Motorcyclist Fatalities Continue Decline

Motorcyclist deaths in the United States fell by at least 2 percent in 2010, the second year of decline, according to a new study. 

The slight decline, however, is far less than the 16 percent drop in motorcyclist fatalities in 2009, which followed 11 straight years of steady increases, the Governors Highway Safety Association announced in a report released on Tuesday. 

Also tempering experts’ enthusiasm is a trend within the 2010 data that indicates an increase in fatalities as the year progressed. In the third quarter, deaths ticked upward about 3 percent relative to the same quarter in 2009. 

“The trend may well get worse if we don’t do something about it,” said James Hedlund of Highway Safety North, a consulting firm in Ithaca, N.Y., who prepared the report for the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway safety offices. It is the second year such analyses have been completed, said Dr. Hedlund, previously the associate administrator for traffic safety programs at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 

Like overall traffic deaths in 2010, which dropped to their lowest level in more than 60 years, according to federal data released earlier this month, motorcyclist deaths decreased in the first half of the year, but increased in the second half, Dr. Hedlund said. “No one really knows why.”

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