May 13, 2025 • 16 mins
IT'S DANGEROUS TO RIDE A MOTORCYCLE IN COLORADO And the Common Sense Institute has a new study to prove it. DJ Summers joins me today at 2:30 to talk about this study that shows that a disproportionate number deaths in road accidents are motorcyclists. DJ has the details on this new report about how declining traffic enforcement is making the roads less safe for most and much less safe for those on bikes.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Common sense reports about important things you need to know about,
and today is no different. We're going to talk about
a new report with DJ Summers about traffic enforcement declining
and motorcycle fatality is going in a much different direction.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
DJ, welcome back to the show. First of all, it's.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Something to be here. Thank you Mandy for having me
pleasure as always.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Now you're a motorcycle guy. You just said that, do
you own a motorcycle?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
I have.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
I'll be getting an endorsement for a motorcycle and not
too long. I'm still shopping around for my next ride.
But I am a motorcycle guy. It's it's nice you
get the wind in your hair figuratively because I don't
have much.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Of it, but you get the wind in your hair.
It's it's some freedom on the road. You know.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
It's a piece of Americana. It's like riding a horse
made out of iron. I know, I sound like pond
joby throwback there, but the truth.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
There worse worse people to emulate than bon Jovi and
his heyday.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Let's talk about this study.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
First of all, why did you guys choose to study
traffic enforcement and vehicle mild deaths?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
At the same time. We just brought this on.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Yeah, I mean this, this came out of kind of happenstance.
You know, we were which is how a lot of
our reports are derived. We just come across interesting bits
of information that are relevant to the public.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Somehow.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
At that time, we were doing just kind of a
larger level scoping process around some traffic enforcements, traffic revenues,
that kind of thing, and we found that motorcycle fatalities
were going way way up they had been, and it
was it was not headed the same direction as like
(01:42):
licenses on the road and vehicle registration traffic penalties. So
we really just saw this and just that that contrast
there stuck out to us, and since its motorcycle Awareness months.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
We thought might be a good time to drop that.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
So let's talk about these actual numbers, because I got
to tell you, the motorcycle death increases are pretty shocking.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I think they're pretty shocking, and.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I want to ask you have they coincided completely with
the introduction of lane filtering, which a lot of young
motorcyclists in my now experience on I twenty five believe
to be the same as lane splitting, because there's a
lot of lane splitting going on right now on our interstates.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
There's a lot of lane splitting going on. You hear
a lot of that anecdotally. Everybody has some story about
driving on I twenty five and having that exhilarating experience
of getting passed by someone on a bike doing ninety.
And there is some correlation between the uptick in motorcycle
(02:48):
deaths and the number of motorcycle fatalities on a yearly basis.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
There is some correlation there because that started.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
In the Remind me when that started late late ten year.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I think it was twenty nineteen, maybe twenty one.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Ye when.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
They passed it in twenty nineteen, but it just went
fully into effect last year, maybe last two years at
the most. It hasn't been that long. So it's been
a relatively new, uh situation, and I feel like a
lot of motorcyclists are either willfully ignorant of what it
actually is, but it's created kind of a terrifying situation.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
And it's always it looks to be a.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Twenty something guy wearing just a T shirt and some
shorts and a helmet and he's going one hundred miles
an hour down you know, in between cars so and
you know, as a mom, that just gets my mom
radar like up. You know, it gets my hackles up
because they think they're invincible and they're going to be
splattered all over the road, and it's just it's incredibly sad.
So what did we learn about traffic enforcement? Let me
(03:49):
walk back to that part of this, because we all
know that for the last few years, you could drive
around with an expired tag that expired in twenty twenty
or twenty nineteen and no one was going to write
you in ticket. So what kind of impact his traffic
enforcement had.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
That really was where we found more at this, you know,
more than there was like a strong correlation with you know,
the implementation of lane splitting things like that. What we
found was there's a lot of overlap between how much
traffic penalties have fallen over the last few years and
(04:26):
this increase in fatalities.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Like total traffic penalties in.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Colorado fell by over fifty four percent from twenty eighteen
to twenty twenty four. You know, that's just enough fancy
way of saying over a six year period, they're giving
out half the traffic penalty assessments that they used to.
