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Comment by russfink | Hacker News Reader

I rode for several years. Such a study needs to take into account the age, accident/ticket rate of the rider, and type of bike. While I was cautious, riding vs driving a car for economic reasons, there were plenty of testosterone-laiden youth who drove up my insurance rates.

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It turns out that actuaries are pretty decent at the math side of these things. It's just that being a motorcycle rider, regardless of how safe you personally are, is dramatically more of a risk to insurers than covering a cage driver. They know that because they have access to all the data behind the claims and payouts that normies like us don't have access to. Literally everyone believes that they are the exception to things like these. That's the difference between an anecdote and data however. Insurance companies rely on data and not your word that you're the exception to the picture that all their data paints.

Location/culture I think matter too. A lot of equatorial nations drive motorcycles & motorbikes as the default. Car drivers aren’t better drivers on the whole, but they are very aware of motorcycles at all times that I feel other places, car drivers disregard all non-car transportation—motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians.

Vietnam traffic was absolutely mind blowing to me.

Especially the awareness and care that cars, buses, etc, seemed to have.

That said the safety stats still aren't that great for scooter/motorcycle/bike riders there.

I biked in Vietnam. It looks kind of mad but the speeds are actually quite low which is how they mostly survive. The locals don't go much about 20 mph on the scooters although they are capable of 60-70.

The problem is what is a minor accident in a car is a serious accident on a motorcycle. I'm a very safe driver and I have been t-boned through no fault of my own. On a motorcycle is death

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