I always wanted a motorcycle.. my dad was vehemently against it. So, like a good brat, when I moved out of the house I bought a Kawasaki Ninja. I had it for about 3 months before I realized it was a very bad idea and that it would likely have been just a matter of time before something really bad happened; a broken pelvis, death, or worse. I sold it.

I recently saw a commercial for Allstate Motorcycle insurance. One of the lines delivered by the rich baritone vocals of pitchman Dennis Haybert, was that “Allstate will REPLACE your motorcycle if it is TOTALED.” My only question is, since you’ve most likely been hurled 50 yards and killed as a result of an accident bad enough to have caused your motorcycle to be totaled… who has the rights to the replacement bike?

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has loads of stats. Motorcyclist fatalities by:

Age (average road meat, 42 years old)

Year, Day of week, Engine Size

BAC – Shockingly, 28% of all cyclists killed in 2013 (4399), were hammered

Speed – 2013, 34% of all radical road warriors who perished were speeding or involved in a race of some sort. Speed Kills!

Helmet usage – varies widely by state. For example in 2013, 79 dudes in Virginia died in a bike wreck and 76 of them were wearing a helmet. Why bother messing up the ‘do’ you might ask? Well because in Oklahoma for example, 92 people got their wings with 77 of them being unhelmeted (yes that’s a real word), leaving 15 with helmets that weren’t much help

Licensing and Previous Driving Record – Those that don’t have a valid motorcycle license most certainly are the type who think they don’t need one until the split second before they meet face to face with the back of a truck, because they make up 1/4 of the total fatalities on average

BUT the one stat I can’t find anywhere is “Percent of motorcyclists that walked away from an accident in which their Motorcycle was turned into a twisted hunk of metal and plastic”. I have to imagine Allstate knows this # and that it’s very, very small.

Either way, it’s got to be hard to square that selling proposition with this little demonstration from their other (hilarious and awesome) character, Mayhem, portrayed by Dean Winters.