That's a huge decline. That is an enormous decline, and
(04:52):
we do know that there has been a couple of
items that contribute to that. You know, a lot of
law enforcement officials have talked a lot about this just
kind of the chilling effects of some of the law
enforcement reforms that came out in the early twenty twenties.
But just in Denver proper, they did have a de
(05:15):
emphasis on low level traffic enforcement as kind of a
policy there.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
So much so that Aurora went the opposite direction.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Aurora said that they're stepping their low level traffic enforcement up.
So we do know that over the last six seven years,
there has been a dramatic decline in the number of
total traffic penalties assessed. Now in that same time, we've
got this increase in motorcycle deaths. We've got this increase
(05:46):
in this road safety condition. That's the gist of what
we've uncovered here, and there's more details in it. You know,
the number of registrations for motorcycles fell by nine percent,
So you've got to think that lower registration means fewer
motorcyclists on the road means fewer deaths.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
That isn't the case.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
There's just fewer registered motorcycles on the road, and there's
fewer licenses generally with vehicles all across the board. You know,
our driving age population rose between twenty eighteen and twenty
twenty four, but the number of total regular licenses enforced
in Colorado shrank in that time.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
So you've got to think, why are these people.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
Driving around without registration or driving around without licenses? And
we do know that has coincided with this decrease in
overall traffic penalty assessment, So it's all kind of tied together.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Well, let me.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Ask this about that, because when we're talking, it does
seem to be obviously there's a correlation, right, correlation is
not causation, but obviously there's a pretty significant correlation there.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Traffic stops are actually a.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Highly dangerous part of policing because you never know what
is going to happen. You don't know who's in the car,
you don't know what's in the car. It is a
very highly dangerous part of policing. And when we don't
have the kind of force numbers that we need. I
don't know if there is an agency in the Denver
metro other than down in doug COO that.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Is fully staffed right now. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I know Aurora is way down, I know Denver's way down.
So is that a big part of it? We just
don't have the bodies to go out and enforce these
like look for crime on the roads when they're having
to respond to the people that are calling nine to
one one.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
I mean, in Denver, that's probably what the police force
would tell you.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Police force would tell you.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Look, we really want to prioritize higher level crimes.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
We want to know we're short on what our authorized.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Strength should be, and we want to make sure that
we're going out and getting the bad guys that are.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Committing robberies and committing aggravated assaults, that kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
We want to free up our police force, limited as
it is, so that they can go out and do
that higher level stuff and not have to focus on
lower level traffic forcement pulling somebody over for an expired
tag or something like that.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
That's definitely what a lot of police forces would probably
tell you about this.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Knowing what we know about our shrinkage in police number
and police strength, I mean, we passed Prop one thirty
last fall. The public knows that they want more police
in the forces statewide. So it's a problem that everyone
(08:35):
kind of acknowledges exists.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
So there's probably a lot that has to do with that.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Somebody else on the text line, and actually DJ Summer
is our guest from the Common Sensus. We were talking
about this off the air, this one, Mandy, Oh, let
me see where it went.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I'd be interested to know how many.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Of those motorcycle deaths are caused by cross rocket motorcycles
in comparison to Harley Davidson type motorcycles, and that we
don't have that parsing right. But I think we're all like,
of course it's the speeders. Of course it's the cross rockets,
you know, I mean the guys, like I said, the
young guys are invincible. But you don't have that information.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
No anywhere that I've seen in the available public data.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
How exactly they would they would make that differentiation, whether
they just do that by you know, how many ccs
the engine is, you know, whether you're riding like a
cruiser versus a dirt bike versus a street bob or whatever.
