All things considered, should I be riding?

[stutrump]

A UK perspective on this:
I'm guessing many of you in the USA can ride on non urban roads, maybe even off road and hardly see anyone.
For us in the UK there is almost zero LEGAL off road and wherever we go we get seen.
Another point not covered which is connected to the above is that in the UK (unlike many countries in Europe), bikes and bikers are not liked by many motorists and therefore maybe one should consider the fact that other motorists will point the finger even more and hate bikers even more if they think we are making non-essential travel.
Personally my belief is each to their own but for me there is another spin.
Until 14 days ago I used my bike EVERY day for work, riding sometimes 500 miles a week. Now, due to covid, I am unemployed and have very little savings/no income so I wont be riding purely for that reason.
Whatever your decision...be happy and stay well

 

[dell835]

Not riding because you might end up in an overcrowded hospital makes no sense to me. That logic would keep me from ever riding. Two of my children work in hospitals and they said that the hospital is almost empty as all nonessential procedures and test have been canceled.

 

[jbrown]

I interpreted the overcrowded hospital statement to mean you are potentially displacing someone who, through no fault of their own, needs the hospital space in this special situation. And you are potentially adding to the load of over stressed healthcare workers. I did not take it to imply concern for oneself, which is the regular decision us motorcyclists deal with all the time.

 

[RCinNC]

This is not a "one size fits all" scenario; your situation if you live in a dense urban area is going to be radically different than it would be if you live in rural North Carolina. New York state alone accounts for about 36 percent of the total cases in the whole country, so if I lived in their currently overstressed health care system, I'd try to avoid doing anything stupid right now, mainly because I'm not sure of the quality of care I'd receive in their supremely overburdened hospitals.

On the flip side of that, the health care system in the area I live is set to start laying off health care workers because there isn't a sufficient workload of regular cases to keep them staffed, since they've postponed every single non-essential procedure. In a case like that, NOT getting injured is actually hurting someone else, since that nurse of tech is going to get laid off like a couple million other people. Emergency care is what's keeping the doors open in a lot of hospitals right now. Non Covid patients aren't taking a bed from a potential Covid patient; in the hospital where my girlfriend works, they've naturally set aside a separate area for them to contain the infection. You aren't taking a bed from someone more "needy"; the only people who go to the hospital are people with disease and people who are injured. Is someone who gets injured falling off their roof while cleaning their gutters during quarantine more needy that a guy who wrecks his motorcycle? Believe it or not, the hospital in my county is relatively empty, because there's no one there recovering from things like knee replacements or rotator cuff surgeries.

There is one big reason that I wouldn't want to be hospitalized right now, and that's because the hospital is where you can definitely find people with Covid 19.

As for social distancing aspect, as long as you aren't riding your motorcycle to a barbeque with 25 other riders, you can't get much more socially isolated that you are riding down the road solo on a motorcycle. You're certainly more socially isolated than all the guys I see walking around the golf course together, or the throngs of people going to WalMart or Lowe's. I'd feel a hundred percent safer on my bike right now than I would going to Food Lion to buy a bag of apples.

 

[dell835]

This is not a "one size fits all" scenario; your situation if you live in a dense urban area is going to be radically different than it would be if you live in rural North Carolina. New York state alone accounts for about 36 percent of the total cases in the whole country, so if I lived in their currently overstressed health care system, I'd try to avoid doing anything stupid right now, mainly because I'm not sure of the quality of care I'd receive in their supremely overburdened hospitals.

On the flip side of that, the health care system in the area I live is set to start laying off health care workers because there isn't a sufficient workload of regular cases to keep them staffed, since they've postponed every single non-essential procedure. In a case like that, NOT getting injured is actually hurting someone else, since that nurse of tech is going to get laid off like a couple million other people. Emergency care is what's keeping the doors open in a lot of hospitals right now. Non Covid patients aren't taking a bed from a potential Covid patient; in the hospital where my girlfriend works, they've naturally set aside a separate area for them to contain the infection. You aren't taking a bed from someone more "needy"; the only people who go to the hospital are people with disease and people who are injured. Is someone who gets injured falling off their roof while cleaning their gutters during quarantine more needy that a guy who wrecks his motorcycle? Believe it or not, the hospital in my county is relatively empty, because there's no one there recovering from things like knee replacements or rotator cuff surgeries.

There is one big reason that I wouldn't want to be hospitalized right now, and that's because the hospital is where you can definitely find people with Covid 19.

