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coldtea | on: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony
>That's the thing. On a bike you can do everything right and still lose.

Same with anything in life.

Same with a car, just less so. Of course you could also stay at home, wearing protective bumper suit 24/7 (and can still die from any number of things anyway).

At some point there's a tradeoff people make. Some people make it where the tradeoff slider says "motorcycle", rather than stop at "car". And I'm not talking a tiny niche, but about 1-1.2 billion people globally.

Falimonda | parent | next
The risk is much much much higher with a motorcycle - especially in the US where most car drivers have next to zero experience sharing the road with motorcycles let alone driving a motorcycle. Saying it's the same thing is absurd here.

- Licensed motorcycle driver

mothballed | root | parent
Vs what though? We're talking about a felon and addict channeling their risk-taking energy. I rode motorcycles exclusively as my transport in my 20s and it was one of the main things that checked use of intoxicants. You need your balance for a motorcycle and it uses the same risk-taking energy that many people would otherwise channel into drugs and destruction.

That is to say, those comparing car v motorcycle are doing the wrong comparison here. You'd be evaluating (car + substitute activity of drugs/crime/etc) vs. motorcycle -- rather than merely car v motorcycles.

Falimonda | root | parent
Motorcycles are not sobriety tests...
paulryanrogers | parent | next
> Same with a car, just less so.

So not the same?

> Of course you could also stay at home, wearing protective bumper suit 24/7

Quite an extreme and useless comparison. There's a large spectrum of transportation and entertainment options between motorcycle riding and home bound bumper suit at all times.

coldtea | root | parent
>So not the same?

Does it have to be the same?

Do you discourage people from riding bicycles too, lest they be hit?

paulryanrogers | root | parent
> Does it have to be the same?

If someone uses the word 'same' followed by a 'but' for a significantly different case then the word 'same' is losing its meaning.

> Do you discourage people from riding bicycles too, lest they be hit?

I don't, and my point is these things all have wildly different cost-benefit tradeoffs. So it's unproductive to jump to some extreme risk averse example that no one was suggesting or implying.

| parent | next
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estearum | parent
Yeah exactly, same with BASE jumping or wingsuiting.

It's the same risk dynamic as driving a car to work, just more so. Of course you could also stay at home, wearing protective bumper suit 24/7 (and can still die from any number of things anyway).