Being a middle-aged wingnut, I have been thinking a lot in the last few years about buying a motorcycle. OK, OK, I’m an ER doc thinking about a motorcycle, so that means I blew my brains out with my last sneeze. But I like the idea of its gas efficiency, the wind blowing through my hair before it is all gone (my hair, that is), and the thrill of open travel on the open road. I know I could get the same things with a horse, but one pet’s poop is all I can stand.

Two things are stopping my hankerin’ for a Harley hog, however: a likely divorce if I dare, and the simple fact that motorcycle crashes are killing Americans in record numbers these days. In fact, for perspective, more motorcyclists are now dying in America each year than died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

According to 2005 crash data just released, motorcycle crashes killed a record-high 4,553 Americans in 2005. That is 13 percent more than in 2004, more than twice the number killed in 1997, and it was the eighth straight annual increase in the number of motorcycle deaths. On average, more than 12 Americans a day are being killed in motorcycle crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA – Web site www.nhtsa.gov) crash data.

Another 87,000 motorcyclists were injured in 2005. If I ran the math right that means there were about 100,000 crashes that caused those injuries and deaths, and every year about one in every 57 registered motorcycles will be involved in a crash, and one in every 1,200 will be involved in a fatal crash.

Those numbers are making the rest of us all look bad when it comes to traffic deaths. Last year saw the first increase in the overall rate of traffic fatalities per mile traveled in this country since 1986, and the highest number of traffic fatalities (43,443) since 1990. The main cause of these increases is the increase in motorcycle deaths. That’s the bad news; the worse news is that 2006 seems likely to be another banner year.

Why the increases? The growing number of motorcycle deaths in America is the result of a match being put to the gas; the number of people riding motorcycles is rising rapidly, and because motor-cycles “are the most hazardous highway vehicles” (NHTSA publication “Cost of Injuries Resulting from Motorcycle Crashes: A Literature Review”). The result is record numbers of motorcycle deaths in many states; 2004 was the worst year on record in Maine with 22.

The idea that motorcycles are the most deadly means of licensed motor vehicle travel in America may put motorcyclists’ cam shafts in a twist, but it is not meant as an indictment of motorcycles; it is just a fact. On a per- mile traveled basis, a motorcyclist is 34 times more likely to die in a crash than is the occupant of a car, according to the NHTSA. Motorcyclists suffered 39.89 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 2005, while car occupants suffered about 1.2.

The number of registered motorcycles on our roads has gone up by almost 400,000 each of the last three years, to almost 6 million in 2004, and up from just under four million in 1995. Further increases seem likely as gas prices go up, although some of us are buying little scooters from Vespa and not two-wheeled street rockets from Kawasaki.

Many of those new bikes on the road are being bought and vrroomed by my fellow middle-aged wingnuts. Baby boomers are not only buying motorcycles in record numbers; they are unfortunately crashing them in record numbers, and the biggest jump in fatalities by age group between 2004 and 2005 was in the over-50 crowd. The average age of a motorcyclist killed in a crash is now 38; this and the other data suggest the popular notion of dead motorcyclists as just 19-year-olds racing recklessly into oblivion is a myth.

The lack of motorcycle helmets on 50 percent of those riding motorcycles is a major factor in motorcycle deaths. Virtually every study ever done on helmet use suggests they reduce the risk of death in a crash by at least 30 percent. The idea that helmets may increase neck injuries – cited by many as a reason not to wear them – is a myth that persists despite subsequent studies discrediting the original single study that suggested this almost 20 years ago.

The injuries suffered in motorcycle crashes are the bottom of the iceberg. About 80 percent of those who crash a motorcycle will be injured, according to the NHTSA, and some of those injuries will be permanently disabling. Unemployment tripled and disability quadrupled in motorcyclists who suffered a brain injury, according to one study.

What’s the answer? It is not to bag motorcycles. Instead, Americans are going to have to approach motorcycles very differently than we have to this point, or the numbers of deaths and injuries will continue to climb as more of us feel the need for motorcycle speed.

Car drivers, who cause many motorcycle crashes, will need to be more “motorcycle-aware”; many of us are “blind” to motorcycles as though a 200-pound person on a 600-pound motorcycle is just noisy thin air. Laws that allow anyone who once had a motorcycle license to always have one need to be tightened to require new training and re-licensing for riders who have been off the bike for a long time. Motorcycle driver courses should be improved, required and repeated intermittently for those who do not ride regularly. Motorcyclists should be a special focus of campaigns against speeding and drunken driving, two common causes of motorcycle crashes.

The 30 American states that allow it, including Maine, should reconsider the freedom most motorcyclists have to ride without helmets. This freedom was a luxury when there were three million motorcyclists and 2,700 deaths 10 years ago, but as the math of more riders multiplies the mayhem, it has become even more of an unaffordable waste of lives and money. The costs of the injuries and deaths, which run into the many billions of dollars (exact numbers are hard to come by), are shared among us all.

At least half of injured motorcyclists are either uninsured or have insurance paid by taxpayers, and the rest have private insurance which we all help pay with our premiums. The old slogan “Let those who ride decide” should be revamped to “Let those who pay have the say.”

Finally, any of us thinking about indulging our middle-age “Easy Rider” fantasies should think twice before we join the burgeoning biker crowd. That doesn’t mean don’t buy the bike; it means if you need the wind to whistle through your thinning hair and are not prepared to ride more carefully than you ever drove, and as though your life depends on it, consider just sticking your head out of your car window, or buying that horse.

Erik Steele, D.O., a physician in Bangor, is chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.