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Table 2-22: Motorcycle Rider Safety Data

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  1975 1980 1985 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
Fatalities 3,189 5,144 4,564 3,244 2,806 2,395 2,449 2,320 2,227 2,161 2,116 2,294 2,483 R2,897 3,181
Injured personsE N N N 84,285 80,435 65,099 59,436 57,405 57,480 55,281 52,574 48,974 49,986 57,723 60,236
CrashesE N N N 103,114 105,030 72,177 74,565 68,752 66,354 66,224 61,451 54,477 57,322 68,783 73,326
Vehicle-miles (millions) 5,629 10,214 9,086 9,557 9,178 9,557 9,906 10,240 9,797 9,920 10,081 10,283 10,584 R10,469 9,529
Rates per 100 million vehicle-milesa                              
Fatalities 57 50 50 34 31 25 25 23 23 22 21 22 R23 R28 33
Injured personsE N N N 882 876 681 600 561 587 557 522 476 472 R551 632
CrashesE N N N 1,079 1,144 755 753 671 677 668 610 530 542 R657 770

KEY: E = estimated; N = data do not exist; R = revised.

a U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) rounds its injury and crash data to the nearest thousand before publishing them, but it calculates injury rates using the unrounded data. NHTSA also calculates fatality and injury rates using vehicle-miles expressed to a higher level of precision than shown here. USDOT, Bureau of Transportation Statistics rounded vehicle-miles to the nearest 100 million in this table.

NOTE

The injury and crash data in this table are from NHTSA's General Estimates System (GES). The data from the GES, which began operation in 1988, are obtained from a nationally representative probability sample selected from all police-reported crashes. The GES sample includes only crashes where a police accident report was completed and the crash resulted in property damage, injury, or death. The resulting figures do not take into account crashes that were not reported to the police or that did not result in property damage. The 1993 National Transportation Statistics (NTS) Compendium and earlier editions illustrated crashes and injury figures estimated by the National Safety Council, which used a different set of methods to arrive at its figures. Thus, the injury and crash figures in this edition of NTS may not be comparable with those found in the Compendium and earlier editions.

SOURCES

Fatalities, injuries, and vehicle-miles:

U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, National Center for Statistics and Analysis, Traffic Safety Facts 2001, DOT HS 809 484 (Washington, DC: December 2002), table 10 and personal communication, Sept. 10, 2002.

Crashes:

U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, National Center for Statistics and Analysis, Fatality Analysis Reporting System Database and General Estimates System Database, personal communication, Sept. 10, 2002.