Bike Night Bullshit: Motorcycle Myths You Probably Still Believe

Bike night runs on bullshit, the kind delivered with total confidence by a rider leaned against his own bike. Every claim below has been said out loud, in the first person, at bike nights, gas stations, and in comment sections, by somebody who believed every word of it. Some of it was true once. Some of it was never true. Here is each one the way it gets said, followed by what the research and the physics actually say.

1. "Loud pipes save lives. Cars can hear me coming."

Watch the cartoon: Bike Night Bullshit Episode 1, Loud Pipes

Start with where the sound goes. Your exhaust points backward, so most of the noise goes behind you, toward the people who are not about to kill you. The crashes that kill riders usually happen in front: a car turning left across the rider's path or pulling out from a side street.

Researchers at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest put it to the test. They revved six motorcycles to redline around a stationary car, including one exhaust peaking at 110 decibels, which is chainsaw loud. With the bike 50 feet behind the car, the driver could not hear it inside the cabin at all. At 33 feet, only one of the six bikes was clearly heard. Modern car cabins are soundproofed, the windows are up, the air is on, and the radio is playing.

Run loud pipes if you like the sound. Just do not count them as safety equipment. Bright gear, a good headlight, lane position, and riding like you are invisible do more work than noise ever will.

2. "I had to lay it down to keep from hitting him."

Watch the cartoon: Bike Night Bullshit Episode 2, Had to Lay Her Down

No, you didn't. Laying a bike down on purpose is crashing to avoid a crash, and the math is against it. Rubber on asphalt has a friction coefficient around 1.0. Steel and plastic sliding on asphalt have far less. A bike slows down much faster on its tires than it ever will on its side, and once it is down you have no brakes, no steering, and no options left. You are just sliding toward the thing you were trying to miss, at a higher speed than if you had stayed on the brakes.

Here is the part nobody likes to hear: if you had time to decide to lay it down, you had time to brake or swerve. Most "had to lay it down" stories are really "grabbed too much rear brake and it went down," retold in a way that sounds intentional. Keep it upright, brake hard, and keep your options open all the way.

3. "I'm not wearing a helmet. Those things break your neck, and you can't see or hear in one anyway."

The neck claim has been tested hard, and it failed. A study in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons using the National Trauma Databank (over 40,000 motorcycle crash cases) found helmeted riders had a lower rate of cervical spine injury than riders without helmets, 3.5 percent versus 4.4 percent. A University of Wisconsin study of 1,061 crash victims found the same thing, only stronger: neck injuries in 7.4 percent of helmeted riders versus 15.4 percent of riders without helmets, and neck fractures at 4.6 percent versus 10.8 percent.

Vision and hearing do not hold up either. The federal helmet standard requires 210 degrees of peripheral vision, which is more than the roughly 180 degrees you have with no helmet on at all. And the Hurt Report, the big in-depth crash study out of USC, did not find a single case where a helmet kept a rider from hearing a critical traffic sound. Wind noise does more hearing damage than a helmet ever will.

4. "I don't need ABS. I can out-brake a computer."

Watch the cartoon: Bike Night Bullshit Episode 3, Out-Braking ABS

In a parking lot, on clean dry pavement, with warning, a skilled rider on a familiar bike can sometimes match ABS. In a real panic stop, with rain, gravel, paint stripes, and a car turning in front of you, the computer modulates the brakes many times a second and never panics. You do.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has run the numbers more than once. Its largest study, covering 65 motorcycle models from 2013 to 2019, found bikes with ABS were involved in 22 percent fewer fatal crashes than the same models without it. An earlier IIHS update put the figure at 31 percent. For standard and cruiser riders, the group most of us are in, the reduction was 32 percent. That is not a crutch. That is the single most proven safety option on the option sheet.

5. "Lane splitting? That's just a good way to get yourself killed."

This one depends entirely on how it is done, and the best data we have comes from California. UC Berkeley's SafeTREC researchers reviewed nearly 6,000 motorcycle crashes, including 997 where the rider was splitting lanes. Splitting in traffic moving at 50 mph or less, at no more than 15 mph faster than surrounding traffic, was not associated with worse injuries. Lane-splitting riders were significantly less likely to be rear-ended, and less likely to suffer head injuries (9 percent versus 17 percent), torso injuries (19 versus 29 percent), and fatal injuries (1.2 percent versus 3 percent) than riders who were not splitting.

