Inevitable new bike thread

[KungFooBob]

I like how the inevitable new bike thread has changed into the inevitable (or not) bike crash thread

[Skub]

I missed this.

Glad junior is ok,the rest can be fixed.

[Rockburner]

"Turn around and go another way".

I can think of one occasion when I have done that. Walking across a car park and slipped on an icy puddle.

There were two access roads. I knew there had been water running across on the way in, so took the other one out.

Perfectly valid option.

Exactly. Theres always another way.

[Horse]

Exactly. Theres always another way.

Really just two options: predict or react.

[Whysub]

The other side of the coin though Spin, is no matter what we do as riders, and no matter how much training you have had, no matter how much you are aware of a hazard and how it can develop, the other driver will still be a dick and pull out giving the rider no chance at all, irrespective of what precautions they have taken.

It was just this scenario that took me out, absolutely nothing I could do to avoid it.

At urban speeds there's actually a remarkably small window in which the collision is unavoidable.

Which was my crash in a nutshell. Despite me having over 30 years riding experience, having had THE best bike training you could ever wish for, having ridden for hundreds of thousands of miles in London, throughout the UK, Europe, crazy Russia, and not being complacent, it still happened.

Sorry for your lad, Iccy. Despite being a new rider, he too could have found himself in the same situation I did. Could have been far worse were it not for his protective gear.

[weeksy]

Knocked off it this morning

Bloke pulled right out in front of him, didn’t even have time to brake. Luckily it was on a side street and he only hit it at about 30mph but it was 30mph to zero instantly. Land cruiser as well, so he didn’t go over the top, just smashed into it. There is a huge dent in the side of the car but the bike doesn’t look that bad although it needs to be checked properly until I know the extent of the damage.

He’s ok, he jumped up ready to do damage to the bloke but that quickly faded and after that he was just shaken up and a bit tender, nothing broken. Luckily even though it was hot he had the full gear on and knee pads, he got used to wearing then because it’s law while you’re learning so he puts them on now out of habit. Those combined with my leather jacket, decent boots and my gloves means not even a graze, but he’ll be a bit bruised in the morning.

Arerrrgh bollox. How's he feeling now?

[Bigyin]

Fuck me, 1 day it was shiny .... glad the boy is ok and even had enough energy and lack of pain to think about sorting the driver rather than rolling about like a Prem footballer who tripped on grass.

Good job he was wearing decent kit and at that age wont even notice it today probably. Did the exact same when i was 17 except i went over the car and went clubbing that night. Mum didnt sleep for 2-3 nights imagining the accident

[Horse]

Science Of Being Seen.

The wonder is that the vast majority of drivers see the vast majority of bikes the vast majority of the time. If they didn't, know of us would get much beyond the end of our own road.

I'm more than happy to do a presentation to the forum - I did suggest it to Weeksy a while back

A small part of my day job is conspicuity, of vehicles, pedestrians, signs, etc. Spin knows more about this particular niche than I do. But he doesn't get the toys to play with that I do.

Although we were beaten by the group that were researching conspicuity for search and rescue at sea, comparing various retroreflective, including IR filtered, materials. They blagged a S&R helicopter with fugg off searchlight.

Final Report EASA_REP_RESEA_2017_2
Research Project: CIMSCY
Crew Immersion Suits Conspicuity

IF you accept that it's the rider who has to take responsibility for avoiding the driver's error. There's no benefit to be gained from being right when you're flat on your back.

When I started in rider training, we had a tame copper who said about the times when he had attended a bike crash. The rider would be flat out on the road and would ask "Are you going to nick him?" He would answer "Yes, but it's not going to help you."

[MrLongbeard]

Ahhh well, shit happens, chick's dig scars, get back on the horse and all that, live n learn

[The Spin Doctor]

Which was my crash in a nutshell.

Lightning DOES strike occasionally... but mostly riders crash at a distant rumble of thunder

Despite me having over 30 years riding experience, having had THE best bike training you could ever wish for, having ridden for hundreds of thousands of miles in London, throughout the UK, Europe, crazy Russia, and not being complacent, it still happened.

JOOC who told you it was THE best?

[Nidge]

Glad to hear your boy didn’t hurt himself too much and he will certainly take something from the experience. Also very impressed at the KTM’s resilience- if that had been on the equivalent learner bike from my youth I’m pretty sure I’d be looking for a new front end

[The Spin Doctor]

You could say the same about pretty much every accident humans have in any capacity, when the H&S nerd comes in he can always point to stuff that might have prevented it. I knocked my own coffee over yesterday, pissed me right off and looking back I can see how it happened and how I could have avoided it, but I'll probably do it again before I die.

What is it with this constant wish motorcyclists have to trivialise things? I don't get it. Spilling a coffee is in no way analogous to riding a bike and crashing it. You wouldn't argue that balancing a fan heater on the edge of your bath was sensible, but we seem to want to find a way of reducing bike crashes to the same level as balancing a hot coffee on the bath when the fact is one can kill, the other is highly unlikely to.

