Motorcycling in Germany

There are 155,000 motorcycles registered in Germany (more or less, note...this is 2018 data).  You can break down the data and say that 13,000 are scooters (125 cc or less).  The trend line for ATV's?  Way up and in urbanized areas, it's a major deal now.

So in this landscape of motorcycles....the topic of deaths is usually part of the discussion.  Out of every five road deaths in Germany (on average)....one will be related to motorcycles or scooters.  In 2018, 699 Germans died on German roads via motorcycles. 

The two chief places that you see motorcyclists?  Usually autobahns and winding country roads. 

So what motorcyclists drift over to are rural roads with less traffic but aggressive curves.  An example of this....down past Kaiserslautern, there is a 15 to 20 kilometer route that you can take in the period of May to September, on Sundays, and there's probably an average of 300 bikers who make the route up, and down this 'path'.  In a car, you can approach some curve, and sudden find that inches over on the curve is some motorcyclist who has taken the full part of the curve and misses your car by inches. At some point around fifteen years ago, you could figure that almost every Sunday....some accident occurred on this route, and 'Johan' was lucky to be carted off alive to the hospital with just a broken leg. 

There is another route near where I live, that leads around a winding mountainside, up to Feldberg.  Same story here.  In the past decade, the German police have started major stop's along the route, and probably issue out a minimum of forty traffic tickets every Sunday.  They also conduct vehicle inspections and ground a number of bikes for safety reasons. 

The noise factor?  In the past decade, these rural towns along the hyped-up routes have finally said 'enough' and they want political or police action to correct the high-noise situation.

Some towns have gone to adding speed-bumps....to make an impression on motorcyclists.

This argument is brewing.  Bikers want an adventurous weekend, and test their courage.  99-percent will return by Sunday night without any problems.  One percent will return with either an accident, a death in the group, or some major breakdown.  Rural Germans have the opposite prospective.  They see the noise-factor and deadly courage thing as a threat to their community.  There is no middle ground....that's the sad part about this discussion.

One of two solutions will win out in the end.  Solution A is to identify x-number of roads in the country (winding and curvey roads) as forbidden for motorcyclists on Sundays/holidays.  It will simply chase bikers to other areas, and invite those eventually to be forbidden.

Solution B is to put up more blitz cameras and confiscate bikes who fail the noise check by the police on some winding roads.  The confiscation will probably involve 'repairing' the bike, and forcing the motorcyclist to pay for the repair before getting it back.  This seems to be the answer that several states are discussing....thus avoiding a federal answer (state by state rules again). 

For those living in highly urbanized areas....it's not a problem we need to think about or discuss.  That's the funny part of this whole discussion.  You have to live in fairly rural areas, or be motorcyclists....to engage on this chat.