Lincoln Beachey thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine The machine broke down and down he fell thought he'd go to heaven but he went to Lincoln Beachey thought it was a dream ...
RIP Lincoln Beachey, drowned in SF Bay 1915
The rates for motorcycle accidents and deaths is really very high:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_safety#Accident_rate...
Quote: "According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in 2006, 13.10 cars out of 100,000 ended up in fatal crashes. The rate for motorcycles is 72.34 per 100,000 registered motorcycles."
That's about 5 1/2 times greater.
http://www.aaos.org/news/aaosnow/jul12/clinical1.asp
I gave up my brief motorcycle career after having kids, which I'm rather glad of now, reading that.
Worse plenty of people own more than one motorcycle so the rate is probably higher than that.
The actual way you calculate the probability of an event with a binomial distribution is by taking the inverse probability and raising it to the power of the attempts, then subtracting from 1. So in the case of two coin flips, that is 1 - (1/2 ^ 2), or a 75% of getting a 'head'. That would mean, with a huge host of assumptions, that a motorcyclist's chance of dying over 30 years would be 1 - (99928/100000)^30, or (funnily enough), 2.13%.
edit: I said bimodal when I meant binomial.
By the binomial series [1], the true value is 1-(1-p)^n = np - n(n-1)/2! p^2 + n(n-1)(n-2)/3! p^3 + ...
So approximating it to just np corresponds to taking just the leading term of the series. Of course, this is only valid when p is small enough. To see how good the approximation is, we can compare it to the two first terms of the series, which is np - n(n-1)/2 p^2, or approximately np - (np)^2 /2.
So the approximation np is about twice the percentage difference between the approximation and the true value. In this case, the approximation np is about 2%, and that guess is itself about 1% wrong.
You set out to correct a naive statistical assumption, computed it properly, and the result was about the same (not at all common for such problems). But you posted it anyway, in the spirit of sharing useful information.
As the Australians say, "Good on you, mate."
In other words, the bulk of deaths on bikes are young, inexperienced, and/or unlicensed riders.
Also, bike deaths are far more likely to involve alcohol than car deaths; so if you're like me and you don't drink before riding, you've just improved your chances.
http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsMotorcycleSafety/
A significant reason for this is your far less likely to survive an accident as an older rider than a young one.
Note: The death rate statistics they quote include non motorcycle owners.
There's also a huge correlation between unlicensed riders and serious injuries. Motorcycle riders are far more likely to be unlicensed than car drivers - last I heard was something like 3-4 times as likely.
Unlicensed motorcycle riders are over twice as likely to be in fatal accidents than licensed motorcycle riders.
I ride 15,000-20,000 miles a year - I'm well trained, equipped, and experienced. A lot of bike owners ride weekends, occasional trips, etc. I actually don't ride much on the weekends - and when I do, I'm pretty shocked how bad (dangerous, rude, etc) the riders are compared to the commuters I mostly see.
That's a very weird statistic. Sure, since those riders spend most of their 30 years riding time over 25yo.
From your link: "The highest death and injury rates were among 20-24 year-olds, followed by 25-29 year-olds."
How many pilots did you know?