Older motorcyclists rev up deaths

It had been more than two decades since the 54-year-old Chandler resident had revved the engine of a street bike, and his nearly immediate wipeout reminded him how even a slight error can upset the motorcyclist’s delicate balance of mass, momentum and power.

“That was a lesson,” he said.

More than 3,000 Arizona motorcyclists learned that same lesson through serious injury and property damage in 2005, the most recent year for which crash statistics are available. Of those cyclists, 150 did not live to learn anything.

The deaths created an alarming 22 percent increase in motorcycle fatalities compared with the previous year.

Overall, the number of fatal Arizona motorcycle collisions doubled from 2001 to 2005, and transportation officials say they are particularly concerned about a surge in driver deaths in the 45-to-54-year-old age group.

Deadly motorcycle crashes increased at 10 times the rate of other vehicular deaths between 2004 and 2005, with more than half involving motorcyclists age 35 and older. Those statistics differ significantly from crash data for other vehicle types, in which older drivers died at a far lower rate.

Luckily, Shepherd learned his lesson the easy way: on a closed training course supervised by professional instructors at a school called Riders Edge. In fact, on the final afternoon of training, four of the six students attending the 25-hour class had taken a spill while practicing basic maneuvers. Each survived with little more than a bruised ego.

“I’d love it if everyone got trained,” said Mitch Lanoue, one of Shepherd’s instructors and manager of the training program at Chandler Harley-Davidson.

Motorcycle enthusiasts disagree about the reasons why their colleagues are dying in crashes at an accelerating rate. Some blame a legal system they say is too timid to punish unlicensed drivers or require safety precautions.

Others say existing laws are adequate to encourage safe driving, and that ultimately surviving the road is a matter of personal responsibility.

Motorcycles are unique in that a large segment of firsttime buyers are middle-aged men who may have ridden decades ago but have forgotten the necessary skills or aren’t prepared for today’s larger, more powerful vehicles, said Michael Hegarty, deputy director of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.

“Not only have bikes gotten bigger and faster,” Hegarty said, “but traffic around them has gotten bigger and faster.”

Arizona’s legal system does little to require those so-called “weekend warriors” — aging urban professionals who drive motorcycles solely for recreation — to prepare themselves for the road ahead, critics say.

Those critics include Jack Frost, student services director at T.E.A.M. Arizona, a Gilbert business that specializes in training motorcyclists.

Frost said Arizona’s lack of strict motorcycle safety laws — and selective enforcement of the ones that do exist — have enabled those he calls “bornagain bikers” to hit the streets unprepared, where they have been suffering ever-greater casualties.

“Everyone is going out on the street with no license, no insurance,” Frost said. “There’s no law that requires you to be licensed before you buy a motorcycle.”

He said 30 percent to 40 percent of his students take the course because they have been cited for driving a motorcycle without the proper license and ordered by a judge to attend training. In many cases, he said, motorcyclists who lack the state’s required motorcycle endorsement are simply given 90 days to get certified.

“There’s no punishment,” he said. “They don’t even give them a fine.”

Frost said properly trained and licensed drivers are 98 percent less likely to be involved in a crash. He believes state lawmakers should deter unlicensed drivers by making it a criminal offense, punishable by mandatory incarceration, to operate a motorcycle without proper certification.

Scottsdale Judge Mike Reagan said city judges cannot dismiss citations for motorcyclists who are caught without the proper endorsements on their licenses, but they can suspend the $105 fine in lieu of other requirements such as attending motorcycle training.

Still, Reagan said increasing the punishment for uncertified drivers would not necessarily lead to fewer deaths.

“The Arizona Legislature has consistently increased the penalties for drunk driving, and in my opinion it has done nothing to stem the number of people convicted of DUI annually,” he said.

Cydney DeModica, spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Transportation’s Motor Vehicle Division, said Arizona law allows drivers who operate a motorcycle to retain their motorcycle endorsement for life, which means baby boomers who answer “the call of the chrome” later in life may be certified to operate motorcycles even if they haven’t driven one in decades.

“There really is no requirement to update that endorsement,” she said. “There are people out there that haven’t ridden on a motorcycle since they were in their 20s.”

Motorcyclists need to be expert defensive drivers in complete control of their vehicles, because they are often unseen or ignored by surrounding motorists, DeModica said.

“It’s so easy for motorists to miss a motorcycle, which is a large percentage of the crashes that occur,” she said.

Arizona still doesn’t have a mandatory helmet law, De-Modica said, and lawmakers who support a helmet law have faced consistent opposition from motorcycle enthusiast organizations such as Harley Owners’ Groups, or HOGs.

Hegarty said double-digit increases in motorcyclist deaths nationwide have led to a push for mandatory helmet laws in several states, but he said introduction of such a law in Arizona is unlikely this year.

Still, the state’s highway safety office is preparing a spring public awareness campaign that will encourage training and use of helmets via billboard and radio ads.

“We’d like to see these people wear the proper equipment, whether the law requires them to or not,” Hegarty said.

Lanoue, president of the Foothills Chapter HOG, said such groups strongly encourage the use of safety equipment but do not believe lawmakers should mandate it. “It’s an individual’s decision,” he said.