As for social distancing aspect, as long as you aren't riding your motorcycle to a barbeque with 25 other riders, you can't get much more socially isolated that you are riding down the road solo on a motorcycle. You're certainly more socially isolated than all the guys I see walking around the golf course together, or the throngs of people going to WalMart or Lowe's. I'd feel a hundred percent safer on my bike right now than I would going to Food Lion to buy a bag of apples.

An S10 can keep you pretty isolated-I rode for hours yesterday and only saw a handful of cars.

 

[thughes317]

This is not a "one size fits all" scenario; your situation if you live in a dense urban area is going to be radically different than it would be if you live in rural North Carolina. New York state alone accounts for about 36 percent of the total cases in the whole country, so if I lived in their currently overstressed health care system, I'd try to avoid doing anything stupid right now, mainly because I'm not sure of the quality of care I'd receive in their supremely overburdened hospitals.

I'm in NY state, not NY city. Keeping with the "not a one size fits all" scenario, there is a huge disparity in population density. Roughly 64% of the state's population lives in the New York City metropolitan area. NYC has a population density of 5000+/sq.mile (8.5 million people living on 300 sq miles of land). The other 11 million people are spread out on the remaining 54,250 sq miles of land. After 5 months of snow-covered streets and shitty weather, an hour or two conservatively cruising the back roads on my scooter for the good of my mental health is an acceptable risk from my perspective. YMMV.

 

[Dirt_Dad]

There is one big reason that I wouldn't want to be hospitalized right now, and that's because the hospital is where you can definitely find people with Covid 19.

This is exactly my point about not wanting to go to a hospital. It is the gathering point for COVID-19 carriers. Not interested in being there.

My state is essential travel only. There are absolutely mixed messages about what that means, but I understand the intended goal, and I have slowly come around to appreciating the need for it.

Trust me, I'm a gun guy. I've moved out of states over the whole infringement issue. I take freedom very seriously. Generally don't like the government telling me what freedoms I'm allowed to exercise. But there's a limit. When your population is dying by the thousands per day, due to a virus that is hyper contagious, I do think it's unreasonable to try to make that stop. So I swallow hard and agree to live by the spirit of what is trying to be accomplished...for now.

In that spirit, I don't want to be explaining my decision on why I felt my ride was more important than doing what was being asked of me. Be it to a doctor, or anyone else.

Am I fearful of riding...hardly. But in my motocross days, it was pretty common for me to end up at some local hospital getting an x-ray for a wrist here, or a knee there. Usually very minor stuff, almost never serious (did get to stay 4 days once), but it did require me to go to a place where sick people congregate. Not interested. Those days have long been behind me, but I still have gone to a hospital for someone riding with me, or related to something I'm doing motorcycle wise.

If I wasn't so dead-set against riding to my "essential" job, I'd have no problem riding a bike to work. But I leave in the dark, and we have plenty of deer...and yes, I do fear those things. But I don't ride for transportation. That just doesn't work for me.

I agree with the sentiment that when everyone else is told to limit travel to essential trips, then you see a group of bikes out running around, it doesn't create a positive impression of riders to the general population. People do notice.

Also agree, we're a big country...or world. Everyone has to do what they think is right for their particular situation. I suspect I'd be taking a different approach if I lived in another region.

Everyone be safe out there. And for god sake, stay away from the places where the sick people go.

 

[RCinNC]

That was verbal shorthand on my part, thughes. I didn't have the exact figures for just the NYC metropolitan area, so rather than being accused or either deflating or inflating the stats, I used the figure I could be more certain of; that of the total cases in New York State. I've been in New York state many times, and in New York City, and yes, there are definitely two worlds there. The same thing happens in my home state of Pennsylvania; people who aren't from there assume that PA is just Philadelphia surrounded by a state forest. Oh, and they also know about Scranton, because they watched "The Office".

 

[RCinNC]

That's exactly why I said what I said, Dirt Dad. Every place is different, and situations are different. Someone who lives in South Dakota has a lot less to fear, statistically, than someone who lives in Tysons Corner. I doubt that anyone on this forum thinks its unreasonable to take steps to slow the spread of the virus, either. Until a vaccine is created, the key to fighting this virus is to starve it of new hosts; that's what social distancing is, and that's what I practice. I don't go in stores unless I absolutely have to, I don't go visit people, and I don't have people at my house. I don't gather in any groups beyond the person I live with. If I have to go in a store, I wear a mask to protect someone from me, if I happened to be an asymptomatic carrier. All of those things will protect both me and society from the spead of the virus. Riding my motorcycle for recreation does nothing to endanger anyone else; it certainly doesn't present anywhere near the danger that's presented by activities that are specifically approved under the shelter in place rules, like shopping or golfing with groups of people on a golf course.

