The Most Dangerous Spring in Recent Memory — Are You Ready to Ride?

Three, two, hey everybody, my name is Len Bolello and this is episode 105 of the Arrive Alive podcast. Now, we're going to do something a little bit different. We're going to talk about Shakespeare and motorcycles. How cool is that? Now, for people who are fans of Shakespeare, you may remember in Richard III, this famous passage, now is the winter.
Now, Shakespeare opened the play with these lines to describe a country emerging from a bloody, frozen conflict into fragile peace. Now, for us in New York City, this is a metaphor that hits home for everybody. And even in the Northeast and D.C. and Philadelphia, along the eastern seaboard, this has been the craziest winter.
In recent memory, Central Park had measured 42 inches of snow this season, which is almost double a normal winter and more than triple last year's snowfall of just about 12 inches. Now, NBC New York said this isn't a recency bias. It's legitimately brutal. Now, the signature event of 2026 was in February when we had 22 inches of snow in about 24 hours.
Same thing for New England. Same thing for Philadelphia. We weren't able to do our one lap of Manhattan ride on January 1st. And the only people that were group riding was Eder Holkin, who everybody knows and loves, and his band of renown. They somehow managed to get out. But other than that, it's been very hard for the average motorcycle rider to get out and ride. Now, I know everybody wants spring. Nobody wants it more than I do. But as the sun finally starts to peak out,
from over the Hudson River and wherever you may be. We really have to be careful. You see, in the play, in the Shakespeare play, Richard III says that a grim, visaged war has smoothed his wrinkled front. And here he means that the surface looks peaceful, but underneath, the danger has not gone away. It's just changed its shape. Now, for us here in New York, that means...
Grim Visage War could be the BQE or the West Side Highway or the FDR or Sunrise Highway or the Meadowbrook Parkway where I know somebody went down due to a pothole. So while the spring will be coming, this has left our roads deformed and unfinished and literally oftentimes unrideable and dangerous. We have potholes the size of studio apartments. You've heard me say this before.
And these potholes can easily, easily swallow a 17-inch motorcycle wheel. Now, in Richard III, he famously ends his speech by saying he is determined to prove a villain. This year, this spring, this summer, complacency is the villain for motorcycles. You see, because we haven't been riding, our skills fade. Your muscle memory, your cognitive abilities,
They have been dormant as long as the winter has been around. Now, the bike, sometimes that fades too. If you haven't been on a tender, like some guys from Poland that live in Brooklyn, Alex, or Long Island City, I should say, he's got a great bike. Every time I talk to him, it's like, hey, Len, my battery's dead. Like, do something about that, right? So between your skills, the bikes, the roads, and then the drivers, it's been 10, 12 weeks.
where drivers of cars have not seen motorcyclists, they need to get acclimated again. I have big bumper stickers that you can have for free. Just send me a note. I'll send a bunch to you that says, watch out for motorcycles in big black type on a bright yellow background. So while we're all desperate for a glorious summer, and I hope it will be for us all, we want group rides on Sundays and morning rides before work and...
rides out to the beach, we want them to be safe. So the transition from winter of our discontent to the summer of our dreams is going to be probably the most, this is probably going to be the most dangerous riding season, at least the first few months in recent memory because of all the bad winter points that we've described. Now, it's not all gloom and doom, but I think, you know, there was an old retail store called Sims that said,
An educated consumer is our best customer. And I believe educated riders and motorcyclists often have the best chance of remaining alive and riding for many years. So I get these research reports from various foundations and organizations about motorcycle accidents, safety, fatalities, crashes. And I just want to highlight some of the recent papers that have come into my inbox. And I'll link them on the show notes too. They're free.
They're in the public domain. And the five of them have to deal with trees, speed, gear, falling to the right or to the left, and age. Now, the first thing is it's actually called the lethality of trees. Now, trees are growing organisms, and they're wonderful, but they're not wonderful to crash into, and I really mean that. And we have a friend of the show that did crash into a tree. Thankfully, he survived, but he's got some.
life challenges that he is making his way through quite admirably, I will say. But in this study, it said that trees are 3.5 times more deadly than hitting a traffic barrier or hitting another vehicle, believe it or not. And that's because trees are stationary. They don't move. If you run into a tree, it's very, very serious. So how do we run into trees? Well, there's a number of ways, but a big way is target.
Fixation. Gasper Trauma, may his soul rest in peace. The father of motorcycle training and safety training, he always told me, Len, look where you want to go. When I first started riding, I was looking at the ground because I don't know why the heck I was on the ground, but I was. He saw that. He said, Len, look five, ten seconds ahead of you, and that's where you're going to go. Don't worry about leaning. Don't worry about counter steering. Just look where you're going to go, and you'll go there. So if you see yourself...
Fixate it on a tree. Try to catch yourself before you get fixated on it too much. Trees are deadly. Traffic barriers less so. Even other vehicles less so. Let's talk about speed. Now, we love to go fast on motorcycles. There's this road near the Atlantic Ocean that I like to ride on that is flat as a pool table. You can see for 10 miles out, and you could really open up your bike. But the conditions are perfect. The conditions are perfect.
This study cites that when you go, if you crash at a speed of less than 35 miles an hour, the chances of you surviving are 90, 90%. Above 40 miles an hour, it starts going down. Above 50 miles an hour, it goes down even more. They say speed kills, and it does. And you have to make your own personal decision and choice when to speed, or go fast, I should say, and when not to speed.
