The high fatality rates of motorcyclists relative to other motorized forms of highway transportation has been a focus of engineers and safety policies for many years. One of the most popular approaches to improve motorcycle safety has been to design training courses to improve riding competence. However, the effectiveness of these courses and the initial crash risk of motorcyclists is not well understood. The current study seeks to provide insight into motorcyclists’ initial crash risk by following the crash history of newly trained motorcyclists for up to 5 years after they complete their required motorcycle training. Specifically, attention is focused on the time until motorcyclists’ first crash. Using data from over 40,000 Florida motorcyclists, Weibull hazard-based duration models are estimated with gamma heterogeneity, and full random parameters, to determine the factors that affect the duration until motorcyclists’ first crash. The estimation results show that age and gender are driving factors in determining this duration and ultimately crash risk. In addition, estimation results show that most gender-age groups have an initial period of increasing crash risk, ranging from 30 to 96 days, where the likelihood of a crash increases the longer motorcyclists go without having a crash. After this initial period, crash risk declines over time as increasing riding experience reduces overall risk. This particular finding points to a critical motorcycle-safety opportunity in that policies and/or training can be modified to attempt to eliminate this initial high-risk period to arrive at a desirable lower initial risk and a declining risk over time as experience makes for safer and more cautious riding.

多年来，摩托车手相对于其他机动化公路运输的高死亡率是工程师和安全政策的重点。改善摩托车安全性的最流行方法之一是设计培训课程，以提高骑行能力。然而，人们对这些课程的有效性以及摩托车手最初的撞车风险尚不十分了解。当前的研究旨在通过跟踪新近训练的摩托车骑手完成所需的摩托车训练后长达5年的撞车历史，来洞悉摩托车骑手的初始撞车风险。具体来说，注意力集中在摩托车手第一次撞车之前的时间。利用来自40,000多位佛罗里达州摩托车手的数据，基于威布尔危害的持续时间模型具有伽玛异质性，以及完整的随机参数，以确定影响摩托车手首次撞车的持续时间的因素。估计结果表明，年龄和性别是确定持续时间并最终导致坠机风险的驱动因素。另外，估计结果表明，大多数性别年龄组的初始碰撞风险增加的时期为30天至96天，其中碰撞的可能性会增加骑摩托车者没有碰撞的时间。在此初始阶段之后，随着骑行经验的增加降低了总体风险，碰撞风险会随着时间下降。