The Singularity Institute is hiring an executive assistant near Berkeley

Motorcycles aren't dangerous. Cars are dangerous.

Particularly for people riding motorcycles.

Have you considered a bicycle? I only have a bike and I use it to get around everywhere in the city (not your city). Bikes actually work a lot better than you might expect if you have not tried it.

Smart Cars are not as deadly as motorbikes, but way deadlier than most cars. They don't have crumple zones, relying on the crumple zone of the other car. (That's the manufacturer's actual justification.) So good thing trees have crumple zones, hey.

(I don't know their stats off the top of my head; I'm going by having glanced at a crash test report. Crash test reports are great things to read. VicRoads in Victoria had them in the waiting area for licence renewal. I'm so glad I don't need a car in London.)

In general: whoever's in the smaller car, comes off a whole lot worse. Driving something the size of a tank is good for you. (Unless it's an SUV, their higher centre of gravity means they roll more.)

I dunno. What are the accident stats like on your planned route?

Let me try again.

In 2009, each licensed driver drove an average of 14,000 miles.

For cars, the fatality rate per 100M VMT was 0.87 (the exact number is on page 22 of my original link). 14,000 miles/year * 0.87 deaths/100,000,000 miles = .0001218 deaths/year = 0.1218 millideaths/year. Inversely, 1 in 8210 people will die each year. Now, my math is hiding subtle assumptions - Traffic Safety Facts 2009 gives the fatality rate for passenger car occupants per vehicle miles traveled. This is affected by how many people occupy a given car! Their definition of motorcyclist also includes people other than the driver. So, these numbers are not exact - but note the direction of bias. It is obvious that cars carry more people on average than motorcycles - therefore, looking at the fatality rate for cars makes them seem more dangerous than they are to a solo driver. Yet the car fatality rate is already an order of magnitude less than for motorcycles. Properly handling this would only strengthen what I'm saying.

For motorcycles (page 28, original link), the same calculation gives 14,000 miles/year * 21.45 deaths/100,000,000 miles = 0.003003 deaths/year = 3.003 millideaths/year. Inversely, 1 in 333 people will die each year. As I mentioned, this is over 20 times riskier (24.7 times!).

Imagine how dangerous cars are. Imagine all of the people who die in car accidents each year. They're pretty dangerous! But they're getting safer, and people judge that their utility outweighs the risks involved. Now, is a risk that's almost 25 times greater worth it?

Now, why aren't our dumpsters clogged with the rotting bodies of motorcyclists? That's because there are far fewer of them than car drivers/occupants, and they travel fewer miles. This simply reduces the exposure to the risk of motorcycles - if a motorcyclist drives less than 14,000 miles per year and experiences less than 3 millideaths per year as a result, it is the reduced distance that is conferring a protective effect, not the motorcycle. Driving whatever distance is chosen in a car instead would reduce the risk of death by 25 times.

Finally, for an absolute comparison, to crime. As you may have heard, South Africa is kind of dangerous! Currently, their homicide rate is 31.9 per 100,000. That's 0.319 millideaths per year - riskier than being a car occupant in America, but less risky than being a motorcyclist, holding vehicle miles traveled constant as explained immediately above.