Something I keep coming back to is the idea of identity — not in a profound spiritual sense, but in a practical one. When I look at my own riding history, I can see that some of the riskier stuff I used to do wasn’t random. It was tied to a version of myself I was feeding. A rider with a distorted perception of risk. That identity wasn’t born from motorcycling; I brought it with me onto the bike, and I fed it by taking unnecessary risks.
That original, pre‑accident identity even shaped how I approached designing and developing the arm. I didn’t realise it at the time, but somewhere in the middle of the research stage, I started questioning why motorcyclists take unnecessary risks. Why did I take so many unnecessary risks?
The identity we bring to the motorcycle — and how we feed it — influences our behaviour on the road. Most riders think they’re judging risk objectively, but I don’t think we are. If you take a standard risk matrix — likelihood on one axis, consequence on the other — we assume we’re reading it straight. But our riding identity sits over the top of that matrix and distorts it.
If the identity you bring to the bike needs attention, validation from your riding group, or a certain image on or off the bike, your brain automatically shifts the risk boxes down a level. Something that should sit in “high risk” gets mentally downgraded to “medium.” Something that should be “medium” gets treated like “low.”
That’s why I’ve started asking myself:
What identity am I feeding when I get on the bike? Where did it come from? How is it affecting my riding?
What part of my identity is influencing how I see risk — and is that identity helping me or setting me up?
Do I genuinely enjoy motorcycling, or am I chasing quick hits of adrenaline or dopamine?
Am I seeking validation from strangers or other riders — and if so, is that validation worth the potential outcomes?
My riding identity has shifted. Age plays a part. Being a dad plays a part. Having a son who rides plays a part. And picking myself up after a severe motorcycle accident definitely plays a part. Whatever identity was steering the ship before the accident is long gone — or at least held at bay by these factors. Not perfectly, not consistently, but enough for me to set clear boundaries around how I ride.
Understanding the limits and temptations of that part of my motorcycling identity reduces my exposure to unnecessary risks. But it doesn’t remove the fun from riding, and it doesn’t get in the way of enjoying the bike.
This is just my perspective. I’m not preaching or talking down to anyone. The reality I’ve learned lines up with the old saying: some lessons can’t be taught, only learned. Motorcyclists are a strange breed; we’ve all heard stories of crashes, or witnessed them, or lived them. But we often miss the full potential of those teachable moments. Not all of us — but more than a few — let our riding identity defend our behaviour and block out the lesson.
If you take a bit of time to figure out your own motivations for riding, and why you ride the way you do, you might avoid some of those hard lessons — whether that’s injury, or trouble with the law, or something worse.