This incident was a bloke stopped that didn't know where he was and was trying to follow directions on his phone

So quite like millions of other drivers... there will be someone in just about every street in every town in the country who doesn't know where they are and is trying to follow directions on the phone. Heck, I've been struggling to find my own way round local streets I've known since the 80s thanks to the COVID street closures and HS2!

he didn't give due care and attention to multiple risks

Read what I've written about workload. Read about the limited 'visual data' memory buffer that can only hold five or six pieces of visual information at one time and shuffles it along - first in, first out.

Casting "didn't try hard enough" blame doesn't explain the issues that cause these collisions... and that means WE never learn from them. Which is why your lad has just had a crash that every generation of biker has had, because the RIDER has never been given the means to understand why drivers make errors. We just carry on blaming them for not being perfect.

and moved from a static position near a school where loads of parked cars and school buses made it hard to see for both him and my lad.

Which means the rider has to slow down, try to get the best view to search for turning cars, try to find a position where he / she can be seen by the driver and be prepared to take evasive action if the driver still doesn't see the bike.

As I said - I'm not blaming your lad. Road safety generally and bike training specifically has failed riders on this point for a long time. Most trainers do their best to inject personal experience into the syllabus, but NOTHING in the DVSA's approach to bike training prepares riders to deal with the consequences of errors, whether they are the rider's or another road users. The emergency stop becomes a game of beating a radar gun and dodging cones rather than any kind of life-saving exercise. The Hazard Perception test is a game of pointing at the right object and hitting the mouse button at the right moment to score maximum points rather than trying to understand what could happen if the same situation developed in real life. The Highway Code teaches us that we can blame other people for getting it wrong and it's not our fault if that leads to a collision.

The police turn up and confirm that "it was the other guy's fault" for us after it happens. And post-crash the insurance companies then fight to establish blame.

No wonder it's so hard to understand the need to predict, then avoid errors.

And I will honestly tell you I wouldn't have been in a position to do any better when I was a new rider... I crashed my 125 returning it to the 500 mile service when a vehicle stopped unexpectedly in front of me when she didn't need to give way - I didn't hit it but I locked up the rear and fell off. Shortly after getting my 400-F, I smacked that into the back of a car that changed lanes without indicating. Three months later and three days after getting it back from the insurance rebuild with a complete new front end (tyre, wheel, brakes, forks) I crashed it on a wet road when a car stopped unexpectedly and I locked the front.

Every single crash was "the other guy's fault" wasn't it?

in fact, it wasn't till I was some months into my courier career that I began to understand that now, if I crashed, it wasn't just a case of someone else picking up the bill and me being inconvenienced by my missing bike and having to catch the bus to uni and missing out on the club rides, whilst dealing with the inevitable argument with the insurance company... no, this time, no bike - and potentially being injured - meant I didn't eat and couldn't pay the rent either.

And however much I yelled and shouted and swore at drivers, and had a good rant about them down the pub with my courier mates, it did absolute F*CK ALL to prevent the next driver from failing to spot me... and that being the case it was down to me to do the best I could to spot driver about to make the looked but failed to see error and then do something myself to avoid being in the place they were about to go. It didn't matter WHO made the error, the important bit was knowing that it COULD happen, and DOING something about it, not saying "the driver should have done better".

The car driver was a really nice bloke

And the vast majority of them are. The ones who caused me to crash were gutted to have done what they did (even if one woman's husband did get his solicitor to send the obligatory "you were speeding and my client couldn't avoid you" letter later). There are a few gits out there, just as there are a few bikers who DGAF about anyone who gets in their way. But most drivers who cause collisions didn't mean to put anyone at risk.

and I looked at it from both perspectives, I might (but probably not) have done what he did

And if he replayed that scenario 100 times he probably wouldn't have done what he did again, either. Most errors like this, though apparently catastrophic blunders, are actually trivial mistakes in themselves (even if the consequences aren't) and that's what makes them so hard to catch WHEN MAKING THEM... which is what renders the "should try harder" approach to road safety so utterly useless.

and I might have ended up the same way my lad did.

And so might I. We all - on both sides of a 'Two to Tangle' collision - get it wrong.

Sometimes shit happens. Feel free to navel gaze... my view on this stuff is that bumps and spills are part of riding a bike... as long as you don't die or suffer a permanent disability then I just accept it for what it is and move on.

And that's where we part company. This is not 'navel gazing'. This is trying to give you - and indirectly your lad - as well as anyone else who thinks "ride a bike, fall off" is an inevitable chain, 1) an insight into driver error, 2) an understanding of how those errors can impact us, and 3) what we can do about it.

We ride on a knife-edge on a bike. I mentioned elsewhere the crash that woke me up. It was a 'minor' spill - I wanted to get across a pedestrian crossing before a pedestrian stopped the traffic, and was caught by surprise when he didn't stop and wait for everything to stop but walked straight out and forced vehicles to come to a halt to avoid running him over. I locked the front and toppled off at walking pace. It barely hurt, did little damage to the bike...

