How dangerous is motocross really?

Bones grow back together ... and when it's your time the reaper doesn't care where or what you're doing.

Most trail riding incidents involve bruised ego's when your buddies are laughing their asses off because you just blew a corner and went head first into a prickly bush.

Over 30+ years racing in SERA i recall two deaths, one guy hit a deer ( non race) And the other had head trauma. Worst Ive had off road is broke legs

My .02 is the jumping part of mx and the racing part of it make it quite a bit more dangerous. One can still get hurt trail riding and playing riding with friends, I have proved it. I don't feel the risks are near as high though.

Depends on your riding, if the trip is your adrenalin than you can ride years without an incident,
if the riding is your adrenalin then you'll probably experience bodily damage. As the reason you
get adrenalin from riding is the danger involved. of course there are always flukes but there are
flukes in all aspects of life. Just depends on how and why you ride. My son virtually grew up riding
the desert. I can't remember a a group trail ride where anyone got hurt. But I do remember going
from good jumping place to good jumping place and on those days we experienced injury.
Just depends on why and how you ride. Same with a car, as a transportation vehicle, pretty safe,
you start racing, drifting, whatever, mistakes get made.

I rode trails and power lines almost all of my childhood. 5- 30 years old. Just normal riding mostly. Once my sons started racing motocross I finally bought me one to ride/race with them. From about 33-43 years old I have been only moto riding/racing. I never broke anything on the trails or powerlines just typical bumps and scratches. In just the last three years riding/racing moto I have had three separate injuries:

1st one was an acl tear - hurt real bad , had surgery and missed 3 months of work. I made a full recovery here.
2nd wreck I broke two ribs, lacerated my spleen and broken right wrist (required surgery). The ribs hurt the worst here but I broke my right wrist (right handed) so life sucked bad. I missed 3 and a half months of work on this one. I made a full recovery.
3rd wreck. I broke one rib, I broke my hip really bad, ruptured my bladder, that was caused by an external oblique muscle getting ripped apart taking the top of the bladder with it. I also had a footpeg impale my left inner thigh. This wreck cost me a week in the hospital (3days in icu). Today is the 4 month anniversary (Dec 21st) and I'm still not back at work and I may never recovery fully. the broken hip stretched my sciatic nerve during the crash and I have very little use of my left foot. I cannot shift gears at all on a motorcycle right now.

These last two wrecks were separated by only 3 weeks of being back at work. So I've basically not worked since accident two happened on aug. 10 2014.

The last two wrecks were also unique in that someone else actually caused the wreck. In wreck two someone wrecked in front of me and I had no where to go but straight into him.
The third wreck was from someone being new to moto (and if you are new please listen to this rule of thumb). and slamming on brakes on the face of a jump and veering sharply left " trying to get out of my way". He was new and heard me coming up behind him and he thought I was approaching from his right when in fact I was on his left. So, in trying to get out of my way he veered left directly into my path. Remember this if new, always hold your line. Let the faster rider find his way around you.

In closing, the trails if just riding are virtually harmless. Moto on the other hand really ups the ante!!