Do what you can. Keep yourself in the bubble. Try not to speed. And just take that into your heart.
And you're mine. Now, let's talk about gear. We got some great gear. We're probably living in the best time to have gear, whether it's AI inflatable vest, jackets, and pants, right, airbags, or it's helmets that have heads-up displays and advanced protection to boots that are probably the best boots that you could ever buy. That stuff is not cheap. We know that.
The gear is great, but the gear will only protect you up to about 77 miles an hour. If you get into a crash going above 77 miles an hour, the gear probably don't matter that much. And so another reason to balance the gear and the speed. So essentially, there is a physical limit to what gear and a helmet can do if the kinetic energy is enough. And that's kind of common sense, right?
Just because you're wearing a helmet, you're going 140 miles an hour, doesn't mean you're going to come out hunky-dory on the other side. Now let's talk about the sides, the right side and the left side. This other study published in 2024, I'm sorry, early 2025, said that riders who depart the road on the right are four times more likely to die in crashes than those who go off on the left. Now you might be thinking, well, on the left you're going on oncoming traffic.
The oncoming traffic is not always there, but on the right side of the road, you have barriers. You have cliffs and rocks and fall off. So I'm not saying you can choose what side of the road to go down on, but those are just the statistics. And sometimes if you have to low side it and drop the bike and go off kind of in the middle of the road instead of going down a ravine, that might be a better thing to do. Now, the last part is this study cites age that it said that
Riders over 57 have a significantly higher risk of fatality in crashes when they crash. So it doesn't mean that they get into accidents more often. And I would argue that if you're over 50, you're going to be an experienced rider, a safer rider, a more knowledgeable rider. But for those riders over 57 who get into accidents and crashes, they're probably going to have a very poor outcome.
So let's take a few seconds to have that all set in and kind of summarize it, you know, between the trees, the speed, the gear. You always want to have the right gear, but going very fast, the gear's not going to matter. But this year especially, this year especially because of everything that's gone on, you have to make sure your bike is in tip-top shape. The tire pressure is correct, especially with the potholes that we have.
And that goes for everything on the bike. And if you haven't had a chance to practice, either watch some YouTube videos. There's some great YouTube videos. Listen to back episodes of this podcast. You can search. If you go to arrivealivepodcast.com, you can search for wet riding, dry riding, old people riding, young people riding, breaking in the rain, all that stuff. We have topics, show topics that deal with that. So you can do that. And you can even be watching.
educational film, writing films, right? Get your mind back into it. Get your body back into it. A lot of us have been dormant. You want to do stretching. I just recently bought something that's been working out a lot. It's been great. So you want to do that, and you want to make sure that your mindset is that where when you do get on the bike this week, next week, the week after, please remember, like we always say, ride like you're invisible. This year,
Triple that. Triple that because the drivers are not going to be looking out for us, especially in the beginning. So I want to take a few seconds also to acknowledge the Heyman Law Firm. They are the sponsor of our show. They help make this possible. John Heyman is the owner and CEO, and all of his riders ride motorcycles. Now, they're not as fast as me.
But they all ride motorcycles. And you can reach them at 1-800-H-A-Y-M-O-N-D. All right, I didn't mean to be a Debbie Downer and talk about all the bad things. But I think the main thing is get out and practice. And, you know, riding a bike, there's nothing else like it. There's nothing, you know, maybe flying a plane, but you can't fly your plane to work most of it. So let's change gears a little bit. And this is something I want to give the listeners of my show a little sneak peek.
Spotify and Apple tell me the types of music that most of my listeners listen to, which is everything from mid-70s, 80s, and early to mid-90s. That's what everybody's listening to, with the sweet spot being 80s, whether it's Bruce Springsteen, Bananarama, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello, Sade. These are the types of music that most of my listeners are listening to.
I taught myself a few things with Claude and what's something called vibe coding, doesn't matter, except I created an interactive music trivia game centered around 80s music. This is my love letter to 80s music that I loved and I grew up with and brings me back to a simpler time. So if you are an older millennial, a Gen X, or a younger baby boomer, put your browser to 80s grid.
That's 80sgrid.com. It's very similar to the Immaculate Grid and a little bit of Wordle. And I built it to bring the memory of these bands and the feelings of that time back to people that lived it and to introduce it to people who have yet to listen and experience this music. 80sgrid.com. Now, we have another show coming up.
Two days after this one. I know we've been dormant for about eight weeks. It was the winter. There was some other stuff going on. But we're going to do a minimum of two episodes per month starting in March and going to the end of the year like we always do. In about two days, we're going to have a very nice gentleman. We actually did the show already. Michael Silverman from the Silver Lining Insurance Company Insurance Agency. And this is going to be everything you wanted to know about motorcycle insurance.
and were afraid to ask. And believe me, I know a lot about motorcycle insurance, and I learned a thing or two. So he's going to be a great listen. And then after that, we have some other great guests coming up. So please, it's good to be back. Please share this show especially, but all of them too, with friends and family who ride. It's easy to share it, and I know everybody does a lot of that already. And I also want to say thank you, in addition to the Heyman Law Firm,
to Rob McLaughlin of the West Coast Hearts. What a great band. What a great songwriter. He also has his own podcast now. I'll link to it in the show notes. And also thank you to listeners like you. Yes, listeners like you. Thank you for listening. It's been great. Last year we had, I think, 36, 34,000 downloads, something like that. It was great. It's people like you that make this show what it is.
My name is Len Bolello, your happy and humble host. We'll see you in about 48 hours. Take care.