...but as I hit the deck and rolled over onto my back, I had to watch a Routemaster's front wheel stopping about a metre before it crushed my head.

And that made me realise there is no such thing as an acceptable bike crash.

That's why I've spent ten years on the Science Of Being Seen project (https://scienceofbeingseen.wordpress.com) which has gone nationwide with Biker Down, have three times been a 'keynote speaker' on the Shiny Side Up project, a radically different approach to rider safety in NZ, etc.

this is a bike forum and these discussions are all good

They are if they don't conclude:

"there was nothing I could do"
"it was the other guy's fault anyway"
and "shit just happens".

Yes, I've pleased he's survived, the bike's survived, and I hope he bounces straight back up and gets back on two wheels, and I would also "rather accidents didn't happen" but we have to go further than "try to avoid them"... we need to be taught HOW, WHERE, WHEN and WHY then happen and then HOW we can avoid them.

PM me an email addie and I'll email you a PDF of the Science Of Being Seen book. And if the forum would like me to, I'll happily organise an evening to give you the same SOBS talk I was delivering for Biker Down Kent till COVID intervened.

[The Spin Doctor]

And one final word before I go out and run a www.survivalskills.co.uk rider training course...

The expression "live and learn" is the wrong way round. We need to "LEARN IN ORDER TO LIVE".

[Horse]

And one final word before I go out and run a www.survivalskills.co.uk rider training course...

The expression "live and learn" is the wrong way round. We need to "LEARN IN ORDER TO LIVE".

And 'learning from experience' requires that you survive it first. Learning from others is far less painful.

[G.P]

Just seen this, glad your kid is ok mate, hope it doesn't put him off

[Noggin]

What is it with this constant wish motorcyclists have to trivialise things? I don't get it. Spilling a coffee is in no way analogous to riding a bike and crashing it. You wouldn't argue that balancing a fan heater on the edge of your bath was sensible, but we seem to want to find a way of reducing bike crashes to the same level as balancing a hot coffee on the bath when the fact is one can kill, the other is highly unlikely to.

For me, if I don't make light of things to do with the less fun side of bikes, it becomes just that, not fun

I don't think I 'trivialise' because that implies that I don't care/learn/think

I definitely learn from every incident - not just the ones that hurt/cost. I learnt a lot from the guy that forced me to the other side of the road and still didn't stop pulling out! I learnt a lot from crashing the blackbird a couple of times. More from crashing the TLs. But I really have learnt as much, if not more, from incidents that 'could have been worse' if I hadn't reacted the way I did. But every incident (avoided or crashed) is different so we are always learning. I read your's and Horse's posts, your stuff on FB. And listen to people more experienced and learn when I get to ride with them

Here, I don't think anyone is Actually trivialising things. Yes it could read like that, but you have a bunch of pretty experienced riders who almost certainly all know that we never stop learning, many of whom are also parents, showing concern for another guy who's son walked away from what 'could' have been bloody serious. I don't disagree with the things you say and it's interesting reading - I hope it doesn't stop Iccy posting updates on how his son gets on when he goes back out

But I do take issue with the word trivialise. That may be how you read it but almost certainly not how it is written/meant

We all know how dangerous our hobby is. We all know we can learn more. And I suspect that I'm not the only one that tries to learn by reading and from riding with others. But if we concentrate on the danger side of the sport/hobby, focus on what might happen, try to eliminate those things, then we lose part of what makes it fun and a passion?

Yes, keep learning, but if we make jokes or don't focus on things, we aren't trivialising at all. Just keeping it a bit light in the immediate aftermath of a scary situation for one of our friends and his family

[Whysub]

JOOC who told you it was THE best?

Everyone. It is the most difficult course to pass, even getting an application accepted is difficult.

[Horse]

JOOC who told you it was THE best?

Everyone. It is the most difficult course to pass, even getting an application accepted is difficult.

I think what Spin meant was about comparisons with training available in other countries, making it THE best.

Although, even in the UK, regional police driving schools are never as good as Hendon, are they?

[JackyJoll]

you're at least five times more likely to be stabbed in the street than you are to be killed whilst riding your motorcycle.

You reckon a motorcyclist in the U.K. is five times more likely to be stabbed in the street than die crashing his bike?

I’m afraid I’ve known quite a few motorcyclists who were killed in a bike crash. I’ve never known anyone at all who was stabbed to death.

[Mr. Dazzle]

you're at least five times more likely to be stabbed in the street than you are to be killed whilst riding your motorcycle.

You reckon a motorcyclist in the U.K. is five times more likely to be stabbed in the street than die crashing his bike?

I’m afraid I’ve known quite a few motorcyclists who were killed in a bike crash. I’ve never known anyone at all who was stabbed to death.

You're at least fifty times more likely to be stabbed in the street than you are in the downstairs bog!