Lifestyle

5 Tips for Avoiding Motorcycle Accidents

Published

4 years ago

July 4, 2021

As a motorcyclist, you’re 29-times more likely to be involved in a deadly road accident than individuals in other vehicles. Devastating injuries are even more common. But if you know how to avoid certain risk factors, you can increase your safety.

Lower Your Risk With These 5 Tips

It’s impossible to know just how exhilarating it is to ride if you’ve never done it before. Until someone has actually hopped on a motorcycle and taken it for a drive on the open road, there’s no way to understand the appeal. But as you know, motorcycling can also be quite dangerous.

According to the NHTSA, “Per vehicle miles traveled in 2019, motorcyclists were about 29 times more likely than passenger vehicle occupants to die in a motor vehicle crash and were 4 times more likely to be injured.”

The elevated risk factor can be tied to numerous elements, but is mostly due to the fact that motorcycles are much smaller than the average vehicle on the road. This makes them (a) less visible to drivers, and (b) more vulnerable in collisions.

When accidents do occur, the results can be devastating. This Charleston motorcycle accident lawyer has seen it all. This includes spinal cord trauma, disc injuries, paralysis, TBIs, broken bones, nerve damage, internal organ damage, and everything in between.

Want to enjoy motorcycling without so much risk? Here are a few tips to put into practice.

Wear the Right Gear

Motorcycle gear doesn’t just look cool – it serves a purpose! Safety is paramount, and the right gear can quite literally save your life.

It doesn’t matter how much gear you own. If you aren’t wearing it every time you hop on your bike, you’re putting yourself at risk. Always remember the old ATGATT acronym, which states All the Gear, All the Time. Here’s a list of some good gear to consider adding to your motorcycle “wardrobe.”

Avoid Bad Weather

Bad weather does nothing but heighten the risk of being involved in an accident. Anytime there’s rain, snow, or ice, the risk of sliding around a turn increases. As a general rule of thumb, avoid bad weather. If you need to go somewhere, a standard motor vehicle is the safer option.

Be Wary of Left Turning Vehicles

Roughly 4 out of 10 accidents involving a motorcycle and a car are caused by a vehicle making a left-hand turn in front of the motorcycle. Typically, the turning car hits the motorcycle when it’s going straight through an intersection, passing the car, and/or trying to overtake the car.

If you want to reduce your risk of being injured or killed in a motorcycle crash, there are a few things you can do:

Always look for indicators that a vehicle is about to turn
Keep your eyes on a vehicle’s wheels to see if they’re moving and/or turning
Always assume that a driver does not see you (and consider your bailout point in case the vehicle does turn)

Intersections are definitely the most dangerous part of any drive. If possible, avoid major intersections and stick to interstates and backroads.

Keep Your Head on a Swivel

When driving a motorcycle, you don’t have the luxury of being encased in a steel cage that can provide protection in a collision. If a vehicle strikes you, the consequences are serious. And it’s for this reason that you must always keep your head on a swivel.

In addition to looking both ways before going through an intersection, we recommend always taking a glance behind you prior to stopping at a stop sign or red light. (Being struck from behind is fairly common.) If making a sudden stop, move to one side of the lane and rapidly flash your brake lights to draw attention to yourself.

Perform Regular Maintenance

Don’t wait until something breaks to work on your bike. Regular preventative maintenance is a must if you want your motorcycle to run in excellent (and safe) condition. Be particularly mindful of the engine, brakes, tires, headlamps, and turn signals.

Stay Safe on Your Bike

Anytime you hop on your bike and go cruising, there’s always a risk that you could be injured or killed. (However, to be totally transparent, that same risk exists for any driver of a motor vehicle.) The key is to reduce this risk by maintaining smart habits. Once you implement some of the tips mentioned in this article, you’ll instantly feel much higher peace of mind.

Lifestyle

Wanda Knight on Blending Culture, Style, and Leadership Through Travel

Published

8 hours ago

December 24, 2025

Michelle Langton

The best lessons in leadership do not always come from a classroom or a boardroom. Sometimes they come from a crowded market in a foreign city, a train ride through unfamiliar landscapes, or a quiet conversation with someone whose life looks very different from your own.

Wanda Knight has built her career in enterprise sales and leadership for more than three decades, working with some of the world’s largest companies and guiding teams through constant change. But ask her what shaped her most, and she will point not just to her professional milestones but to the way travel has expanded her perspective. With 38 countries visited and more on the horizon, her worldview has been formed as much by her passport as by her resume.

Travel entered her life early. Her parents valued exploration, and before she began college, she had already lived in Italy. That experience, stepping into a different culture at such a young age, left a lasting impression. It showed her that the world was much bigger than the environment she grew up in and that adaptability was not just useful, it was necessary. Those early lessons of curiosity and openness would later shape the way she led in business.

Sales, at its core, is about connection. Numbers matter, but relationships determine long-term success. Wanda’s time abroad taught her how to connect across differences. Navigating unfamiliar places and adjusting to environments that operated on different expectations gave her the patience and awareness to understand people first, and business second. That approach carried over into leadership, where she built a reputation for giving her teams the space to take ownership while standing firmly behind them when it mattered most.

The link between travel and leadership becomes even clearer in moments of challenge. Unfamiliar settings require flexibility, quick decision-making, and the ability to stay calm under pressure. The same skills are critical in enterprise sales, where strategies shift quickly and no deal is ever guaranteed. Knight learned that success comes from being willing to step into the unknown, whether that means exploring a new country or taking on a leadership role she had not originally planned to pursue.

Her travels have also influenced her eye for style and her creative pursuits. Fashion, for Wanda, is more than clothing; it is a reflection of culture, history, and identity. Experiencing how different communities express themselves, from the craftsmanship of Italian textiles to the energy of street style in cities around the world, has deepened her appreciation for aesthetics as a form of storytelling. Rather than keeping her professional and personal worlds separate, she has learned to blend them, carrying the discipline and strategy of her sales career into her creative interests and vice versa.

None of this has been about starting over. It has been about adding layers, expanding her perspective without erasing the experiences that came before. Wanda’s story is not one of leaving a career behind but of integrating all the parts of who she is: a leader shaped by high-stakes business, a traveler shaped by global culture, and a creative voice learning to merge both worlds.

What stands out most is how she continues to approach both leadership and life with the same curiosity that first took her beyond her comfort zone. Each new country is an opportunity to learn, just as each new role has been a chance to grow. For those looking at her path, the lesson is clear: leadership is not about staying in one lane; it is about collecting experiences that teach you how to see, how to adapt, and how to connect.

As she looks to the future, Wanda Knight’s compass still points outward. She will keep adding stamps to her passport, finding inspiration in new cultures, and carrying those insights back into the rooms where strategy is shaped and decisions are made. Her legacy will not be measured only by deals closed or positions held but by the perspective she brought, and the way she showed that leading with a global view can change the story for everyone around you.