Car was wrong way going southbound in the carpool lane of the northbound 5 freeway near Main Street in Santa Ana California.
Are you aware that California has the most registered motorcycles out of any other state in the union? Naturally most of those motorcycles are registered in Southern California. I mean with our great climate, and being able to ride from the beach to the mountains usually within an hour or so, makes Southern California probably one of the best places to ride a motorcycle.
Unfortunately, there is a downside to motorcycle riding here in Southern California. California has perhaps the highest gas tax in the country. Plus, because the State was using just 20% of the gas tax money to maintain the highways, they were in terrible condition. To solve this problem, instead of using more of the dedicated gas tax money, the politicians in California, earlier this year, decided to jack up the gas tax by over $.12 a gallon on top of what we were already paying. Now, that’s just the current gas tax increase, because this same legislation increases the amount of gas tax every year!
Orange County Motorcycle Crash
Luckily, this November there’s a people’s initiative to rollback this tax and prevent future gas taxes.
Plus, in other states where they have legalized the use of marijuana, highway accidents and highway fatalities have increased by about 5%. So, naturally, the voters in California, last year, decided to legalize marijuana! I’m sure that if it’s reported at all, or reported correctly, we will start to see our own California motorcycle accidents and motorcycle highway fatalities also start to increase because of stoned automobile and truck drivers.
California Motorcycle Accident
As far as California motorcycle accident statistics go, the latest figures I could find were for 2013. For that year, over 11,700 California motorcycle riders were injured in accidents. Also, in 2013 there were 480 motorcyclists killed in accidents here in California. The highest California motorcycle accident rates for that year were in Los Angeles County with over 3500 injuries for motorcyclists. The second highest California County for motorcycle accidents was right here in San Diego County, where there were over 1,200 motorcyclist injured!
