Teaching someone to ride, is the Hurt Report still valid

Spinning off the other thread about teaching a girl to ride one often quoted piece of information was that people who learned from friends and family where significantly over represented in Hurt Report.

The Hurt Report was published in 1981, 31 years ago. There was a distinct lack of formal motorcycle training even available at that point and no effort was given to determine what percentage of the riding population had formal motorcycle education in the report. So you can draw 2 possible conclusions from that even at the time, either people who have taken the course are safer or there where very few people taking the course.

Sense the report was taken motorcycle training is significantly more common, and was even acknowledged by the MSF:
"From the first meeting of the Technical Working Group that prepared this document, it was apparent that our effectiveness would be limited by a consistent lack of viable, current research in most subjects related to motorcycling safety. Wide-ranging changes in motorcycling and related factors have altered the motorcycling landscape since the
publication of Motorcycle Accident Cause Factors and Identification of Countermeasures (referred to as the Hurt Report) so thoroughly that it is impossible to determine if the findings of past studies are still valid."

Followed by more specifically, "State motorcycle-operator licensing requirements and operator training are generally more stringent and rigorous."

In the maids report that was allot more recent it found that 40% had no formal training, 47% had formal pre-license training and 1.7% had additional non-compulsory training and 10.1% was unknown. So looking at that data it appears to safer to not get any formal training at all, or could it simply be that Europe has a higher percentage of educated and trained drivers on the road so there's a greater chance they could be involved in a crash...

No.

But it's the best we have, unfortunately.

As I wrote over in the Killboy thread a few weeks ago:

That said, as for the issue of formal training versus training from friends, absent any serious evidence against it, I don't see a logical reason to dispute that formal rider training is always preferable-- formal training of ANY kind is always preferable.

As is often noted here, learning from family & friends risks not one but two shortcomings when compared to formal training:
1. Your family and friends may be lousy trainers versus impartial, educated professionals
2. You may be a lousy student of your family and friends versus impartial, educated professionals

That's not to say that the MSF is the end all, be all-- it most certainly isn't, the course is *barely* adequate IMHO-- but the odds of having a training failure are much less than learning from someone you know. And once learned, bad habits have a long half-life: if you "learned' how to ride from your dad who doesn't know how to ride all that well ("lay 'er down," anyone?), it may take you years to shake out that bad wisdom-- if ever.

Thus, my advice is always to start from the MSF or similar course. If after that you want to practice with your friends and family, by all means, please do. But professional education should be the starting baseline, not the exception.

I feel the MAIDS report which is available here http://www.maids-study.eu/pdf/MAIDS_Multivariate_Analysis.pdf

Is already leaps and bounds better...

Also I delved into the report a little deeper it broke down the training by vechile classification too. The stat above was across the board including scooters and mopeds.

On "L3" vehicles aka motorcycles 77.2% of the riders that crashed had compulsory pre-license training.

So clearly based on that stat we should eliminate pre-license training right?

I wish I knew more about formal training back when the Hurt Report was released. What if "formal training" back then was rigorous riding schools similar to, say, Code's California Superbike School?

Anyway, I always tell people I know that the MSF course is a great starting point, but by itself it isn't enough. There are few impartial studies on the effectiveness of MSF in preventing/reducing crashes, if I recall correctly. The BRC could attract semi-competent people that wouldn't ride unless the MSF was available. People that don't take the class maybe have years of dirt bike experience as children and ride quite well. Too many variables to account for.

Again, the BRC is a nice starting point, but not enough to consider ones self "trained", IMHO. A lot of things annoy me, including people acting like they are motorcycling experts because they took the BRC. I imagine I'm not alone here in this sentiment.

Apples and oranges comparison. You can't say "X percent of crashers had training" without knowing what percentage got training.

MSF is currently doing a longitudinal study of riders by mounting cameras and sensors on their bikes for a few years. That'll give the necessary information. (and I'm not a fan of MSF)

That was _my_exact_ sarcastically veiled point. All these people citing the hurt report for the reason why MSF is so much safer need to pull there heads out of their collective asses. The report doesn't tell you shit about if training actually made anyone safer.

'their'. Hough felt he could make the claim from the numbers, but I don't think he ever showed his work of where his comparisons came from.

Team Oregon's eyetracking study has been interesting too. In other words, using data to separate skilled and unskilled riders by behavior instead of sorting them by miles or years of experience.

Any link to the study? Google didn't turn up anything other than some articles discussing it.

I doubt they'll ever finish/publish it. Which sucks.

No, and Yes.

For somethings I have to look askance. Like "Weather was not a factor"- for 900+ crashes in Los Angeles, maybe not. And most casual riders don't like to ride in the rain, so they stay home. WA did some stats that showed it was more dangerous to ride on a weekend on a sunny afternoon- because that's when the crashes happened. Um. (Good news for daily riders- those people aren't crashing. Draw your own conclusion there.)

