You can say the same about reducing car driving fatality and injury statistics by not doing stupid things like driving drunk too. The relative risk profiles would be the same.
What increases the risk profile with motorcycles is other cars hitting you directly while moving. Inattentive elderly people, young people, people in a hurry, whatever, it's something you don't have control over or an obvious indicator such as bad weather.
I too rode a scooter w/ armor for a year during my student days in a Seattle climate. It is somewhat fun, but there are more fun physical activities out there with less of a risk profile and non-regular occurrence. There were many times I wish I could be driving a car instead.
To me, it doesn't pass the 'Would I regret doing this if a somewhat uncommon screwup happened' test? Especially if I had to do it repeatedly. It's like having casual sex without a condom. It feels better, but your going to regret it majorly if you got a girl pregnant who doesn't want an abortion. Your going to fucking want to kick your past self and tell him to wear a condom. I would feel the same if I got into a major motorcycle accident.
I never said I thought motorbikes were safer than cars; in fact, I explicitly said that they were dangerous, but not as dangerous as e.g. skydiving (IMO - I've seen multiple people break ankles in perhaps 20 days total on dropzones, and three reserve parachute deployments).
The risks apply differently to motorbikes than cars because of how much less there is between you, the vehicle, and the environment. Alcohol affects you worse on a bike; misjudgement affects you worse, because most bikes brake worse than cars yet accelerate far faster. The temptation to twist the throttle and feel the acceleration, and the extra relative width of the road compared to the narrowness of a bike, all make you more likely on average to speed on a bike. Because of the acceleration, agility and small size, you can get away with maneuvers you could never do in a car - if you risk it.
In terms of fun - this is obviously a subjective judgement. You asked if I was put off by the risk profile; I explained why I am not, and clearly part of it is because I find it more fun than you do. It's particularly fun in London, because in the UK it is legal to filter / lane split: you generally skip to the front at red lights, overtake or go down the middle of traffic queues, and generally never have to stop for long because of traffic, even in the narrow streets of central London. The UK equivalent of US double-yellow lines are rare in urban areas; riding on the "wrong" side of the road to skip traffic is common. If I was condemned to ride in the multi-lane highways of the US, and forbidden from lane splitting, and didn't have to deal with London-style traffic, I'd probably drive a car too most days.
(When I ride bikes in California, where I can lane split, it's still not as fun as the UK, because there isn't enough traffic; the highways are too wide, too straight, have too many lanes, while the back roads have poor surfaces and low speed limits. Better than most of the UK again is the Eifel region in Germany / Belgium / Luxembourg, but it's a different kind of fun.)
As to regret, I believe you end up regretting the things you didn't do more than the things you did. I regret not learning how to ride sooner; I wish I'd done it years ago, when I still lived in Ireland. I rode a scooter in the UK on a provisional license for over a year before I got my full license and was able to ride something bigger than 125cc, and regret not passing sooner, having found out how easy it was to pass - it would have lead to lower insurance rates if nothing else. Growing up, I cycled everywhere, and I was always ambivalent about cars. I never had a desire to drive, and didn't learn until I was 29, and it still doesn't appeal to me. I drive reluctantly in rentals, mostly. But motorbikes were different; with every step, I've become more and more convinced that this is the motorized transport for me. It's become part of my identity; it's one of the best things I've ever done, and I regret much of the time I could have spent riding, but didn't.
What increases the risk profile with motorcycles is other cars hitting you directly while moving. Inattentive elderly people, young people, people in a hurry, whatever, it's something you don't have control over or an obvious indicator such as bad weather.
I too rode a scooter w/ armor for a year during my student days in a Seattle climate. It is somewhat fun, but there are more fun physical activities out there with less of a risk profile and non-regular occurrence. There were many times I wish I could be driving a car instead.
To me, it doesn't pass the 'Would I regret doing this if a somewhat uncommon screwup happened' test? Especially if I had to do it repeatedly. It's like having casual sex without a condom. It feels better, but your going to regret it majorly if you got a girl pregnant who doesn't want an abortion. Your going to fucking want to kick your past self and tell him to wear a condom. I would feel the same if I got into a major motorcycle accident.