I don't think that there's anything in the literature right
now that makes those kinds of distinctions. It'd be interesting though,
(09:42):
because you know, different kinds of bikes lead to different
kinds of behaviors, So I'm sure that's maybe part of
the puzzle.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Well, I'd love to know.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And we have a lot of law enforcement to listen
to the show if they can hit the text line
five six six nine. Oh, what is your experience in
law enforcement dealing with these fatal and you know, DJ,
I don't know if you guys looked into this, but
how many serious accidents involving a motorcycle have have happened
in Colorado where maybe the person doesn't die, but they
are seriously and dramatically injured. I mean, there's a level
(10:14):
of disability that comes along with a motorcycle accident that
you don't necessarily get in a car accident just because
anything pect.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, very very yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
I mean, we we've got all kinds of serious injuries
that we're not even talking about.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
With this study that one.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Hundred and sixty plus motorcyclists dead in twenty twenty four,
that doesn't account for all of the ones that have
maybe just been you know, horribly.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Injured now or quadriplegic something like that.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
We're not even talking about seriously injurious accidents here.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
We're only focusing on these fatalities.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
And to be clear, DJ, I want to make sure
that people who ride motorcycles in our listening audience, I'm
not mad at motorcyclists. The thing for me about motorcycles
is I personally know to people that had been riding
motorcycles for forty years that were killed because of the
actions of another driver. Right, So there's that level of
protection that doesn't exist. But I'm not picking on motorcyclists.
(11:11):
I just want them to keep their heads on a
swivel and make sure that they know that Colorado roads
are not necessarily the safest thing for motorcyclists. Do we
know what percentage of the people on the road, of
the miles driven on the road are driven by motorcyclists
versus people in cars, Because if right now they're making
up twenty four percent of all traffic desks, what percentage
(11:33):
of passenger miles do they make up?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
To give us some perspective.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
On that, I don't know those numbers off the top
of my head.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I do know that they're lower.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
It's not commensurate with the number of fatalities that you'd see.
It's a disproportionate amount of fatalities in traffic crashes that
are represented by motorcyclists as opposed to just passenger vehicles,
which makes sense.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
It's a more inherent lead danger for his way to travel.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
You don't have a seat belt, you're exposed, there's less
material around you to absorb any kind of impact if
you get into it.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
It just that does make sense.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
But to see them going up like this, especially in
the light of you know, traffic penalties going down, maybe
that leading to a little bit less savory road conditions,
especially with the state of Colorado's roads you know where
ranked some of the worst urban highways and some of
the worst rural highways both in the nation according to
(12:32):
a recent study. So all of those factors, they just
they kind of make the perfect storm.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
DJ I mean, in my mind, what do we do
with this information other than go to your local law
enforcement agencies, go to your town councils, your city council's,
your county commissions, and say we've got to make traffic
enforcement a priority.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
It has to be a priority.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Because I saw a quote and I believe that it
was the New Aurora PD Chief Todd Chamberlain.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I think it was him.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
He actually said, you know, we've stopped these stolen cars
or cars with no plates, and we found firearms, we
find people with warrants, we find people with drugs. Because
normally law abiding, otherwise citizens are not driving around with
no tags on their car, right, I mean, most people
are trying to do the right thing. So the notion
that somehow traffic enforcement wouldn't help prevent other crimes by
(13:22):
taking criminals off the streets, that's the part that for
me feels the most important here.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
It's a big portion of it for a lot of
district attorneys that we might have talked to. You know,
we haven't gotten into that kind of depth of analysis
just yet. How many low level traffic enforcements lead to
some kind of higher level law enforcement action. We don't
have those on hand, but that was one of the
(13:49):
reasons that we were looking into this in the first place,
is we wanted to know what was going on, whether
or not that was leading to a decline. We don't
have any of those figures just yet, but acdotally, you
can talk to a lot of law enforcement people, people
in the legal system who say that lower level traffic
enforcements were good for higher level law enforcement altogether for
(14:15):
the reasons that you just named that you know, a
lot of the time they lead to something else, So
as an enforcement strategy, it's kind of part of the toolkit.
