Never Forget it`s Dangerous

[bgd]

I wonder if the audience is the correct one for the police to preach to. It would be interesting to hypothesize as to why left hand bends have more fatalities than right hand bends (assuming that oncoming traffic is not the cause of the fatality).

Is it that as you run wide you go from positive camber to negative camber and so lose a huge amount of grip? Is it that a gutter road position gives you a good view on RH, but none on LH?

From experience in NZ I found my safety was often compromised when assuming the correct position for a left hander due to the number of 4x4 nutters straightening the corners. Got to seem them earlier, but often they were almost inside me, and it was a long way to get back to the LH verge...and most of the time they don't even bother trying to get back to their side of the road.....I guess if I'd flown off the road and killed myself I would have been a single vehicle fatality on the stats.

The traffic police realise that talking to the likes of IAM is really preaching to the converted, i.e. those who appreciate the need for advanced training. The difficulty they have is getting at those more in need of such lectures and they don't know how to get to them. Efforts like bikesafe and road shows only go so far but don't reach everyone.

Not sure why it's left handers that seem more of a problem but they do say that in almost every case they don't know why the bike left the road, i.e. the bike is more than capable of taking the corner at a higher speed than that at which the accident occurs. Down to rider error, getting it wrong standing the bike up and running wide. Their message is if it's going wrong just lean the bike further, most of us don't (often) exceed the bike's capabilities. I think the problem with this is it flies in the face of our natural instincts.

It's good to have someone with years of riding experience to point these things out. I'd rather learn from the mistakes of others than mine. Exposure to these guys - meeting them as riders rather than cops - has certainly helped me.

[bluninja]

Down to rider error, getting it wrong standing the bike up and running wide. Their message is if it's going wrong just lean the bike further, most of us don't (often) exceed the bike's capabilities. I think the problem with this is it flies in the face of our natural instincts.

I guess the other advice to go with that is to keep the throttle opened up....not very intuitive either. I guess every little helps....but really it's down to riders to hone their bike control skills and work on their road riding to create the correct habits......when you're in a mess you don't have time to recall the good advice.

[Lou Girardin]

On left handers, the consequence of running wide is hitting an on-coming car. Invariably fatal.
It's almost what happened to the guy on the CBR in the Waipu gorge on Sunday. He missed a head-on with a car by about 2 - 3 metres

[SPman]

Not sure why it's left handers that seem more of a problem but they do say that in almost every case they don't know why the bike left the road, i.e. the bike is more than capable of taking the corner at a higher speed than that at which the accident occurs. Down to rider error, getting it wrong standing the bike up and running wide. Their message is if it's going wrong just lean the bike further, most of us don't (often) exceed the bike's capabilities. I think the problem with this is it flies in the face of our natural instincts.

When my partner got back into bikes (after a 30 year layoff), I drummed this into her. "If the roads dry and you arent dragging anything, dont hit the brakes! Just lean some more and feed a bit more power in!" It saved her bacon on at least 2 occasions - on left hand corners! - with oncoming traffic! FZR 250.
One of the bins on a Coromandel run in Jan. was due to the same thing - Survival reaction on LH corner - brake - standup - lock up - spear off road - exit one 996! His bike was quite capable of getting around the corner at the speed he was doing - his brain said "fuuuuuck!"...exit stage right.! Luckily he was OK.
In moments of stress or tiredness, or inattention, its easy to get into that situation.I guess the only remedy is just experience and on road/track training to teach people what their bikes limits really are - and more importantly, what their personal limits are! So, when it all turns decidedly dodgy, ingrained learned procedures over ride personal limits!
I always think that, if you have to think about a procedure, in an emergency, its often already too late!

[moko]

A few weeks ago I saw a couple of clowns photographing each other doing wheelies at I`d say at least 60 m.p.h. on the Plymouth/Kingsbridge road,the S.W. ex-pats will tell you what a beauty that one is.These guys ride custom painted GSXRs so pretty easy to recognise.Same road on my regular Sunday evening ride yesterday and I come across 3 police cars and one of the GSXR`s very,very bent,the front wheel was actually missing and the forks kind of an "L" shape.The other guy had his bike parked up and was talking to one of the Cops.I really hope the guy didn`t hurt himself too seriously(ambulance with flashing lights passed me a way further down the road)but I`ve seen these 2 riding like complete twats more than once and if anyone ever had it coming it was one of them.Luckily looked like no other vehicle was involved,pure case of rider ****-up,and this after a week of anyone reading or watching the local media being well aware that 5 of our number are no longer with us,you just cant get through to some people. :disapint: