The American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) looks at the philosophy and agenda of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and how they've created and manipulated studies to produce the conclusions needed at the time. You'll understand why information coming from NHTSA, the IIHS, and insurance companies like AAA Michigan can never be accepted at face value.
American Motorcyclist - February 1988
IIHS Target: Motorcyclists
They were the force behind Sen. John Danforth's "Motorcycle Safety Act of 1987." They claim to be committed to improving motorcycle safety, but their history shows that they're only involved when it serves their own interests, or those of the huge insurance industry. And they've gone on record with an opinion to ban all motorcycles.
"They" are the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). And "they" are the dark cloud lurking behind the silver lining in our victory over Danforth's bike ban.
While Danforth got most of the notoriety from the proposed superbike legislation, it was the IIHS that was pulling the strings in the background. The Insurance Institute supplied information and videotape footage to Danforth's staff members that appeared to make sportbikes the culprit in a purported increase in motorcycle fatalities. And in his conversations with the AMA, Danforth indicated that he based his legislation on that information.
In fact, the Danforth legislation was only one part of a carefully orchestrated campaign against sportbikes on the part of the IIHS. And that campaign is still moving forward despite the setback it suffered when Danforth decided to abandon his legislation after consultation with the AMA.
What's the purpose of this campaign? Consider this: Albert Benjamin Kelley, former vice president of the IIHS, seriously suggested in 1975 that one option to eliminate motorcycle injuries would be to eliminate motorcycles. The public outrage over that comment may have softened the institute's public statements since, but that doesn't mean that the group's agenda has changed.
So what is the IIHS, and why does this group have it in for motorcyclists?
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, founded in 1959, represents itself as an independent research and information organization concerned with saving lives on the nation's highways. As one IIHS publication put it, the institute tries to "help lift from the country the horrible burden of motor vehicle deaths and injuries."
That's a noble goal, but the fact is that the IIHS has other interests to serve. You see, the money to run the institute comes from insurance companies. And insurance companies, like all businesses, are interested in profits.
Thomas Morrill, former board chairman of the institute, explained the relationship between research and profits in a speech made in 1971:
"Any means of reducing the losses entering the insurance system lowers our (the insurance companies') costs, reduces discontent among our customers, and broadens our markets to additional economic levels. The crash loss reduction efforts of automobile insurers, which are growing in scope and effectiveness, are held together by the glue of self-interest - and I know of no stronger glue. There is every reason for the insurers to assert their roles in crash loss reduction; it is difficult to conceive of any other form of private enterprise in which the same congruity of public and private interest exists."
In other words, what's good for the insurance industry is good for the country, right? Unless you happen to enjoy something that the IIHS considers unsafe - like participating in any activity that includes risk.
The AMA first came into contact with the IIHS in the '70s, when mandatory helmet laws were the hot topic in motorcycle safety. The AMA was successfully campaigning against a federal blackmail system under which the states had to adopt mandatory helmet laws or lose highway funds. The IIHS, meanwhile, supported the federal blackmail power.
Since then, the AMA has developed a comprehensive approach to motorcycle safety that includes support for stricter licensing laws (and stricter enforcement of existing laws), tougher testing, rider-education programs funded entirely by motorcyclists, drug and alcohol awareness programs, and programs to make drivers more alert to motorcyclists.
On the other hand, the IIHS has stuck with single-issue, equipment-related approaches to motorcycle safety. The institute continues to push for mandatory helmet laws, and campaigned in favor of lights-on laws for motorcycles. Now, the IIHS has decided that sportbikes - what the institute refers to as "race-design bikes" - are the obstacle to improving motorcycle safety.
Surprisingly, the IIHS has been responsible for one bit of fairly good research on the subject of motorcycle safety, and the style of the work contrasts sharply with more current research sponsored by the institute. In an IIHS-supported study released in two stages in 1975, Dr. Jess Kraus, then with the University of California in Davis, looked at motorcycle accidents during the year 1970 in Sacramento County, California, and came up with some interesting considerations.
First and foremost, Kraus found that, "The highest injury rates were observed for male motorcycle drivers 15 to 19 years of age, with a peak rate occurring for those 18." In fact, a chart from that study shows that an 18-year-old male is 15 times more likely to be injured in a motorcycle accident than a 45-year-old male. Kraus called age "the single most significant factor related to motorcycle crash injuries," adding, "The significant number of younger male drivers involved in injury-producing motorcycle collisions suggests that perhaps age is indicative of other variables such as differential exposure, lack of driving experience, use of alcohol while driving, and other related factors."
