how to fall?!?

[knight rider]

If you know your coming off try to roll insted of sliding. As you slide you will grase your gear. If you roll you'll be lucky to have a scratch on you. I learnt that one from a friend

[FROSTY:Me]

Dude with all due respect to ya mate--hes talking shit.
If you crash -this is the time your gear earns its keep
Ya can't actually predict how you are gonna crash but in the "ideal" world you wanna do the starfish. Sliding along on your back feet first.

[jonbuoy]

Who needs arms anyway, They are highly over-rated

What everyone else said...
Relax, and make sure you have actually stopped and checked yourself before standing up.

Very good advice - don't even try to stand up until you've come to a stop, relax as much as you can - your inner voice might be telling you to do this - listen to it. Unless your in the path of oncoming cars don't try to move until you've had a chance to check things over mentally. Getting up and finding your foot/leg doesn't work because its broken isn't pleasant.... You might not feel any pain from injuries for a few minutes. Good ole adrenalin. I'm not sure about the putting hands out thing, you will take the impact to your arms instead of your torso/head which may or may not be better, depends on the angle. Chances are whatever you do will be gut instinct anyway.

You could try to run through a crash scenario in your head but who knows if youll react like that when if you do.

[Lazy7]

i did karate for a long while and we got taught how to fall. I haven't had the chance to use what i learnt on a bike yet, but i think it would come in handy.

few tips we learnt.

dont put your palms facing downwards if you are going down. you will bend your hands backwards and snap them off at the wrists.

exhale all the air in your lungs. if your lungs aren't full of air, you wont get winded and it means you'll be able to move better when you stop. This is why you hear boxers exhale when they are fighting, stops them getting winded when they get body shots landed on them

hit the road, dont let it hit you. as in when you fall, hit the road with your outstretched arms and legs, this will lessen the force your body and head hit the road with and helps distribute the force. the more of you that hits at once, the less one part of you takes the major force.

i think this has been said before, but try and slide rather than tumble. sliding will just burn you, tumbling will break stuff.

dont be stupid and try and save your helmet. its the hardest bit of armour your wearing and its there for a reason. the last ride i went on with KB a guy came off his bike and i think his helmet coped a fence post at speed. gave him a pretty good concussion... and i was shocked... but then i got thinking... if he'd been hit 6 inches lower, it would have snapped his neck in half so getting hit in the helmet was probably the best place for it!

other than tips for what do to when falling, your best option is not to fall in the first place!

[Pathos]

lol if you've got time to think about falling you should probably try not to.

I've come off 3 times and not one of them gave me time to think about falling. And they were all low speed.

I would recommend against high speed rolling. You don't have the strength to hold you limbs close so they snap as they wrap around your body.

Sliding is fun and pretty safe as long as you're in leathers. And don't hit something....

[knight rider]

i did karate for a long while and we got taught how to fall. I haven't had the chance to use what i learnt on a bike yet, but i think it would come in handy.

few tips we learnt.

dont put your palms facing downwards if you are going down. you will bend your hands backwards and snap them off at the wrists.

exhale all the air in your lungs. if your lungs aren't full of air, you wont get winded and it means you'll be able to move better when you stop. This is why you hear boxers exhale when they are fighting, stops them getting winded when they get body shots landed on them

hit the road, dont let it hit you. as in when you fall, hit the road with your outstretched arms and legs, this will lessen the force your body and head hit the road with and helps distribute the force. the more of you that hits at once, the less one part of you takes the major force.

i think this has been said before, but try and slide rather than tumble. sliding will just burn you, tumbling will break stuff.

dont be stupid and try and save your helmet. its the hardest bit of armour your wearing and its there for a reason. the last ride i went on with KB a guy came off his bike and i think his helmet coped a fence post at speed. gave him a pretty good concussion... and i was shocked... but then i got thinking... if he'd been hit 6 inches lower, it would have snapped his neck in half so getting hit in the helmet was probably the best place for it!

other than tips for what do to when falling, your best option is not to fall in the first place!

this is the best advice I've heard

[FROSTY:Me]

ohh lazy---Ive got the visor from said lid--Ive never seen one shatter before

[kickingzebra]

Waaaaayyy more fun to slide, Only thing I learned is think twice before digging in hands to try and slow down, I was wearing gloves, but digging them in heated them up, and melted synthetic lining into the palm of my hand... OUCH. Tumbling is best avoided, I watched a guy come off a bike somersault, run along the ground, somersault again, then stop. He broke his left scapula... Thats a major, mind you, stupid bastard was A, Pissed, B unlicensed, and C, the only bit of protection he was wearing apart from helmet was one of those pathetic leather waistcoats. He would have been in hospital for 6 weeks... Bugger that, all of the gear, all of the time!

