older riders surviving badly

[dangerous]

... this has been on my mind a bit of late, more so the last week with the 2nd funeral of a friend on Saturday, earlier in the year was a very dear friend at 49yrs old, hers was avery freak acco... last week a van turned in front of a friend... 48yrs...
Now Im 50 and I know I have passed my "best by date" shit im not so agile or fit, Im now blind in one eye the others struggling... I struggle to concentrate like I used to I know all this but cant slow down... why?
Are we older riders loosing it due to age... or are we loosing it due to being to long in the tooth ie to complacent?

I want to hear from the same age and older riders that may not ride much these days... ststs show the older generation are dieing... why???

[Ocean1]

... this has been on my mind a bit of late, more so the last week with the 2nd funeral of a friend on Saturday, earlier in the year was a very dear friend at 49yrs old, hers was avery freak acco... last week a van turned in front of a friend... 48yrs...
Now Im 50 and I know I have passed my "best by date" shit im not so agile or fit, Im now blind in one eye the others struggling... I struggle to concentrate like I used to I know all this but cant slow down... why?
Are we older riders loosing it due to age... or are we loosing it due to being to long in the tooth ie to complacent?

I want to hear from the same age and older riders that may not ride much these days... ststs show the older generation are dieing... why???

Because there's more of them riding.

"The stat's" as presented by most authorities are well bent to show exactly what you're seeing, like selecting the oldest age group at twice the age range of the rest, and then ignoring the fact that that's there's more of that age riding anyway. I don't know why the whole "born again" bashing thing is so popular, but it ain't true. If you reformat the data to make age groups the same size and then show what percentage of each age group are crashing the story that emerges is the same as it's always been: Beginners crash most, then each successive age group crashes less as they gain more experience.

Sorry for your lost mates, dude. There's worse ways to live, and as they say: there's no quantity of life worth saving if it's just to be spent in a nursing home. On the other hand: take it easy out there all you doddery old cunts.

[AllanB]

Work sucks.

The prospect for better work becomes limited.

A good ride makes it better for a short period of time. I never think of work cranked over mid corner. I do occasionally think 'shit that car in front is coming up fast ......'

[nzspokes]

For the most part I would say attitude. The roads not a race track and yes it's a decaying skill.


Im 50 and take in all the training I can.

[dangerous]

yeah I get the majority thing as in 45-55 the commonest age for a rider, fuck we come from that area... but we are very experienced, myself mega mileage under my belt on the road on the track even an acredited MNZ coach... but I dont have it anymore is this common with getting to this age group? are we to blazay I bloody well hope not

For the most part I would say attitude. The roads not a race track and yes it's a decaying skill.


Im 50 and take in all the training I can.

at 50 I doubt to many treat the road as a race track... or do we, like it was us that drank and drove in the day... and yes every time ya ride ya learn, think ya know it all and its all over...

[russd7]

its hard yakka getting older and as allanb suggested it gets harder to get new employment options even tho I know I can give a better return to most employers than younger counterparts, but that's another story.
as for riding, I knew I had become complacent and knew I was getting lazy and had allowed bad habits to creep in so I went and did a senior rideforever course, I came away completely despondent but started working on all the things I knew I needed to and riding became a whole lot more enjoyable. I may have slowed down slightly but not as much as thought I would have.

I have since done the gold course as a refresher and will do another next year. oh I also lost a lot of weight and am getting fitter and I think that helps as well

[AllanB]

at 50 I doubt to many treat the road as a race track... or do we

Mate you ride the CHCH - Akaroa route frequently. You telling me you stick to the limit and suggested corner speeds?

And check out some of the 'road' rubber on bikes after a spin on the hill - that balled up rubber is not from a scenic ride.

[skippa1]

No amount of youth, fitness, agility or reflex is going to save you from some dickhead that suddenly turns in front of you 50m away. You have less than 2 seconds at 100kmh, if you consider they are carrying minimal speed. Barely time to survey the situation before impact.

More cars on the road, more bikes on the road, more distractions......it happens in the blink of an eye

Trust me

I know

Best to be a cunt....only the good die young

[nzspokes]

at 50 I doubt to many treat the road as a race track...

Age seems irrelevant with those that must win the get to the pub first GP.

[AllanB]

Age seems irrelevant with those that must win the get to the pub first GP.

Booze and bikes don't mix well in my opinion. I stick to the fanta.

[dangerous]

Mate you ride the CHCH - Akaroa route frequently. You telling me you stick to the limit and suggested corner speeds?

And check out some of the 'road' rubber on bikes after a spin on the hill - that balled up rubber is not from a scenic ride.

no al... I rearly ride that road, once twice a year maybe... not enjoyable, traffic and all plus to get there its a 45k straight line ride LOL... unlike our mate GC.
That said tho, yes it is a road for hooning with out traffic its awesome, easy to push ones luck.

No amount of youth, fitness, agility or reflex is going to save you from some dickhead that suddenly turns in front of you 50m away. You have less than 2 seconds at 100kmh, if you consider they are carrying minimal speed. Barely time to survey the situation before impact.