And that's that's kind of a concern with some of
the people that you know, we've been speaking to.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Around that time.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Again, we don't really have any of those numbers just yet,
but that was kind of the thought around this, And
I mean.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
It's a crucial revenue question as well.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
You know, we're in a statewide budgets kerfuffle at the moment,
that one point two billion dollar gap that's been causing
state legislator's grief, and we know that impacts municipalities too,
That impacts towns, that impacts cities, counties who.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Get to share some of that state revenue.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
The revenue that you do generate from total traffic penalties
from those low level stops is not insubstantial, as unpopular
as that might be. To say, for law abiding citizens
who don't want to get pulled over for you know,
an expired registration tag or something like that, get it
gets up into the millions. The revenue generated from the
(15:22):
penalties fell three point two million dollars.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
I mean there's between.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, there's a big a difference between a speed trap
community where all they do is write tickets. Morrison fairly
recently was one of those, and quite another to say,
if we've got people going down you know, our roads
at ninety miles an hour when it's a forty mile
an hour speed limit, that's a sizable ticket and should
be a revenue stream.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Sure, sure, I mean, I mean just with motorcycles, motorcycles alone,
if motorcycle registrations had kept pace with population growth, Colorado
would have.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Generated eight million more dollars in.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
State registration revenue between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty four.
And that doesn't even include like county level registration fees.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
So you are talking.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
About some of that basic stuff that registration fee, lower
level traffic enforcement, that is a revenue source. And in
the light of increasing fatalities and less than safe road
conditions according to certain rankings, it might be something to consider.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
DJ Summers from the Common Sense Institute another fascinating report
about Colorado. I can hardly wait to hear the response
from the politicians that will sound something like nuh uh,
because that's all they ever say to you, guys when
you report, You report the facts, and then they come
back and you're like nah, So keep up the good work, DJ,
I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
I appreciate you, Mandy, thank you for having me on
as always. Cannot wait to do it again.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
All right, man, have a great day.
Common sense reports about important things you need to know about,
and today is no different. We're going to talk about
a new report with DJ Summers about traffic enforcement declining
and motorcycle fatality is going in a much different direction.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
DJ, welcome back to the show. First of all, it's.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Something to be here. Thank you Mandy for having me
pleasure as always.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Now you're a motorcycle guy. You just said that, do
you own a motorcycle?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
I have.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
I'll be getting an endorsement for a motorcycle and not
too long. I'm still shopping around for my next ride.
But I am a motorcycle guy. It's it's nice you
get the wind in your hair figuratively because I don't
have much.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Of it, but you get the wind in your hair.
It's it's some freedom on the road. You know.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
It's a piece of Americana. It's like riding a horse
made out of iron. I know, I sound like pond
joby throwback there, but the truth.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
There worse worse people to emulate than bon Jovi and
his heyday.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Let's talk about this study.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
First of all, why did you guys choose to study
traffic enforcement and vehicle mild deaths?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
At the same time. We just brought this on.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Yeah, I mean this, this came out of kind of happenstance.
You know, we were which is how a lot of
our reports are derived. We just come across interesting bits
of information that are relevant to the public.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Somehow.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
At that time, we were doing just kind of a
larger level scoping process around some traffic enforcements, traffic revenues,
that kind of thing, and we found that motorcycle fatalities
were going way way up they had been, and it
was it was not headed the same direction as like
(01:42):
licenses on the road and vehicle registration traffic penalties. So
we really just saw this and just that that contrast
there stuck out to us, and since its motorcycle Awareness months.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
We thought might be a good time to drop that.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
So let's talk about these actual numbers, because I got
to tell you, the motorcycle death increases are pretty shocking.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I think they're pretty shocking, and.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I want to ask you have they coincided completely with
the introduction of lane filtering, which a lot of young
motorcyclists in my now experience on I twenty five believe
to be the same as lane splitting, because there's a
lot of lane splitting going on right now on our interstates.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
There's a lot of lane splitting going on. You hear
a lot of that anecdotally. Everybody has some story about
driving on I twenty five and having that exhilarating experience
of getting passed by someone on a bike doing ninety.
