This seems the easiest solution, but I don't want to give up riding. It's so exciting. It's so fun. It makes me feel so good when I'm riding and not worrying about how dangerous the activity of riding is.

Is there any way we can increase our chances of survival in the sport of riding? I certainly hope so.

I think there are two ways to increase our chances of survival:

1. Avoidance: Identify dangerous conditions/ situations where the incident of accidents is higher than others, and avoid them.



2. Skill Improvement: Through training and practice, improve our riding skills so that we can handle difficult conditions/situations better.

Obviously, they don't have to be mutually exclusive of each other, and actually, the improvement in both areas is preferred over improvement in one area only. The question is which is easier for the majority of riders to put into practice? I think the answer is the option 1 because...

Accept my view that riding is a sport, not some kind of activity where we can expect everybody, if trained properly, can get equally good at. Some people have more talent than others, and some people are just not cut out for this sport. Nobody realistically believes that by training, no matter how rigorous and well designed it is, everybody can become a top-level athlete in many different sports, right? So discard this idea that through ride safety education, training, and practice, all of us can become good riders. All we can realistically expect is that through education, training, and practice, most of us can reach a certain level of competency which could be considered sufficient to allow us to ride with reasonable level of risk.

Know your limit and feel comfortable riding within your limit. If you can get good satisfying feeling going at low speed, say 20-30 mph, but feel a little scared going at 40-50 mph, you don't have to feel that you need to improve your skill so that you can go at 40-50 mph comfortably. You don't have to prove anything to anybody. The only important thing is that you know what your limit is, you stay within it, and you enjoy yourself. If you want to expand the envelope of your limit, of course, you can do so through learning and practicing, but you shouldn't feel pressured to do so.

Well, let's start identifying conditions/situations which we think are very significant. That will be a good start.

I'm pretty sure there are many dangerous conditions/situations. We can worry about less significant ones later. Let's start with axing first. We'll move into shaving later.

In my mind, the following come as the two most significant contributing factors in motorcycle accidents:

1. drinking
2. speeding

Carrying passengers on bikes may not be resulting in the increased number of motorcycle accidents; however, I think it's a shame that passengers die for something they have no direct control over. Not carrying passengers surely eliminates the deaths of passengers.

We'll study them more in subsequent articles.