Bore & Stoke Breakout: Treat Street Riding As A High-Consequence Sport
The motorcycle industry frequently markets riding as a casual, lifestyle-driven hobby, but in episode four of the Bore and Stoke podcast, Ken Hill argues that this casual mindset is precisely what cuts many riding journeys short.
Motorcycling is a highly technical sport with unforgiving physical consequences if executed incorrectly, and it demands to be treated with absolute seriousness. Hill notes that while no one would dream of jumping out of an airplane without extensive instruction or playing a round of golf without a lesson, individuals regularly walk into dealerships, purchase 200-plus horsepower sportbikes, and hit public roads with zero technical training.
To illustrate this disparity, Hill often asks riders to imagine a casual sport like bowling, but with a twist where throwing a gutter ball means someone is waiting at the end of the lane to break your collarbone. If the penalties for mistakes were that immediate and physical, people would approach the activity with a completely different level of focus.
The street environment offers changing traction, blind corners, and unpredictable traffic, making it more dangerous than a closed track. Mitigating these inherent risks requires active, ongoing education, and street riders should consider seeking out professional training to replace raw survival reflexes with deliberate, risk-reducing habits.
Check out the Bore & Stoke episode with Ken Hill here to listen to the full interview.
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It took me about 20 years to progress from a '75 Honda CB200T at age 18 to an '88 Kawasaki ZX-10. So, moving from ~16 horsepower to ~135 HP. And 20 years was about right to gain the maturity that superbike demanded.
I have been street riding for about 52 years in Southern California. I dropped a bike on my knee at near zero speed due to sand on an intersection and dunlop K70 tires which had all the grip if a hockey puck covered in grease on hot asphalt. That caused the MOST damage to me . 2 knee surgeries to fix. caused me problems for decades.
OVer cooked a corner on a mountain road went off an empanbkment over the bars. no injuries. Car pulled infant of my left turn. Hit the brakes hit the car. rolled over the car ran into a ditch bike filled me. sore the next week. Fixated on a turn ran into a mountainside but slowed to a near stop when I hit no damage.
IN EACH CASE OF THESE I was fixating.
I have a cousin how rode safely for 35 ears. he got a go pro put it on his helmet and had 4 accidents in 4 months the last ut him ooff the bike for 13 months due to severe shoulder injury. I said sell the damnned camera! sure enough he got back on the bike his brother tossed the go pro and 7 years later no accidents.
you have to pay attention .
One nearly bad one .. I stopped on Clark road in Long Beach ca. on my way to work on a raining day due to a light and the trash truck behind me did not. I swear if I had a thicker jacket on I would have been hit. scared me to death.
that was my fault to a point for NOT checking my 6.
these were all on under 60 hp bikes.
I have over 300k miles of riding and that was my danger points.
what have I seen.. Ortega highway a brand new rider on a HD wiped off the face of the earth riding next to her husband riding over the double yellow into oncoming traffic.
High speed sport bikes (a few treating Ortega highway and Angeles crest like a racetrack totally forgetting that the other directionn are other people doing the same, several terrible accidents.
At the road house after being picked on for being slow. I said do you want to learn to go really fast? go to a race school for a weekend. One day on a track and you will never treat a street like a racetrack again...the meat Wagin is right there, no traffic coming to other way, no crap on the track once you have done that you will see how bad of idea it is to ride over your head.
I am and AMA life member and try to get peorplkto join for the strong safety aspect the encourages going to training and rinding sanely.