Ivory soap claims to be 99 and 44/100ths percent pure. Most motorcycle safety experts agree that 90% of all motorcycle crashes are avoidable. Now, while I’m not going to go quite as far as Ivory, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I believe that 99% of crashes are avoidable. I’m leaving that 1% for the freak occurrences such as wildlife and those very rare stories that are reserved for those “The Most Amazing … ” television shows. With proper riding/driving strategies, good judgment and appropriate risk acceptance levels, almost all crashes are avoidable. Virtually every crash scenario that has been presented to me — including the multitude of stories that included some version of “I had to lay it down” — has been an avoidable crash; at least if the rider had been thinking ahead and planning for the possibilities. Is there any crash, other than the admittedly uncontrollable instance of deer strikes (although we can do much to avoid peak deer activity hours) that are truly out of our control? Or are those of us who have had crashes (myself included) just unwilling to admit that we had other options? ET