As for the sentiment about seeing a group of bikers is liable to trigger a poor opinion of bikers, maybe it will. It might also trigger that same negative opinion about golfers, or why the crowd at WalMart needs to buy potting soil during a pandemic, or why you have to get to that two for one sale at Lowe's. So what? People love to concern troll; I've seen people flipping out on other people on Twitter because they went out for a freaking walk in their neighborhood. Who's actually creating the risk: me on my motorcycle, or that mother of four at WalMart, who trundled her whole family to a big box store to try and score the last roll of toilet paper east of the Mississippi?

And one real important thing to remember; this probably won't be the last time we have to do the social distancing waltz. This virus will ebb and flow until they discover a vaccine, which in all likelihood won't be until next year. Until then, we'll probably have to go on lockdown multiple times; in urban areas, it may be even more often. People are all "we're in this together" right now, but try and imagine how difficult it'll be to manage a population after the third or fourth time they shut down the economy and try and lock people up in their homes indefinitely. The more reasonable (and reasoned) decisions they make about how to best do that, the more likely the population will be to comply. The more draconian and unreasonable the rules are, the more likely people will be after the second or third round of this to just shrug and say "screw that".

 

[ballisticexchris]

The motorcycle gatherings I have personally seen are very disturbing. As well as the shoppers. I'm stuck waiting on these idiots grouped in a bunch for the store to open. The way people are riding and driving is outrageous. Cops are spread thin. So most everyone is riding/driving fast. Running lights/stop signs, cutting across lanes with no signal, etc. Its way worse than before the stay at home order was issued.

 

[holligl]

I have not riden since our stay at home order was issued, but I am finding it difficult. Conflicting guidelines as trails and parks have remained open for outdoor exercise. While I would not go on any risky solo rides, I am starting to need a mental health ride.

We have helped two different older neighbors get to emergency rooms since the order. Stuff besides Covid happens. In both cases little or no activity in the ER (praying it stays that way). I feel 100x more threatened/threatening getting groceries, than I would feel riding.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

 

[Madhatter]

i have hardly even seen a cop of late... most of them are as afraid as most of the rest of America , they do not no who has what when they make contact .... I think they are just enforcing serious and obvious breeches of the law letting the minor crap pass on by. and as for the actual numbers of deaths will take time to actually no the real numbers .... too many years of lying fake news to ever believe all they say about any subject , the media seems excited that so many are and have died from this and that the economy is tanked . china is now the one super power economy out there. we bought and paid for the rope they could use to hang us.

 

[eemsreno]

We don't have a stay at home order here. Just stay away from others.
I'm thankful to live in the rule mid west , Not much safer place to be about now.
No cases in Davis county where my kids live, 3 cases in this county and 2 cases in Wapello county where we do all our business.

 

[RIVA]

A UK perspective on this:
I'm guessing many of you in the USA can ride on non urban roads, maybe even off road and hardly see anyone.
For us in the UK there is almost zero LEGAL off road and wherever we go we get seen.
Another point not covered which is connected to the above is that in the UK (unlike many countries in Europe), bikes and bikers are not liked by many motorists and therefore maybe one should consider the fact that other motorists will point the finger even more and hate bikers even more if they think we are making non-essential travel.
Personally my belief is each to their own but for me there is another spin.
Until 14 days ago I used my bike EVERY day for work, riding sometimes 500 miles a week. Now, due to covid, I am unemployed and have very little savings/no income so I wont be riding purely for that reason.
Whatever your decision...be happy and stay well

