OTHER VIEW
Commentary: Why I no longer warn my fellow motorcyclists about nearby police
Motorcyclists tend to be iconoclasts and rebels, loners who travel in packs and stick to their own kind. Adventure riders hang out with adventure riders, sport riders with sport riders, and Harley owners with other Harley owners.
But on one thing we are unified: No matter the bike, no matter the brand, we always signal to warn each other about cops. Riding on the Angeles Crest Highway, or Mulholland Drive or other favorite biker haunts, when we see Los Angeles Police Department or California Highway Patrol officers lurking, we alert oncoming riders by raising one hand above our heads and tapping our helmets.
Well, I’m not doing it anymore.
Just over 5,100 motorcyclists died on U.S. roads in 2017, the last year for which complete numbers are available, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Motorcycle deaths now account for 14% of all motor vehicle deaths, a percentage that has doubled since 1997, and motorcyclists are 28 times more likely to die while riding than drivers or passengers in cars, IIHS numbers show. A lot of those deaths were in California. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, we have the highest number of registered motorcycles of any state in the country, and year after year we lead the nation in motorcycle fatalities.
About 40 percent of those deaths occurred in single-vehicle incidents, when riders hit a stationary object – a tree, a guard rail, a parked car or the pavement – and more than a third of all motorcycle deaths involved speeding.
I’ve been riding California roads for more than 45 years, and I understand why people speed. Riding a motorcycle properly feels like flying, and higher speeds can increase this sensation. You feel deliciously liberated from gravity. Riding fast also cranks up the thrill level and offers you a way to test your skills.
Most of today’s bestselling bikes accelerate very quickly and can run at extremely high speeds. Riders usually run out of talent long before they run out of horsepower. In a very common Angeles Crest scenario, a rider is moving too fast to complete a turn, runs wide, and hits something – a barricade, if he’s lucky, or a parked car or a tree or a rock if he’s not.
Those who rip up the Snake in Malibu or race each other up the Crest see these accidents all the time. In the last year alone I’ve been an eyewitness to three such accidents. One of the victims would almost certainly have died had we not come upon the accident when we did, seconds after it happened, and summoned help.