And there is some correlation between the uptick in motorcycle
(02:48):
deaths and the number of motorcycle fatalities on a yearly basis.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
There is some correlation there because that started.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
In the Remind me when that started late late ten year.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I think it was twenty nineteen, maybe twenty one.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Ye when.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
They passed it in twenty nineteen, but it just went
fully into effect last year, maybe last two years at
the most. It hasn't been that long. So it's been
a relatively new, uh situation, and I feel like a
lot of motorcyclists are either willfully ignorant of what it
actually is, but it's created kind of a terrifying situation.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
And it's always it looks to be a.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Twenty something guy wearing just a T shirt and some
shorts and a helmet and he's going one hundred miles
an hour down you know, in between cars so and
you know, as a mom, that just gets my mom
radar like up. You know, it gets my hackles up
because they think they're invincible and they're going to be
splattered all over the road, and it's just it's incredibly sad.
So what did we learn about traffic enforcement? Let me
(03:49):
walk back to that part of this, because we all
know that for the last few years, you could drive
around with an expired tag that expired in twenty twenty
or twenty nineteen and no one was going to write
you in ticket. So what kind of impact his traffic
enforcement had.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
That really was where we found more at this, you know,
more than there was like a strong correlation with you know,
the implementation of lane splitting things like that. What we
found was there's a lot of overlap between how much
traffic penalties have fallen over the last few years and
(04:26):
this increase in fatalities.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Like total traffic penalties in.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Colorado fell by over fifty four percent from twenty eighteen
to twenty twenty four. You know, that's just enough fancy
way of saying over a six year period, they're giving
out half the traffic penalty assessments that they used to.
That's a huge decline. That is an enormous decline, and
(04:52):
we do know that there has been a couple of
items that contribute to that. You know, a lot of
law enforcement officials have talked a lot about this just
kind of the chilling effects of some of the law
enforcement reforms that came out in the early twenty twenties.
But just in Denver proper, they did have a de
(05:15):
emphasis on low level traffic enforcement as kind of a
policy there.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
So much so that Aurora went the opposite direction.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Aurora said that they're stepping their low level traffic enforcement up.
So we do know that over the last six seven years,
there has been a dramatic decline in the number of
total traffic penalties assessed. Now in that same time, we've
got this increase in motorcycle deaths. We've got this increase
(05:46):
in this road safety condition. That's the gist of what
we've uncovered here, and there's more details in it. You know,
the number of registrations for motorcycles fell by nine percent,
So you've got to think that lower registration means fewer
motorcyclists on the road means fewer deaths.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
That isn't the case.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
There's just fewer registered motorcycles on the road, and there's
fewer licenses generally with vehicles all across the board. You know,
our driving age population rose between twenty eighteen and twenty
twenty four, but the number of total regular licenses enforced
in Colorado shrank in that time.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
So you've got to think, why are these people.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
Driving around without registration or driving around without licenses? And
we do know that has coincided with this decrease in
overall traffic penalty assessment, So it's all kind of tied together.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Well, let me.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Ask this about that, because when we're talking, it does
seem to be obviously there's a correlation, right, correlation is
not causation, but obviously there's a pretty significant correlation there.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Traffic stops are actually a.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Highly dangerous part of policing because you never know what
is going to happen. You don't know who's in the car,
you don't know what's in the car. It is a
very highly dangerous part of policing. And when we don't
have the kind of force numbers that we need. I
don't know if there is an agency in the Denver
metro other than down in doug COO that.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Is fully staffed right now. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I know Aurora is way down, I know Denver's way down.
