Secondary examples of auto driver ignorance include that most motorists don't realize that their car rear view mirrors have "holes" in them large enough to obscure a motorcyclist riding or passing in their adjoining lane; hence their ignorance of the basic “motorcycle accident avoidance strategy” that auto drivers must turn their ("dumb") heads and look into their rear view mirror blind spots before changing lanes. Auto drivers are also uninformed and hence ignorant of the fact that bikes generally can stop more quickly than cars in emergency situations, hence the necessity for auto drivers to leave a greater number of "car lengths" between their vehicle and a motorcycle ahead of them.

Statistically the most common cause of motorcycle accidents is auto driver inattention to motorcycles when they enter a roadway from a side street or turn left at an intersection into the motorcyclists right of way. Auto drivers claim they don't "see" us, which is their most common excuse for killing or maiming one of us after they've crossed into our paths at an intersection. The problem is NOT the supposed "lack of conspicuity " of the motorcycle, so often misinterpreted by NHTSA and state policy makers to implicate the motorcycle’s size and supposed “lack of visibility” to auto drivers - their fatalistic explanation for auto drivers not “seeing” us, and excuse for not doing anything about it.

Motorcycles are just as “visible” as cars, equally evident in the auto driver’s visual field, at the distance at which a car entering an intersection would pose a threat to the motorcyclist. Indeed, since most motorcycles now come equipped with standard headlights which turn on at ignition and remain on day and night, motorcycles may be even more obvious in the visual field of auto drivers who enter into intersections from side streets or turn left in front of us into our right of way.

Unfortunately, Harry Hurt coined this term “lack of conspicuity” in his landmark 1981 motorcycle accident survey; and, equally unfortunately, NHTSA and many state policy makers have seized on this concept, equating it with “lack of visibility,” and so have come to the conclusion that intersection motorcycle accidents are “unavoidable.” Since auto-motorcycle intersection accidents result in the greatest porportion of motorcyclist injury and death, NHTSA's decades long conviction that this catagory of accidents was unavoidably the result of the motorcycle's "lack of conspicuity" has led to horribly failed "motorcycle safety" policies focusing on what motorcyclists wear, instead of why auto drivers don't "see" us.

So what is it that leads auto drivers not to “see” us if it is not the smaller size of the motorcycle. The answer is to be found, at least in part, in the literature of inattentional blindness, the scientific phenomenon which explains why people don’t "see" what is right in front of them, readily apparent at the center of their visual field. There are numerous factors contributing to the phenomenon of inattentional blindness, including “expectation” “relevance” which we have tentatively concluded to be the most potent factors. Further research is necessary to specifically define the operative factors, but an example, “expectation” would refer to the auto driver’s failure to consciously anticipate and look for a motorcycle approaching at an intersection. We believe that “relevance” may play a part as auto drivers may not appreciate fully the life and death implications of their pulling out in front of a biker, or they may see oncoming motorcycles as less “relevant” because bikes don’t pose a threat to them in the same sense that oncoming cars or trucks would pose a threat.

Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers is currently researching the phenomenon and putting together a team of scientists to describe how the phenomenon of inattentional blindness accounts specifically for auto driver inattention to motorcyclists when entering intersections and turning left into the right of way of motorcyclists. We hope to provide both an accurate description of the operative aspects of intentional blindness which account for auto driver inattention to motorcyclists, and to provide specific solutions, signed off on by the appropriately qualified scientists. Our current research indicates that indeed the solution is auto driver education directed at getting auto drivers to look for motorcycles in their visual field while engaging in the auto driver behaviors most likely to result in motorcycle accidents. We applaud "Motorcycle Awareness" programs, but we are not convinced that vague pronouncements by NHTSA or our state Governors, or even billboards and public interest televisions spots will be effective to train auto drivers to "see" the motorcyclist. Inattentional blindness can perhaps be best understood as the result of a subconscious selection process in which only a small subset of the visual stimuli which enter through our eyes and then are extensively processed subconsciously are permitted through to our conscious attention, and if the visual stimulus is not passed through to our conscious attention, the experience is that we "didn't see it." “Only those objects to which attention is either voluntarily directed or that capture attention at a late stage of processing are perceived. It is as if attention provides the key that unlocks the door dividing unconscious from conscious perception. Without this key, there is no awareness of the stimulus.” Mack & Rock, "Inattentional Blindness," 1998. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the answer is quite as simple as just telling auto drivers that they have to look for motorcyclists. For example, our preliminary research suggests that to get auto drivers to actually consciously focus their attention on oncoming motorcycles in their visual field what is necessary is that they be informed that it is necessary for them to engage in a specific conscious task specifically with respect to the motorcycle. For one example, through mandatory auto driver education on motorcycle safety issues motorists might be informed accurately that it is more difficult to gauge the speed of an oncoming motorcycle, and hence the necessity for auto drivers to pause to consciously assess the motorcycle’s speed before entering or turning left at intersections. While not as obviously a function of the phenomenon of inattentional blindness, this aspect of the same solution, conscious task involvement, may also be useful to reduce the incidence lane change accidents, by informing auto drivers that their rear view mirrors have holes in them large enough to obscure a passing motorcyclist, and hence their responsibility to consciously engage in the task of turning their heads and looking into their rear view mirror blind spots before changing lanes. The same with regard to multi-vehicle motorcycle rear-end accidents, informing auto drivers that motorcycles can stop more quickly than cars and hence the necessity for them to consciously leave a greater distance when following a bike. In each instance providing the conscious task to perform when the motorcycle appears in the auto driver's visual field will have the effect to force the auto driver to "see" the motorcycle.