Kraus also discovered that accident risks were highest for motorcyclists with less than one year of experience, for those who use their motorcycles more than the norm and for those with the poorest driving records. Oddly, Kraus' report indicates a higher risk for riders who "claimed to have received motorcycle drivers' training." However, this study was conducted before the Motorcycle Safety Foundation had established its highly regarded training courses, so it's hard to say what form that "training" may have taken.
In performing that study, Kraus tracked down injured motorcyclists through police reports, hospital records and death certificates. He then sent out questionnaires to the motorcyclists to get more information about their riding and personal habits. Near the end of the report, he explains the need for that diversified approach. Other researchers, Kraus says, had "suggested that accident reports form police agencies are an unreliable source of identification of all persons injured in motorcycle collisions. Our present study supports this conclusion, for less than 39 percent of all injured motorcyclists were identified using only official police reports."
All in all, that early Kraus study did a lot to improve understanding of the nature of motorcycle accidents. But it apparently had little effect on IIHS policy. Presented with this complex group of factors contributing to motorcycle accidents, the institute took the easy way out, deciding that helmet laws were the answer.
Why ignore such worthwhile data? To understand that, you have to remember the political climate of that era. During 1975, the U.S. Congress was debating a bill that would eventually end the federal blackmail power over the states when it came to mandatory helmet laws. We can only speculate about what was going on at the IIHS, which had been firmly in favor of helmet laws. Certainly, the organization saw support for its position eroding. And just as certainly, the institute needed a study that would lend credibility to its position. Conveniently enough, somewhere among the many factors Kraus considered (several steps down from age and experience), he found that helmets helped prevent injuries.
For an organization that was deep in a struggle to retain mandatory helmet laws, the Kraus study wasn't perfect. It included too many elements that didn't lend themselves to simple legislative answers. But it was available, and apparently that was good enough.
A look at the IIHS' current "Selected Bibliography" shows how important the helmet-law debate was to that organization. Out of 360 studies, research papers and magazine articles listed, all of them supported by the IIHS, you won't find one mention of motorcycle safety prior to 1975.
In that year, while Congress was debating helmet laws, the IIHS suddenly discovered motorcycles. Three IIHS-sponsored studies, all featuring Dr. Jess Kraus as one of the principal researchers, surfaced just in time to shore up the institute's position.
As the year wound down, it became obvious that Congress would eliminate the federal blackmail power. In November, just a few weeks before the final vote went in favor of the AMA's position, Kelley made his famous statement concerning a possible ban of all motorcycles. His comments, made at a meeting of the American Association for Automotive Medicine, included one last pitch for retention of mandatory helmet laws through federal blackmail. Then, perhaps realizing that the helmet-law fight was a losing cause, Kelley raised the option of banning some or all motorcycles.
He defended that statement a few months later in an article entitled "Motorcycles and Public Apathy," that was published in the American Journal of Public Health. In a commentary that sounds very much like sour grapes, Kelley defended any amount of government meddling in the sport of motorcycling:
"Since it shares in paying the costs of the mayhem, the public at large has a right to take steps to reduce it, just as organized cyclists have a right to argue (with facts rather than firebrands, it is hoped) against such steps. The cyclists are certainly exercising their right; the same cannot be said of the public"
In other words, we motorcyclists had been a little too successful in our lobbying efforts, and we obviously couldn't be trusted to decide these matters for ourselves.
Interestingly, Kelley's original paper to the medical group is no longer included in the Insurance Institute's "Selected Bibliography." Maybe it's become too much of an embarrassment even for the IIHS, or maybe the IIHS would prefer that its agenda for motorcycling not be stated so openly.
All of this is pretty ancient history to motorcyclists. Since those days, the AMA and other industry groups have gone on to promote motorcycle safety through a number of positive programs. Harry Hurt has conducted his landmark study of motorcycle accidents. The Motorcycle Safety Foundation has established and refined its beginning and experienced rider courses, and has prepared comprehensive motorcycle skills tests that have been adopted in many states. The AMA has been successful in helping to get self-funded rider-education programs started in 29 states and has put together its Ride Straight campaign against irresponsible alcohol use.
But for most of the past 13 years, the IIHS appears to have been stuck in a time warp. Of the 10 motorcycle studies sponsored by the IIHS between 1976 and 1986, five deal with exclusively with mandatory helmet laws. Another pair of reports deals with daytime headlight use by motorcyclists, an issue that was resolved even before the helmet question when manufacturers started selling motorcycles with the headlight permanently on. And another study concerned, you guessed it, both helmets and daytime headlight use.