Blast through a traffic jam 40 mph faster than the cars and the numbers change fast. The myth is that splitting itself is suicide. The data says speed differential is what gets you.

6. "I've got deer whistles mounted up front. Deer stay out of my way."

Watch the cartoon: Bike Night Bullshit Episode 4, Deer Whistles

If only. Researchers at the University of Georgia tested sound devices on captive and free-ranging deer, using pure tones across the range these products claim. The deer did not change their behavior in any way that would prevent a collision. In one treatment, the deer reacted in a way that made a collision more likely. The study, published in the Journal of Wildlife Management, concluded whistles are likely not effective.

The physics are just as bad. Deer hear best between about 2 and 6 kHz. Many whistles aim up at 16 to 20 kHz, and whatever sound they do make gets drowned out by your own tire and wind noise before it gets anywhere useful. Ten bucks at the parts counter buys you a false sense of security, and that is the most dangerous thing on the bike. Scan the edges, cover the brakes at dawn and dusk, and slow down in deer country.

7. "I run premium in mine. She makes more power on the good stuff."

Octane is not energy. It is a measure of knock resistance, nothing more. An engine built and tuned for regular gas cannot use the extra knock resistance, so it makes the same power on 87 as it does on 93. AAA tested this directly in 2016 and found no consistent gain in horsepower, fuel economy, or emissions from premium fuel in vehicles designed for regular. The Federal Trade Commission has been saying the same thing for years: using a higher octane than your manual calls for offers, in its words, "absolutely no benefit."

Read your owner's manual and run what it says. If it requires premium, run premium, because running regular in that engine costs you power and risks knock. If it calls for regular, the extra dollar a gallon is buying you a nicer receipt.

8. "Easy on those tires, they're brand new. They're coated in grease for the first hundred miles."

This one has a kernel of truth wrapped in an old story. Modern tire plants are not slathering tires in slippery mold release the way the legend says, and no magic switch flips at mile 100. But tire makers still tell you to take it easy at first, and they are not wrong: a brand-new tire has a smooth, untouched surface, a different profile than the worn-out tire you just took off, and it needs a few heat cycles and some gradual scuffing before it feels like itself.

So the myth is not "be careful on new tires." Be careful on new tires. The myth is that the tire is a greased trap waiting to throw you off at the first corner, and that at 101 miles it is suddenly a racing slick. Gradually work your way out to the edges over the first rides and you will never think about it again.

9. "He can't clock me. No windshield, radar's got nothing to bounce off of."

The windshield part is backwards. Most windshields are plastic or fiberglass, which radar passes through almost like air. What radar actually bounces off is metal and mass: the engine, the forks, the headlight bucket, and you. Your chest and helmet present more target than any windshield ever did.

There is one kernel of truth in it. A motorcycle has a smaller radar cross-section than a car, so at long range, or with a truck right behind you, the gun can grab the stronger return from the bigger vehicle, and the cheap radar signs at the roadside do sometimes sail right past a bike without registering it. Officers who run radar will tell you bikes are a little harder at distance. But harder is not invisible. Inside normal enforcement range, radar clocks motorcycles every day, and lidar does not care about any of this: the officer aims at your headlight and has your speed before you have seen him. Riding a naked bike is not a cloaking device.

10.  "I always get on from the left. That's the correct side."

There is no correct side to mount or dismount from. The left-side habit is borrowed from horses and the way a bike leans on its stand. Get on and off from whichever side is safer where you are standing; motor officers are trained to mount from the right so they never step into traffic.

11. "I sit in neutral at red lights. Holding the clutch in wears it out, and neutral's safer anyway."

Rider training teaches the opposite: stay in first gear, clutch in, foot on the rear brake, eyes in the mirrors, ready to roll the second the car coming up behind you looks wrong. Getting rear-ended while parked in neutral with no way to move is the scenario that matters. If the light is long and a car has already stopped behind you as a buffer, then drop it in neutral and rest your hand. Modern wet clutches do not care either way.

Two arguments that will never be settled

The myths above have answers. These two just have sides, and riders have been picking them for years.

Running a car tire on the back of your bike. The "Dark Side."

The darksider says: "Heavy bikes eat rear tires. I get 20,000 miles out of a car tire for half the price of a motorcycle tire, and it handles fine."