In order to modify this auto driver attention deficit specific to motorcylists we also consider that srong penalty legislation is appropriate, including in particular penalities for right of way violations which result in injury to a motorcyclist. The penalty must be specific for ROW violations causing motorcyclist injury because the purpose we want to acheive is to raise the motorcycle in particular in the auto driver's assessment of relative "relavance" so that the appearance of the motorcyclist in the auto driver's visual field will bre processed through to his consicous attention. In order to acheive sufficient relevance, the penalties also must be substantial, one or two year drivers license suspensions plus 16 hours of motorcycle safety education for the first offense and jail time for any subsequent offence. Auto driver inattention to motorcyclists is responsible for the greatest number of motorcycle accidents and consequent biker injuries and deaths, so auto drivers must be forced to "see" the motorcyclist square at the center of their visual field. If the penalties appear severe, consider that the consequence of failing adequately to modify auto driver inattention to motorcyclists is measured in broken bodies, wrecked lives, and the piled caskets left in path of the inattentive auto driver.

One other aspect of auto driver education which will be very important in reducing the obscene incidence of motorcyclists injury and death is that driving under the influence of cell phones is as dangerous as DUI drunk driving. Specifically, driving while engaged in cell phone conversation results in a four fold likelihood of causing an accident. We consider this an important subject for auto driver education, at least until comprehensive cell phone bans can be enacted, because we believe that the danger posed by the cell phone impaired to motorcyclists may be even greater than the danger these drivers pose to the general public. See the Scientific Review Article on Cell Phone Driving Impairment prepared for Motorcyclists-Against-Dumb-Drivers by Ray Henke. The reason is that the impairment resulting from cell phone use is another type of inattentional blindness, similar to the previously identified auto driver inattentional blindness for motorcyclists, but different in the sense that the preexisting inattentional blindness results from a value moderated visual stimuli selection process, while cell phone conversation induced inattentional blindness results from the switching of attention to the internal-cognitive tasks associated with the give and take of the the cell conversation away from the external-visual tasks essential for safe driving. We suggest that the combination of these two distinct attention deficits results in at least an additive effect and possibly a synergistic effect to incerease the auto driver's inattentional blindness specific to motorcyclists.

Auto drivers need to be informed that driving under the influence of a cell phone is as dangerous as DUI drunk driving, and that the DUI level danger results from an inattentional blindness that has nothing at all to do with dialing or holding the cell phone.

Currently 70 percent of drivers use cell phones while driving, and at any given daylight moment in time fully 10 percent of the drivers on our American streets are actively engaged in cell phone conversation. In terms of the resulting danger for all motorists, imagine that 10 percent of all drivers on the street were DUI driving under the influence of alcohol. There is no difference in terms of the severity of the impairment or in terms of the likelihood that the cell phone impaired or alcohol impaired will cause an accident. Auto drivers who use cell phones will certainly resist accepting that their own driving is impaired, even as they acknowledge that they observe that other drivers who use cell phones do appear to drive impaired. This is a function of a "disconnect" between the driver's inattentional blindness and his ability to recognize his inattentional blindness. If the auto driver doesn't "see" what it is that he doesn't see, he doesn't realize that he didn't see it. And this is why it is so very important that auto drivers be informed of the attentional impairment that results from cell phone use while driving.

