Here's a question borrowed from Motorcycle Consumer News. "Are high mileage riders more at risk due to time spent in the danger zone, or does accumulated experience add to youre safety?"
My response,
It's a comment we hear all the time, in person and on message boards, "there's two kinds of riders, those who have crashed and those who haven't yet". I myself don't completely buy into that mindset.
I approach riding in terms of risk management. You use your head and pick your spots. While it would be arrogant to think I will never go down, I don't get on my bike thinking the more I ride the closer my number is to being called. It's similar the lottery, your chances of winning don't go up the more you play. The individual odds of winning are the same whether it's your first ticket or 100th (btw an old statistics professor once said your odds of winning the lotto are about the same if you simply flush the dollar down the leu).
Having said all of that I have hit three deer over the years in my pickup and zero on the bike. Not that it couldn't happen (like today!!), colliding with large animals on a motorcycle doesn't sound like my idea of fun. It's all about exposure. Therefore I always get "leathered up" as they say. New riders are at risk, as are those who's ego exceeds their actual ability. I try to avoid being among the latter...
Ride safe all......
JH
