The New York Times reports on the first recorded instance of a rider being saved by Honda's airbag-equipped Goldwing (which I blogged about here):

Returning to the office from lunch on his 2007 Honda Gold Wing motorcycle one day this spring, Lou O’Connell got a glimpse into the future, if only by two seconds or so. A car pulled out of a shopping center in Weston, Fla., near Fort Lauderdale, and into his path. He could see that he was going to hit the car.

Mr. O’Connell said that although he did not expect to be killed in the impending crash — becoming one of the 5,000 or so motorcycle riders who will die on American roads this year if recent trends continue — he knew that at the very least he was about to go flying over the handlebars.

But then there was a bang and a cloud of powder in front of him. Though the front of his bike had slammed the passenger side of a black Nissan 350Z, Mr. O’Connell found himself nearly uninjured — intact enough to lay down the bike and stride over with some well-chosen words for the car’s driver.

That's good news. But the Times spends the rest of the article wondering what could possibly be causing a rise in fatal motorcycle crashes:

Riding a motorcycle is becoming riskier. Deaths last year increased by 5.4 percent over 2005, according to preliminary estimates of the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System, and are up for the ninth consecutive year. Deaths have increased 125 percent over 10 years, a period in which registrations rose more than 50 percent.

Even when adjusted for more bikes covering more miles, the picture is grim. While the death rate for people in vehicles fell by about 17 percent for each mile traveled over that period, the rate for motorcycle riders more than doubled, according to the report.

That timeline coincides with factors including a rising average age of riders, more powerful engines and the repeal of state laws requiring universal helmet use, in part a result of pressure applied by lobby groups that persuaded legislators to “let the rider decide.”

So, what is causing all these crashes? Older riders? More powerful bikes? Helmet law repeals? I suspect the answer is "none of the above." Look at the very example that leads off the Times article itself: A car pulled out of a shopping center in Weston, Fla., near Fort Lauderdale, and into his path. Maybe, just maybe, the increasing number of bike crashes is due to the increasing number of careless, unskilled, and distracted car drivers on America's roads.