White-Knuckle Commuting : Thousands Zip to Work on Motorcycles Despite Documented Risk
A helmeted motorcycle rider on a powerful red-and-black racing bike weaved skillfully between cars on the congested Harbor Freeway, alert for any sign that a driver might change lanes and wipe him out.
“Motorcycle riding is dangerous,” Jack Worrall agreed on a recent sunny day, before starting the 28-mile commute home from his university job. “It scares me constantly, but I’m willing to trade that (fear) for the feel of riding.”
Splitting traffic lanes on the most dangerous freeway in Los Angeles with a passenger clinging on behind him, Worrall, 43, gunned the sleek two-wheeler with the big 750cc engine between a van and an old station wagon.
Every day Worrall and several thousand other Southern California commuters crank up their bikes and brave the congested freeways and busy surface streets. Nowhere else are there quite so many of these powerful motorcycles roaring down the white lines.
“Southern California is the motorcycling capital of the world,” said J. B. Moore, spokesman for the Highway Patrol’s California Motorcyclist Safety Program. “It’s because there are more people putting more miles on motorcycles than anywhere else . . . and (as a result) there are more injuries and more deaths too.”
Commuting on a motorcycle is far more dangerous than driving a car. Research reported in the American Journal of Surgery shows a cyclist’s chances of injury or death in a crash are 50 times higher than people in automobiles.
In Orange County, California Highway Patrol statistics from 1987 (the most recent figures available) state that one in 40 motorcycle accidents results in a fatality. Furthermore, 46 motorcyclists died in accidents that year.
Who are these people who ride motorcycles day in and day out? And why do they take the risks, knowing that at any instant a car may cut them off or that an oil slick could spill the bike?
Most motorcyclists, young and old, are quick to defend their two-wheeled machines and say that media sensationalism, hostile motorists and uninformed politicians exaggerate the dangers and promote a negative image, making recreational riders out to be scruffy outlaw bikers on choppers.
“Motorcycling has an image problem,” said Dexter Ford, executive editor of Motorcyclist magazine in a recent editorial opposing legislative attempts to impose safety laws on all riders.
The Costa Mesa-based Motorcycle Industry Council in 1985 conducted a national survey of people who do not drive motorcycles and found that 39% of those polled had either “very negative” or “somewhat negative” attitudes toward motorcycles. The poll also found that 30% were neutral and 26% were positive toward cycles.
For motorists trapped in traffic, the sight of motorcycles splitting lanes or weaving through street traffic can be irritating and does not look safe--or legal.
Lane splitting is legal, authorities agree. Research shows that most motorcycle-auto crashes are the fault of the car or truck drivers who violate the cyclist’s right of way. It is also true that when a motorcyclist goes down, the impact can be tragic--and long lasting.
Virgil Petrocelly, a 49-year-old cabinetmaker, sat at a table in a Pomona rehabilitation hospital staring at the picture of an eating utensil, unable to write the word fork. Laboriously he scrawled f-o-r-t, then stabbed the pencil down in anger, hissing, “That’s not right!” Although Petrocelly has recovered from most of his other injuries after crashing his motorcycle on the San Bernardino Freeway last October, the damage to his brain has short-circuited his ability to read and write, therapists say. Sometimes he knows the word or number, sometimes not.
Like many others, he was not wearing a helmet at the time he went down. Severe head injuries are the rule, not the exception, in such crashes, safety experts say.
Erin Millsap, a 21-year-old championship wrestler at Cal State Fullerton, was a passenger on a motorcycle driven by a former teammate when the bike crashed on a steep slope on Bastanchury Road near State College Boulevard on Sept. 15.
Millsap was thrown from the motorcycle onto the pavement.
In 1983, Fountain Valley police stopped using motorcycles to patrol traffic because of the number of officers injured while riding.
When actor Gary Busey, 45, lost control of his motorcycle on a Culver city street and went down in December, 1988, he hit his unprotected head on the curb and was rushed to the hospital in critical condition.
At the time, Busey was actively lobbying against a bill in the state Legislature that would have required riders to wear helmets. After months of rehabilitation, Busey returned to work, still opposed to mandatory helmet laws for experienced riders over 21. California law now requires youngsters 15 and under to wear helmets, but no one else.
Despite reports to the contrary, Busey’s position has not changed, according to his business manager, Herb Nanas. “Gary hasn’t changed his mind; he still rides without a helmet,” Nanas said in a recent phone interview.
Busey’s position is popular with a lot of motorcycle enthusiasts who cherish the wind-in-the-hair freedom that riding the open road gives them. And they contend that helmets don’t provide much protection.
“In that Gary Busey (accident) . . . he wouldn’t have got out of it so easy with a helmet,” says veteran Harley-Davidson rider Dave Fournier. He says the weight of a helmet would have broken Busey’s neck.
Fournier commutes daily from Palmdale 75 miles into Culver City on a touring bike. He opposes mandatory laws, saying: “If you hit anything above 40 m.p.h., it’s not going to do any good anyway.”
