Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month - Shared Road & Responsibility! The National Safety Council has designated May as Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month. And whether you’re a rider of 2-wheels (or one of those strange 3-wheel contraptions) or a driver of 4-wheels, it’s everyone’s responsibility to stay safe on the roads – and aware of motorcycles. And nowhere in the United States is that more important than in California which has the most registered motorcycles in the country. In this iDriveSoCal Podcast we’re joined by Motorcycle Officer Darren Wybenga of the California Highway Patrol for tips during Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month. (Including the mind-blowing concept of motorcycle lane-splitting… which is legal in California… for some reason. Why? I don’t know – I guess, because it’s California.) California Highway Patrol, Motorcycle Educational Resources: CaliforniaMotorcyclist.com (877) RIDE-411 ***Transcript*** Recording date – May 4, 2018 in Torrance, CA Darren Wybenga: It's more about safety, seeing my fellow riders ride safety than it is important for me to write that person a ticket. When there's a fatality it doesn't generally occur from the initial impact, it typically happens as a secondary impact once you've been ejected onto the road and then a car doesn't even see you and you end up in their path and then you're struck again, it's from a secondary impact like that that'll end up resulting in serious injury or potentially fatality. Tom Smith: Welcome to iDriveSoCal, the podcast all about mobility from the automotive capital of the United States, Southern California. I'm Tom Smith and today I'm at the California highway patrol, south office, yet again. With me is California highway patrol officer Darren Wybenga. Officer Wybenga thank you so much for what you do and thank you for joining me for this podcast. Darren Wybenga: You're welcome, it's my pleasure. Tom Smith: Okay, so officer Wybenga is a motorcycle officer, he has been for a very long time and today's podcast is on motorcycle safety awareness. As those of you know listening to the podcast, I'm not from California, I'm from Chicago and our laws for riding bikes are very different. Personally, let me just get this out there, I had a bike when I was a teenager, the second I was old enough to defy my parents I got a bike, scared the daylights out of myself and although I really love the idea, romanticize the idea of having a bike I don't think I'm ever going to own one again the state of California, perhaps maybe if I lived in Paso or something like that. Officer Wybenga rides professional for work and rode personally to get there, meaning rode personally to start riding professionally but now just writes professionally for work, correct? Darren Wybenga: Correct. Tom Smith: Okay. I swear I'm going to let you talk in just a second here but I wanted to rattle off some statistics that officer Wybenga shared. In 2016 there were 476 motorcycle fatalities and over 14,000 injuries. This is a very serious topic everybody, you really want to take note and if you're not a motorcycle rider, we're all impacted by it because we're also driving. So Officer Wybenga, as a motorcycle rider or non motorcycle rider, what kind of high level points do you have to share with us for safety awareness month? Darren Wybenga: California is home to the largest number of motorcycle riders so it's a reality when you're on the road you're gonna see many, many, many motorcycles pass you on either side, infront, behind. Darren Wybenga: One of the most common locations of accident occurrence is near the car pool lane. Many motorcyclists are splitting lanes on the double yellow lines between the car pool and the fast lane and it's just really important to reiterate the fact that ...
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