Life Happens 365 - Are You Managing the Risk?

By Diane Tait Image courtesy Pixabay If you live in Florida and own a motorcycle, you no doubt enjoy being able to ride it nearly all year around.   That being said, there are some notable differences when it comes to insuring a bike as opposed to a car in Florida.   In the Sunshine State, it isn’t even mandatory to carry insurance to register a motorcycle, whereas the state requires you to carry insurance to register a car, truck, van or SUV.   That doesn’t mean a motorcycle owner isn’t going to be held financially responsible for any damage and/or injuries caused if they’re involved in a crash.   Far from it.

  By Diane Tait Motorcycle owners in Florida are blessed since they can pretty much ride year around.   That makes it easy to take your bike out for a road trip when most everyone else in the country is shoveling snow.   But what makes many bikers uneasy is not knowing what is and isn’t covered on their motorcycle policies.   So, I thought I’d take the time to answer some of the questions all you bike owners may have.  

By Diane Tait Image courtesy flickr Living in Florida means never having to winterize my motorcycle.   While the weather outside my office today is bitterly cold, I know in a few days the temperature will bounce back to the sixties or seventies.   Of course, the extreme fluctuations of temperature make it difficult to decide what to wear when I ride, as do the potential for pop up rain showers and other hazards found on the road in January and February.   With that in mind, I thought I’d take the time to acquaint all you snowbirds who brought their bikes along with them to the Sunshine State with ins and outs of winter cycling rules, Florida style.

By Diane Tait Image courtesy Pexels It’s been almost a month since Bike Week Daytona.   Now that April is here in Florida and many motorcycle owners are chomping at the bit to get back on the road, I thought it was high time to do a blog on motorcycle safety.   It’s especially poignant to me since I saw an accident about a week ago involving a car and a Harley where the bike owner wound up sprawled over the hood of a BMW.   Fortunately for him, the accident occurred at a stoplight where both the bike and the car were only going 5 MPH.   But the bike owner did wind up being taken to the hospital with a fractured ankle.   The driver of the car was talking on his cellphone and never saw the bike turn into the intersection until he felt the impact.