Should you be concerned about making left turns?

As a motorcyclist, you understand that sharing the road with cars puts you at greater danger than it does your other motorist counterparts.

This includes your risks for left turns. While left turns tend to be more dangerous for everyone than right turns, they can actually prove a potentially deadly hazard for motorcyclists like you.

Why left-hand turns are dangerous

The NHTSA discusses the dangers associated with left turns for motorcyclists. As mentioned, left turns in general hold a bigger risk than right turns for most drivers. When turning right, you turn with the traffic, which allows you to avoid the possibility of a paths-crossing incident.

Turning left, on the other hand, often takes you through other lanes of traffic heading in the opposite direction. This increases your chance of crashing by a surprising amount.

Statistics of paths-crossing turns

In fact, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration states that only 6 percent of path-crossing crash incidents involve right turns. On the other hand, up to 53 percent of these same accidents happen due to left turns. This is over ten times higher than the chance of a crash due to a right turn.

Motorcyclists turning left often have to worry about cars turning right at the same time, in particular. Most cars do not think to check all lanes carefully when making a right turn due to how protected these turns tend to feel.

If all drivers take account of their surroundings before making their turns, it could potentially drastically reduce the overall rate of left-turn crashes that motorcyclists get into. This could improve the safety of the road as a whole for all motorists.