To be blunt...

[Headbanger]

What wouldya rather have? All of us old buggers wiping ourselves out on bikes or all us old buggers lingering on for years and years sucking up pensions and health benefits?

Live long and prosper.

[duckonin]

Yep and the good old police superintendent Knowles gives it a good nudge also...

[Katman]

Yep and the good old police superintendent Knowles gives it a good nudge also...

He makes me look decidedly diplomatic.

[madbikeboy]

Hmm, not great for the families of the riders (and pillion) involved.

[monkeymcbean]

Yes, not good for the families at all, very stressful.

But is it that bad? that the media are creating with the public a whole negative focus on motorcycles....or do I only notice this because I have a bike, and these sort of articles attract my eyes
?
I mean do these articles have a effect on your riding? Im not sure if they are to make you feel a idiot for riding, owning a bike, or a idiot for having a accident.

I would feel a idiot for having a accident for sure, if its anything like what I feel when dropping a bike.

[firefighter]

What i'm concerned with is the high rate of motorcycle accidents in this district compared to the rest of the country. What's with that?

I blame the in-breeding

It's got to be pretty hard to ride with webbed hands.

[Bald Eagle]

Well some motorcyclists are not doing the rest of us any favours, some of the riding I observe daily by young kids on crotch rockets is enough to make me cringe at being associated with the label motorcyclist. The media as always will focus on the negative, and there are a lot of people in positions of authority who are very happy to reinforce the stereotype as it suits their agendas.

[ukusa]

mid life crisis is a bullshit term to use, appears to be a catch-phrase that's used out of context all the time by media & cops, with no evidence whatsover that the persons involved in accidents were actually having some sort of crisis or not. The only crisis I see is after the crash has occurred.
For me it's more the fact that once the kids grew up & the mortgage had mostly disappeared,I finally had some spare money to do with what I want! So I chose to get a bike, no crisis there. For every middle aged bloke (or bloke-ess) who has a crash, there are hundereds (or thousands?) more who don't. I had a break from riding for around 10 years, got back into dirt bikes then decided the road was for me , so jumped into a 900cc for a couple of years, followed by my current 1600. Been back riding now for around 5 years (only 3 on the road). How long (& how many kms) does it take before they decide you're out of the mid life crisis?

[sinfull]

He makes me look decidedly diplomatic.

And validates the issues you have been pushing for some time !

[duckonin]

ha ha ha it's all good Katman I at least can see your posts are worthwhile..

[PrincessBandit]

mid life crisis is a bullshit term to use, appears to be a catch-phrase that's used out of context all the time.........

And yet there may be some truth in it (not necessarily in the context of the particular crashes mentioned in this thread).

Mid-life crisis? hahaha, most of us are in denial about the term, until we ourselves hit mid-life, then it's another story!

There will always be young hoons and young "sensible" riders. There will always be grizzly ole dyed in the wool born-to-be-on-a-bike riders who could ride anything at any age and take it all in their stride. There will also be some older ones who buy something bigger and faster (because their ego doesn't want to acknowledge that they might be better off on something a bit smaller) who come to grief due to being ruled by their nuts rather than their brain. Then again, the same thing could be said for any rider (with the exception of women, 'cos we don't have nuts....)


p.s. Headbanger's thread "To be blunt" is on the same topic and using the same news item

[yungatart]

Face it though, a motorcyclist pootling along minding his/her own business and obeying the road rules is never going to be newsworthy.
Only bad news sells papers!

[monkeymcbean]

Well said, I am well over that 'mid crisis' saying, if they want to see a crisis ...take my bike away.

I hope for every negative about motorcycles, a positive is seen somewhere out there, amongst the people population.

[peasea]

mid life crisis is a bullshit term to use, appears to be a catch-phrase that's used out of context all the time by media & cops, with no evidence whatsover that the persons involved in accidents were actually having some sort of crisis or not. The only crisis I see is after the crash has occurred.
For me it's more the fact that once the kids grew up & the mortgage had mostly disappeared,I finally had some spare money to do with what I want! So I chose to get a bike, no crisis there. For every middle aged bloke (or bloke-ess) who has a crash, there are hundereds (or thousands?) more who don't. I had a break from riding for around 10 years, got back into dirt bikes then decided the road was for me , so jumped into a 900cc for a couple of years, followed by my current 1600. Been back riding now for around 5 years (only 3 on the road). How long (& how many kms) does it take before they decide you're out of the mid life crisis?

Couldn't agree more. I shook my head at the article's inference that the riders are heading here on high-powered motorcycles and that the 1000cc Harley Davidsons were deemed to be such. I can't recall when HD made a 1,000cc machine: Currently it's 883, 1200, 1150, 1450 and all the rest but 1,000cc's was last seen on the old iron head Sporty's was it not? Hardly 'powerful' and not what I'd tour on, that's for freakin' sure. The perception that large displacement bikes are powerful is based on ignorance, something the mass media has in bucketsful. Is it possible Knowles is in the same class?

Being on the wrong side of the road is just plain dumb (unless the rider was skidding on something etc) and I doubt that engine displacement had anything to do with it.

[CHOPPA]

Its funny how it took me a couple of years to be allowed to ride a 600cc bike on the road when i have raced motorcycles my whole life and I had already held a car licence for 10 years so in theory the only difference is handling the motorbike but my mum was allowed to ride any motorcycle she wanted after doing a 2 min test 40 years ago!