So is that a big part of it? We just
don't have the bodies to go out and enforce these
like look for crime on the roads when they're having
to respond to the people that are calling nine to
one one.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
I mean, in Denver, that's probably what the police force
would tell you.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Police force would tell you.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Look, we really want to prioritize higher level crimes.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
We want to know we're short on what our authorized.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Strength should be, and we want to make sure that
we're going out and getting the bad guys that are.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Committing robberies and committing aggravated assaults, that kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
We want to free up our police force, limited as
it is, so that they can go out and do
that higher level stuff and not have to focus on
lower level traffic forcement pulling somebody over for an expired
tag or something like that.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
That's definitely what a lot of police forces would probably
tell you about this.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Knowing what we know about our shrinkage in police number
and police strength, I mean, we passed Prop one thirty
last fall. The public knows that they want more police
in the forces statewide. So it's a problem that everyone
(08:35):
kind of acknowledges exists.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
So there's probably a lot that has to do with that.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Somebody else on the text line, and actually DJ Summer
is our guest from the Common Sensus. We were talking
about this off the air, this one, Mandy, Oh, let
me see where it went.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I'd be interested to know how many.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Of those motorcycle deaths are caused by cross rocket motorcycles
in comparison to Harley Davidson type motorcycles, and that we
don't have that parsing right. But I think we're all like,
of course it's the speeders. Of course it's the cross rockets,
you know, I mean the guys, like I said, the
young guys are invincible. But you don't have that information.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
No anywhere that I've seen in the available public data.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
How exactly they would they would make that differentiation, whether
they just do that by you know, how many ccs
the engine is, you know, whether you're riding like a
cruiser versus a dirt bike versus a street bob or whatever.
I don't think that there's anything in the literature right
now that makes those kinds of distinctions. It'd be interesting though,
(09:42):
because you know, different kinds of bikes lead to different
kinds of behaviors, So I'm sure that's maybe part of
the puzzle.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Well, I'd love to know.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And we have a lot of law enforcement to listen
to the show if they can hit the text line
five six six nine. Oh, what is your experience in
law enforcement dealing with these fatal and you know, DJ,
I don't know if you guys looked into this, but
how many serious accidents involving a motorcycle have have happened
in Colorado where maybe the person doesn't die, but they
are seriously and dramatically injured. I mean, there's a level
(10:14):
of disability that comes along with a motorcycle accident that
you don't necessarily get in a car accident just because
anything pect.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, very very yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
I mean, we we've got all kinds of serious injuries
that we're not even talking about.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
With this study that one.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Hundred and sixty plus motorcyclists dead in twenty twenty four,
that doesn't account for all of the ones that have
maybe just been you know, horribly.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Injured now or quadriplegic something like that.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
We're not even talking about seriously injurious accidents here.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
We're only focusing on these fatalities.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
And to be clear, DJ, I want to make sure
that people who ride motorcycles in our listening audience, I'm
not mad at motorcyclists. The thing for me about motorcycles
is I personally know to people that had been riding
motorcycles for forty years that were killed because of the
actions of another driver. Right, So there's that level of
protection that doesn't exist. But I'm not picking on motorcyclists.
(11:11):
I just want them to keep their heads on a
swivel and make sure that they know that Colorado roads
are not necessarily the safest thing for motorcyclists. Do we
know what percentage of the people on the road, of
the miles driven on the road are driven by motorcyclists
versus people in cars, Because if right now they're making
up twenty four percent of all traffic desks, what percentage
(11:33):
of passenger miles do they make up?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
To give us some perspective.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
On that, I don't know those numbers off the top
of my head.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I do know that they're lower.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
It's not commensurate with the number of fatalities that you'd see.
