Motorcycle miles driven drops for second straight year

Miles driven by motorcyclists declined less than 1% to 20.1 billion miles in 2018, according to the latest data from the Department of Transportation. Vehicle miles have been declining since 2016, with 20.4 billion miles driven in 2016 compared with 19.6 billion in the prior year.

In fact, miles driven by motorcyclists have hovered around 20 billion for the past decade, according to the DOT. In the prior decade, the average was 12.5 billion miles.

Meanwhile, fatalities caused by motorcycle accidents declined 5% year over year to 4,895 in 2018. Fatalities have been on a downward trend since 2016, when 5,337 fatal accidents were recorded – the highest level recorded in 29 years.  

Additionally, the fatality rate per 100 million miles driven fell 17% to 24.83 deaths in 2018. The number of people injured in motorcycle accidents has also been trending downward since 2016. Injured people fell 8% to 82,000 in 2018.   

The injury and crash data are from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s General Estimates System (GES). The GES sample includes only crashes where police accident reports were completed, and the crash resulted in property damage, injury or death.