California Motorcyclist Assn. spokesman Wayne Thomas agrees with Fournier, explaining that while the association has lobbied hard against mandatory helmet laws in Sacramento and Washington, it has supported motorcycle safety training programs.
“We have nothing against helmets,” Thomas said. He wears one sometimes and insisted that his wife wear one while she was learning to ride, but he feels riders should be free to chose when to wear a helmet.
But motorcycle safety experts and doctors say there is a high public cost attached to that freedom of choice. When a motorcyclist crashes in a bloody tangle, taxes and insurance premiums go up, they say. Studies show that most riders are either uninsured or under-insured and the public cost for treating those who crash without helmets runs an estimated $300 million a year nationally.
Medical costs are high. The average motorcycle accident victim’s medical bill runs $15,851 if the rider wore a helmet, according to a San Francisco trauma center study. Without a helmet, the report said the bill nearly tripled, reaching $42,291.
There is no doubt that helmets reduce the number and severity of head injuries in motorcycle accidents, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration reports.
Mandatory helmet laws were in effect in 47 states two decades ago, the result of federal law that linked passage of such state laws to federal highway funding. But under pressure from the motorcyclist lobby, the federal requirement was abolished and 26 states repealed their mandatory helmet laws. Motorcycle fatalities shot up 44%, according to backers of a bill to establish new federal mandatory helmet legislation.
The Highway Patrol has recommended passage of a mandatory helmet law in California.
The Legislature has twice passed passed mandatory helmet measures but saw them vetoed by Gov. George Deukmejian, who did not want to be “unfair” to older, more experienced riders who choose not to wear helmets. The governor said he favored rider education and a helmet law for those under 21.
Motorcycles attracts millions of riders, most of them young and male, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council, a nonprofit trade association. These riders often start off as teen-agers riding dirt bikes and graduate to street bikes when they are old enough to get a license. Most have had no special riding or safety training.
Several motorcycle safety classes exist in Orange County, and the Costa Mesa-based Motorcycle Safety Foundation has sponsored more than 700 rider courses nationally.
Of the 3.8 million motorcycles on the nation’s streets and highways, the council estimates that 2.3 million are used to ride to work or school. There are 831,000 motorcycles in California, about half of them licensed for street use.
The motorcycle’s allure has something to do with having a 400- or 500-pound “rocket between your legs,” according to Worrall, who commutes from Monrovia to the USC campus downtown. He is director of USC’s electron beam microscope laboratory. His motorcycle is “the hottest bike in the magazines.”
With that much power he can speed out of harm’s way, he said. Defensive driving is the key to survival, he said, adding: “Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t change lanes, cutting me off.” He has had four accidents, but escaped uninjured each time.
Most riders who crash are not so lucky. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration figures show that 80% of all motorcycle crashes result in injury or death. The agency’s conclusion: “Motorcycles are the most hazardous form of motor vehicle transportation.”
For at least a decade California has led all other states in the number of motorcyclists killed and injured, and those numbers were climbing through the mid-1980s, reports show. By 1986, cycle accidents claimed 851 lives and another 28,097 riders were injured.
Some obvious factors contribute to the carnage--more motorcycles, more riders, more riding time because the weather tends to be sunny. But the Highway Patrol also says that California’s motorcycle accident rate runs 30% above the national average.
Part of the problem was a lack of riding experience and safety awareness, according to a 1981 study by USC’s Traffic Safety Center. In this benchmark study, safety experts made on-the-scene investigations of 900 motorcycle crashes in the late 1970s.
They reported the average rider involved in these accidents was 16 to 24 years old, male, and either a student or blue-collar worker who was “inexperienced, untrained, unlicensed, unprotected and uninsured and does a poor job of avoiding the collision.”
The USC investigators then confirmed what experienced riders already know: Most motorcycle-automobile collisions result from “a violation of motorcyclist’s right of way.” Too often, motorists do not see the rider and turn in front of him, the USC experts reported.
Most riders suffered some kind of injury, half were seriously hurt, one in four either died or suffered critical injuries. The USC investigators found that less than half were wearing helmets.
Rob Garner, a 22-year-old warehouse worker from San Gabriel, is a classic example. He admits that, until an accident last June, he rode his big, powerful cycle wildly, sometimes racing on the streets. Then, in a blinding crash, his life was shattered.
Garner, thin and still limping, recently talked about the accident and long months spent in the hospital and rehabilitation recovering from a fractured skull, brain damage and other serious injuries.
“I was late for work, going fast,” Garner said. He usually wore a helmet, but Garner had left it behind that morning.
The accident initially left him unable to think and reason above about the second-grade level, said Robin Ogawa, a therapist at Casa Colina Neurological Learning Center in Pasadena. But after months of therapy, Rob is responding well, is back at work, but still has a long way to go, she said.
While California has no helmet law for adult riders, the Legislature did pass the California Motorcycle Safety Program in 1986 in response to skyrocketing accident statistics. The program, administered by the Highway Patrol, established mandatory training courses for teen-agers who apply for motorcycle licenses.
This, the safety experts say, was a step in the right direction and has helped reduce the bloody statistics. But they still argue that a mandatory helmet law is needed.