Every opportunity should also be availed to inform the driving public that cell phone use while driving is a potent factor contributing to traffic congestion and the length of our daily commutes. Drivers under the influence of cell phone conversation take 19 percent more time to regain flow of traffic speed following each braking episode, and with 10 percent of all drivers engaged in cell phone conversation, the cumulative effect is to substantially increase congestion, slow traffic flow, and increase everyone's commute.

Education will not be sufficient to eliminate the danger posed by the cell phone impaired.. Comprehensive prohibitions against cell phone use must be enacted, and that means prohibitions on the use of all cell phones, handheld and hands-free alike. There is no difference at all in the level of driving impairment or in the likelihood of causing an accident resulting from auto driver use of handheld and hands-free cell phones. See, the Motorcyclists-Against-Dumb-Drivers Scientific Review Article on Cell Phone Driving Impairment. The penalties for using cell phones while driving should be the same as those for DUI drunk driving, substantial drivers license suspensions for first offenses and jail time for each additional offense. Again, if this is considered at first blush severe, consider that the cell phone impaired are just as dangerous as DUI drunk drivers, and the path of the cell phone user is equally littered with human carnage and caskets.

There Is a Solution to Auto Driver Ignorance. Auto Driver Ignorance Can Be Cured By Motorcycle Safety Education. A Proposal for Mandatory Auto Driver Education on Motorcycle Safety Issues and the Motorcycle Accident Avoidance Strategies Which Auto Drivers Must Employ for the Safety of Motorcyclists. This is a matter of Bikers Rights.

Auto driver ignorance can be cured just as all manner of ignorance is cured, by education. Specifically, mandatory auto driver education. It is our position that the objective of reducing the incidence of motorcycle accidents can be most effectively accomplished by changing the state auto driver education booklets to include the comprehensive information specifically on motorcycle safety issues and the strategies which auto drivers must employ for the protection of motorcyclists; second, by the inclusion of a comprehensive list of motorcycle safety questions on the written tests auto drivers must take to obtain or renew their drivers licenses; and third, by mandating the denial of driving privileges to any prospective driver who fails to demonstrate full and complete knowledge of motorcycle safety issues and full appreciation for motorcycle accident avoidance strategies by answering all motorcycle safety questions correctly.

Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers Solicits Your Help to Make Our Streets Safe for Motorcyclists

Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers actively lobbies to achieve its mission. We have communicated with the state Governors offices and with many state officials. Our hope is by year end to critique the motorcycle safety policies and programs of each state and offer specific recommendations tailored to each state. We have participated in some state symposia to present our views, critique state policy, and offer our solutions. You may review on another page of this web site one such Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers position paper submitted to a Florida Motorcycle Safety and Awareness Month symposium at which Florida state transportation safety policy makers made themselves available to receive the views of biker advocates. We also directly lobby federal agencies whose charters include motorcyclist safety. You may review as an example our "Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers Response" to NHTSA’s invitation to comment on its most recent proposed "Amendments to Highway Safety Program Guidelines.” We have communicated directly with state legislators, particularly those who are involved in the motorcycle safety debate. In this regard you may review our letter to Senator Martinez, on another page of this web site. We have also prepared speeches delivered to bikers rights rallies, including one most recently solicited by ABATE Utah and presented by the CEO of Utah Abate at their Utah Motorcycle Safety and Awareness Month Rally in Salt Lake City. Spokesman for Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers, Ray Henke, also co-moderates with Bruce Arnold, of "Long Distance Riders," the most active national bikers rights discussion forum, “Bruce-n-Ray's Biker Forum,” which has become a centerpiece of serious discussion about motorcycle safety issues. We welcome the opportunity to participate in meetings and seminars with state legislators, policy makers, and to avail every opportunity to get our message out to bikers so that we can all join together to redirect the motorcycle safety debate from the traditional myopic paternalistic focus of state policy makers on what bikers wear to the real solutions to this obscene and hugely disproportionate incidence of motorcycle accidents caused by auto driver inattention and negligence.

