Vehicle Safety
I've been involved in an ongoing disagreement on a mailing list (which
will go unnamed to protect the innocent) about motorcycle safety. The
overwhelming majority (all the non-lurkers, it seems) on the list
seems to believe that no single motorcycle (type) is safer than any
other (type). And the primary justification for this position is that
the majority of motorcycle crashes seem to be a result of rider error.
I.e. there are no (or very weak) correlations of the crashes to any
other factor.
Of course, being the obstinate, ignorant, bull-headed, contrarian that
I am, I disagree with this position. And, it's useful to add that
many of the people on that mailing list are motorcycle
instructors... making me not just obstinate, ignorant, bull-headed,
and contrarian, but also an anti-authoritarian dissenter. :-)
Now, practically, a large source of my objection to their
justification is that we (being the parts of US society with which I'm
familiar) seem to have accepted the fact that other vehicles like
cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes can be categorized according
to how safe
they are. The primary critical
question that keeps me skeptical of their justification is: Why would
motorcycles be so fundamentally different from other vehicles? Why do
all other vehicles submit to a safety gradation but motorcycles do
not?
Now, of course, in most instances of heavy impact crashes like those
involving trains, ships, and planes, the putative cause is some form
of "pilot error". And that fact may seem to bolster the justification
that motorcycles don't submit to a safety gradation. Further, the
commonality of the ascription of "pilot error" to these high profile
crashes might be justification for thinking that the safety gradation
we apply to trains, ships, and planes is unwarranted or just plain
false! Perhaps no one (type of) train, plane, or ship is any safer
than any other (type of) train, plane, or ship!?!? Indeed, if most of
the crashes are the result of "pilot error", then the relative safety
of one vehicle over another may well be buried down in the noise of
the data.
However, I don't think that's the case. The fact that most of these
high-profile crashes are putatively the result of "pilot error",
weakens the justification for the belief
that no one (type of) motorcycle is safer than any other (type of)
motorcycle. It weakens it because we can ask: Well, if even in these
crashes involving other types of vehicle (trains, planes, and ships),
the putative fault lies with the "pilot" but we
maintain that some of these vehicles are
safer than others, then we can do likewise with motorcycles.
At least, from a skeptical point of view, it's
reasonable to claim that all vehicles are
similar in their submission to a gradation of safety. I.e. either
motorcycles submit like all the other vehicles, or NONE of them are
more or less safe.
And since the general consensus seems to be that all other
(non-motorcycle) vehicles submit to a safety gradation, then so do
motorcycles. I.e. some (types of) motorcycles are safer than others.
So, why would all these relatively intelligent, knowlegable people
deny that reasonable, consensus based position? The answer is that
there is not enough data to say one way or the other (despite their
insistence that there is enough data to demonstrate that rider error
is so totally dominant that other correlations are lost in the noise).
Very few scientific motorcycle safety studies have been done. The
authoritative one (the so-called "Hurt report") took place between
1976 and 1981. And traffic patterns, technology, and human density
has changed quite a bit since then.
However, the paucity of data is not quite sufficient to explain why
seemingly intelligent and knowlegable people would reject the
reasonability of the conjecture that motorcycles are just like any
other type of vehicle (and hence submit to a safety gradation). The
lack of data is necessary but not sufficient to explain their zealous
attachment to the uniqueness of motorcycles as a type of vehicle.
I posit that the additional condition that we need to add to build a
sufficient explanation for their zealotry is two-fold: 1)
conservatism: don't change what ain't broke and 2) liberalism: don't
limit freedoms unless you can demonstrate the benefits and costs of
such limitations.
In other words, these people don't want the gub'ment to willy-nilly,
without good reason, to slap any type of restriction on the
manufacture and use of motorcycles. And that strikes me as
reasonable, as well. If yahoos like me start yapping loudly about how
motorcycles are just like any other vehicle and some are safer than
others, then we might see more junk science (in the form of actuarial
assessments) arguing that, for example, "super sport" motorcycles
should be banned. And no matter how rational the yahoos like me may
actually be, those rational arguments will be co-opted and abused by
cranks who feel they need to do something and, subsequently, will jump
to ANY premature conclusion that presents itself.
Having said all that, the ethical dilemma I face is: Do I allow the
fear of premature conclusions to prevent me from discussing motorcycle
safety in a rational way? Obviously, as evinced by this web log post,
I don't cower in the face of such fears. As with the fear that the
gub'ment might ban some sorts of guns, we cannot allow our fears
coerce us into zealous over-commitment to false ideology.
The reality is that some (types of) motorcycles are safer than others.
And we desperately need more data to determine that safety gradation,
which is why
this
news is so bad.