Another well-written article!
There's a saying - 'It takes 20 years to become a conservative from a liberal without changing a single idea'. And that's how it is. Your point of view changes with time. I'm 31 and the sole bread earner of my family. Each and every time I am challenged on the road, I give up. Because for me that is risk. And I can't afford to take these kind of risks. Life is not from the screens of ROADRASH where you go down and get up and repeat.
Then there are those people who have a riding jacket, a pair of gloves and a LS2/MT and consider themselves king. Obviously this consists of maybe 25-30% of the people who own all these riding gears. But how does ensuring one's own safety guarantee one can play with other's safety on the road? To me, these folks pose more risk to others than those who ride without all these gears.
Read somewhere that most accidents occur within 3 km.s of your home. Means either you are too tired or too relaxed. Does not matter what safety gear/equipment you are using. You need to know your machine's limits. And of course your own limit!

Thanks Shivanshu. Relevant example. But then proper gear allows your mind to focus better on the more vital job at hand - riding - rather than constantly evaluating how your body is feeling while exposed to the elements.

When I mentioned 'Risk Homeostasis' - this is exactly what I meant. Repeated forays into the high speed riding zone without any scares or damage lowers the perceived risk threshold as a result and you tend to relax because of this and not because the risk has actually reduced in any way. And that is where the danger is - the difference between perceived risk and actual risk. The first few times that you hit the ton, you're eyes and ears wide open. And this heightened alertness saves your bacon. But in time as you become habitual to speed and your heightened alertness keeps you safe, you start believing that speed is actually not that risky after all. This makes you complacent instead of becoming more alert as you used to be. And so the risk resulting from complacency adds to the risk inherent in high speed riding which will always be there. The scary part is that you have no idea of this increase in risk unless you keep a tight watch upon your own attitude towards 'speed'. And mind you - this ability to keep a watch on your own self is not automatic - this has to be diligently cultivated, consciously self-imposed for long enough till it becomes a habit. And then 'speed' will never become a habit for you.

As Krishna says above - that's self awareness in action again. No amount of skills and hardware can reduce risk without this one single element in a motorcyclists repertoire. One must always be aware of what is going on - with you. within you and around you.

The courier boy/delivery boy scenario is again not one of not caring about risk. It is just that the consequences of that increased risk seem so distant since all is usually well. Of course this attitude changes pretty quickly at the point of impact or skid or that drop - thereon the risk appears a lot more real. They know about the risk but because of the relative rarity of mishaps compared to the profusion of mishap free rides, they tend to relegate risk to a lower priority level than making time on the road as their job demands. And ride on believing more in lopsided statistics (I've been riding like this for months and nothing's happened eh! so I must be doing everything right) than in the perpetuity of risk (that it is always around and never vanishes).