One way in which you can do your part to make a difference specifically to improve motorcycle safety on our streets and highways is to write to your Governor, remind him that motorcycle injury and death on your state's highways is a serious state public health issue, that the problem is auto driver ignorance of motorcycle safety issues, and that there is a solution. Inform your Governor that he has it in his power to adopt the solution and make a substantial impact to reduce this obscene incidence motorcyclist injury. Inform him that 2/3 of motorcycle accidents are the result of auto driver inattention and negligence, and that the problem is auto driver ignorance of motorcycle safety issues and the motorcycle accident avoidance strategies that they must employ for the protection of the biker. Make plain to him that the solution to ignorance is education. Tell him that the solution to auto driver ignorance is mandatory auto driver education, specifically on motorcycle safety and basic motorcycle accident avoidance strategies; the addition of comprehensive motorcycle safety questions to your state's DMV auto driver education booklets, and the addition of comprehensive motorcycle safety questions to the written tests which auto drivers must take in order to obtain or renew their auto driver licenses.

Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers provides a "Form Letter" which you may send or adapt to send to your Governor. And we also provide the e-mail addresses for the 50 state Governors. We can make a difference. We needn't have to suffer the idiotic antics of ignorant auto drivers at our every turn and every corner, every time we ride. Motorcycle safety is a matter of bikers rights, but you have to fight for your bikers rights if you hope to attain them.

In Order to Seize the Offensive on Motorcyclist Safety We Need to Be Able to Undermine the Traditional Foci of State Policy Makers Which Have Sidetracked The Motorcyclist Safety and Bikers Rights Debates.

One of the hurdles facing bikers rights advocates seeking to provide the real solutions for reducing incidence of motorcyclist injury and death is that federal and state policy makers have traditionally chosen to focus myopically on “what bikers wear,” from helmets to multicolored neon clown suits, and appear entrenched in their misunderstanding of the motorcycle statistics which has led them to this overbearing, paternalistic, and unproductive focus.

Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers does not have it as it’s mission to enter into the helmet law debate. We consider this a matter of the bikers’ “right to chose,” and a bikers rights postition that is effectively being promoted by ABATE and other freedom fighters who have carried on this fight valiantly and vigorously as a matter of personal freedom.

What we consider unfortunate is that the “safety” debate has been so skewed in the minds of NHTSA and many state policy makers that the real motorcycle safety issues have been ignored.

When outlaw Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks, he responded “Because that’s where the money is.” From a motorcycle safety standpoint, what NHTSA and most state policy makers have focused on almost exclusively for decades is robbing liquor stores, attempting to dictate what bikers wear, rather than robbing the banks, meaning modifying the auto driver behaviors which are responsible for the vast majority of motorcycle accidents.

What Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers would hope to contribute tangentially to the bikers rights helmet debate is perspective. Of least importance, we take the initiative to demonstrate that the motorcycle accident statistics on which NHTSA and most state policymakers base their pitch for helmet laws is bad science, failing to control for the panoply of obvious independent variables, and drawing conclusions from weak correlations without the application of standard statistical analysis. That isn’t to say that helmets don’t provide some measure of protection against head injury in some accidents. It suggests only that NHTSA and those who have urged these raw data compilations to support their political position are not accurately presenting the “statistics.”

One important way in which the gathering and reporting of the statistics is rather obviously politically motivated is first in the framing of hypotheses and then in the conclusions drawn from the raw statistically unanalyzed correlations. This is how the motorcyclist safety debate has been skewed to focus on what bikers wear rather than “where the money is,” which is what auto drivers do which cause the vast majority of multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents, and hence the vast majority of the panoply of motorcyclist injury and death.

Most commonly, in their quest for helmet laws what NHTSA and most state policy makers will do is focus on these “statistics” which show a positive correlation between failure to use a helmet and brain injury. Putting aside the quality of the statistically unanalyzed correlations, the focus on head injury or brain injury or death from brain injury ignores the much greater incidence of the broad panoply serious and catastrophic motorcyclist injury from paralysis to internal injury, serious orthopedic injury, limb amputation, and death from all these medical causes other than brain injury.

