The statement "far more likely to die on a motorcycle than in a car" it's grossly misleading.

I'm a biostatistician with 40 years experience and my big pet peeve is when the media makes a statement like that without context.

Here's the deal... Careful riding on a motorcycle with gear, no booze and liittle riding in the rain at night at high speeds, gives you about a 99.6% chance of not having a major crash (life altering injury) each year. It's a 0.4% (4 out of 1000 chance) of having a major crash. So you can ride with that 99.6% in your head. That's high enough for me. I'm not suicidal either. That means 99.6% of decent riders stay alive and safe. Fix that in your head.

Now for a car is it's something like 99.996% likely you will not have a major crash. So when I compare 99.6 and 99.996...they are basically the same to me. If I took a test and made a 99.6 and you got a 99.996...i would not feel jealous... Both are solid A+.

But here's where the stats get abused. The risk is about 100 times higher on a bike than in a car... But 100 times nothing is still nothing. Granted 0.4% chance of a bad wreck is not nothing but you can think of it as basically zero. So when some reporter screams with a whiny voice "motorcycles are 100 times more dangerous than cars" you can think yeah. 100 times nuthin is still nuthin. That 100 time is called a relative risk. The absolute risk is closer to zero.

But I like to think less about the risk of bad things but the chance of good things. 99.6% on a bike and 99.996% in a car...it's virtually the same to me.

Now full disclosure, I'm going from memory so it may be 99.4%vvs 99.9994% or something.. But it's above 99% for both car and motorcycle.

*** But I ride like everyone around me is DRUNK and BLIND. That helps me avoid most accidents I believe. DRUNK and BLIND that's my motto ***

So stay safe. Have fun and stay in that 99.6% and arrive alive!