More cars on the road, more bikes on the road, more distractions......it happens in the blink of an eye

Trust me

I know

Best to be a cunt....only the good die young

Im hearing ya BUT... as a rider you should be tuned into that car 50M away and be expecting it to turn so all the above should help, ofcourse if the dickhead is 50M round a blind corner then yeah down to luck maybe...
cunt/die young is bit of a contradiction... because ya cant be both good and a cunt... unless ya me and im a good cunt.

[seattle smitty]

Motorcycle riding certainly puts a premium on situational awareness, and even then, as Skippa asserts, there are situations you can hardly spot and dodge in time, if at all.

I did once manage, on a little Yamaha DT125 in heavy afternoon go-home traffic, to dodge an inflated tire/wheel rolling and bounding towards us at 80kph in the concoming lanes (came loose from a car, I assume). It took a hard bounce off somebody's bumper and went very high in the air, shimmying wildly, and diagonally crossing over three lanes in the general direction of . . . me. As I tried to calculate it's downward arc and trajectory, I was braking enough to, I hoped, both avoid the tire and the traffic behind me. The car in the lane next to mine continued at speed, having not spotted the tire at all, and it hit him in the passenger-side of the windshield (would have killed the passenger had he been carrying one). To his credit he slowed in a controlled manner as I went past. No way I was going to stop and check things out with that mob of cars behind me, so I just kept going. It all happened so fast, I had no time for fear, and was perfectly calm as I motored away, maybe partly because I could see that the tire never had my name on it anyway.

I just wanted to tell my little anecdote, which has little to do with the question I wanted to ask. Did you fellas ever hear of a study that became known here as the Hurt Report? Harry Hurt, a professor at San Diego State U. (IIRC) in the Seventies, did a good study on motorcycle accidents. One of the first things he noticed, in interviewing numbers of participants in the 800-some accidents he studied, was that in a great many of them, the biker reported, "The guy/gal in the car LOOKED RIGHT AT ME before he/she pulled out right in front of me!!" Yet the offending driver of the car nearly always said, "I never saw the guy coming!!" Wondering at this, Hurt started digging further. He found that overwhelmngly the car drivers had never owned a motorcycle, nor had anyone in their families, and the upshot was evidently that their brains were not prepped very well to have a consciousness of motorcycles.

I should say that this was in an era when most bikes did not have the automatic headlight-on-when-running feature that helped make them stand out. Of course, since then the flaming idiots in government have got all newer cars set up for full-time lights-on, so that motorcyclists have not only lost their protection, but all drivers are slightly blinded from all the damned lights, especially us old guys and especially at night.

Anyway, the Hurt Report. The prof went on to say that certain groups were hugely OVER-represented in motorcycle accidents, especially fatal ones. First were the drinkers. Just being completely sober while riding makes the stats look a whole lot better for you. The second group was the squids (squirrelly kids); the young, fearless, unimaginative new riders who jump on their sportbikes wearing shorts and sandals and go wheely-ing out of the lot, and soon into a tree or something. Hurt found that a lot of the guys in this group were not well-read motorcycle lovers, and really didn't know much about bikes. The third over-represented group was the low-visibility riders, in black leather and such, with black helmets. Wearers of high-vis clothing and helmets did not figure much in Hurt's stats. Whether this was due to the bright garb, or to the fact that guys who choose to wear this stuff are undoubtedly tuned in to any other means of self-preservation while riding, well, who could say.

The overall point of the Hurt Report was that statistically motorcycling is certainly dangerous . . . BUT, that for the smarter riders who do not fall into any of the three accident-prone categories, motorcycling is statistically nowhere nearly as dangerous an activity.


Or maybe you all know of that study (largely common sense anyway), and I should have done something other than this post, LOL.

[sidecar bob]

Knowing what you are good for & monitoring your downward spiral is important.
Apart from not getting a buzz out of it anymore, my days passengering a top level F1 sidecar are over.
My mental agility is not razor sharp, so time to let it go before me or somebody I'm supposed to be looking after get hurt.
I also find that taking advice from young & competent motorcyclists re tyres, helmets & pretty much anything I don't fully understand the current technology of, including how to download music is invaluable.

[SaferRides]

I'll bet only one or two people at the MoT and no one in our government has heard of the Hurt report, let alone even read it.

You also have to realise that the key decision makers have vested interests in what is done to reduce the road toll. The police will say speed, then they want more staff. NZTA will say the roads are crap so they can build shiny, new ones - well, hopefully not shiny. Probably the only people who's primary interest is reducing accidents is ACC and it seems their main strategy is rider training. Interesting.

[Big Dog]

Less than 10% of the motorcycle riders involved in these accidents had insurance of any kind to provide medical care or replace property.

From:http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...he_Hurt_Report

I have always wondered, is that a link to general lack of preparation, or more an attitude of "I'm special and don't play by the rules"?

I also find it interesting to read through these findings and compare which risk groups apply to me now vs the first time I read the report 16 years ago.