One problem with NHTSA's "political" approach to "science" is that, it in its quest to defend its long failed myopic focus on "what bikers wear," it will not just fail to control for the most obvious, confounding independent variables, it will create methodology specifically intended to piggyback its political agenda on the unrelated variable. The most recent example is the "before/after" helmet law repeal "studies," actually just raw comparisons of fatalities occurring in the years before and the years after the repeal of helmet laws. NHTSA stridently urges its political position that the rise in motorcycle deaths over time results from more bikers riding without helmets following helmet law repeal. As our freedom fighters first pointed out, NHTSA was failing to take into consideration that during the same post repeal years the numbers of motorcycle registrations also went up precipitously, accounting for at least a portion of the increase in motorcyclists deaths. Also the "new riders" were probably had less experience than average experience of the riders on the road in previous years, and hence more likely to be involved in fatal accidents, another variable unrelated to the use of helmets which surely contributed to some part of the increased number of fatalities. And then, as we point out here in our main Cell Phone DUI Impairment Scientific Review Article, prepared for Motorcyclists=Against-Dumb-Drivers and then specifically in the accompanying note on "Driving Cell Phone Studies Disclose A Potent Additional Independent Variable Undermining NHTSA's Comparisons of Pre and Post Helmet Law Repeal Fatality Rates," by far the biggest independent variable resulting in the year to year increase in motorcyclist deaths over the past decade is certainly the exponential rise in use of cell phones while driving, again having absolutely nothing to do with whether state motorcyclists took off their helmets. The epidemiological studies and controlled experimental studies demonstrate that those who engage in cell phone conversation while driving are just as driving impaired as DUI drunk drivers and just as dangerous, 4 times more likely to cause accidents than those who are not actively involved in cell conversation. And indeed the use of cell phones while driving has certainly increased each year epidemically. In the year 2000, at any random daylight moment in time, 4 percent of the total number of auto drivers on our American highways was actively engaged in cell phone conversation. By the year 2002 the number had risen to 6 percent; in 2004, to 8 percent; and as of December of 2005, to 10 percent. That is, over the past 5 years, there has been a rise from 4 percent to 10 percent of all drivers on the road at any given daylight moment, driving DUI level impaired, four time more likely to cause an accident. That is why we are seeing these rises in accidents generally, and we provide good reason to believe that motorcyclists are at ever greater risk from the cell phone impaired driver. This epidemic of driving under the influence of cell phones is certainly a powerful independent variable which NHTSA and state helmet law proponents have failed to control for in their politically motivated "before - after" helmet law raw data analyses.

Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers submits that if NHTSA and the state policy makers would abandon their myopic paternalistic obsession with what bikers wear and focus instead on reducing the incidence of multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents, that the incidence of all of the kinds of motorcyclist injury across the board would be much more substantially reduced, including brain injury and death from brain injury among helmeted and unhelmeted motorcyclists alike.

So why is NHTSA so intrenched in its obsession with requiring bikers to wear helmets? At this point, a part of it may be rabid-dog-with-rag-in-its-mouth syndrome, like the phenomenon of prosecutors who obtain death penalty verdicts and then resist applications to free the wronfully convicted, even in the face of new DNA evidence demonstrating the death row inmate’s unequivocal innocence. Another aspect of the political problem which might be more easy to crack is NHTSA’s towel-in-the-ring syndrome, in which it has appeared that NHTSA long ago gave up doing anything to reduce the incidence of motorcycle accidents (other than by seeking motorcycle rider training.) And then, there is NHTSA's pretend-at-all-costs-that-we-were-right-all-along syndrome responsible now for all the additional millions of dollars of good money being thrown away to create false evidence to defend its failed "motorcycle safety" policies with these "before-after" studies.

NHTSA’s focus on helmet laws and multicolored clown suits clearly skirts the real motorcycle safety issues deriving principally from auto driver inattention and negligence. Again, NHTSA and state policy makers cannot have missed that fully 2/3 of Multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents are solely result of auto driver inattention and negligence, meaning without any contributory fault on the part of the biker. So, why does NHTSA ignore the bank in favor of robbing the liquor store? Well, giving NHTSA the benefit of the doubt for a moment, perhaps it is because in part that it has concluded that the security systems at the bank are impenetrable. Unfortunately, beginning with the coining of the term “lack of conspicuity” in the original large Harry Hurt study, NHTSA may have concluded that multi-vehicle accidents are “unavoidable” just because motorcycles by their smaller size are supposedly “less visible” than cars and other larger vehicles. If this is the only impediment to NHTSA’s re-evaluation of its myopic focus on what bikers wear, then one would hope that by reeducating NHTSA policy makers one could also change their policies.