Subtract those eight research papers and you're left with just two studies that have tackled any of the issues raised by Kraus back in 1975. Both of these concern motorcycle riding and alcohol use.
What that means is that 13 years after its own researcher told the IIHS that age and riding experience were the key factors in motorcycle accidents, the institute has never once followed up on those elements - either in studies or in IIHS policy statements.
So why worry about an organization so rooted in the past that it hasn't tackled anything new in more than a decade? Because, as we told you at the beginning, the IIHS is at it again, and this time it's found a new scapegoat: sportbikes.
This whole episode should give motorcyclists a feeling of deja vu. Once again, the IIHS is proposing a simple equipment-oriented solution to the complex question of motorcycle safety. And once again, the institute is orchestrating that campaign with a study by Dr. Jess Kraus, now with the University of California at Los Angeles.
Kraus' latest study is called "Motorcycle Design and Crash Injuries in California, 1985." Two months ago, we examined it in detail, but some of what we said then bears repeating.
What Kraus did was loosely group all road motorcycles into four general categories: touring street, dual-purpose and something he calls "race-design." He then looked at California police reports for 1985 and totaled up the number of accidents that involved serious injuries or fatalities for each class. Finally, he compared his accident figures to state registration numbers and decided that "race-design" bikes were the most dangerous, followed by street bikes, dual-purpose bikes and touring bikes.
The study has several obvious flaws. For instance, Kraus claims, "Virtually all of the motorcycle models could be unambiguously classified into these categories." And yet, in the short list of motorcycles included in a table at the end, we find the Kawasaki GPz550, a competent production racer, is listed among street bikes, while Honda's 700cc Nighthawk S, with no racetrack history to recommend it, is included among the "race-design" bikes.
Why? We're not sure, but a little bit of mathematical work showed us that including the GPz figures in the "race-design" section would have eliminated most of the difference Kraus claims to have found in crash rates between styles of motorcycle in that displacement class. And that result comes just from working with a few examples he lists in in the report. We have no way of knowing how Kraus classified (or mis-classified) hundreds of other motorcycle models.
And there's more. You may remember Dr,. Kraus telling us back in 1975 that other researchers had "suggested that accident reports from police agencies are an unreliable source of identification of all persons injured in motorcycle collisions." You may remember Kraus telling us, "Our present study supports this conclusion..."
Guess what? Thirteen years later, Kraus has ignored his own findings. This new study relies solely on that "unreliable source": police reports.
You may also remember Kraus telling us 13 years ago that age was "the single most significant factor" in motorcycle accidents. You may remember his concerns about the role of rider experience, number of miles ridden, poor driving history, alcohol and even rider training is causing motorcycle accidents.
So what did these important factors play in his latest study? Exactly none. Even though he had information about the ages of accident victims right there on the police reports, Kraus either chose not to bother with it or was instructed by the institute to ignore it. Even though it would have been easy to find out if the motorcycle riders involved in the crashes had been ticket for driving while intoxicated, no one checked those figures.
And therein lies the difference between the IIHS' current campaign against sportbikes and its attempts to hold on to mandatory helmet laws in the '70s. Back then, the IIHS was saddled with a study that was too complex. While the institute was arguing in favor of a simple, equipment-oriented fix for motorcycle safety, its own study was demonstrating that only a comprehensive approach involving human factors would make a difference.
The IIHS obviously learned from that experience. There are no bothersome ambiguities in this new study. The IIHS knew exactly what target (and perhaps even what results) it wanted to hit, and it got ignored everything that might have gotten in the way.
However, even in this simplistic study there are indications of an underlying reality that the IIHS chooses to ignore. The news release accompanying copies of the study says, "Racing-style cycles are being marketed with emphasis on high speed, rapid acceleration and aerodynamic styling."If those were, indeed, the problem areas that separate "race-design" motorcycles from other bikes, then you would certainly expect that the raciest - the ones with the highest speeds and most rapid acceleration - would also be dangerous.
Not true. What the study appears to show is that motorcycles in the 576-675cc class are far and away the most dangerous, whether they are "race-design" or "street design" machines. Bigger bikes, those in the 675-775cc or 776cc and over classes, are substantially safer. In fact, the "race-design" bikes in the 675-775cc class end up safer than the "street-design" bikes in the 576-675cc class.
Somewhere in all of this is a faint echo from 13 years ago. The 600cc class has become a popular entry-level class for new, young motorcyclists. And back in 1975, Dr. Jess Kraus told us that age and riding experience were among the most important factors in motorcycle crashes. But, of course, Kraus didn't bother to check the age or riding experience of those 600cc riders who were injured - that wasn't the target.
