Where’s the criticism of road bikes? Sure, there are bike lanes, but I hardly ever see a road biker using them? You get hit while riding a road bike, you’re just as likely to die as on a motorcycle. It can’t go 60 miles an hour, but if your bicycle gets hit by a car, you are fucked.
As the good doctor was fond of saying you buy the ticket you take the ride.
I’ve riden for 20 years or more, I ride ever day, rain or shine, it gets me back and forth to work, and back and forth to the grocery store or whatever. I dont ride to look cool, I’m a big fat mutant who wears hawiian shirts and tie dyes. The coolest motorcycle in the world wouldnt make me look or be cool. I’m ok with that
Here’s the thing bud, life is to be lived. You can either hide under your bed or take some risks or theres a whole lot of real estate inbetween those two strategies. Some of us push towards the risk side a little farther, and we live a little more for it. If I get squashed by a beer truck tomorrow I wont regret a minute of it. I don’t fault people for playing it safe, and I sure as hell dont berate my friends who lived life to the to the fullest and cashed in early.
Res Ipsa Loquitur.
Mahalo
My pair ain’t shrivelled and fallen off yet, Doors. Statistically I’m shortening my life expectancy by riding a bike, but not by all that much and in my opinion the risk/reward balance is acceptable. Instead I could go hide under my bed, eliminate all danger from my life, and die witless, incontinent and drooling at age 95 in a nursing home. If I should get croaked untimely while biking, think only this of me: I took all steps to minimise the risk, and I died doing something I enjoyed.
It was nothing like a statistical certainty that one of your co-workers was going to die. What’s the median number of rider-miles per motorcycling death?
–Mal, biker since 1979, ~80k miles and still defying the odds.
Yesterday returning home from work I was turning left across the traffic into a one-way side-road with a couple of cars in front of me, and a bike behind me. You have to be quick on the accelerator as you’ve got two lanes of oncoming traffic to turn across (no central dividers on this stretch of road) and the oncoming traffic is coming out of a bend too. So I put my foot down and went and darn it all if the bike didn’t appear in my vision - just a foot or so from my door - trying to overtake me on the inside. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision, and he bumped up onto the kerb before speeding away into the distance. Some of them don’t want to live, it seems.
Fucking hamsters.
Airman, my condolences on your loss. I had a longer post, but I’ll leave it at that for the time being and see if this post gets through.
Okay, take two.
I appreciate you are hurt and angry, so please do not see my next comment as an attack. I don’t think anyone can accurately predict whether a deceased is in a better or worse place, having fun or not having fun. That is entirely dependent on an individual’s worldview. I personally sense that the other side of the veil is infinitely more joyous than the current existence. But that’s just me.
I ride almost every day. In fact, I own two bikes. I fully appreciate the risks, and I take full responsibility for any part I play in close calls. In my experience, it is a combination of inapproprate speed and visibility. As such I wear a retina-scorching high visibility jacket, and I watch my speed. It does nothing for any Hell’s Angels aspirations.
To cut to the heart of the matter, I thoroughly enjoy my bike rides. They are the highlights of my work days. The exhilarating sense of freedom, the exposure to the elements, the wind in my eyes, the dipping of the front fork as I prepare for a corner, the heart stopping spongy glitch as I snick the white line with my front tyre, storing that memory so as to avoid that spot the next time round, the straightening up, the throb of 4 cylinders between my legs, the purr of the 4-into-one, the wide-eyed waves from kids behind glass on backseats, the “howzit-my-china” thumbs-ups from fellow riders, the sense of cameraderie, the list goes on and on.
In my view, life is meant to be an adventure. Those of us who choose to ride the edge should not be spurned. Furthermore, and I have no cite and I may be totally wrong, I suspect that bike accidents take no prisoners other than the riders themselves. I have yet to see a bike wiping out a busload of passengers, or smashing into multiple cars and killing multiple occupants. So why malign them so?
Once again, my condolences.
And if the hamsters eat this one too, I’ll shit myself.
Hey, I know this is the Pit, and we’re all supposed to be effing and griping, but I’ve got a serious series of questions. Do you guys have the Air Force’s “101 Days of Summer” briefing every May? Don’t they get up and show photos of motorcycle accidents? Don’t your officers refer their airmen to motorcycle safety instructors for periodic re-training and counseling?
I mention this only because the Air Force, at least the Air Force I was in, was a total pain in the ass about motorcycle safety. I was volunteered to be my flight’s safety officer for a year, and I had to keep a log of motorcycle riders, long rides they had planned, and so on, and so on. Please tell me that your unit is just as hard-assed about donorcycles as mine was!
I’m very sorry about your loss, Airman. You have every right to be angry and frustrated.
A while back, I was reading a story in the newspaper about a motorcycle run some people did in memory of their friend who was killed. The guy who was interviewed focused mostly on how it’s the fault of people who drive cars that motorcyclists are killed. We need to make special accommodations for them because they choose to ride motorcycles. There was a photograph accompanying the story, with several motorcyclists riding down the road. Out of half a dozen or so, do you know how many of them were wearing helmets? One. So I find myself thinking, “If you’re not concerned about your own safety, why in hell should I be?”
Very timely thread for me. I just got my motorcycle license, but decided not to buy one.
