Your Couch is More Dangerous Than My Motorcycle.
I teach people to ride motorcycles. Not the basics — I run "after the basics" street instruction, which means I work with riders who've already passed the beginner course and want to actually learn to handle a bike in the real world. I've been riding since I was 8, had my own bike since I was 14. In that time, I've spent about 6 years without a bike I've "been riding" for 44 years, I've been in the saddle for around 34-36 years, endorsed for MOST of it. I've been in IT and cybersecurity for twenty-five years — a field that runs on data, not gut feelings.
The most common thing people say when they hear what I do is some variation of "that's dangerous." Usually with a tone that implies they've thought about it and I haven't.
Let's do the math.
New Mexico, 2023. Approximately 120,426 licensed motorcycle endorsement holders in the state. Fifty-five crash deaths that year.
Fifty-five out of 120,000 is a 0.046% annual crash death risk.
Now take that same population of 120,000 people and apply the standard all-cause death rate — roughly 10 to 11 deaths per 1,000 people per year in New Mexico. You'd expect approximately 1,200 to 1,300 deaths from all causes among endorsement holders in any given year. Fifty-five of those are crashes. The other 1,145 to 1,245 people — over 95% — die from exactly what everyone else dies from.
The real top four causes of death among motorcycle riders:
- Heart disease
- Cancer
- Accidents (motorcycle crashes are a subset of this category — not the category itself)
- Stroke and chronic disease
Compare that to the CDC's top four for the general population:
- Heart disease — 683,491 deaths in 2024
- Cancer — 619,876 deaths
- Accidents / unintentional injuries — 197,449 deaths
- Stroke — 166,852 deaths
They're the same list.
The only statistical difference between "motorcycle rider" and "everyone else" is that crashes represent an elevated slice within that third category. Heart disease and cancer still come for motorcycle riders at the same background rates they come for everyone. They just don't show up in the motorcycle danger conversation, because nobody cites those numbers.
Why you remember the crash.
When someone you know is killed in a motorcycle accident, you remember it. When ten other riders — people with the same endorsement, the same bikes, the same years in the saddle — die of heart disease that same year, you don't hear about it. Nobody holds a press conference for a cardiac arrest. The medical examiner doesn't file a report that says motorcycle rider, cause of death: myocardial infarction. He was a rider. He died of heart failure. The two facts sit in different mental categories, if they connect at all.
Crash deaths are memorable precisely because they're rare. The same reason you remember the car accident on the evening news but not the 683,000 people who died of heart disease last year: the crash is sudden and visible; the chronic disease isn't. This is the availability heuristic at work, not statistics.
Now consider the rider you've probably never accounted for.
A retired teacher gets her motorcycle endorsement at 72. She's always wanted to ride, and she's just been told she has stage IV lung cancer. She takes the course, gets the license, rides for six months, and dies that October — from cancer. She is, technically, a motorcycle rider who died. She appears in exactly zero crash statistics. She is completely invisible in every "motorcycles are dangerous" conversation, while being exactly the kind of person who should make us reconsider that conversation.
For every NM rider who dies in a crash, roughly 22 endorsement holders die from something else that year. That ratio matters. It doesn't appear in the coverage.
Sitting on the couch watching television is more dangerous than riding a motorcycle. While dramatic, that comment is not for effect. It is well founded in science. The evidence has been accumulating for decades and it is not ambiguous.
Sedentary behavior is independently associated with elevated risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, metabolic syndrome, and all-cause mortality — regardless of how much you exercise at other times. Physical inactivity is the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality, according to the World Health Organization. The couch is not neutral. It is a risk factor with a body count, and it's quiet about it.
The neuroscience makes it worse.
A twenty-year longitudinal study — the CARDIA study, tracking nearly 600 participants from their early thirties into their fifties — found that each additional hour of daily television viewing was associated with approximately 0.5% reduction in gray matter volume by midlife. That is not atrophy from aging. That is dose-response atrophy tied to television hours. Additional research presented at the American Heart Association's 2021 conference, drawing on 1,601 adults in late life, found that moderate-to-high TV viewers showed measurably lower volumes in deep gray matter — greater brain atrophy, directly correlated with viewing habits. A third study from the same conference tracked over 10,700 adults for fifteen years and found 6.9% greater cognitive decline in moderate-to-high viewers compared to low viewers. And a separate peer-reviewed study of 1,712 adults, published in Alzheimer's and Dementia, documented smaller volumes specifically in the frontal lobes, occipital lobes, and deep temporal and limbic regions — the structures most vulnerable to Alzheimer's pathology, and the same structures responsible for executive function, decision-making, and memory.
The areas the couch is eroding are the ones you can least afford to lose.
Now contrast that with what happens when you ride a motorcycle.
Researchers at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior measured the biological and physiological responses of 64 experienced riders across 12-hour sessions, using EEG monitoring and saliva and urine analysis. Riding reduced cortisol — the primary stress hormone — by 28%. It produced what the researchers called a "relaxed aware" brain state, with sensory focus elevated to levels comparable to experienced meditators. The effects persisted at least ten minutes after dismounting. The mechanism matters: cortisol is neurotoxic at chronically elevated levels. Sustained high cortisol is one of the documented pathways through which chronic stress accelerates brain aging and gray matter loss. Riding reduces it by more than a quarter. At the same time, the cognitive demands of motorcycling — continuous visual scanning, spatial awareness, dynamic motor control, anticipatory risk assessment across multiple input streams at once — actively engage the frontal and prefrontal systems that passive television watching is documented to atrophy.
You are using the structures the couch is eroding.
One disclosure belongs here: the UCLA study was commissioned by Harley-Davidson and, as far as the published record shows, has not been peer-reviewed in a journal. The researchers are credible; the institution is credible; the funding source is not independent. The television studies have no comparable conflict of interest — they were conducted through academic and public health channels with large, diverse populations tracked over decades. I give you both because that's the full picture. The direction of the evidence is consistent regardless.
Riding keeps me outside. It requires alertness — situational awareness on a motorcycle is a continuous full-body practice, not a switch you flip. It demands cognitive and physical engagement in a way that sitting doesn't. I have pulmonary fibrosis. My lungs are being replaced by scar tissue. My doctor's instructions were to go live my life as much as I can, for as long as I can. Riding is part of what that looks like.
One more thing, because it's my job to say it: proper training and appropriate gear do reduce both the likelihood of a crash and the likelihood of dying in one. The MSF Basic RiderCourse is a starting point, not a destination. Ongoing instruction — real instruction, not just accumulated miles — changes the calculus. Gear that fits and actually protects changes the calculus. Situational awareness treated as a daily practice, not a one-time lesson, changes the calculus. The risk is not zero. Nothing is zero. But the risk is a fraction of what "death wish" implies, and it is substantially lower than the risk you're running from the life you're already living on the couch.
Death wish? No. I have no intention of sitting on the couch watching television.
Sources: NM Motorcycle Crash Statistics (UNM 2024); NM-IBIS Leading Causes of Death 2023; CDC FastStats — Leading Causes of Death; NHTSA Motorcycle Safety; National Safety Council Injury Facts; WHO Global Health Observatory (physical inactivity); Dougherty et al., CARDIA Study (AHA EPI/Lifestyle Conference 2021); Gabriel et al., ARIC Study (AHA EPI/Lifestyle Conference 2021); Palta et al., ARIC Neurocognitive Study (AHA EPI/Lifestyle Conference 2021); Raichlen et al., Alzheimer's and Dementia (2022); Vaughn et al., UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior (commissioned by Harley-Davidson).