So, same with training- I'm not sure that is relevant.

But some stuff is, like most victims didn't know how to brake or swerve effectively. Most people showing up for "classes for riders" we teach (in Oregon, RSP and ART) that have no previous training, still don't know how to brake or swerve well.

Still in progress. The data collection was over a three year period, following four groups:

1) New riders (trained)
2) New riders (untrained)
3) Experienced riders (trained)
4) Experienced riders (untrained)

I can't remember if it was two or three times a year, they came in and rode a predetermined course.

The rig has two cameras- one looks out at where the helmet is looking, the other tracks the rider's eye and superimposes a crosshair on first camera's image. There's a circle around that which grows the longer the rider fixates on a single point. Plus speed, lean angle, etc. for the bike. Then they have to go through every single video and look for the markers they're looking for (target fixation, hazard detection, corner navigation), compare to previous, compare to the group, compare to overall... This is where they are now.

The raw video is fascinating to watch; at some point they may drag the hardware out and use it to shoot a video on road management.

A little bit of a hijack of my own thread but I'd love to stick that rig on the heads of some high level racers while racing or qualifying and see what they actually look at, and then stick it on some motogp world champions and see what comes out the other side.

1) A guy who takes the bike out once a year to putter around town, showing off the chrome on a nice day
2) A guy who takes his scooter to the grocery store every few days, a mile away on quiet streets
3) A woman who rides 15k per year in all weather

Number 3 might have a higher accident rate, but wouldn't have a higher accident rate per vehicle mile traveled.

Also, I took the BRC, and everyone in my class passed. People passed that course who were not to be trusted on a bike until they had a lot more time to get the hang of it. A kid passed by a point, he was planning on buying a CBR600 after he got his license. His ability to navigate cones in a parking lot at 20 miles per hour was crappy at best... but forth he went to buy a sportbike that was vastly beyond his ability to cope. Another woman passed who couldn't do the figure eight without touching her feet down over, and over, and over again. She already owned a bike at home, though to her credit it was at least a 250 Rebel, and she seemed like she wasn't an absolute lunatic. The other class that ran parallel to ours had one person fail, a tiny, tiny woman who had already bought herself a Ducati Monster (don't recall the displacement), though to her credit she was wearing new, high-end Revit gear from head to toe... She failed for crashing on at least a few occasions on the course.

That said, it's better than nothing, but the big risk is to have people walk out of that course with a license in hand, thinking that they've gotten pretty good at this thing.

"Riding a motorcycle is like sleeping with your neighbor's wife. Just when you think you are getting good at it, you get killed."

they are conducting a new study: http://www.motorcycle.vtti.vt.edu/

at the end of the day though, is training going to save your life? best answer is a definite maybe.... compared to the requirement to get a license here in MA? night & day. The license requirement in MA is a joke: two plumbers cones about 30' apart, do 2-3 circles, then do 2-3 figure eights around them. Do that w/o dropping your bike or putting a foot down & you're good to go. Of course if you take the BRC, you get your license, assuming you pass, and a 10% insurance discount. I guess I tell myself after a weekend "it's better than nothing".

In the end I don't think people in the States take licensing as any more than a "right", not something you have to earn... but rather something you get when you come of age. So will proper training ever come along? I doubt it.

I have a fair number of family members (including extended family) in Europe, and the licensing process is far more involved. However, the traffic is much denser, and there are far more alternatives in terms of transportation. If you live much outside the city in the US, and don't have some kind of motor vehicle it's really difficult to get around.

Those two words are very important and at the right place.


Nobody said that learning from a friend was an always bad idea...but it's an (almost...shit may happen) always good idea to start with formal, official course.

An apprentice can learn a lot beside an experimented mate but he has to start with solid base.

Poppycock!

http://www.maids-study.eu/pdf/MAIDS2.pdf

Adding a link to the actual study.

imho, the Hurt report is still very much valid in many ways. Conspicuity is still an issue, Awareness of risky traffic scenarios is still an issue. Alcohol is still an issue. Rider information is still an issue. So, I advise new riders to accumulate as much info as they can and to evaluate it as carefully as possible. Then there is all the culturally hardened miss-information to sort out like loud pipes and front wheel braking. The Hurt report is a good starting point because it is so old. Riders reading the newer stuff can see improvements. And the Hurt report doesn't take all that long to read.

The MAIDS report is pretty good and well worth the effort to read. I would add that "Traffic" by Tom Vandebilt should be on every rider's list. "Traffic" gives a great overall perspective to evaluate road risk in ways that I never considered before.

I have loaned my copy of Traffic to several people. Some find it too hard for a variety of reasons and give up on it. Others, like me, found it a facinating read and couldn't put it down. I read my copy twice, back to back, just to make sure that I got all the info possible.