how to fall?!?

[Wenier]

Ah well that sounds alright then. You try to offroad a zzr. That would be a great mission, those bikes are whales.

[Ixion]

Ah well that sounds alright then. You try to offroad a zzr. That would be a great mission, those bikes are whales.

I ride THE WHALE. The Great White Whale. And it's actually quite good on gravel. Not off road though because trying to weave something so wide and ponderous through trees would be a mission. Not to mention the 600 odd pounds weight. But on gravel roads it's OK once you get over the initial unease at taking on a gravel road on something that suddenly feels as big as a Mack truck.

[Pixie]

Try to fall down.Up will eventually result in breathing difficulties.
Let you muscles go limp,if you forget,though,a tree or some other solid object will probably help you do this.
If it was some moron that made you crash,and you're conscious,try to remove you helmet and insert it into the individual.

[Flyingpony]

I've had about 8 crashes this year, I wont even try count offroad crashes they arent so bad, becuase the bike just about always is sweet.

We're six months into the year. What are you doing? That's far too many on-road crashes.

I haven't crashed in over 5yrs. In that time I've had a couple very close calls on wet roads under emergency brakes, but managed to regain control of my wayward beast.

[John]

We're six months into the year. What are you doing? That's far too many on-road crashes.

I haven't crashed in over 5yrs. In that time I've had a couple very close calls on wet roads under emergency brakes, but managed to regain control of my wayward beast.

Please read the entire thread for an answer.

[Wolf]

The other was when a car pulled out infront of me on a slight bend in the rain. I was convinced I was going to hit. Then theres a blank bit (ie- I have no idea what happened) and I found myself on the other side of the car, still on my bike, with a very sore back. I have no idea what happened or how I got around the car. I wish I did, must've been a neat trick- would be handy to know what it was!

Yep. Know what you mean - one moment the van in front of me was a looming wall of red metal, the next I was on the line between the lanes with cars zooming by to my left and a wall of red metal to my right (that my pillion was pounding the shit out of) I was going too slow for the gear I was in and the bike was wobbling (from the aforementioned pounding) and I had no idea how I got there - especially since I was relatively inexperienced and I had a pillion on the back affecting braking, balance etc. I put it down to my subconscious mind taking control of the situation and the good manoeuvrability of a trail bike.

My first lowside I don't recall falling but I found myself "gently" sliding along the road on my right elbow with my helmet off the ground, left hand trailing along beside me bouncing over the uneven surface, boots doing like wise, bike skidding tranquilly along on its side following me like a puppy and then the bottom of my tacho slowly cartwheeled past me. i had a nice leisurely time to contemplate all sorts of things and wonder at the spectacle of my errant tacho making a break for freedom.

I'm going to get jumped on here because I am going to claim I deliberately dropped a motorbike to avoid hitting something and apparently "nobody" ever does that.

I turned of Normandy Ave onto Cobham Drive, heading Southish, pissing rain, roads well and truly awash - way beyond any worry of Diesel or oil but into hydroplaning territory - and with my girlfriend at the time on the back.
I had just come off the lights and as the road was wet and visibility was poor I was taking it slow - had not even got up to 40km/h.

Further along Cobham Drive, in the no stopping area, a van was stopped. I presumed it must have be out of commission as they were stopped (silly assumption, I know, I know) I foolishly did not properly assess the hazard (inexperienced, preoccupied with the rain) and did not slow down or otherwise take precautions against the van. Now doing about 40km/h. Without signalling, the van U-turns in front of the bike.

Everything went slow-motion, and my mental provcess went along the lines of "I cannot stop in the distance between me and the van - not two-up in the wet - I would skid but still hit the van anyway." (NB This was back when I used only the rear brake as I had binned twice using the front brake and feared it.) "If I jam on the brakes too hard I risk dropping the bike. If I hit the van, we could be killed, but if I drop the bike we should slide to a halt long before we get to the van."

My biggest worry was that the cars behind us would fail to react to us falling fast enough to avoid hitting us.

So, trading on the experience of a couple of previous fuck-ups involving corners, gravel and front brakes, I jammed on the front brake and abruptly twisted the front wheel to the left slightly to nudge it out of line.