An Irish perspective on this
We in Sth Ireland are in a similar situation to The UK. Green laning in Ireland is almost non-existant and is frowned apon. Motorcycling as a whole is tolerated filtering is legal if carried out with care and travelling in bus lanes is overlooked if done at legal speeds. Rural roads in Ireland are reasonably busy at the moment as people in theseareas usually shop twice or three times a week.. Hospitals in Ireland were under some pressure before the pandemic but miraculously since the first case here 29-02-20 things have eased somewhat. With ten days the goverment are only allowing essential industry and travel. Essential travel is classed as travel to and from work and essential shopping. The Gardaí (Irish Police) are manning checkpoints but are very understanding . I have not used my motorcycle since 29-03-20 and will not be using it until restrictions are lifted. As I am retired my income is assured from both my Work pension and the nation al pension. Both of these were contributed to during my working life. I have a son and daughter both married . My son-in-law and daughter and daughter-in-law are not effected as both are in essential services but my son was laid off last week but is expecting to be back at work on Monday as his employer is providing services to the chemicaAll in all a very trying timel industry. The goverment here have arranged a €410. payment weekly to be paid to each worker effected by the shutdown and have asked employers to top up this payment to a basic week' pay.

 

[holligl]

I'm thankful to live in the rule mid west , Not much safer place to be about now.

The scenery can get a little monotonous though...

Glad my daughter's family is in that area, and my son's family in Hawaii, where they are doing even better. When we leave Arizona, we may delay in Iowa, waiting for Illinois to get better.

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[ballisticexchris]

We don't have a stay at home order here. Just stay away from others.
I'm thankful to live in the rule mid west , Not much safer place to be about now.
No cases in Davis county where my kids live, 3 cases in this county and 2 cases in Wapello county where we do all our business.

Steve, you may not have a stay at home order but a little common sense should be used. This virus is spreading rapidly everywhere including your state. And Iowa is a very small state. Your counties are only a few miles apart. You have almost 1000 cases in your state and already 25 deaths. This is over double from last week.

It's more accurate do the numbers by population and testing facilities available. In population alone: IA has 1 death from COVID- 19 per about every 120,000. CA has 1 death per about every 117,000. Your state is not far behind and it is spreading quickly. Pretty spooky.

The scariest part is it can be spread without any symptoms.

 

[kingfisher]

Steve, you may not have a stay at home order but a little common sense should be used. This virus is spreading rapidly everywhere including your state. And Iowa is a very small state. Your counties are only a few miles apart. You have almost 1000 cases in your state and already 25 deaths. This is over double from last week.

It's more accurate do the numbers by population and testing facilities available. In population alone: IA has 1 death from COVID- 19 per about every 120,000. CA has 1 death per about every 117,000. Your state is not far behind and it is spreading quickly. Pretty spooky.

The scariest part is it can be spread without any symptoms.

He is not going to spread it if he maintains distance and hand hygeine. The virus cannot fly through the air and catch you in the air at 70 mph. A little common sense IS in order.

 

[Sierra1]

For the most part kingfisher is correct. As long as everything goes right. Nobody, well almost nobody, ever plans on getting into an accident. Just because you don't make a mistake, doesn't mean that other people won't. "The best laid-plans of mice and men" eemsreno is also correct about rural living being safer than an urban environment, but it's not a guaranty. I wear a seatbelt, helmet, and Kevlar because they improve my chances in an unforeseen situation. Which is why I will wear gloves, and a mask if/when I have to leave my rural residence. Y'all do you. But, it seems weird that a group of people that preach A.G.A.T.T., would take unnecessary risks. Stay healthy.

 

[scott123007]

I think part of this problem is if your state has a "stay at home " order, it does not mean it's a " use your judgement" order. It means unless it an absolute necessity to leave your house, stay the fuck at home. How hard is that for a couple of weeks? When it comes to using our own judgement, it completely disintegrates any consistency of behavior. It has been over a month now since EVERYONE knew there was a serious problem here in the US. If we had used GOOD judgement since then, the clusterfuck we are in now, would be over. Since, it seems, we as humans are not intelligent enough to do that on their own, a stay in place order had to be enacted, and we are still rebelling against it.

 

[ballisticexchris]

He is not going to spread it if he maintains distance and hand hygeine. The virus cannot fly through the air and catch you in the air at 70 mph. A little common sense IS in order.

Actually not true. Any contact outside the home is a risk. Have you been at a red light and smelled cigarette smoke? Well that can be the virus you are breathing in only the virus is odorless.

I'm positive I will never convince someone to do the right thing. Not gonna happen. I will do what I think is best for me, my loved ones, and those around me. Many others are going to do what they want regardless of what is happening.

Every Monday morning when I shop and every time I get fuel I see it with my own eyes. Groups hanging out together, riders heading for the canyons, etc. Acting like it's not going to be them.