Safety stressed as motorcycle sales keep revving

updated 7:27 p.m. ET Aug. 15, 2006

MILWAUKEE - As Sean Mizlo lay in a hospital bed last summer, he wondered if he’d ever ride a motorcycle again. He knew he could, even though doctors had just removed his left leg above the knee. But would he want to?

“When I first said I was going to ride again, everyone said, ‘Are you nuts?’” said Mizlo, 36, of Orion, Ill. “But it’s just something you’ve got to do.”

As the motorcycle industry continues to report record sales 14 years in a row, the industry and the government are looking to curb a rising number of injuries and deaths. They’re encouraging motorcyclists to ride sober, wear protective gear such as helmets, take training courses and get licensed.

Riders attending this month’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally were being reminded to “Take It Easy” in ads and banners sponsored by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, an industry group.

But industry experts and the government say other factors complicate things. Riders are getting older, riding more miles on rural roads and drinking more. And the rising number of riders is also making it harder to get into training programs, they say.

Motorcycle sales were up 11 percent in the first six months of this year and interest continues because of high gas prices, the Motorcycle Industry Council said. In 2004, the most recent year data are available, the industry posted $7.6 billion in sales of 725,000 on-highway bikes, up from nearly $4.7 billion in 2000 with 471,000 bikes sold.

“A big part of what you need to look at it is the simple fact that there are lot more motorcycles on the road,” said Bob Klein, spokesman for Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson. It sold 154,041 motorcycles in the first half of the year, up about 7 percent from the previous year.

Motorcycles accounted for 2 percent of all registered vehicles in 2004 but made up 9.4 percent of all highway deaths, up from 5 percent in 1997, according to government statistics.

In 2004, 4,008 people died on motorcycles, up 8 percent from the previous year’s 3,714 deaths, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. At the same time, total traffic deaths dropped less than 1 percent to 42,636.

Preliminary numbers from last year show a 7.7 percent increase in motorcycle fatalities, the NHTSA reports.

“Every fatality is huge to us because in almost all cases they’re completely preventable,” said Tim Buche, president of the Motorcycle Safety Foundation. “If riders make good choices, they ride trained, they ride within their limits, we don’t have to have crashes.”

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