We went down as predicted (with me thinking "there goes $80" - referring to the army surplus great-coat I was wearing) and slid to a halt while the van went on his merry way, bike slid to a halt behind us. The cars behind us stopped without hitting us or the bike. I confirmed we weren't seriously injured (pretty well kitted up, Colleen's glove wore through so she had a bit of minor road rash on one hand), the woman from the first car came up and asked if we were all right, the guy from the second car came up and said "Fuck you laid that down well."

Van stopped at lights so I hightailed it across the road, banged on passenger door (first bit o' clear thinking), drippy looking blonde says "we didn't need that, we didn't need that" in a spaced out/wasted kinda way that seemed sorta surreal at the time and I could feel reality slipping away, drippy looking bloke in drivers seat turns to stare at me with weird look on his face then the lights change and they drive off. I got their rego number and returned to the bike (fat lot of good it did me tho')

I now suspect the "vehicular emergency" that had these two Dorklanders (I traced the rego) illegally parked on Cobham Drive was the need to blaze up a spliff or drop a tab...

But yeah, I deliberately dropped the bike after a leisurely-seeming (it wasn't in reality) weighing-up of the options available to me at the time.

If a similar situation presented itself today, would I do the same thing? No. I would not make the same assumptions about the illegally parked van, I would be prepared for the likelihood of it U-turning without warning, I would reduce speed to give myself better reaction time, position myself better on the road to increase reaction time and options, and (if the U-turn happened) I would use the slo-mo period to explore other options and focus on slowing and avoiding - I brake better now (I now use both brakes, not only the rear brake out of fear of the front brake as I did back then) and I have a lot more experience in emergency manoeuvres. So yes, if I had been better experienced I would not have dropped the bike - I've certainly avoided worse since then.

Once prior to that I was going wide in gravel and had a stand of trees looming up I deliberately dropped the bike to avoid them - but then my thought processes were "Fuck, I don't wanna hit those, abandon ship!" so I applied the front brake and braced myself to hit the track. I was lightly grazed and I ripped the muffler off the pipe of my TS.

Each time I've been in an accident/near-accident situation, I've had the slo-mo thing happen, I've been able to see what's coming and make decisions based on it - I haven't always made the right decisions, but the opportunity was at least there for me to squander...

[Zed]

no this might seem a bit stupid, but realy much like attraction to the opposite sex, fall from a bike is very likely to happen.
Now what is the best way to go... i know theres a lot of different ways you can come off, and i know that you might not be able to fall like you want, but can i have some advice on what to do and what not to do.
For instance i herd that if im going to land on the front i should tuck my arms in, and resist the natural reaction to put them out.
any other advice out there?

You probably won't have enough time to actually *think* about much when you fall off your motorcycle, but during the event if you could try and make sure that you distance yourself from the bike as much as is possible you would save yourself some damage. Also, if you wear a back protector of some kind you would do well to try and land/slide on that. When I binned last year I managed to find a split second to manoeuvre myself on to my back protector and slide for about 10 metres...as I slid I thought "phew I'm saved" until I hit the bank and cartwheeled several times!

[James Deuce]

With as much grace and style as possible.

If you can't do that you can tumble like a rag doll, screaming like a 6 year old girl having a head rush from too much super cold sno-freeze, like the rest of us do.

[Motu]

If ever a guy knew how to crash it would be Evel Knievil - apparently every bone in his body broken atleast once.....ok,authors licence,but I bet he's done a big one more than all on this site times 10.Back before we had internet and invasive reporting - a big wake up call for me to wear good gear and not crash was seeing his fall at Ceasars Palace - poor quality film,but the bike comes down and he just rag dolls down the ramp,limbs flying in all directions...then his Harley comes down and goes through him like a rotary hoe through the washing...scary shit,and proof that even if you know how to crash very well,you're not gunna get it right every time.

