Wisconsin Motorcyclists' Handbook - Wisconsin Department Of: Fill & Download for Free

Question: “Are motorcycles safe in the snow?”Do you want an answer from a motorcyclist who knows something about it?For several years while I attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison and was posted at Fort Campbell’s Army Base in Kentucky I had a motorcycle as my only means of transportation and was a four season motorcyclist. I rode a motorcycle in the snow…a LOT!The bike looked like this. It was a 200 cc Suzuki X5 Invader with five gears and a 2-cycle motor producing 21 horsepower with a 7,500 rpm redline.Can motorcycles be ridden in the snow? Yes, definitely. But it takes a lot more skill than riding on clean dry pavement. Every mistake you make will be amplified. Any lack of forethought and any lack of smoothness will put you into a slide. Riding on snow and ice is a good way to learn what motorcycling skills you have to improve.It is extremely helpful if, before attempting to ride a motorcycle on snow, you have already been taught and learned how to confidently drive a car on snow and ice. I mean that you know how to do that so well that when it snows you delight in finding an iced over empty parking lot where you can have fun by repeatedly putting your car into slides and catching it. To ride a motorcycle safely on snow and ice you have to think of it as fun rather than dangerous.I was taught, when I first learned how to drive, how to drive a car on the ice on frozen Wisconsin lakes. We practiced how to purposely put cars into skids on ice and catch them. These cars were often VW Beetles which had the weight of their engines hanging out behind the rear wheels. Because of their rear weight bias, VW Beetles were easy to put into skids by popping the center mounted hand brake lever. We would learn just how fast you could drive in a decreasing radius circle before the rear end slid out and then learn how to catch thae slide smoothy without overcorrecting and without putting the car into a spin.To ride a motorcycle safely in snow and on ice you need those skills. You have to be able to feel, almost intuitively, small changes in tire to road adhesion and chassis dynamics that occur just before a skid starts. And you have to know how to delicately and subtilely stop or control the skid before the laws of physics take you beyond the point where you will be able to correct it.Doing that requires a LOT of experience…enough that the complex of perceptions and just the right level of response are imprinted in your reptilian brain and are performed autonomically. For, in a slide on a motorcycle you do not have enough time to figure out “OK, what is happening and what do I do next?”. And, unlike in a car, you cannot simply slam on the brakes or forcefully turn the steering wheel!I still vividly remember a ride home from the base on a beautiful bright winter day in Fort Campbell when, after having revved the bike up to near its red line, I saw the glare from the surface of a long patch of black ice in a tree shaded section of the road ahead of me. Had I done anything abruptly, had I panicked, I would have put the bike hard into a slide and the ditch. I had enough experience to ride the bike delicately with my fingertips and all of my senses, thereby avoiding a crash. Riding a motorcycle in winter does have its dangers and, therefore, has to be done intelligently.There are things that you can do to enhance your winter snow and ice motorcycling experience and safety. The first is to fit a wind screen to the bike. My bike did not have one. And I can assure you that you want one! After riding in a wet Kentucky snow storm back to our married couples’ base housing the front of my field jacket and field pants would be covered with a two inch snow pack making me look like a Yeti. I would have to wipe the snow pack off of my face shield with my glove at every intersection. A wind screen would direct much of that snow away from you.You can, and should, also fit winter tires to your motorcycle.These not only have a tread pattern better suited to riding on snow and ice and wet surfaces but they have a rubber compound that is much grippier under those conditions and remains resilient at cold temperatures. There are studded motorcycle tires available. But those are really designed for competitive motorcycle sports, not general winter riding.And I know some motorcyclists who live in the upper midwest who continue riding through the winter months by fitting side cars to their bikes.There are also heated grips and heated seats and heated gloves and jackets and pants and socks that plug into your motorcycle’s electrical system that make winter motorcycling safer by making you more comfortable.Are motorcycles safe in the snow? Well, they ARE motorcycles. But with training, skill, and experience and the proper equipment they can be ridden in snow. And, if you enjoy developing skills and are already a very good driver, riding a motorcycle in snow can be a lot of fun. And because riding on snow and ice will amplify any mistake and thereby force a motorcyclist to learn how to read road surfaces and understand chassis dynamics and tire performance, a four season motorcyclist is a much better and safer rider than the guy who only takes his bike out for group rides in perfect weather on summer Saturdays.Yes riding on snow and ice is more difficult, requires skill, and entails some risks. But, if you were frightened of any risks, you would not have bought a motorcycle, would you?

