Fellow riding advocate “IronMaiden”, continues her vigilant efforts to shed more light on Bill 117 and gather opposition against this ridiculous Bill.

As you all know Bill 117 has gone to the Justice Policy Committee for consideration, however there is still a chance it will not be carried further. Should the legislature ‘prorogue’ when they go to recess, all Bills not on their ‘very important’ list, for lack of a better term, will be wiped out including Bill 117…it is NOT on that list. However, this does not keep Jaczek from presenting it again though so we need to continue our efforts should we need to stand in opposition of a similar Bill in the future.

IronMaiden has forwarded me some information which comes from her dealings with SmartRisk directly. SmartRisk is the organization where Jaczek claims to have collected her “alarming statistics”. Needless to say her numbers are bogus. What we have learned is that “motorcycle related injuries” include mopeds, motor scooters and motorized bicycles but that is just the beginning.

There could not have been 46 serious motorcycle-related child passenger hospitalizations in Ontario when, according to Smartrisk, all “motorcycle related hospitalizations” totalled 858 including rider and passenger in the fiscal year of 2005/06. Are we to believe that 5% (46) of 858 “motorcycle-related” hospitalizations in Ontario were children riding as passengers?

Far more likely is the Ontario injury report numbers done by Smartrisk on motorcycles alone in 2002/03 which claims that 5% (36) of 736 hospitalizations were passengers of all age groups. How many of that 5% were children? We do not know because Smartrisk does not break down their numbers by age groups. They do know by way of that report, that 47% of “serious” motorcycle-related hospitalizations include broken arms and legs. Perhaps now we can go back to the MTO safety reports.

When you include the fact that mopeds and motor scooter injuries are in those figures and that child injuries make up a small percentage of the 5% of 858 who were passengers on motorcycles for the fiscal year of 2005/06 we now get a pretty good idea of the true numbers of child motorcycle passenger injuries and they are likely to be pretty close to what the MTO safety reports say, as we have always known in our hearts. The MTO safety reports for 2006 and 2007 will be available early this year.

Jaczek claimed there were 556 injuries to children in 2005/06 as well. It’s unclear where Jaczek got her numbers but Smartrisk suggested we research into police reports to get that much detail as they do not….perhaps Jaczek asked for ATV injury reports and added them together?

It would appear that she has been embellishing the numbers to garner support for her “cause”. What a shocker.

Here are some data sheets provided by SmartRisk, showing more realistic numbers. As you can see, Jaczek figures don’t support her claims.

Analysis of Motorcycle Injuries

Addtional Crash Data