“Lack of conspicuity,” as it has been misinterpreted in the lay sense as synonymous with “lack of visibility” is clearly not the reason why auto drivers don’t “see” oncoming motorcycles. As discussed above, motorcycles are just as “visible” and apparent in the visual field of auto drivers at the distance at which a car would pose a threat to a motorcyclist entering into an intersection from a side street or turning left at an intersection into his right of way. The main problem is defined by the phenomenon of “inattentional blindness” and this nut can be cracked by auto driver education appropriately designed to raise the “consciousness” of auto drivers to the motorcycle in their visual field, as discussed above.

Less obvious, and more insidious, unfortunately is that it appears that NHTSA and state policy makers may have actually chosen to focus exclusively on what motorcyclists wear (and on motorcycle rider education) as the result of political concerns. This is suggested indeed by their focus on only head injury and death statistics while studiously ignoring and failure to report or publicize the much greater incidence of catastrophic motorcyclist injury which is unrelated to head injury. One explanation is that NHTSA and state policy makers feel that they have had to come up with a “plan,” any plan to make it appear they are doing something, but have concluded that it is more politically acceptable to focus imposing this dress code on the minority, motorcyclists, rather than acknowledge that the real problem lies with the ignorance and inattention of the majority, the auto drivers.

One can see this anti-biker political bent expressed in bold or subtle public statements which unfortunately have the effect to enhance public support for prejudicial non-solutions while making it more difficult to lay the framework ultimately for changes in federal and state policy. One such comment by Senator Martinez: "When motorcyclist do not wear helmets and survive their crashes, they frequently suffer traumatic brain injuries. Such injuries are very expensive to treat. In many cases the tax payers end up being billed through Medicaid to pay cost." In even less restrained hysterical tone Fred Grimm for the Miami Herald wrote: “The initial reports out of Daytona Beach indicate that at least 12 of the 18 bikers killed during Bike Week were riding bareheaded when they crashed. Yes, but weren't they exercising their God-given American right to crack unprotected skulls into any roadside attraction of their choosing? Which ought to be fine, as long as bikers then have the good manners to succumb. It's those who insist on lingering around hospital trauma centers whose personal freedoms intrude on the commonweal.”

This is what we are up against politically. Of course this is utter bullshit. But the unfortunate fact is that these kinds of comments can have the desired effect to justify federal and state policies focusing only on what bikers wear rather than the true causes of these motorcycle accidents. The likelihood is that 12 of the 18 deaths were actually the result of auto driver inattention and negligence, two-thirds of the total. We spoke to the daughter of one of our brothers who died that weekend and were told that the accident occurred when an auto driver negligently pulled out in front of her father, causing the accident. The statistics quoted refer only to deaths, without providing the information whether the deaths were due to brain injury, let alone whether even that subset of deaths due to brain injury, if any, might have been averted by a helmet. These “statistics” also fail to account for all the other serious and catastrophic injuries which bikers sustained other than deaths, thus calculated to obscure the broader problem associated with auto driver inattention and negligence. Indeed, the focus on the imposition on the “comonweal” when the state must pick up the tab for the medical expenses of motorcyclists who fail to “succumb” in motorcycle accidents is not only callous but misstates the reason why the state must pick up the expense.

First, the greatest fiscal imposition on the state associated with motorcycle accidents, mostly auto driver caused motorcycle accidents, derives not from bikers who suffer brain injury, but from the greater panoply of motorcyclist injury, such as paralysis, internal injury, orthopedic injury, etc., which have nothing to do with whether a biker wears a helmet.

Secondly, the fact that motorcyclist medical expense must be borne by the state is not the fault of the biker for having failed “to succumb.” The fact that the state must pick up the tab for the cost of biker medical expense, resulting predominately from auto driver inattention and negligence, is solely the result of the auto drivers’ failure to carry insurance sufficient to pay for the motorcyclist's medical expenses.

