as someone who just got back from a nice motorcycle group ride: lol
You can be the best rider in the world and still have a bad day/week/month/year/life.
I am back on the horse. It is just a zen and still relaxing time, albeit more anxiety while riding, than before. Thankful I can still ride, and I do.
I'm glad you're better. Tenacity.
More likely you're belted in your cage and surrounded by airbags.
Apples to orangutans.
THIS is the major difference, protecting even the best motorcyclist's abilities.
Some US highways are posted at 85mph [137km/h] – unprotected flesh doesn't stand a chance!
I'm sorry, but from a European perspective, this is the problem, not bikes. If your roads and driving culture encourage driving a tank for safety, that's a bit less than ideal.
I commuted to work for 5 years on a moped. I never used a highway, almost never exceeded 50km/h, and had 2 accidents during that time; both resulted in just a few scratches and bruises.
In another post, you said: "maybe speed was a factor" - actually, it's the only factor. If you never go too fast and never use roads where others may go too fast, you're safe - at least from life-altering tragedies.
If, on the other hand, it's generally impossible to get where you want to without using highways, or the sheer distance forces you to step on it - then yeah, don't buy a motorbike. Just note that it's not the bike's fault!
While you're right about slower generally being safer, you should still treat it like a life-altering tragedy could happen at any time and like you're going 200 kph.
It's still worth noting the relative probability: death or life-changing injury is basically what happens in every single accident when you're going 200km/h on a highway surrounded by (what could as well be) steel walls moving at the same speed; in my use case, when not exceeding 40-50 km/h and using roads where other users basically stand still most of the time, you need a pretty specific conditions and a lot of bad luck to even have an accident, much less die or become permanently disabled as a result of one. Still, not a zero probability, but the difference between 100% and 0.01% is kind of noticeable.
Half of the group rides I see are to "honor" or "remember " a rider who died doing something stupid as well.