The other camp says: "Bikes lean and cars don't. That tire was never made to be leaned on, and every manufacturer says don't."

Both of those are real positions held by real riders, and the honest state of play sits between them. A $300 motorcycle tire can be done in 5,000 to 7,000 miles on a heavy touring bike, so Gold Wing and big cruiser riders run car tires instead: around $150, higher load rating, strong wet grip, run-flat versions, and 20,000 miles or more out of one tire. Darksiders will tell you a worn motorcycle tire squares off flat anyway, and whole forums of high-mileage riders have done it for years without a problem. The other side points to the round profile, the bead and rim seat that were not designed to match, and the fact that every tire and motorcycle manufacturer says not to do it. No laboratory has ever crash-tested it either way, so the fight is engineering principles against a mountain of rider anecdotes, and neither side is surrendering. Watch for the insurance question, too. Nobody agrees on what an adjuster would say after a wreck.

The wave, and who has earned one.

The waver says: "Two fingers down for everybody. We're all out here in the same wind."

The purist says: "I don't wave at scooters. And a Slingshot has a steering wheel. That's a car."

Two fingers down seems simple until riders start writing rules. Wave at everybody on two wheels? What about three wheels? A Harley trike gets one from most riders, but the Slingshot splits the room. Trikes yes, scooters no, is a common line, and the most repeated complaint in every thread on the subject is that Harley riders do not wave back, usually answered by a Harley rider pointing out that sportbike riders started it. Some riders have quit waving entirely so a snub cannot ruin their ride. Others wave at kids on bicycles. It costs nothing, takes half a second, and somehow supports more unwritten law than the tax code.

The pattern

Notice what most of these claims have in common: they all sound right when a rider says them out loud. Loud must be safer. Sliding must be softer than hitting. A computer can't brake better than me. The trouble is, every one of them fell apart the first time somebody measured instead of argued.

Which one did you grow up believing? And which one are you still not giving up, no matter what the studies say? And on the two unsettled ones: car tire or motorcycle tire, and who gets your wave?

Sources, for the skeptics:

• Polytechnic University of Bucharest / Romanian motorcycling association exhaust audibility study, reported by MotorBiscuit, RevZilla, and MCN: bikes revved to redline at 50 ft and 33 ft behind a car; loudest exhaust 110 dB; inaudible at 50 ft, only one of six clearly heard at 33 ft.
• James R. Davis, Motorcycle Safety Site (msgroup.org): friction analysis of "laying it down"; rubber/asphalt coefficient about 1.0, sliding metal/plastic far lower, skidding tire about 80 percent of rolling friction.
• Crompton et al., "Motorcycle helmets associated with lower risk of cervical spine injury: debunking the myth," Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 2011 (National Trauma Databank, 40,588 cases; cervical spine injury 3.5% helmeted vs 4.4% unhelmeted).
• University of Wisconsin-Madison study, Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine (1,061 crash victims; cervical spine injury 7.4% helmeted vs 15.4% unhelmeted; fractures 4.6% vs 10.8%).
• SMARTER / Hurt Report findings: DOT standard requires 210 degrees of peripheral vision; no case found of a helmet blocking a critical traffic sound.
• IIHS, "Effects of Antilock Braking Systems on Motorcycle Fatal Crash Rates" (Teoh): 31% reduction, 2003-2011 update; IIHS 2021 study of 65 models, 2013-2019: 22% fewer fatal crashes, 32% for standard/cruiser models.
• Rice et al., UC Berkeley SafeTREC, "Motorcycle Lane-Splitting and Safety in California," 2015 (5,969 crashes, 997 lane-splitting).
• Valitzski et al., "Deer Responses to Sounds From a Vehicle-Mounted Sound-Production System," Journal of Wildlife Management 73(7), 2009 (University of Georgia).
• AAA premium fuel study, 2016; US Federal Trade Commission consumer guidance on octane.
• Radar and motorcycles: smaller radar cross-section makes bikes a harder target at long range and next to larger vehicles (officer accounts, Bay Area Riders Forum and radar testing literature); modern lidar targets the headlight and clocks motorcycles reliably.
• Tire break-in: manufacturer guidance (Michelin, Dunlop, Bridgestone) recommends gradual scuff-in on new tires; the heavy mold-release coating is a legacy of older manufacturing.