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So while I was driving home on Highway 101 I saw a motorcyclist pass between two SUVs in adjacent lanes at 40mph. He basically had like 4ft of room. One of the SUVs swerved slightly toward the other one, depriving the motorcyclist of his bit of passing room. The motorcyclist hit his hand onto the window of one of the SUVs. In response the SUV swerved away slightly and hit the brakes. The motorcyclist squeaked through without becoming pancake.
It seems like even a good motorcyclist would have about a 10% chance of getting crushed or run over in this situation. If this guy does stupid shit like that on a regular basis, it seems like he'd be getting into serious accidents every couple of months.
So why isn't he dead yet?
- Maybe people like that are actually really really good at handling the dangerous situations they put themselves in.
- Maybe he's just been riding for a few months, so the statistically likely event of his untimely death hasn't hit yet.
- Maybe he just does stupid things very occasionally and I happened to see it this time.
All I have to do is get my hands on some motorcycle accident stats. If we get some measure of risk-taking behavior of motorcyclists (eg frequency of speeding tickets) then we can look up the at-fault accident rates of the highest risk-taking pool of people within the group of regular motorcycle users.
It seems like even a good motorcyclist would have about a 10% chance of getting crushed or run over in this situation. If this guy does stupid shit like that on a regular basis, it seems like he'd be getting into serious accidents every couple of months.
So why isn't he dead yet?
- Maybe people like that are actually really really good at handling the dangerous situations they put themselves in.
- Maybe he's just been riding for a few months, so the statistically likely event of his untimely death hasn't hit yet.
- Maybe he just does stupid things very occasionally and I happened to see it this time.
All I have to do is get my hands on some motorcycle accident stats. If we get some measure of risk-taking behavior of motorcyclists (eg frequency of speeding tickets) then we can look up the at-fault accident rates of the highest risk-taking pool of people within the group of regular motorcycle users.