In point of fact, the cost to the state associated with motorcyclist medical expense is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the human and economic toll on motorcyclists and their families wrought by the inattention and negligence of auto drivers who also typically are woefully underinsured to pay for the injury and damage they cause. While the state may bare the coast of the medical expense in those cases where auto driver is underinsured and the biker lacks the wealth to pay it, it is the biker who must live the remainder of his life paralyzed, or orthopaedically broken or with the medical sequella of internal injury, unable again to ride or do any of the other things that brought him joy, also without compensation by the underinsured inattentive auto driver who caused the accident. For those bikers who do have the “courtesy to succumb” to their injuries, whether head injuries, or internal injures as the result of auto driver negligence, the families suffer the loss of their loved ones love and affection and comfort and society and protection and emotional and economic support also without comensation from the underinsured auto driver.

But if the fiscal consequence to the state is all that state policy makers see as worthy motivation to support their calls for helmet laws, then fine; the “money” is still to be recouped by robbing the bank. The focus on helmet laws to reduce the small fraction of motorcyclist medical expense associated with those head injuries which arguably might be averted by helmet use literally pales in significance to the state fiscal cost for biker medical expense which could be saved if auto drivers were to be reeducated to apply the motorcycle accident avoidance strategies essential to avert the full panoply of motorcyclist injury caused by their inattention and negligence.

Overcoming NHTSA and state political entrenchment in their traditional foci on helmet laws and what bikers wear is what Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers hopes to contribute to the safety debate by calling to the attention of these federal and state policy makers that their premises are false, indeed ass-backward, prejudicial, and discriminatory, and they are poorly calculated either to effectively meet the public health issue or effectively ameliorate the asserted state fiscal concerns.

Auto Driver Ignorance About Motorcycle Accident Avoidance Strategies Which They Must Apply for the Protection of Motorcyclists Is the Cause of the Vast Majority of Motorcycle Accidents. Get Mad. This is a Matter of Bikers Rights, the Right to Ride Free of the Danger's Posed by Dumb (Ignorant) Auto Drivers. Call for Motorcycle Safety on Our Highways.

If We Are to Achieve Our Goal of Making Our Streets and Highways Safe for Motorcyclists, We Must Demand That Our Governors Order Our State Departments of Motor Vehicles to Educate Ignorant Auto Drivers. But First We Must Educate Our Auto Driving Governors. And This is Where YOU Can Make a Difference. This is a matter of Bikers Rights.

What Can You Do To Insure Your Motorcycle Riding Safety? Simply Copy or Adapt The Form E-Mail Located on This Site and E-Mail Your Governor Using the E-mail Addresses Provided For the Purpose. You Must Assert Your Bikers Rights to Motorcycle Safety Or You Will Never Gain Them.

Bikers Rights to Motorcycle Rider Safety in Alaska Alabama Arkansas Arizona California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Massachusetts Maryland Maine Michigan Minnesota Missouri Montana North Carolina North Dakota Nebraska New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico Nevada New York Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Virginia Vermont Washington Wisconsin West Virginia and Wyoming.

Thank You, Please "Ride Safely," And Watch Out for Dumb Auto Drivers.

"Ride Safely" is not just our way of saying good-bye. We mean it. And what we mean specifically is ride SMART, because you can only expect the opposite from the "dumb," ignorant auto drivers who you are likely to encounter on the road at every turn.

To be specific, when we say "ride safely" we mean use strategies to anticipate auto driver stupidity, actively look for potential hazards that might arise from auto driver stupidity, separate the hazards, and be prepared to act to defend yourself from the idiotic maneuvers of the ignorant auto driver. To this end Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers provides some SMART strategies for riding your bike on streets populated by auto drivers who, unfortunately, have not been educated about dangers they pose to us, or the simple and ordinary strategies which auto drivers should, but don't, employ to avoid causing our deaths and serious injuries.

