{"id":682,"date":"2009-04-15T08:21:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-15T12:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/04\/15\/easy-riders-or-ambulance-fodder\/"},"modified":"2009-04-15T08:21:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T12:21:00","slug":"easy-riders-or-ambulance-fodder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/04\/15\/easy-riders-or-ambulance-fodder\/","title":{"rendered":"Easy riders or ambulance fodder?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Adirondack Daily Enterprise <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com\/page\/content.detail\/id\/505977.html?nav=5008\">has a story today<\/a> about a motorcycle crash out near Paul Smiths College.  The rider was medevac&#8217;d by helicopter to a hospital.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>State police were not able to give the biker\u2019s name at the scene, but Trooper Eric Mendelsohn said the man\u2019s injuries appeared to be mostly \u201cfacial road rash.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is the season when we&#8217;ll see one or two motorcycle accident reports a week in the North Country &#8212; some of them truly horrific.<\/p>\n<p>Last summer, I reported on the fact that motorcycle touring is big business and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northcountrypublicradio.org\/news\/story\/11723\/motorcycle-touring-brings-big-business-accidents-to-north-country\">dangerous business<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s an excerpt from a brochure issued by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nhtsa.dot.gov\/people\/injury\/pedbimot\/motorcycle\/motosafety.html\">Motorcycle Safety Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Motorcycle fatalities represent approximately five percent of all highway fatalities each year, yet motorcycles represent just two percent of all registered vehicles in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>One of the main reasons motorcyclists are killed in crashes is because the motorcycle itself provides virtually no protection in a crash.<\/p>\n<p>For example, approximately 80 percent of reported motorcycle crashes result in injury or death; a comparable figure for automobiles is about 20 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My concern with the motorcycle touring culture isn&#8217;t that people choose to ride &#8212; obviously it&#8217;s a joy to thousands of people and this is a free country.<\/p>\n<p>My worry is that the motorcycle industry markets these machines aggressively to people who are underprepared and underskilled&#8230;and often poorly informed about the risks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Adirondack Daily Enterprise has a story today about a motorcycle crash out near Paul [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}