Travelling on a motorcycle carries a much higher risk of death or injury than driving the same distance in a car. In 2006 US motorcyclists had a risk of a fatal crash that was 35 times greater than that of passenger cars, based on 390 motorcyclist deaths per billion vehicle miles and 11.1 car fatalities for that distance.[2] In 2016 this rate was 28 times that for automobiles.[3]

When looking at all reported accidents regardless of injuries, the accident rate for motorcycles in the US in 2016 was 6.31 per million miles driven, significantly higher than the rate of 3.28 accidents per million miles driven for cars and similar vehicles.[4] However the primary reason for the higher rates of injuries and fatalities among motorcyclists is that cars provide more effective crash protection. For automobiles, 31% of crashes result in injury but only 0.29% of accidents are fatal. For motorcycles 78.3% of reported crashes result in injury and 4.24% of crashes are fatal.[5][6]

Statistics from other countries confirm the US data. The UK Department for Transport indicated that motorcycles have 16 times the rate of serious injuries, people either killed or injured, compared to cars.[7] UK data for casualties, i.e. the total of all injuries and fatalities combined, showed 6,043 casualties per billion miles traveled on motorcycles in 2017, 25.4 times the rate of 238 per billion miles travelled for cars.[8] In the UK in 2017 there were 116.9 motorcyclist fatalities per billion passenger miles, 61.5 times the rate of 1.9 fatalities per billion passenger miles for occupants of cars.[8] UK data shows a wider disparity between cars and motorcycles than US data in part because it is based on fatalities per passenger mile while US data is based on fatalities per vehicle mile.