Celebrities on motorcycles: It's all fun until somebody gets hurt

Some people say that celebrities on motorcycles, regardless of their reasons, give a boost to the industry. But I sometimes wonder if they do more harm than good.

Lately, for example...

Actor Dax Shepard (who really is a serious motorcyclist, by the way) described on his podcast on August 17 how he recently did a track day and unfortunately got too enthusiastic going into a braking zone, hit another rider and crashed, leading to four broken ribs, a broken clavicle and reinjury of a hand he broke earlier. I guess I'll take Shepard's word for how events transpired, though his account is about as dramatic (and plausible) as most Hollywood movies. He claimed he was "passing six guys" and did a stoppie that lasted 100 yards before he hit one of the other riders and crashed. Shepard explained, "I clipped their bumper and I went over the handlebars and landed pretty hard." Now I don't know which track day organization was running the show that day at Sonoma Raceway, but clearly it puts extraordinary emphasis on safety if it fits the motorcycles with bumpers.

Of course this leads to celebrity web sites such as popculture.com posting breathless headlines about "fans freaking out" because a star got hurt. Makes me question the old "all publicity is good publicity" saying.

Ebikes also got some celebrity-fueled negative publicity lately as "America's Got Talent" judge Simon Cowell got an electric bike — news reports disagreed over which model, exactly, but they concurred that it was a powerful one — and crashed it without even leaving home, while still in the courtyard of his Malibu, California house. Cowell broke his back and had to undergo several hours of surgery, but fortunately did not suffer permanent damage. Maybe neither will the image of the currently hot ebike market.

Luckier and apparently just as clueless is Ben Affleck, who got a really nice birthday present from girlfriend Ana De Armas: a custom BMW. Naturally, they went for a ride on the new bike. Apparently she also included a set of cute, matching helmets. So who wants to be the one to explain to Ben that those stickers on the visors of the obviously brand new helmets are removable? And taking them off will enhance the ability to see where you're going.

Affleck's goof is funny but harmless. The real problem with celebrities riding motorcycles is when they crash or get hurt. Then legions of people who know nothing about motorcycling have their biases confirmed that riding is unavoidably dangerous, like Russian roulette, instead of something where you can use knowledge and skill and good judgment to manage (though not eliminate) risk. Exhibit A, the incident a couple of years ago when George Clooney crashed a scooter into a car in Sardinia and immediately announced he was swearing off motorcycles. "Good call to hang up the riding gloves and helmet," reported celebrity web site TMZ approvingly.

Here at Common Tread, we'd have been more likely to write "Good call to use some countersteering and avoid the crash, George." Except he didn't do that and we didn't write about a celebrity scooter accident anyway. You see, Clooney said he was going 70 mph on his scooter, a 250 cc Yamaha XCity that was probably traveling more like 70 kph, judging from the traffic camera video. And while the car did encroach on his right of way, it was stopped when he hit it head-on and his fellow rider swerved past with no problem. So yeah, there might have been a simpler and less painful alternative to flying over the hood of a Mercedes and giving up motorcycling.

Like TMZ, I'm kind of relieved he gave it up, but for totally different reasons. One less celebrity who could crash again and convince thousands of fans that all of us who ride a motorcycle are nuts.