It's a disproportionate amount of fatalities in traffic crashes that
are represented by motorcyclists as opposed to just passenger vehicles,
which makes sense.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
It's a more inherent lead danger for his way to travel.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
You don't have a seat belt, you're exposed, there's less
material around you to absorb any kind of impact if
you get into it.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
It just that does make sense.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
But to see them going up like this, especially in
the light of you know, traffic penalties going down, maybe
that leading to a little bit less savory road conditions,
especially with the state of Colorado's roads you know where
ranked some of the worst urban highways and some of
the worst rural highways both in the nation according to
(12:32):
a recent study. So all of those factors, they just
they kind of make the perfect storm.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
DJ I mean, in my mind, what do we do
with this information other than go to your local law
enforcement agencies, go to your town councils, your city council's,
your county commissions, and say we've got to make traffic
enforcement a priority.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
It has to be a priority.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Because I saw a quote and I believe that it
was the New Aurora PD Chief Todd Chamberlain.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I think it was him.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
He actually said, you know, we've stopped these stolen cars
or cars with no plates, and we found firearms, we
find people with warrants, we find people with drugs. Because
normally law abiding, otherwise citizens are not driving around with
no tags on their car, right, I mean, most people
are trying to do the right thing. So the notion
that somehow traffic enforcement wouldn't help prevent other crimes by
(13:22):
taking criminals off the streets, that's the part that for
me feels the most important here.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
It's a big portion of it for a lot of
district attorneys that we might have talked to. You know,
we haven't gotten into that kind of depth of analysis
just yet. How many low level traffic enforcements lead to
some kind of higher level law enforcement action. We don't
have those on hand, but that was one of the
(13:49):
reasons that we were looking into this in the first place,
is we wanted to know what was going on, whether
or not that was leading to a decline. We don't
have any of those figures just yet, but acdotally, you
can talk to a lot of law enforcement people, people
in the legal system who say that lower level traffic
enforcements were good for higher level law enforcement altogether for
(14:15):
the reasons that you just named that you know, a
lot of the time they lead to something else, So
as an enforcement strategy, it's kind of part of the toolkit.
And that's that's kind of a concern with some of
the people that you know, we've been speaking to.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Around that time.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Again, we don't really have any of those numbers just yet,
but that was kind of the thought around this, And
I mean.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
It's a crucial revenue question as well.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
You know, we're in a statewide budgets kerfuffle at the moment,
that one point two billion dollar gap that's been causing
state legislator's grief, and we know that impacts municipalities too,
That impacts towns, that impacts cities, counties who.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Get to share some of that state revenue.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
The revenue that you do generate from total traffic penalties
from those low level stops is not insubstantial, as unpopular
as that might be. To say, for law abiding citizens
who don't want to get pulled over for you know,
an expired registration tag or something like that, get it
gets up into the millions. The revenue generated from the
(15:22):
penalties fell three point two million dollars.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
I mean there's between.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, there's a big a difference between a speed trap
community where all they do is write tickets. Morrison fairly
recently was one of those, and quite another to say,
if we've got people going down you know, our roads
at ninety miles an hour when it's a forty mile
an hour speed limit, that's a sizable ticket and should
be a revenue stream.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Sure, sure, I mean, I mean just with motorcycles, motorcycles alone,
if motorcycle registrations had kept pace with population growth, Colorado
would have.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Generated eight million more dollars in.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
State registration revenue between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty four.
And that doesn't even include like county level registration fees.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
So you are talking.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
About some of that basic stuff that registration fee, lower
level traffic enforcement, that is a revenue source. And in
the light of increasing fatalities and less than safe road
conditions according to certain rankings, it might be something to consider.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
DJ Summers from the Common Sense Institute another fascinating report
about Colorado. I can hardly wait to hear the response
from the politicians that will sound something like nuh uh,
because that's all they ever say to you, guys when
you report, You report the facts, and then they come
back and you're like nah, So keep up the good work, DJ,
I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
I appreciate you, Mandy, thank you for having me on
as always. Cannot wait to do it again.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
All right, man, have a great day.
The Mandy Connell Podcast News
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