You can consider the "ride safely" strategies more extensively on the "Smart Safety Strategies For Dealing With Dumb Auto Drivers" page. But while we have your attention, permit us to mention just a few: (1) Use your eyes constantly. Actively scan for the potential hazards posed by dumb auto drivers when you ride. Actively look for hazards over the distance you will travel 14 seconds ahead of you, with the distance within 4 seconds being the immediate danger zone. This includes looking for cars approaching intersections from all directions, and do NOT expect that ignorant or "blind" auto drivers will respect your right of way. Stay aware of the cars in your adjoining lanes, moving quickly through their rear view mirror blind spots. Look out for cars parked on the side of the street, keeping alert for a turn indicator light or brake or reverse light, and for occupants in the driver's seat who might decide to pull out into your lane of traffic without turning their heads. (Also scan for road defects, pot holes, gravel, oil, and consider pedestrians and animals which might run out into your path.) (2) Separate your hazards. If you see more than one potential hazard, separate them so that you will only have to deal with one at a time. For example, on a freeway, if you are in the right-most lane and there is a car approaching from behind in the lane to your immediate left and another car entering by the freeway ramp to your right, slow down or speed up in anticipation that one or the other or both of these predictably "dumb" auto drivers may do something predictably stupid so that your accident avoidance options are maximized. (3) Provide ample space between you and other motorists by keeping up with traffic but remaining a safe distance behind the car in front of you. And that is not just the distance you would need to stop if the auto driver in front slammed on his brakes. You have to consider that there is another ignorant auto driver behind you who you can predict to have no clue how quickly you can stop you bike, and is probably following way too close to avoid hitting you if you stop as quickly as you can. So you must leave sufficient car lengths between your bike and the car in front of you to slow at the speed it will take the car behind you to brake if you don't want your bike and body pinned between the unforgiving metal of these two cars; (3) Choose your position in your lane of traffic to minimize risk, considering (a) providing the best and greatest number of escape routes; (b) increasing your visibility to other motorists, © avoiding auto driver blind spots, (d) communicating your driving intentions; (e) increasing your ability to observe potential hazards; (f) avoiding road defects/surface hazards; and (g) protecting your lane from other motorists. (4) Ride within your limits and the limits of your bike. A stretched and radically raked Harley chopper is going to have more limited ability than a sport bike for accident avoidance, such as swerving, our two quick counter-steers that will often get us out of predicaments caused by idiotic auto drivers. Each biker also has his own limits which are a function of his individual reaction time, and level of experience riding his bike, among dozens of other factors. All of us can ride with roughly equal "relative safety," recognizing that we all face the same hazards, including those posed by dumb drivers, if we ride within our limitations and the limitations of our bikes. That isn't to say that we can eliminate the dangers, particular the dangers associated with the stupid things that auto drivers do. But by riding within our limitations we can avoid the 20 percent of motorcycle accidents in which our own negligence is statistically a contributing factor.

Motorcycle Insurance: Since You Cannot Rely On Auto Drivers to Carry Liability Insurance Adequate to Pay for the Serious or Catastrophic Injuries They Commonly Wreck Upon Motorcyclists, Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers Advises That You Obtain The Highest Policy Limit Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Coverage That You Can Find to Assure that You and Your Family Will Not Face Financial Disaster In the Event You Encounter an Inattentive or Reckless Auto Driver..

There isn't an "old timer" who hasn't been in a serious motorcycle accident caused by the inattention or negligence of an ignorant auto driver. And it doesn't matter how experienced a rider you are. As noted above, fully two-thirds of motorcycle accidents are cause exclusively by the auto driver's negligence without any fault of the motorcyclist. Additionally, because we don't have thousands of pounds of metal surrounding us, protection designed interior padding, seat belts and air bags, very often motorcycle accidents will result in serious injuries. However, more commonly than not the ignorant auto driver who causes the accident will also be woefully underinsured and impecunious, unable to pay for our medical expenses and loss of earnings, let alone what might be the catastrophic impact upon our future lifestyle. The only way that a biker can be assured of compensation for accidents caused by the idiotic antics of auto drivers is to obtain uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage for himself. Generally speaking, uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage provides compensation above the policy limits of the at fault auto driver's liability policy, both for your economic damages and your general damages up to the limits of the UM coverage. To take an example, if the at-fault auto driver has $15,000 in liability coverage and you have $500,000 in uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage, the auto driver's insurance company would pay the first $15,000 and your insurance company would pay the next $485,000, up to the limits of your UM coverage. Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers considers that given the percentage of motorcycle accidents that are auto driver at-fault accidents, and the general failure of auto drivers to purchase liability policies adequate to cover the consequences of the serious injuries they will likely cause a motorcyclist, that it only makes sense to obtain the highest uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage that you can. (The above is not intended as legal advice, and may be subject to nuances of state law. The recommendation is based on general principles of law generally common in most states. You should inquire further with your local insurance agent. As a matter of policy, Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers takes no position with regard to the relative strengths of policies offered by particular insurance companies. Again, this is a matter for you to discuss with your agent.)

Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers, A Bikers Rights Forum, Welcomes Your Thoughts, Criticisms, Ideas, Encouragement.