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. -----