USA Today

We are cooked

On par for mainstream coverage and written by those who, in their own words, are experienced in writing about "Deportation policies, firearms policies, gun shops, ATF policies, combat sports IE Boxing and the Olympics.  Perfectly written by soy-boy, risk-avoiding nerds.

Tough read....

Very tough read. But it had me asking questions, too. The article states over the last 25 years, 158 children and teens have tragically passed away while racing, citing 7x more than kids playing football. Which would leave me to assume only roughly 23 of the same have passed away playing football over the last 25 years? 

Honestly, that was a well researched and written article. I was not expecting to see drawings of ruts and whoops in a mainstream media article about motocross.

Obviously the subject matter is bleak but less of a shock to us. I've said for years if actual data was compiled on both fatal injuries and severe life changing injuries (spine, neck, etc) people would open their eyes but I think our sport is just used to seeing it so often at this point which is sad. 

According to the article, roughly 6 minors perish riding dirt bikes each year. Last time I checked, roughly 14 children get ran over and killed by their own school bus each year too. Clearly a child riding a school bus occurs more frequently, so the probability is worse on a bike. Still, if you're worried about saving the most lives, where do you focus your efforts?

I've seen this tragedy first hand multiple times. Never was it negligence, it's just been highly improbable circumstances. A rear fender getting under the chest protector, a riders bike hitting them etc. The article makes it sound like all this could be avoided by common sense precautions but all the tracks I've frequented already do that. 12 children in 25 years is 12 too many, but that's how many they identified as having died from collisions in open practice. That in my opinion is the most preventable occurrence, but based on the numbers it doesn't account for a significant percentage. Government involvement isn't the solution, it will just make safety gear more expensive and riders will flock to more remote areas where emergency medical care is less accessible.

The solution lies in the adaptation of advancements in safety gear. The industry has taken great strides by introducing neck braces, better helmets, and most recently the self inflating torso protection. Buy the gear, wear the gear, if you see something unsafe at the track speak up without being initially confrontational, and never stop pounding basic rules of safety to your kids like how to get on and off the track or what to do after a jump if you crash.

25 Yrs = 158 deaths on a Motocross Track? Safer than public schools in the US over the last 25 years.

I think its time we stick to Crusty Demon's for your kids homeschool education.

I believe that's by rate.

Around 20 kids per year die playing football, but participation is obviously a lot higher.

Their points are not all wrong, but I am sure many idiots will flame away with the old "it's a dangerous sport"  as if that means we should not try to improve or hold tracks to a higher standard.   I came on this board posting ideas for safety improvements back in 2011 and after yet all that happened was, I got attacked for it.   Yes, even DC attacked my comments of me for wanting safety related items such as lights, track equipment moved away from tracks, better track design, better track prep, and so much more.   Myself I have been injured for the past two years straight due to poor track operations and it is frustrating to watch the sport you love go this way.   The sport can't be perfectly safe just as football can't but, have we made improvements really?     

I was watching Youtube videos of some Gopro from tracks last night and it made me cringe when I noticed there were no flaggers at all!  It was a track I had never been to and lots of riders on the track with big 100ft jumps yet no flaggers.   Makes me shake my head and say, no thanks.

I also think that is misleading a bit too, if you are racing dirt bikes you have 100% participation.

A high school football team may have 20 kids on the team that rarely see a snap but they are counted into that total number of participants value.  

Unfortunately, the future odds of the parents saying yes when little Johnny is asking his parents for his first dirt bike just went down a lot.

Too many parents will have that headline imprinted in memory, and when the day comes to decide on getting a dirt bike the parents will use that article as proof that it is "too dangerous". 

I got hurt way more on my BMX bike than my MX bikes as a kid. No one wants to ban BMX bikes, yet.

The new generation just wants to wrap their kid in bubble wrap and never let them try anything other than "safe" sports. Like videogames.... ):

Can you expand on the incidents you experienced with your injuries related to track operations? I had a friend that was seriously injured because the tractor pulled out on the track behind a blind jump while the track was open for riding. He came over the jump and landed on the tractor. 

I fear the insurance companies will only read the headline.

Decent article,  a little biased with their statistical comparison but I give them credit for including comments from Ping and others, like this one:

On the bright side, it's nice to see the AMA being held accountable.  The AMA declined to share their data, obviously because they have none 😆.
They want to be THE motorcycling organization without doing any of the work.

I've been called a pussy and I don't care, but there should not be huge rutted jumps because of overwatering and prepping too deep. Nice rut berms in corners (to an extent) are part of what makes motocross fun, but even that is being over done. MX will never be a safe sport, never has been and never will be. Sports in general will hurt you, but they are still all about those "Friday Night Lights" especially here in the South. If we don't get a handle on it, the government will and it won't be pretty.

Fair article. Most of their points have been made on here many times. Not much new info in there but the number of deaths is higher than I'm guessing most of us realize. 

Don't complain about legislation and regulation if the sport itself can't even get on the same page with mixed practices, flaggers, medics, etc..... those football deaths would catch up in a hurry if they told kids to go practice against pros.

There's nothing inconsistent about advocating for safety standards while also limiting liability for those who abide by them. The article gets close to criticizing AMA for doing that. 

