This is verbatim from FairWarning, increasingly one of my favourite and most respected go-to sites:

Preliminary figures show U.S. motorcycle fatalities falling 7 percent in 2013 as bad weather kept riders off the road. A report by the Governors Highway Safety Association projects that the number of motorcyclists killed last year will total 4,610, down from 4,957 in 2012 and nearly identical to the 2011 figure of 4,612. It is only the second time in the last 15 years that such fatalities have declined. Still, the association’s figures show that people in passenger vehicles are about twice as safe as they were in 1997, while there has been no improvement since then for motorcyclists, largely due to declining use of helmets. As FairWarning has reported, biker groups have pushed lawmakers and regulators to back away from promoting or enforcing requirements for safe helmets, the best way known to save bikers’ lives. The Washington Post, Forbes – See more at: http://bit.ly/1mHIQ8r

Editors note: This is another good reminder of how essential it is to pay close attention to changes in exposure whenever injury rates change, in either direction.