There have been four fatal motorcycle crashes in Pensacola in the last two months.
The Pensacola Police Department says those numbers are above average. They’re also high across three Northwest Florida counties.
Below is crash data involving motorcycles from the Florida Highway Patrol.
That data indicates, in the first six months of 2025, Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties have either met the yearly total of crashes or topped numbers that haven’t been seen since 2023.
As of June 18, Escambia County saw 55 crashes involving motorcycles. There were 68 crashes for all of 2024. The county is on track to surpass 2023’s total number of crashes, which was 61.
However, the number of fatal crashes are down. So far, there were four fatal this year — 15 in 2024 and 11 in 2023.
The numbers are similar in both Santa Rosa and Okaloosa County. Two fatalities happened in Pensacola last week, alone.
Attorneys representing people involved in these crashes say the roads are more dangerous than ever. And they say predominately locals are involved.
“It seems to me the number of motorcycle cases that we represent, they’re almost all local. There was one fatality case that we were involved in recently,” said Marcus Michles, managing partner of Michles & Booth. “It was last month where the visitor was from out of state. But by and large, the motorcycle accidents that are around here, that we see, are from local people and people that live here.”
“So we had two of them that were the fault of the riders of the bicycles,” Pensacola Police Officer Mike Wood said. “Excessive speed was a contributing factor. And then the other two were motor vehicles, cars making turns or pulling out in front of the motorcycles.”
During the last week of July, two people were killed on a motorcycle in Okaloosa County. Michles, who represents one of the families, says distracted driving was to blame.
“Stopped dead in the road and run over from behind,” Michles said. “There’s not a lot that the motorcyclist can do under that circumstance.”
That’s how Justin Soley was hit.
“I remember sitting at the red light and then waking up in the middle of the road,” Soley said. “And my leg was behind me and i had to pull it around and then life light.”
Soley was on his way home to Jay, Florida, when he woke up in a hospital with a broken femur, spine, five broken ribs and a detached pelvis.
“I was told that I’d never walk again,” said Soley. “And if I did, it wouldn’t be without assistance.”
He’s been riding since he was a teenager, and has been hit six times. Soley says in those cases, cell phones were the problem.
“Most of it is cell phone use,” Soley said. “Not paying attention, being on their phone, stopping at a light and then going back to looking at their phone, and starting to move and side-swiping. Just not seeing the bikers a lot of left-hand turns.”
Michles says while technology in cars has better detection for blind spots, the advancements are a double-edged sword.
“A lot of this technology on our phone is designed to be used when the car is moving. How about our maps, our navigational software?” Michles said. “You see people put mounting their phone on their windshield right by their face. All that’s doing is diminishing their field of vision and distracting their attention. It’s something that’s designed to be used when the car is actually moving, which is very unsafe.”
But Officer Wood says it goes both ways.
“We have so many vehicles that pull out in front of these motorcycles and cause these collisions,” said Wood. “But on the other side, we also have motorcycle riders who have a complete disregard for their safety and the safety of others by doing the speeds that we see. In fact, we clocked one at 128 miles an hour on the 3 mile bridge. So that’s just a ridiculous amount of speed to be going on a motorcycle.”
“With the sports bikes, you see excessive speed wheelies, reckless endangerment,” Soley said. “And that’s not to call out the sports bikes alone, but they’re capable of it. So a lot of people do it.”
The state of Florida ranks No. 1 in the nation for motorcycle crashes, according to the National Safety Council’s 2023 stats. There were 668 fatalities across the entire state in 2023. Texas follows behind, with 598 deaths.
Everyone WEAR News spoke to reminds people on the roadways to put the phone down and look twice.
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Source: weartv
