It’s safety first for Team Oregon, the state’s motorcycle training program

On a recent Sunday, eight motorcycle training students stood in a circle in an empty parking lot at Hillsboro High School, listening intently to two Team Oregon instructors.

“Today we will refine your skills, introduce new ones to make your riding safer, more efficient and more fun,” said Teresa Velasquez, an instructor who’s been with the organization for 18 years.

For the next five hours, under a blazing June sun, they learned how to safely weave in and out of traffic, dodge obstacles, execute tight U-turns and make emergency stops.

With Oregon’s rainy weather in the rearview mirror, many motorcyclists, both old and new, are eager to get on the road. Team Oregon, the state’s only approved motorcycle safety training program, has been helping riders in the Pacific Northwest learn to ride for four decades.

All of the organization’s classes are designed to reduce risks for motorcyclists and in extreme cases, help save their lives.

“The stakes are so high, you know?” said student Erynn Crawford about riding motorcycles. “I feel like you have to really want to do this.”

Crawford has been riding her Suzuki SV650 regularly around Portland for the past three years. She’s not new to motorcycling but Crawford believes there is always more to learn — and is convinced she’ll use the skills learned in the advanced Team Oregon class.

“Weird things happen on the road. Sometimes we have to make a tight exit,” said Crawford. “So it’s useful to have that experience, to be like, ‘I’ve done this before’.”

A safe place to learn two wheels

Team Oregon teaches both beginner and advanced motorcycle riding classes at sites throughout the state. The vast majority of students are first-time motorcycle or scooter riders enrolled in the basic rider training course, a class that combines online or in-person classroom instruction with eight hours of hands-on riding.

Beaverton resident Jonathan Nehring took the basic course in June. Nehring said he was motivated to get his motorcycle endorsement after watching many of his friends and family ride.

“I was very nervous to start this class,” said Nehring, who previously didn’t know how to operate a clutch to shift gears on a motorcycle. “The instructors were very thorough going through that process.”

Team Oregon provides beginner-friendly training bikes and scooters as well as helmets to all students who enroll in the endorsement class. That means people who are curious about motorcycles don’t have to shell out thousands of dollars on a bike or gear just to try riding.

Nehring passed both the riding skills and written tests needed to get a valid endorsement on his license. And he has a bike waiting in the wings too: his father-in-law’s old Suzuki SV650.

“Now I’m pretty confident - I still need a lot of practice, but I’m pretty confident about getting on a bike,” said Nehring.

Safety at core of Team Oregon

Team Oregon isn’t a for-profit business or standalone nonprofit. It’s housed within Oregon State University’s College of Health. That might seem like an odd place for a motorcycle training program to call home, but team leaders say it makes sense from a public health perspective.

“It started as an injury prevention program,” said Pat Hahn, Team Oregon’s training and engagement manager.

The organization first started teaching motorcycle safety classes to Oregonians in 1984. Team Oregon trained 400 motorcyclists in its first year.

Forty years later, Team Oregon partnered with the Department of Transportation and has taught about 230,000 budding motorcyclists the basics of operating and riding a bike safely.

There’s no doubt that motorcycling is dangerous. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Motorcycle crash data from 2021, the most recent year available, is sobering: Motorcyclists are nearly 24 times more likely to die in a crash than people in passenger car collisions.

Instructors at Team Oregon believe many of those crashes were preventable.

“The courses are built on motorcycle crash research,” said Hahn, who noted that navigating intersections and corners are especially dangerous for people on motorcycles. “The courses take that research and build it into training exercises that reduce crashes, injuries and fatalities in the real world.”

Oregon takes motorcycle safety seriously

Oregon is one of a handful of states that requires people seeking a motorcycle endorsement to take and pass a motorcycle safety course. Team Oregon is currently the only program approved by the state to provide such training.

Former state lawmaker Vicki Walker sponsored the 2009 law that made motorcycle training a requirement. Before this law, only Oregonians under the age of 21 were required to pass a safety course.

Walker said her husband, an avid motorcyclist with an eye towards safety, inspired the legislation. She took Team Oregon’s basic riding training course in 2008, after riding as a passenger on the back of her husband’s bike for years.

“One day I decided I wanted to have my own bike because I like going on motorcycle rides,” said Walker. “And when I took the class, it made me a better automobile driver.”

Walker was impressed by Team Oregon’s instructors and class materials. She can still recite SIPDE, an acronym taught in the class that stands for the words scan, identify, predict, decide and execute. The teaching tool helps new riders be more aware of their surroundings on the road. Beyond the training requirement, Walker amended a different law in 2009 to require insurance companies to offer motorcycle riders a discount if they take and pass a training program.

Walker, who now leads Oregon’s Department of State Lands, no longer rides motorcycles. She sold her Kawasaki EX250 in 2017. But next year, she’s retiring.

“I still have my gear, I still have the “M” on my driver’s license for my endorsement and I’m very proud of it,” said Walker. “I love riding motorcycles.”