I went through the MSF course, learned a lot, and nearly bought a bike. But my decision not to was based on the fact that, for me,* it wasn’t fun enough to justify the risks. *
However, had I found THRILLING then I might have bought one and become a real rider. I already fly aerobatics and that’s fun to the point where I’ll accept the risks. And I have a lot of training and experience in flying, so I consider it less of a risk than a motorcycle would be.
It’s true that everything is a risk. But some bets are better than others. I don’t see motorcycles as a very good bet from the outset. And for me personally, they’re not enough fun to make me accept that and roll the dice.
Sorry, you have a problem with actually noticing we’re there and not driving into us? That’s “making special accommodations”?
Strangely, an unwillingness to wear a helmet does not indicate “unconcern about one’s own safety”. I’ve always worn a helmet - it’s compulsory over here - and I would feel naked without one. Yet in 27 years on two wheels, it’s never once saved me from death or injury. Riding in a manner such as to preclude falling off usually does the business. All we ask is that you don’t actively make it harder for us.
“Special accommodations”? Specially accommodate this worn-out silencer, yellowval. :
:
You can blame other driver’s negligence for 95% of motorcycle accidents but that really isn’t going to save your life now is it?
Motorcycle riders who live a long time practice something called defensive driving. That is, don’t put yourself in a position where another driver’s negligence is going to cost you your life.
You always hear of cyclists getting “cut off” or “someone pulled out in front of them” or “the truck ran the light and hit him.” Good cyclists know this and ride looking for this. When you approach an intersection and the light is green you can’t rely on “hey, I have the light, I’m just going to look straight ahead and gun it”. You maintain a steady speed and look for cars on either side that may be entering your path even though they are in the wrong.
And see that chick on her cell phone in that Range Rover? Probably not a good idea to ride behind or next to her even though you have every right to do so.
That guy in the Mustang waiting to pull onto your right-of-way? Sure it looks like he sees you, but pull into the other lane just in case he decides he’s going to pull out into your lane.
I didn’t survive 10 years on a bike because I was a good driver who followed the rules of the road, I survived because I avoided the bad drivers around me.
Dead right, Hampshire. Or as I put it:
- You are invisible.
- In spite of this, everyone on the road will deliberately kill you if humanly possible.
Allow for those two, and you can live for a long time.
How about just watch where the fuck you are going?
Are you fucking serious!? Do you really believe this!? If I choose not to wear a helmet then I am fair game to your negligence? Fuck you.
I want to apologize to Airman Doors, USAF because I feel I was jumping his shit and he probably didn’t anticipate the thread geting so ugly. And again, I am sorry for the loss of your friend.
yellowval, eat hot chrome death.
Trying not to hit them is “special accomodations”??
*Not intended as wishing death on you, in case it appears that way.
How about just watch where the fuck you are going? The whole tone of this article was basically that drivers of cars need to be extra careful because of all the motorcyclists on the road. Sorry, but if I can’t see or hear you, whose fault is that, mine? You’re the one who deliberately chooses to drive this dangerous vehicle, not me. If you choose not to wear a helmet, you’re game to your own negligence. If I’m in an accident with you and you die because you’re not wearing a helmet, it’s my fault? Sorry, but I’m not taking the blame for that. I also refuse to stoop to your level of insults. No matter which way you intended it to sound.
99% of traffic on the road consists of cars and trucks, it’s just flat out hard to account for that 1%. Keep that 1% in mind at every intersection, every left turn, every time you pull out into traffic when 99% of the time there’s nothing there. If 10+% of our road traffic was 2 wheeled, then it would get a lot safer, because we would all have to be on the lookout for them. As it is, that vigilence is difficult for many to maintain because it is so often unnecessary.
We live in a country that is married to our cars, almost everyone drives almost every day. You can’t filter out the bad or inattentive drivers without handcuffing people to lives without transportation. The system we have is set up for cars, not motorcycles, not bicycles, that’s a fact, even if it’s unpleasant to admit.
This report (page 12) appears to back you up. Although it doesn’t specifically indicate fatalitites by age, it does graph total number rider accidents against age. The highest group of all is 15-24, with a rapid decline by age bracket.
Fuck yes it’s your fault. It means you aren’t paying attention. We aren’t that fucking hard to see. It means you are just taking quick glances in a general direction and not looking both ways.
They are only dangerous because of puppy-fucking shit sticks like you who refuse to pay attention to where you are going. There’s a hell of a lot more to driving than turning a wheel and pushing a couple of pedals, dumb ass.
If the cause of the accident was your fault then it doesn’t matter if I was naked on the fucking thing with chocolate smeared all over me, a clown nose over the head of my cock and a can of yams shoved up my ass, you idiot. You caused the accident!
How about if we’re in an accident because your negligence and poor observation caused you to turn across my path when I had right of way? That’s happened to me before now. (30mph collision, the bike fairing threw me up and over the car, I landed ass, feet and shoulders simultaneously on the tarmac and walked away with barely a bruise. I couldn’t have done it better if I’d been a trained stuntman.) You about to argue it’s all my fault because I wasn’t driving around in a fucking tank?
Yours. Inarguably. Bikes aren’t invisible or inaudible. If you don’t see or hear them, it’s your fault for not paying attention. I’m very glad you asked. Use your eyes and ears, or turn in your licence, I don’t care which.