Harry Hurt, who works across town from Jess Kraus at the University of Southern California , built upon Kraus' early work in a study known as the Hurt Report that was released in 1979. Even though the study was not sponsored by the IIHS, Brian O'Neill, the institute's current president, has called it, "the most comprehensive, in-depth study of motorcycle accidents."
Hurt's study, which went into much greater detail than anything before or since, also found that age and riding experience were among the key factors in motorcycle crashes. And it pinned down a number of other elements, including the fact that motorcycle accidents are most commonly caused by a car turning left in front of the motorcyclist.
Hurt says that Kraus' latest study is "fatally flawed" because it fails to consider any factors other than the number of motorcycles registered. It doesn't compare the number of crashes to the number of miles ridden by the accident victim. In other words, a rider who travels 20,000 miles a year and has an accident - regardless of who causes it - would be considered more dangerous than a rider who travels 200 miles a year and doesn't have an accident.
We asked O'Neill about Hurt's criticism. "I would say that Harry Hurt doesn't know much about epidemiology (the study of the causes of injury and death) if he thinks that is a fatal flaw," O'Neill responded.
He added, "This is the standard basis for studies of this kind involving passenger vehicles and trucks."
We decided to check that. So we went to the National Safety Council to see how they do their research on automobile accidents. Guess what? All of their figures are in accidents per vehicle mile traveled. They don't even list any data in the form of accidents per registered vehicle. And Alan Hoskin, manager of the statistics department for the agency told us, "Vehicle mileage is the most common data used in these surveys."
The problem is that mileage data is harder to track down, and it appears that the IIHS didn't want to be bothered with the extra work.
Why does the IIHS keep pursuing these simplistic solutions to complex issues? It all comes down to a matter of philosophy. You see, Brian O'Neill believes that machines exert some type of irresistible control over humans. As an example, he speculated about two 40-year-old men, one of whom drives a station wagon and the other who drives a Corvette.
"I strongly believe," O'Neill told us, "that if you switch those two drivers around and make the Corvette driver drive the station wagon and station wagon driver drive the Corvette, you wouldn't reverse the situation (of which car is more dangerous). I don't think the Corvette driver in the station wagon would have as good a record as the guy who originally wanted the station wagon, the same as I don't think the guy in the Corvette would have as bad a record as the guy who chose the Corvette, but I think they would go in that direction."
In other words, sports cars (and sportbikes) somehow entice their operators to travel more recklessly, and the solution is to eliminate the machines.
Fans of sports cars ought to pay attention, because O'Neill wasn't just using that as an isolated example. During November, he and Ed Youngblood, president of the AMA, offered opposing points of view on the issue of sportbikes in editorials sent to the 90 Gannett newspapers across the country. In his editorial, O'Neill noted, "Motorcycle manufacturers aren't alone, either. Automakers are producing and marketing increasing numbers of cars with performance levels inappropriate for public roads."
The philosophy that says that one group should decide what's inappropriate for the rest of us stems from what O'Neill refers to as "the public health approach." What that means is looking at deaths and injuries from an overview and figuring out ways to protect society from those deaths and injuries. Quite often, the public health approach finds that the way to eliminate deaths and injuries is to eliminate the activity associated with them.
If people hurt themselves hang gliding, well, society can get along just fine without hang gliders, so let's get rid of them. If people hurt themselves in Corvettes, we can get along just fine without Corvettes. And if people hurt themselves on motorcycles, well, you get the idea. Of course, this theory ignores the benefits to public health that accrue in a free society from recreation, risk, and personal enjoyment.
The important point to remember is that the public health approach as pursued by the IIHS isn't interested in making you a safer motorcyclist. From a public health standpoint, rider education and motorist awareness programs, simply perpetuate a public health problem: motorcycling. The IIHS's public health solution is to eliminate the problem.
And that's exactly where the IIHS is still headed. As O'Neill told us, "We are going to continue to look at this issue. We are talking to Jess Kraus about some other things we might do and some other things we might look at."
Concerning superbikes, we asked?
"Superbikes and other bikes," he said.
Does anybody out there remember Ben Kelley?
Read current American Motorcyclist articles at http://www.ama-cycle.org/
For further insight on the philosophy and agenda of insurance companies and safetycrats in our government, see the June 8, 2001 MRF Report: Insurance Advocates Slam Education as Risky.
ABATE of Michigan, Inc. : Region 15 : Wayne County - http://www.atch.com/abate/