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Re: safety in cars, speed limits, and motorcycles
Jon Simon (jon.simon@solar.org) wrote:
> With motorcycles, though there is less chance of getting in an accident
> (there are less accidents/cycle vs accidents/car), accidents are much
> much more severe.
I don't think this is quite correct. When you compare the accident rates
on a vehicle mile basis, motorcycle have several times as many accidents
as automobiles. Here are some stats I computed a few years ago.
Cycle 83 84 85 86 87 Average
Veh Miles 10^6 8760 8784 9086 9397 9855
Fatalities 4045 4378 4342 4209 3781
Per 10^8 Miles 46.18 49.84 47.79 44.79 38.37 45.39
Total Accidents 530,000 570,000 480,000 440,000 380,000
acc/fatal 131.03 130.20 110.55 104.54 100.50 115
miles/acc 16,528 15,411 18,929 21,357 25,934 19632
Mot Veh Ac 10^6 18.3 18.8 19.3 17.7 20.8
Veh Miles 10^6 1.65E+6 1.72E+6 1.77E+6 1.84E+6 1.92E+06
miles/acc 90,328 91,489 91,917 103,842 92,500 94015
Fatal Acc 37,976 39,631 39,168 41,062 41,434
acc/fatal 481.88 474.38 492.75 431.06 502.00 476
Per 10^8 Miles 2.30 2.30 2.21 2.23 2.15 2.24
20.27
Now this table is a bit obscure, but you can see that automobiles
were driven about 94k miles per accident and motorcycles about 19.
The fatality rate per mile driven was 20 times higher for
motorcycles (45per 10^8 miles versus 2.24 for cars).
This doesn't necessarily contradict what Mr. Simon was saying, since
motorcycles tend to driven a lot less miles per years on the average.
--
Joel Upchurch @ Upchurch Computer Consulting joel@civ.net
718 Galsworthy Ave. Orlando, FL 32809-6429 phone (407) 859-0982
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