
Originally Posted by
BlackSheepLogic
Unfortunately bikes are different to cars, they don't have cages around the riders to absorb impact.
A fuck up at 80km/h, 100km/h or 110km/h it's extremely serious, when your dealing with accident at those speeds the risk of death is very high and you would be hard pressed to show a meaningful real world example of where you walk away from one and would not have walked away from the other. In some cases the higher speed may have changed the dynamics and become survivable.
Unlike cars, a riders ability to absorb impact is very limited, the 100km/h vrs 110km/h has no real world influence on that. If you end up sliding down the road your survival is not dependent on 100km/h vrs 110km/h. It's the interaction of you and the road surface and how that energy is distributed. I'm much more concerned about being run over or my bike catching up with me that an extra 10ft slide.
The problem with text books is that the real world is full of dynamics yet to be introduced into your 5th form physics class. You need to construct real world scenarios where a rider would have survived had they been traveling at 100km/h vrs 110km/h. For each one of those scenarios your could construct a scenario where had they been traveling at the higher 110km/h they would have survived - not been run over or hit the road at a different angle, or missed an object etc.
My original point was that for a rider 100km/h vrs 110km/hwould make little difference to a riders outcome. Unfortunately once you are traveling at speed survivability for a rider depends on factors that have a much greater influence than the speed does.
The golden rule of speed on a motorcycle is "Can you stop in the distance you see to be clear". Traveling at 100km/h on a bike carries the same risk as traveling 110km/h on a bike in terms of rider outcome. Once your dead your dead.
If this is too much to take in so be it.
Okay so you want examples:
a Rider falls off at 100 kph - the total energy is dissipated through a combination of cracking 3 ribs, shattered wrist and sliding along the road
Same scenario run at 110 kph, all other factors about the fall are the same, except now the 20% increase in energy causes a punctured lung, 4 cracked ribs, a shattered wrist and ruptured Ulnar artery and sliding along the road - the Rider bleeds to death before the ambulance could arrive.
A rider falls off at 100 kph - the total energy is dissipated through a slide of 50 m (from the ADAC leather slide test), Rider gets up, dusts himself off and walks away
A rider falls off at 110 kph - all other factors are the same, but the 20% increase in energy means he slides for an extra 10 meters - into the oncoming lane and underneath a truck - Dead.
I could keep going - but the stark reality is - at the start of the crash, Energy has to go somewhere, and an increase initially energy means more has to be done to dissipate it and all other factors being equal, that 20% increase in energy could be the difference between life and death.
Physics; Thou art a cruel, heartless Bitch-of-a-Mistress
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