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Troy Roper -- who sustained a traumatic brain injury and nearly died as a result of a 2005 motorcycle crash -- has some ideas about why Utah motorcycle deaths have increased so rapidly.
The upward trend likely has been caused by a combination of speedier bikes and inadequate training requirements, the Bountiful resident believes.
"Some of these bikes go really fast, and if you've got the money, you can go ride," he said.
Motorcycle fatalities reached a record low as recently as 1997, but over the next decade, the number of deaths reached record highs both nationally and in Utah.
Motorcycle deaths have persistently increased, even as almost all other categories of motor-vehicle deaths trended downward in those years.
More motorcyclists than ever have died in Utah this year.
With only a few weeks left in this riding season, 32 riders have met their deaths while behind the handlebars. The average number of motorcycle deaths in Utah has been about 23 per year during the last decade.
The conventional explanation for the trend is that rising gas prices have encouraged motorcycle sales and thus more deaths are to be expected.
"If you put more on the road, then there's more chances for accidents," said motorcycle rider Rep. Mel Brown, R-Coalville.
That popular explanation overlooks National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data that show two things.
Indeed, there are more registered motorcycles now than 10 years ago, but the number of fatalities per motorcycle has increased considerably.
In 1998, for each 100,000 registered motorcycles, there were 59 fatalities. In 2006, there were 72.
Put another way, during the last decade, the number of registered motorcycles increased by 80 percent to pass 7 million, but the number of annual motorcycle fatalities increased 124 percent, totaling 5,154.
The rise in the motorcycle death rate comes as the rates of all other motor-vehicle deaths have been improving in Utah and the nation.
Fatalities involving impaired drivers, teen drivers and rollovers, for example, have been considerably dropping. Motor-vehicle deaths overall, likewise, have decreased despite there being more cars and trucks on the road.
Riders often cite negligent and distracted car and truck drivers as the cause of many motorcycle crashes.
While data show that to be true, nothing suggests clearly -- and it seems counterintuitive -- that car and truck drivers have become any less observant of motorcycles in the last decade even as the number of motorcycles on the road has nearly doubled.
Helmets are cited by many riders, clinicians and industry groups as a key safety feature of motorcycling that decreases the risk of death.
However, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, only nine states have ever repealed universal helmet laws and each did so in the 1970s. That was well before either the record-low number of deaths in 1997 and the record high in 2007.
Utah, for example, had a universal helmet law beginning in 1969. By 1977, the requirement was for motorcycle passengers ages 17 and younger only.
While other states have made amendments to their helmet laws more recently, there was no trend among lawmakers in the '90s that predates the rise in deaths.
So what accounts for the glaring increase in fatalities? No study is considered definitive.
Recent causation studies in Europe and Thailand found a matrix of contributors to motorcycle deaths, including distracted drivers, lack of helmets and lack of training.
The Federal Highway Administration plans to release a motorcycle-crash causation study in August 2010.
Roper complains that the minimum standards test for a motorcycle endorsement on a Utah driver's license is too easy to pass. The driving portion of the test takes about 15 minutes and costs $30.
Motorcycle riders alternatively may obtain their endorsement by paying about $180 for a 15-hour rider course -- 10 hours of which are spent driving a bike -- but it's not mandated for any riders.
A law passed by the Legislature this year says that unless riders age 19 and under choose to take the 15-hour course, their license is restricted for two months.
However, restrictions like not driving at night can be evaded when riders tell the state they need to drive to and from work, in which case they are exempt.
Though Roper can't drive a bike anymore because his brain injury has severely limited his vision, he still attends meetings of the Beehive Beemers, the local group of BMW motorcycle enthusiasts.
Roper cites a new product from his beloved BMW as a symbol of the manufacturers' speed war. BMW's own Web site claims the K1200s have "enough raw power to shock even the most seasoned adrenaline junky."
Roper claims this 135-horsepower bike that can achieve 180 mph is out of the ordinary for BMW and reveals the company is trying to compete with Suzuki and Honda, for example, for the super-fast sports bike market.
"That's to compete with the Japanese bikes," he said. "They wanted that niche."
Roper's instincts also initially led him to blame younger drivers for the upward trend in motorcyclist deaths, but the data does not support that either.
Before 1997, the 30-and-under age group suffered the most fatalities, but since then, the group of riders age 40 and over who die in motorcycle crashes has grown fastest and largest.
All age groups, including younger drivers, have seen increases in deaths, however.
That makes sense to Dean Thompson, spokesman for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, an industry group funded by 12 major manufacturers.
He said new and returning drivers of motorcycles in the past 10 years have been from all age groups -- and training has been too little for everyone.
Nationally, he said, about 38 percent of riders avail themselves of training courses rather than minimum licensing requirements in their states.
He acknowledges the upward trend in motorcycle deaths and said explaining the trend needs to consider the three Es: education, enforcement and engineering.
He dismisses Roper's engineering explanation -- that bikes have gotten faster -- stating it's too simplistic.
"There's no silver bullet. There's not one thing in the marketplace that explains all this," he said.
Thompson said his organization neither opposes nor supports mandatory helmet laws or mandatory training laws, but encourages riders to do both of their own accord.
"There's an issue that people are choosing not to get trained," he said.
He feels the trend of the past 10 years is mysterious and requires more robust data.
He wants causes as well as means of mitigation to be positively identified. A study like that has not been done in the U.S. since 1981.
Posted by Utah Motorcycle Crash and Wrongful Death Attorney, Dustin Lance
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