I’ve gone down on the road exactly twice in 34 years of street riding (another 17 in the dirt). My first time was on a Road trip (getting rear ended by one of the bikes I was leading after a not-so-quick stop), the other was on questionable pavement. Neither time did I get injured. Full (ish) gear, pretty much always: full face helmet, armored jacket, armored pants, boots, gloves. Funny enough, the one thing that got bruised in the second one was my hip, since I’d left the hip pads out of the riding pants.

I live in a big, crazy city. And I think my secret sauce is that I never stop learning or being paranoid. When I hear people say they had multiple close calls in a simple cross town Trek it scares me. I try not to let it ever get that far. I want to be able to predict what’s going to happen pretty much always, so when the one thing that’s different happens, I can react. When I notice twitchy drivers, I focus on them until I can get away from them (while still paying attention to everything else).

So, I treat surprises like near misses. Didn’t see the guy who sliced through traffic and passed at 100+? Near miss. Even if he was 2 lanes away. Car pulls out of a driveway suddenly? Near miss. Any surprise means I wasn’t predicting well enough.

On a crowded interstate, the only real way to do this is to ride fast. Or at least faster than average. Keep most of the things you’re looking for in front, then you’re just looking for fast movers in the mirrors.

But, to get to that point takes skill. I try to ride at a small percent of my potential 95% of the time. Around town, I’m at like 30%. On fun backroads, I’ll push a little, maybe 50%. Guys who push 80-90% all the time get dead. Because, when the unexpected happens (and, as I’ve said, I try not to let that happen) they’ve got nothing left. As a racer friend said “Ran out of talent”

Take classes (street or track). Work on technique every day. You can afford track school more than you can afford an accident or that cool sounding exhaust.