don't remember exactly), and in both cases had only relatively minor injuries. Why? He doesn't treat motorcycles lightly. He's put a lot of time into becoming very good at driving, and when he's on his motorcycle, he's probably two or three times as alert about what's going on around him than pretty much everybody else on the road. He knows how to control the motorcycle to minimize his own risk if something should happen, and he pays attention to the other people around him so he knows if somebody's about to do something stupid. He understands that motorcycles have additional risks, and those additional risks entail an obligation to be a better driver. And as a result I'm pretty certain that he's safer on his motorcycle than I ever will be in my car.

The attitude that motorcycles will inevitably kill their riders is wrong, and in my opinion only contributes to the problem because it just aggravates a fatalistic attitude. The point that needs to be stressed to motorcycle riders is exactly the opposite, that motorcycles can be safe, but you need to work at it, treat them seriously, and know how to ride them properly.

I don't mean to imply that motogrrl was a bad rider. I don't know, and I won't speculate. It is perfectly possible to be a really good rider and still get in a fatal motorcycle accident. Heck, lots of people do everything right and die in car accidents too.

FYI, statistics also show that people who ride motorcycles daily (commuters, etc) have about the same accident rates as car drivers, which suggests it's actually better to have a motorcycle as your main transportation than to use it only recreationally as you suggested.

And it should also be pointed out that, from what I understand, the reason that attempts to make lane-splitting illegal are repeatedly shot down is mainly because lane splitting has never been shown to be a large factor in most motorcycle accidents anyway.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

*nods* Most of the fatalities in motorcycle accidents are within the first year of ownership. (That's driver's school and too many hours in health instruction classes.)

It's just a toss of the dice, really - once you get past that. You can be the absolute best there ever was - and all it takes is one wrong move, not even on your part and that's all she wrote. It's not based on the number of years, miles, what have you. It's the sheer mismatch of exposure and available protection vs. what the typical rider has to compensate for. Right Stuff arrogance notwithstanding - the guys who ride for years without incident aren't somehow "better" and the people who die on the roads aren't somehow "inferior" because they got killed riding.

Sometimes, it's just bad luck. Wrong place, wrong time. Happens in any confrontation.

Motorcycle vs. everything else on the road? Only thing you have going for you is paranoia, hence my stance on keeping it enjoyable, not required. The less you're doing it because you have to (sick, tired, well, stressed, what have you), the fewer times you toss the dice. Get in proximity to other vehicles, and start adding tosses.

(I have equally "interesting" opinions on the relative safety of the other end of the scale - ya think an SUV is going to keep you safer? Based on the number of rollovers Jim and I have personally had to deal with, I'd have to say not. But that's another post for another day.)

Keep in mind - my experience with motorcycles and the people who ride them has been squarely on the side of keeping it legal, safe and available. And reminding the powers that be that negligence that kills a cyclist is a crime and not proof that they shouldn't share the same roads as everything else.

I didn't come up with the statistics - it was common knowledge back when I was hanging with MMA. Yeah, the accident rate is comparable. The survival/injury rate is NOT. (And they did funerals as often as the AIDS support groups used to. I grew up in Riverside County. Back then, killing a cyclist was considered sport in some circles...*shivers*) Shoot, would any of my suggestions made been any help? Dude, they're for me, custom-made. I make a policy of telling people what I do - not what TO do., and the two shouldn't be confused. This is how I deal with it. People have to make up their own minds. Put this senseless death in their own frame of reference.

I ask people to quit smoking, as a gift to me. I don't ask them quit riding motorcycles. Even when it is my honest opinion, gained through weighing the evidence presented to me over the years, and listening to other riders - that if you do it enough, it'll kill you.

It's an attitude, it's an opinion - and it's my story, and I'm sticking to it.