The finding 24 of the Hurt Report quoted in MSF CONSPIRACY PART 1: MSF, Mr. Harry Hurt, and the Hurt Report has been questionable to me since I first saw it last year. At a casual glance, the finding seems to suggest that rider training is very effective in reducing "accident involvement and is related to reduced injuries in the event of accidents" because the majority of riders who were involved in the accidents studied, 92%, were not formally trained. However, this statement is meaningless without the data for how many of the whole rider population were formally trained and how many were not. The MSF article mentioned in PART 1 has the number of MSF trained riders for each year from 1975 to 1980 as follow:

quote:

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1974	Motorcycle registrations: 4,921,127 Students trained: 15,629

1975	Motorcycle registrations: 4,964,070 Students trained: 14,122

1976	Motorcycle registrations: 4,984,244 Students trained: 10,775

1977	Motorcycle registrations: 4,881,150 Students trained: 22,778

1978	Motorcycle registrations: 4,858,707 Students trained: 19,293

1979	Motorcycle registrations: 5,502,450 Students trained: 20,409

1980	Motorcycle registrations: 5,618,479 Students trained: 31,666

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(1974 was the first year which produced MSF trained riders.)

According to Mr. David Hough, the Hurt team spent two years after gathering the data and the study was published in January , 1981; therefore, the last accident data must have been from late 1978/early 1979. At the end of 1978, the cumulative total of MSF trained riders was 82,597. At the end of 1979, it was 103,006, At the end of 1980, it was 134,672.

Assuming the number of registered motorcycles has been equal to the number of riders in each year, we get the following:

Year	MSF trained riders (theoretical maximum)	Untrained riders
1978	1.70%	98.30%
1979	1.87%	98.13%
1980	2.40%	97.60%

California Motorcycle Safety Program, California's rider safety program incorporating MSF's classes, was not legislated until 1987; therefore in the LA area, at the time of the Hurt Report, the percentage of MSF trained riders was likely to be nil or at most substantially lower than any of 1.70%, 1.87%, and 2.40%. Were there other rider training classes widely available to the general public in the LA area around the same time? I don't think so.

If any conclusion can be drawn, at the time of the Hurt Report, it was likely that trained riders were OVERREPRESENTED in motorcycle accidents.