[terbang]

Havn't had one for a long time and am fully aware that now I am over 40 I am more likely to snap rather than bend, but I survived a few gooduns as a youngster. Wear the gear, be proactive so as to not to have to use it (in other words avoid falling off), let it do its job if you do bin remember the gear is the last line of defense. I do sort of agree with the slow motion comments here but they are often in hind sight though I do remember concious proactive thought during a short period of flight in one instance. But it didn't really help as I broke a lot of bones and wasted some tax payers coin. It is sometimes quite a revelation to find injuries in places you didn't realise or remember contacting and that big split in your helmet is often hard to explain. If you take a serious off I reckon you realisticly have a very small amount control over the way its going to finally unravel. Lowsides do tend to unravel a little slower than other emergency ways of getting off your bike .
Preferrably My first reaction before getting off my bike is to put the sidestand down.

[sunhuntin]

only accident ive been in on the road....i knew it was coming, my brain went hyper and somehow i remembered reading somewhere to jump at the moment of impact....so jump i damn well did! the instant the bumper of the car connected with the front end of pup, i was airborne, more by my own force than that of the impact.
i flew over the bonnet, i think turning in midair, and then rolled once i hit the ground. stopped on my back, spread eagled. my brain told me instantly my legs etc were usable, ie, not broken! got up, tried to pick up the top box that had my cell phone and couldnt even lift it. staggered to the footpath and sat there.

somehow, i managed to escape serious injury and i dont know how. my left foot im sure got trapped between bike and car and lower leg got hooked up somewhere, due to large gash that was on it...shredded my best jeans. that leg now has a tidy scar and tends to be numb about 95% of the time. wasnt wearing a jacket, so got away lightly!

spent a lot of my childhood years rolling down hills at school and things, so this is likely why i rolled and escaped any big injury

[DougB]

When I did my compolusry military training in the early 1950s the NZ Army was still in world war two mode. They used to train their motorcycle despatch riders to fall off.
I remember seeing about ten Army Indian bikes with their 18 year old riders riding in loose formation. An order was given (whistle blown) and they all fell off in the approved army fashion.
I did not see much of the action as I was training as a gun fitter but I heard that they started them falling of at slow speeds and increased speeds gradualy up to forty
MPH (65k) all done on soft ground.

One of these guys was Johnny Hemplman who became a NZ champion on the track. I saw him at the end of his Army training escorting a convoy over a gravel road leading to Tihoi. He rode from one end of the convey to the other doing a slide turn at each end - ON AN ARMY INDIAN. Showing off was not in the army rule book so he was grounded. He was racing a Vellocette every weekend and was in the same barrack as me. he spent most of his spare time polishing the head of his bike. He used it as a shaving mirror.

The Army had manuals for everything, I still have my vehicle recovery manual from those days. I would love to get the one on falling off an Indian.

[knight rider]

only accident ive been in on the road....i knew it was coming, my brain went hyper and somehow i remembered reading somewhere to jump at the moment of impact....so jump i damn well did! the instant the bumper of the car connected with the front end of pup, i was airborne, more by my own force than that of the impact.
i flew over the bonnet, i think turning in midair, and then rolled once i hit the ground. stopped on my back, spread eagled. my brain told me instantly my legs etc were usable, ie, not broken! got up, tried to pick up the top box that had my cell phone and couldnt even lift it. staggered to the footpath and sat there.

somehow, i managed to escape serious injury and i dont know how. my left foot im sure got trapped between bike and car and lower leg got hooked up somewhere, due to large gash that was on it...shredded my best jeans. that leg now has a tidy scar and tends to be numb about 95% of the time. wasnt wearing a jacket, so got away lightly!

spent a lot of my childhood years rolling down hills at school and things, so this is likely why i rolled and escaped any big injury

so rolling can help prevent injurys. Of course if you have the gear then it is better to use what it was desined for

[jonbuoy]

When I did my compolusry military training in the early 1950s the NZ Army was still in world war two mode. They used to train their motorcycle despatch riders to fall off.
I remember seeing about ten Army Indian bikes with their 18 year old riders riding in loose formation. An order was given (whistle blown) and they all fell off in the approved army fashion.
I did not see much of the action as I was training as a gun fitter but I heard that they started them falling of at slow speeds and increased speeds gradualy up to forty
MPH (65k) all done on soft ground.

One of these guys was Johnny Hemplman who became a NZ champion on the track. I saw him at the end of his Army training escorting a convoy over a gravel road leading to Tihoi. He rode from one end of the convey to the other doing a slide turn at each end - ON AN ARMY INDIAN. Showing off was not in the army rule book so he was grounded. He was racing a Vellocette every weekend and was in the same barrack as me. he spent most of his spare time polishing the head of his bike. He used it as a shaving mirror.

The Army had manuals for everything, I still have my vehicle recovery manual from those days. I would love to get the one on falling off an Indian.

Love it, only in the armed forces would they teach you such skills, and you get to crash a bike at someone elses expense.

[sunhuntin]

so rolling can help prevent injurys. Of course if you have the gear then it is better to use what it was desined for

yeh...ive got the gear [had it in the back of the bike! LOL] but was literally going 5 mins up the road from the gym to work. what a way to get off work, lmfao.