How many people die each year in car accidents compared to motorcycle accidents?

Can't used just plain numbers to justify a position on motorcycle vs automobile safety. More people die in car accidents than motorcycle accidents because there are many, many more cars on the road than motorcycles. A better comparison is the number of deaths as a percentage of automobile drivers and the number of deaths as a percentage of motorcycle riders. Let's resume that all motorcycles were banned. Then the death rate will be 0%. Now all vehicle deaths would be attributed to car drivers. Is your friend going to ban cars next because too many people are dying in car accidents? The problem with using statistics is that you can use them to support ANY position on any subject. If 1,000 people die in motorcycle accidents out of 1,000,000 owners, I can report the safety numbers in two different ways. If I wanted to support the theory that motorcycles are dangerous, I would use the 1,000 deaths figure. 1,000 deaths sounds like a lot of people, and it is. But if I wanted to support the theory that motorcycles are safer, I would use the %age of deaths. 1,000 deaths out of 1,000,000 riders is .001%. .001% is a smaller number than 1,000. Using the 1,000 deaths figure does not take into consideration the total number of motorcycle riders - and most people don't understand statistics. Here is another example. Let's say the sales tax is 5%. That's 5c of every $1.00 spent. Now the government wants to raise the sales tax to 6%. That's only 1c more than you are currently paying. So the pro tax increase forces will key on that 1c increase. But that 1c increase represents a 20% jump in the rate. 20% of 5c = 1c. So the anti-tax people will report that the sales tax will jump 20% (not jump TO 20%, just jump or increase by 20%). Which sounds worse? 1c increase or a 20% increase. In this instance, the %age increase sounds worse where as before in the above motorcycle example, the %age number sounds much bertter.

Although there are many injuries in car accidents, nearly everyone in a car accident wearing a seat belt lives. Deaths are much more likely to happen only if someone is not wearing a seat belt (which is already banned, or should be), is riding a motorcycle, is a pedestrian, or is riding a bicycle. The only reason there are more deaths in car accidents than deaths in motorcycle accidents is that there are more cars than motorcycles.

No way... motorcycles kick ***. You know what should be banned.. stupid drivers that cause accidents. Definitely more accidents occur in vehicles. People who ride bikes are usually more vehicle oriented / better drivers than most people. Its not the vehicle that is dangerous, it is how you drive it. People have the assumption that bikes are dangerous because people like to ride them fast, though they are almost always more careful when riding bikes. Statistics cannot compare because there are too few bikers compared to drivers. You can compare ratios though (percentage of bikers involved in accidents vs percentage of drivers involved.)

More people do get hurt and killed in car accidents than in motorcycle, but you have to keep in mind that there are many, many more people traveling by car than by motorcycle, so of course you'd have more car crashes than motorcycle simply because there are much fewer motorcycles on the road.