United States data

In the US, 1,129 children aged 14 and under died in traffic crashes in 2022, and an estimated 500 children die daily on roads globally. While US child traffic fatalities decreased by 6% from 2021 to 2022, the numbers highlight that motor vehicle crashes remain a leading cause of death for children. 

Daily: Approximately 500 children die every day on the world's roads. 

We are screwed when our "Governing Body" (AMA - Tim Cotter) go in front of a state governing body (Massachusetts in the story) and says we need MORE GOVERNMENT REGULAION...............WTF, AMA, that's the LAST thing you need, more Government involvement. They just want to shut dirt bikes down, you moran. AMA seems to me to be using this story to try and make EVERY track an AMA track, in a money grab.  

That might be their goal, but doesn't have to be for nefarious reasons. 

If the legislation they're advocating for is for things they are already doing, it's just an attempt to make everyone live up to the same standard, which they likely believe gives them ground to stand on with insurers and regulators when they read stories like this one. The AMA is right to participate in the discussion if it's happening anyway. Last thing you want is stuff being written into law by people who know nothing about the sport and don't care what happens to it.

This is a heartbreaking story, and Ping is right that we need to get out of the "too bad for them ... next race" mentality.  A lot of the issues the article focuses on (obstacles near track, mixed-age practices, insufficient/untrained/unqualified flaggers, lack of qualified medical personnel) are no-brainers and should be fixed immediately.

We all love this sport, but we are going to lose it as we know it if we don't respectfully begin having conversations with race promoters, track owners, sanctioning bodies, etc. about cleaning up some of this stuff.

This will not be a popular view, but I don't think young grade school kids should be competing on what was designed as a track for adults.  Let them ride and race on a small, contained, low obstacle course with required training before they compete in their first race and small numbers of kids in each moto.  Grade schoolers launching 65s off of unforgiving, 70-foot jumps is just insane.

If we don't fix this, someone will do it for us, and we're not going to like it.

At least the article wrapped around at the end to highlighting that the woman who lost her sister at Loretta's enjoys riding with her kids. We all WANT to come home in 1 piece after a day of riding with friends and family. 

Perfectly worded. Nice. 

In ball and stick sports, just as in MX, most of the time spent and injuries may not be in actual competition. That's kinda fractional over participation. The high school football kid who didn't see a single game snap is probably still playing 10 hours of football per week, which would put them on the far right side of the motocross participation bell curve.

Also, I'd argue competition versus participation rates are probably significantly higher in ball-and-stick sports, since they have playing-time guidelines in place and regulated for recreational youth athletes. In MX, anyone who signs the waiver can go to the practice track.

We've dealt with some recent deaths/injuries where the kid was not a racer and barely a rider.

To suggest that motocross is more unsafe than football simply by using sheer deaths directly caused by the respective sports is lazy. More and more information comes out every year on the effects of years of tackle football on the brain. With how many boys grow up playing football, there's probably thousands of men in our country who unknowingly suffer from the effects daily.

To some degree, we can police our own here. Clearly youth football has its issues.

DC “attacked you”…? Can you repost some of these exchanges so we can better understand what you’re talking about?

I see things at tracks that could be a helluva lot safer. From fence-lines (wooden and steel posts, etc) to large pipes, poles and other obstacles being way too close to the racing line/race track.

Yet, when I’ve discussed these things w/ DC …I’ve never even had an argument. The dude discusses things and looks into that can done. 

There will always be risks in motocross, and we all know that. There will still be fatalities even if sensible safety protocols are in place and all safety protocols are followed. But it's tough to argue against the the claim that there shouldn't be unnecessary risks from tracks not having sensible safety protocols or not following their own safety protocols. There's inherent risk and then there's unnecessary risk. We can accept the former (which you must if you ride) while working to reduce the latter. Hopefully, if we police ourselves appropriately the government and other external bodies need not interfere. A lot of it is common sense and it's stuff we know by don't always enforce. If we don't enforce sensible safety protocols, then we might be forced to deal with externally imposed protocols that aren't sensible. 

The tracks I go to in NJ have the highest safety standards I’ve seen, and hit all the concerns mentioned in that article. They check chest protectors, split up practice, kids track for 50s and under, no trees or machinery in the way, and a lot of flaggers.

"She later found out the assigned medical director for the race, James McGee, did not help Ashlee because he was lining up for his own race, set to begin minutes after the women’s event."

Wow!

Yes, two different issues.  One was a track that put the track exit on the landing of the finish line jump on the right side.  So, a novice rider decided to exit the track by moving from the left of the track to the right side of the jump to exit and I was jumping on the right side. Did not end well for me.   The other was a race where they decided to have two gate drops and they put the women on gate one and experts on gate drop two.  Well within half a lap myself and the leaders had lapped 7 women, and one woman cut us off leading to a big crash. The track then changed this and split it up for moto 2.   Just stupid things that everyone knew were wrong but yet the tracks did not care enough.   

The writing has been on the wall for a while now, why do you think there are only a few places to get track insurance ? In the near future you will have to be 18 to ride at a track, no more minors no matter what waiver you are willing to sign.