Research
The US Hurt Report, begun in 1976 and published in 1981, expresses disdain for the ignorance and misinformation about motorcycle safety among riders studied, noting that 92% of riders in accidents had no formal training, compared to 84.3% of the riding population, and that when interviewed, riders frequently failed to take responsibility for their errors, or even perceive that accident avoidance had been possible. Hurt noted they held such misconceptions as the belief that deliberately falling down and sliding was a more effective accident avoidance strategy than strong, controlled application of the front brake. The final recommendations of the report include the advice that, "The Motorcycle Rider Course of the Motorcycle Safety Foundation should be the prerequisite (or at least corequisite) of licensing and use of a motorcycle in traffic."
However, when the European MAIDS report, conducted in 1999 to 2000, looked at motorcycle accidents and the riding population, in societies where rider training was both widely available and in generally mandatory, they were unable to find conclusive evidence that riders without training were more likely to be involved in accidents. Nor were their interviews able to discern a significant difference between the number of riders who had been in accidents who were unqualified to operate their motorcycles, and the number among those who had not been in accidents. The MAIDS study did find that drivers of other vehicles were less likely to fail to perceive motorcycles in accidents if they themselves had a motorcycle license, and that motorcyclists riding illegally without a license were more likely to have accidents.
The MAIDS report does not conclude that training is unnecessary, but rather states that their results are inconclusive. Hurt's complaint was that in the absence of mandatory training, false information is passed from one generation of riders to the next, so it is to be expected that this particular problem would decrease in regions where training is generally mandatory. Years of riding and contact with other riders, in lieu of formal training, doesn't necessarily expose motorcyclists to accurate information. Open questions remain, however, such as why the overall safety of motorcycling in Europe is not significantly different than in the US.
Read more about this topic: Motorcycle Training
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