Fatality Rate by Age Group

Fatality Rate by Age Group

Last update: September 13, 2002

While fatality rates for riders in all age groups combined seem readily available, I have not been able to locate fatality rates for different age groups on the Internet. I'm sure that they have been available to the insurance industry, but for some reason, they don't seem to have been readily available to the general public. Looking through various numbers in a government document DOT HS 809 271 Technical Report: Recent Trends in Fatal Motorcycle Crashes, I realized it is possible to get a reasonably good estimate of fatality rate for different age groups for the years, 1980, 1985, 1990, and 1998.

The following two tables are from DOT HS 809 271 Technical Report: Recent Trends in Fatal Motorcycle Crashes.

Table 23: Motorcyclist Fatalities by Age Group and Year (1980, 1985, 1990, and 1998)
Age Group	1980		1985		1990		1998
Age Group	Number	Pct	Number	Pct	Number	Pct	Number	Pct
Under 25	2,793	54	2,297	50	1,294	40	564	25
25-29	967	19	970	21	667	21	357	16
30-39	920	18	861	19	816	25	612	27
40 and Over	460	9	431	9	466	14	760	33
Unknown	4	0	5	0	1	0	1	0
Mean Age (Years)	26.2		26.8		29.3		34.6

Table 24: Ratio of Fatality Percentage to Ownership Percentage by Age Group and Year (1980, 1985, 1990 and 1998)
Age Group	1980	1985	1990	1998
Under 25	1.1104	1.4138	1.6761	1.6728
25-29	1.3239	1.1364	1.2023	1.4275
30-39	0.9411	0.8387	0.8192	0.9702
40 and Over	0.5921	0.8387	0.5439	0.7581

The following is the explanation for Table 24, given on the page 33 of DOT 809 271:

In order to calculate fatality rates based on ownership, data were used from MIC�s 2000 Motorcycle Statistical Annual. These data were available for 1980, 1985, 1990, and 1998 and were given as percentage of ownership by age groups. Rates are calculated by dividing the fatality percentage (numerator) by ownership percentage (denominator) for the specific age group. Since actual numbers of owners by the age group were not available, this method of calculating the rates was used.

The following tables were created by using various data available from DOT HS 809 271.

Table 1 is a subset of data in Table 2 of DOT HS 809 271.

Table 1: Registered Motorcycles and Fatality Rate for All Ages (1980, 1985, 1990 and 1998)
	1980	1985	1990	1998
Registered Motorcycles	5,693,940	5,444,404	4,259,462	3,879,450
Fatality Rate (Per 100,000)	90.34	83.83	76.16	59.13

Table 2 contains the numbers in Table 23 above adjusted to get a higher number of decimal places in percentage figures. Each number in the Unknown category of Table 23 was divided by four and added to the fatality number for each age group.

Table 2: Motorcyclist Fatalities by Age Group and Year (1980, 1985, 1990, and 1998)
Age Group	1980		1985		1990		1998
Age Group	Number	Pct	Number	Pct	Number	Pct	Number	Pct
Under 25	2,794.00	54.32	2,298.25	50.39	1,294.25	39.90	564.25	24.60
25-29	968.00	18.82	971.25	21.28	667.25	20.57	357.25	15.57
30-39	921.00	17.90	862.25	18.89	816.25	25.16	612.25	26.69
40 and Over	461.00	8.96	432.25	9.47	466.25	14.37	760.25	33.14

Table 3 contains the numbers calculated using the numbers in Table 1, Table 2, and Table 24. (The reason there are differences between the numbers in Table 3 and the results obtainable through calculations using the data shown in Tables 1, 2, and 24 is because the numbers of decimal places for percentage figures in Table 2 which were used during calculations were higher than those shown in Table 2.)

Formula: Registered Motorcycle [Table 1] x (Fatality Percentage [Table 2]/ Ratio [Table 24])

Table 3: Registered Motorcycle Ownership by Age Group and Year (1980, 1985, 1990 and 1998)
Age Group	1980	1985	1990	1998
Under 25	2,785,216	1,939,162	1,013,893	570,433
25-29	809,342	1,019,541	728,701	423,227
30-39	1,083,268	1,226,398	1,308,299	1,067,196
40 and Over	861,822	1,163,429	1,125,573	1,695,925

Table 4 contains the numbers calculated using the numbers in Table 2 and Table 3.

Formula: (Fatality Number[Table 2] / Registered Motorcycles [Table 3]) x 100,000

Table 4: Fatality Rate by Age Group and Year (per 100,000 registered motorcycles) (1980, 1985, 1990 and 1998)
Age Group	1980	1985	1990	1998
Under 25	100.32	118.52	127.65	98.92
25-29	119.60	95.26	91.56	84.41
30-39	85.02	70.31	62.39	57.37
40 and Over	53.49	37.15	41.42	44.83

The following charts plot the numbers in Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, and Table 4. The fatality rate in the chart "Fatality Rate by Age Group" is per 100,000 registered motorcycles.

Chart: Registered Motorcycle Ownership by Agre Group

Yes, as the media wants us to believe, the fatality rate for older riders (the age group: 40 and over) has been on the rise while those of other age groups have been declining (at least until 1998); however, the fatality rates of older age groups are still considerably lower than those of younger age groups.

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