[the_real_sparky]

I don’t ride on the street anymore (not enough fun to be worth the risk - of death via car or losing my drivers license), but I do regularly take my S1000RR to the track. It is capable of doing just over 90mph in first gear, which is why it’s not much fun on the street at legal speeds. It will quickly get to 150mph and with enough room run out to 195mph, but the length of straights on most tracks keep it down to the 140-175mph range.

The risks of sudden-stop collisions are better controlled on the track than the street. In addition, traction control has greatly reduced the risk of high-side crashes. Airbags inside the leathers have greatly (almost completely) reduced the risk of torso injuries if you do crash. Helmets are a bit safer than they have ever been (FIM certification). Traction control, ABS and cornering ABS have reduced the risk of dumb crashes while learning, probably by 2/3rds. ABS eventually gets disabled when you get more experienced, but at that point it’s not really needed. Traction control is adjustable on the fly and doesn’t really ever get in the way because of that.

High-level racers have many crashes in their pursuit of faster lap times. The airbags have made an incredible difference in injury rates. I’m just a normal middle aged guy with a family and I find the risks to be acceptable with a fast bike on the track. I understand that most people may not, but then again most people don’t seriously consider the risks they take on a daily basis anyway.

Airbags weren’t fully mandatory in Moto2/3/GP until 2018, but you can see from the 2013-2017 data that it was already safer than you would expect given the high number of crashes. To be fair, some riders were using airbags prior to 2018. Also, crash rates while pushing the edge of the envelope racing are vastly higher than crash rates at track days.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8082255/

[laminarflow]

Fellow sportbike rider (late model R6) - Thank you for sharing that article, even I was surprised to see such a low incidence of fractures.

I was curious what the corresponding data would be for brain injuries, and found the below, which is also surprisingly low.

Musculoskeletal injuries represented the vast majority (88.43%) of the 191 encounters registered in the acute setting, while concussions were diagnosed in only 1.57%. The most common orthopedic motorcycle injuries were upper extremity contusions while the most common anatomical area for fractures was the hand.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09493...