I was thinking the same thing when I first read the article, If there are more and more riders then and the average stayed almost the same then It is a decrease but none the less 4500 deaths is still a lot, and that averages out to almost 13 deaths a day (roughly 1 every two hours).i'd have to search to find it, but i believe there was another study recently that said there was a decrease in moto deaths - they contributed it to a growing number of riders, actually think new motorcycle registrations, while the deaths either stayed the same or were lower so the avg was less