Originally Posted by
rastuscat
Indeed. Berries nailed it. There are some crashes that can't be avoided by coaching.
A friend hit a tree on the West Coast a few years back. The tree fell onto the road at the precise second my friend was passing that point. He happened to be riding a Police R1150RT-P at the time. No amount of the training he had could have prevented that.
However, I suggest that those bins are the minority. Most often there is something we can do, something in the way we ride, that can help to minimise our chance of becoming a victim. Either of our own mistakes, or of the mistakes of others.
However, the pattern I've personally seen is the human tendency the apportion blame elsewhere. It's normal to do that. Freud said so.
In reality, the discussion about fault doesn't matter much when you are lying in the back of an ambulance, with a broken arm, broken leg and ruptured spleen. Coaching is about things you can do to reduce the risk of those things.
Sorry to see this thread turn into a slanging match. But hey, it is what we make it.
To really dial in the nuance - both accidents I've had (fortunately minor) were caused by a third party, but even then - there were things I could (and should) have done proactively that would have avoided the crash.
One look at Youtube Go-Pro accident compilations - I've yet to see a single one where the accident didn't start a good 3-5 seconds before the rider noticed and started to take any evasive action, those seconds could have prevented the accident.
By that I mean (as an example) a Car started to pull out of an intersection (the start of the accident) but the rider only noticed and started evasive action when the car crossed into their path.
There are other things as well - bitter experience in Auckland taught me to be especially wary of large, late model luxury SUVs in white, driven by a particular demographic.
I think the TL;DR is that whilst the overwhelming majority of crashes are ones where there were action(s) that the rider could have taken to prevent or mitigate the accident, then people will continue to bang the 'Training' drum loudly for all to hear.
Should we ever reach a time and place where the majority of Crashes are through completely unavoidable scenarios, then the discussion will move in a different direction.
Physics; Thou art a cruel, heartless Bitch-of-a-Mistress
Bookmarks