Riders are at double the risk of deadly accidents compared to all other road vehicles.
Motorcycle crashes are on their way up, including those leading to rider fatalities, placing them in far greater danger than any other vehicle operators on the road.
According to a recently released report, fatal accidents rose by 11 percent from 2019 to 2020.
The report focused on a ValuePenguin study that examined fatal motorcycle crashes for the five years starting in 2016, the latest available data. Riders are more than twice as likely to be involved in a deadly accident as other vehicle operators. It also represents an increase of more than double the 5 percent that it had been between the start and end of that time period.
According to the report, speeding was a factor in one in every three deadly motorcycle accidents that occurred during that time span. Thirty-three percent of fatal accidents between 2016 and 2020 involved speeding. Comparatively 18 percent of accidents involving all road vehicles involve speeding.
Nearly half of all fatal motorcycle crashes occurred during the brief two-day span of weekends.
Forty-nine percent of deadly accidents took place on weekends, even though they consist of only two days when compared to the entire rest of the week. The weekend, in terms of the report, included the span starting Friday at 6pm and continuing to Monday at 6am. The remaining 51 percent of the fatal accidents took place between 6:01 am on Monday mornings through 5:59 pm on Fridays.
The summer months are the deadliest, with nearly half of all deadly accidents occurring during that one season. Forty-nine percent of them occurred in June through September. July represented the highest single-month percentage, at 13 percent. This makes sense, as much of the country can’t use these vehicles at all during colder months as they’re not appropriate during the winter in the cold, snow and ice.
The highest number of fatal motorcycle crashes occurred in Texas, when based on the number of registered vehicles of this type. In Texas, there were 6.2 deadly accidents per 1,000 registered motorcycles between 2016 and 2020. Behind Louisiana at 5.6 per 1,000 and Washington DC also at 5.6 per 1,000.