[250learna]

If ever a guy knew how to crash it would be Evel Knievil - apparently every bone in his body broken atleast once.....ok,authors licence,but I bet he's done a big one more than all on this site times 10.Back before we had internet and invasive reporting - a big wake up call for me to wear good gear and not crash was seeing his fall at Ceasars Palace - poor quality film,but the bike comes down and he just rag dolls down the ramp,limbs flying in all directions...then his Harley comes down and goes through him like a rotary hoe through the washing...scary shit,and proof that even if you know how to crash very well,you're not gunna get it right every time.

bit off topic, how da hell did you get that bloody pingu score

[inlinefour]

Hitting things is what hurts. Get away from the bike, or any other vehicle involved.
Wear good riding gear, if you don't then your a knob
If your going to push the limits, then do it where there are no other road users. If you crap off yea you might lie there a while but you will not hurt anyone else.
Oh and FFS, don't relax and go limp. The more thought and control put into an off can result in less injury and damage to the bike. Always hit the kill switch on the bike as you go down...
And most important, try to stay upright!

[Bob]

Hitting things is what hurts. Get away from the bike, or any other vehicle involved.
Wear good riding gear, if you don't then your a knob
If your going to push the limits, then do it where there are no other road users. If you crap off yea you might lie there a while but you will not hurt anyone else.
Oh and FFS, don't relax and go limp. The more thought and control put into an off can result in less injury and damage to the bike. Always hit the kill switch on the bike as you go down...
And most important, try to stay upright!

Yup, I'd go with the riding gear - the best you can afford.

But as for "don't relax and go limp" - are you kidding? OK, if you're still on the bike and have a chance of saving it, then you don't do the 'rag doll' thing. But once you're off? Hopefully you're away from the bike, so you go as limp as you possibly can. Loose, relaxed limbs will take punishment. Tense, rigid limbs tend to break.

There is an old saying about drunks and hangovers - push a drunk out of a 1st floor window and they will pick themselves up, dust themselves off and then go looking for their next drink. Do it to someone with a hangover and you will be up in court for murder. Drunks just go limp. Hangover sufferers are tense and stiff. Same with riding a bike - if you are relaxed, then it handles better. If you are stiff, it translates into the handling.

Have you ever watched a racer when they come off? If they can, they are on their back, relaxed and just sliding along the ground. And, as someone else mentioned here, when they come to a stop, they stay there for a little bit longer, gathering their thoughts and making sure they really have stopped sliding!

And lets face it, a racer knows more about crashing - and more importantly, how to come out of one with as little damage as possible - than any of us "mere mortals".

[XP@]

And lets face it, a racer knows more about crashing - and more importantly, how to come out of one with as little damage as possible - than any of us "mere mortals".

A racer has no concerns about trees, cars, trucks, armco, cheese slicers, curbs and potholes...

[RiderInBlack]

As for fall control I'd go with what Motu said here http://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/sh...3&postcount=13.
The on-your-back-arms -out-hands-on-chest-head-up-feet-first method as saved at least one of my biker mates:

"Pilgrim had come down for the March Hare Rally and was on way out of Arrowtown on his brand new Wide Glide that morning when he found some fu*ken diesel left on a corner by some d*ckhead. He reckons it was lucky that he had recently done a bike course, which included instructions on how to fall properly. As he and the bike parted company, he rolled onto his back, head raised, elbows out, legs apart and facing the direction of his sliding. It was a right-hand bend so it shot him off the road (the diesel greasing the way). He had to close his legs on the way to flatten a road marker (road markers in the nuts at that speed would not been a good look!). He reckoned his next piece of luck was being slowed down by a blackberry patch (only Bur-Rabbit would have been keener to be thrown in to the brier patch). No broken bones and hardly a bruise! Five other bikers had found that diesel that day and they all went visiting the local hospital!"

If your heading for a fence try to put the bike ahead of you, stay on your back with you leg in front. Fence wire is like a cheese cutter very at low speeds. My Brother has had the missfortune to come accross a decappitated biker that had joined the "Fencing Club".

Ditto on the slow motion thing. Part of the brain seems to start processing data far faster than it can be put into words.

Doesn' t work for too many people though, and I've not met a psychologist yet that will admit it exists

The Slow-Mo thing. You'll probably found it written in a few Medicial Journals. I can not be fart-arsed looking it up in my Nursing Med books, but adrenaline does increase your metabolic rate (heartrate increases, etc) so you would be thinking faster (like too much caffine), therefore time relative to you whould seem to slow.

[Skyryder]

When/if the time comes you will instinctively know what to do. If you have to think it will probably be too late.

Skyryder