Okay, obviously I phrased something wrong. I didn't mean to get on anybody's case or say that certain things "shouldn't" be talked about - what I meant is they aren't relevant. Talk about whatever you want. But I bet the person who posted the comment I replied to knows what I'm talking about, since they're obviously a motorcyclist too.

Re: "last clear chance," that's an old-fashioned legal term, but I meant it in a common usage sense. On a motorcycle, if you crash, it is ALWAYS your responsibility. You ALWAYS could have avoided it, no matter WHAT some car driver might or might not have done. (Sure there are exceptions, meteorites falling from the sky, pianos dropped out of skyscraper windows, things no one could possibly anticipate, but they're extremely rare.) On a much less powerful bicycle, that's not always the case. You're traveling much slower than (for example) the car that's turning left in front of you. You didn't necessarily have the option to not enter the intersection until they'd done whatever they were going to do - you may already have been in the intersection before they approached - and you definitely can't goose the throttle and go around them to the outside.

Other than the fact that we don't have a protective cage around us and we need to put a foot down when we stop (and we lean the *correct* way going around a turn) bicyclists and motorcyclists really don't have that much in common. (In a civilized country, I would have my velo and my moto, and nobody would be confused by them both being called "bike." ) Anybody who's crashed both motorcycles and bicycles (raising own hand wildly) can tell you that the dynamics are completely different. Bicycles throw you down to the ground, hard. Motorcycles do that (albeit in a different way) when you highside, but the much more common lowsides and impacts throw you in the direction of travel, and then the issue is mainly whether or not you hit anything solid in your path. And despite the fact that we wear protective gear on the same parts of our bodies (other than back protectors and earplugs, and let me tell you it took me a long time to get used to not putting in earplugs when I get on a bicycle), our gear just really gets subjected to different kinds of stresses and impacts. Honestly? Although I do neither, I would much rather ride a motorcycle without a helmet than a bicycle, precisely because when you crash a bicycle, it throws you down on your head, hard, whereas on a motorcycle you're much more likely to slide out on some less critical part.

When you're talking about fatalities, motorcycle fatalities in the present day are usually the result of somebody missing a turn and flying off the road, all by themselves. Bicycle accidents are unlikely to be fatal unless there's a car involved.

Mainly, I just got my back up about the comment that motorcycle fatalities are up because of car drivers' cell phone use. That stinks of ABATE sophistry and it is just plain not true. If bicycle fatalities are down, that's great, but we're on the same roads with the same phone-addicted SUV soccer moms, and somehow, we're surviving it when the motorcyclists aren't. /Soapbox off.