I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

Executive Report by John Reblin

The State Meeting is just around the corner, being held at the Clarion Hotel in Baraboo October 8-9-and 10^th. Hopefully, you will be there to help us celebrate this organization’s trip around the sun, along with seeing who is getting an award this year for things they did to help this organization to keep moving forward. Some time and effort go into hosting an event like this, and of course we lean on our volunteers to help us get through it. We also have some by-law changes that need to be voted on, mostly cleaning up the language. Look for more information on the by-law changes and what is going on in Baraboo that weekend in the newsletter. Make your reservations now if you are planning to attend!!

So, throughout the course of the week, the days are a little too short, between work, ABATE of Wisconsin and spending time doing things around the house. Trying to spend a little time with the Little Flower gets to be a little hit or miss. The Little Flower has her work things, along with her gardens, and other projects to fill her day. I make an effort to do things along with her.

What does that entail, you may ask? Well, we usually make supper, yes, it is supper not dinner, together. Depending on what we are making dictates how much I am able to help. Sometimes it just may be that I am putting things away or setting the table. Other times it is all me in the slicing and dicing department, boiling some noodles and jazzing up some spaghetti sauce with onion and pepper. Then we do the dishes together and go on into the evening from there. It is not much, but it is time we can talk, laugh and share ideas, some of which move forward and are just dreams tucked away for a future day. An exciting date night is the two of us at the Piggly Wiggly looking for something that will make a few meals, different than what we have been having, and something that won’t break the bank.

It’s not much but it is something we work at together to get mundane jobs done with little effort and we have a good time doing it. If every night I came home, would have to make dinner, wash up all the dishes, and then do all the shopping every week, it would get tiring, I would get mad, and there would be some changes. By helping out, I can make suggestions on meals, help out to add a little extra flavoring or some spice, or maybe add pineapple to the pizza. I haven’t done that yet, but it sounds intriguing.

What does me helping out at home have to do with motorcycles? We need to start working together to reduce motorcycle fatalities this year and in the future. I have been doing some digging around and talking with some of the people at the Wisconsin DOT to figure out what is going on this and last year as far as fatalities go. As you have been hearing, last year with the 112 motorcycle fatalities, we were running 40 percent over the rolling 10-year average. That is quite a jump, and some thought was that it may be due to Covid, with other things seeing large increases in numbers. We all kind of thought things would settle down this year, but we are running over last year’s numbers, some weeks by 6-7 percent, one week we were 50 percent over last year at the same time. So, it is a little nerve wracking waiting for the weekly fatality totals.

I was able to get some numbers of what happened last year. I know when we read about a motorcycle fatality on social media, or we are talking to others, we just shake our heads and say everyone needs to put down their phone and drive. But that is not always the case. The latest total number I saw for 2020 were 112 fatalities after few were removed for some reason or another. It is a little confusing, but the DOT has rules that dictate what is counted and what is not counted.

Out of the total number of fatalities 65 were single motorcycle crashes. There was no other motor vehicle involved. Pretty scary right? Now to be fair with this comparison 10 can be removed from the 65 because those involved hitting an animal, in this case the 10 hit a deer. So, 55 out of the 112, basically half of our fatalities, did not involve another real reason to be a fatality except the rider did something wrong, made a poor decision or for reasons we don’t know could not complete the ride safely.

What did they do wrong? Well 27 percent out of the 65 did not have, for whatever reason, a valid motorcycle license. It could be they never went in and got one or… they may have lost if for a behavioral issue like OWI, or some other traffic violations.

Out of those 65 single motorcycle fatalities, 38 percent are suspected of riding under the influence of alcohol. That number may go up or down as police reports are finished up and test results completed.

We still have the 57 other fatalities that we have not gotten all the information on, but many of those crashes were riders making poor decisions or not able to control their motorcycle, keeping it in their lane of travel. Things like following too closely and hitting the car in front of them, hitting the motorcycle next to them losing control, or crossing the centerline hitting oncoming traffic.

We all need to work together, to urge training, to mentor other riders, and to make sure our friends and other riders are not swinging their leg over the motorcycle after having too much fun in the bar, or maybe doing some other type of chemical fun. If these numbers stay the way they are in the next year or two, there will be laws drafted that we won’t like.

Many of us don’t like the idea of autonomous cars, but I am seeing where motorcycles are starting to offer adaptive cruise control, so it slows down as you get too close to the vehicle in front of you, and if there is a vehicle in your blind spot. Is this a road we want to go down?

When out on the road, talk to your fellow riders, share some tips, tell them to park the bike when having “to much fun”, and hopefully we can work together to reduce the fatal errors we are seeing on our bikes.

John