It’s difficult to say how many riders are licensed to operate a motorcycle. In the US, it is required to have a motorcycle endorsement to ride a motorcycle. Some states allow a motorcycle only license. Many states require you to already have an operator’s license, then add a motorcycle endorsement.Alabama was the last state to require a motorcycle license or endorsement to operate a motorcycle - 2016.There are no ready statistics on unlicensed motorcycle operators. Unless they are stopped for another infraction, no one really knows if an operator has the proper license or not. That goes for auto and truck operators as well.Wisconsin did a small study of motorcycle fatalities and found that 36% of motorcyclists killed in Wisconsin over a 10 year period did not have a proper motorcycle endorsement on their license and were operating their motorcycle illegally when they crashed and died. One year, of those ten years, unlicensed operators accounted for 46% of the fatalities in Wisconsin.Unlicensed motorcyclists account for 36% of deaths over 10 yearsIn 2009, Wisconsin sent letters to 31,500 people who had a motorcycle registered in their name, but did not have a motorcycle endorsement on their license. Those people may have owned the bike, but may not have been the operator, so the data is inconclusive on whether they operated motorcycles illegally.

tl’dr: 14,000–110,000 infected; 700–7,000 dead, primary infections only.Update Sept 8: Research study suggests over a quarter of a million new COVID-19 cases including secondary and tertiary infections. $12.2 billion in health costs.counties that contributed the highest inflows of Sturgis attendees saw COVID-19 cases rise by 10.7 percent following the Sturgis event relative to counties without any detected attendees.http://ftp.iza.org/dp13670.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3-R6I7p_VcdgeDXRTeedGyRpkA3AtlArzFA3ez7zqoFcl7XZf_jgGGYtUI’ve been studying and writing about the Sturgis event, partly because of my background building the most sophisticated pandemic management solution in the world, partly because I’ve been a motorcyclist on and off for most of my life, and partly because Sturgis is so interestingly intersectional.What states are most people attending the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally coming from?Is Sturgis turning into a MAGA rally?What is the epidemiological science behind BLM and Antifa riots and protests not being considered viral "superspreader" events, while the Sturgis motorcycle rally is considered a viral "superspreader" event?460,000 people attended Sturgis, and likely every state in the USA had participants there.R0, or the transmission rate, for COVID-19 depends on what measures people take to prevent transmission. The reason why Sturgis was so important in this regard was the lack of physical distancing and the lack of masking. The compounding factor is the long distances to and from Sturgis that attendees traveled, effectively creating a spiderweb of transmission throughout the USA. Every gas station, rest stop, camp ground and hotel in every direction from Sturgis is a transmission opportunity, and when the people get home from their vacation in South Dakota and resume their lives, it’s more.Scientists are still trying to figure out the R0 accurately, simply because there are innumerable people who caught mild cases of it, often spreading it to others. Unless contact tracing tracks through everyone in the path, and everyone is tested, many cases are not proven.The science is settling in on 15 minutes of close contact with an infected person being the threshold for a high likelihood of transmission. Hanging out talking with someone about your bike, having a beer together, grabbing a burger or getting out on the dance floor all count.It’s very early days, but there are already 22 proven cases related to Sturgis, and an employee at one of the main bars was infected. We’re under the 10 days normal period, so this is the early part of the infection curve, and we have barely begun.Update: A tattoo artist at the rally has also tested positive.Update: Aug 22 saw 251 confirmed cases of COVID in South Dakota, the state Sturgis is in. This is higher than their previous one day count in May of 249 cases. Aug 21 was 193 cases, fourth highest this year. Too early to be all statistical, but my assumption is that this is a trend and SD will be a major hotspot.Update: Aug 24: “Health departments in four states, including South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska and Wyoming, have reported a total of 81 cases among people who attended the rally. South Dakota health officials said Monday they had received reports of infections from residents of two other states — North Dakota and Washington.”Update Aug 26: Now eight states with 103 COVID-19 cases linked to Sturgis: Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and Washington.Update Aug 31: Over 100 cases have now been linked to a single concert event in Sturgis, the Smash Mouth-headed concert.Update Sept 1: 263 confirmed cases linked to Sturgis in 12 states, with terrible contact tracing and poor isolation standards. Tons more in reality.Update Sept 3: First COVID-19 death of Sturgis attendee, in Minnesota.My guess is that 20–40% of the people who attended Sturgis likely had at least one transmission event, so about 90,000–180,000 people came in contact with someone infected. The contagiousness of the disease suggests that 5–10% of those people might become infected.4,600–37,000 attendees might be infected.For those people, they’ll likely transmit the disease to another couple of people each (R0=2) as they travel back home and wander around.Update: Aug 25 from Fox News. “He had visited a bar where health authorities later issued warnings — One-Eyed Jack's Saloon — but said he had not had any COVID-19 symptoms. He discussed quarantining with his wife after he returned, but decided against it.”So that’s 9,000 to 74,000 people in the direct transmission, not counting follow-on transmissions by the newly infected.That’s a total of 14,000 to 110,100 infected, not counting the next steps.And the infection fatality rate is around 0.1% for everyone, but it climbs rapidly as people age. Over 45 through end of life, mortality median is about 6.5%. Obesity and other pre-existing conditions increase it as well. Sturgis skewed old. The average age of a Harley-Davidson owner a few years ago was 51, and they haven’t become younger. So 5% to 6.5% for the potential fatality rates is not unreasonable.So that’s about 700–7,000 fatalities due to Sturgis.And mostly because of partisan idiocy about basic science.Note: first version I missed a calculation step and didn’t add the R0=2 infections to the base infections, but just used the R0=2 infections. Fixed in this version.