And beyond those important skills, your child will also learn from his dirt bike an attitude that I consider invaluable for anyone venturing into traffic. Crashing sucks, motorcycle riders say, because they understand important truths about consequences. In the Pavlovian corners of our brains, we learn not to do those things. Perhaps catering to the soccer mom mentality, American traffic safety is all about belts and bags, seats and restraints, impact resistance and crash survivability. Our system accepts without complaint the inevitability of accidents and tries to force auto makers to build a more bulletproof cocoons, in preparation for the moment when the poor dummy runs into something.
Motorcyclists see the world differently.
We reject the notion that crashing is inevitable. We shed the cocoon and rely on accident avoidance to get us safely through the day. Given the opportunity to test his personal performance envelope off the road, he ll likely feel less need to prove anything on it. Saturday night street drag races are less appealing to a kid who s focused on Sunday morning riding. And so I encourage you to at least think about this motorcycle thing in a different light.