Editorial: A summer driving messages: See motorcycles

Motorcyclists are about 28 times as likely as passenger car occupants to die in a motor vehicle traffic crash, according to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Riders accept those risks when they get on their bikes, but do the rest of us on the road appreciate that?

Their smaller size and ability to maneuver in traffic makes motorcycles more difficult to see and track when you're behind the wheel. And that's when you're paying attention to the road rather than your GPS or text messages. Here's a reminder that, as of last Monday, such activity will earn you a moving violation.

With summer officially under way and finally some summery weather to boot, those bikes are out of storage and out on the road. It's important that car and truck drivers are keeping an eye out for them.

This is more acute given the news out of New Hampshire.

Seven bikers from a New England motorcycle club were killed last month when 10 bikes were struck by a pickup truck towing a flatbed trailer on a two-lane highway in a mountainous area near the Quebec border.

The driver of that truck, who has a history of drinking and driving, sits in a jail cell charged with seven cases of negligent homicide.

What a terrible tragedy - one that surely could have been avoided.

"Seven people. C'mon. It's senseless," Bill Brown, a 73-year-old Vietnam War veteran and motorcyclist, told The Associated Press. Brown visited the crash scene the next day to plant flags. "Somebody made a mistake, and it turned out to be pretty deadly."

While details of that crash have yet to emerge, any biker will attest that it doesn't take much for things to go horribly wrong when a motorcycle is going at highway speeds. There are no fender benders in motorcycling.

We don't have to wait for the results of the investigation of the crash to learn lessons here.

"Start seeing motorcycles" is a common bumper sticker and one worth heeding. Ensuring you can hear them also is a good rule of thumb.

Of course, the onus is not just on four- and 18-wheel drivers to protect bikers. Motorcyclists, too, have a responsibility to drive safely, maintain a healthy speed and help make themselves available to be seen.

Bikers by and large take safety seriously. But too often we see some opening up their throttles on crowded highways, zipping between cars or passing on the right.

Lane splitting - the act of riding between two vehicles in adjacent lanes - is illegal in Illinois. And for good reason.

We can all coexist on the roads if we're all mindful of each other and keep our eyes on the road.

Start seeing motorcycles.