I should note that that is the method I use by myself, and the point of alternate tightening is to keep the motorcycle from falling over during the process of lashing it down. If there is another person to help you, s/he can just hold it upright. But do put the kickstand up.
Not a biker myself, but I have plenty of friends who are (including one who is a former professional motorcycle racer) and have ridden with friends.
GET GOOD GEAR. Seriously. I don’t even own a motorcycle and am not licensed to drive one but I have a helmet for riding with friends, wear heavy boots, and also vote for bright, day-glo colors.
Your kid is a pilot, right? Remind him about neck on a swivel, see and avoid, anticipate problems, and so forth. The vigilance he learned for flying will help him on the road. He needs that same awareness of what’s going on around him, only more so. Much more so. People are idiots, but assuming he’s been driving for a number of years he already knows that.
Gear can be repaired if it’s damaged - my shop sees a constant flow of boots, along with jackets and other bits of gear. Just fixed up a bike side-saddle yesterday. If he buys quality gear it will be worth it to keep it in good shape. Except for the helmet - if the helmet gets damaged get a new one. Gear makes a huge difference. my friend who used to be a racer has walked away from high speed crashes because he had proper gear (he’s also landed in the hospital, but that is a real risk with any form of biking, even more so with racing).
I was posting from my phone on tapatalk. I didn’t realize it included my sig automatically. :smack:
You are correct, this is perhaps not the best thread to have my sig included.
I’ve always thought the light modulator thingies were neat–they essentially make your light flashy looking by modulating between high and low beam (or something). I think they may be illegal in some areas.
My biggest fear when riding was always that a car waiting to turn left from a parking lot or something onto a road would pull out in front of me. I’ve taken many right turns before passing a car like that (e.g., when they were inching out and I hadn’t made eye contact with the driver).
Doh! :smack: I completely misread your post. OK, so I agree with everything spotthegerbil posted.
I’d like to provide a bit balance to the helmet issue.
A lot of states over the years have repealed their mandatory helmet laws. It turns out that statistically it can not be shown that overall deaths or injuries go down when all riders are forced to wear a helmet.
Some injuries are prevented when a rider in an accident is wearing a helmet, however, some accidents are avoided because the rider without a helmet has better situational awareness, being better able to hear and see traffic just behind/beside him.
Helmet vs no helmet for street riding (not racing) really turns out to be a coin-flip as to the overall number of injuries … to the extent that even a lot of nanny-state legislatures and insurance companies could not justify imposing or retaining mandatory helmet laws.
Leathers or modern fabric skid gear is much more important. At some point that guy in the car at the stop sign who is looking you right square in the eyes and smiling at you is going to pull right in front of you and shorts and sneakers won’t help much when you have to choose to lay it down and do a controlled slide.
I can’t stand bikers that do that (FTR I have a motorcycle). When I’m in my car and driving towards a motorcycle with it’s brights on, I end up having to look away from the bike (even during the day). ISTM that’s the opposite of the intended effect. Wear flame orange, get a white helmet, use your blinkers, be aware of your surroundings, but (IMO) using your brights or a headlight modulator is annoying and causes people to look away from you. It’s not really all that different then driving towards a car with it’s brights on.
I can understand not being able to hear as well with a helmet on, but try as I might I can’t see my helmet when I’m wearing it. It doesn’t block my vision at all.
I do wear one, but it’s mainly to keep the bugs, wind and road debris out of my face.
You need to check the Learner’s Permit rules for your state, for they might not permit your son to ride his motorcycle alone before he passes both the written test and the driving test.
In Kansas, the Learner’s Permit restrictions for a motorcycle is exactly the same as for a car: No driving after dark, no passengers, and you must ride with a fully-licensed driver (on his or her own bike).
That’s right … in Kansas, once you pass the written test, you have to ride with a buddy to get your driving time in. I’m pretty sure I am the only person in the history of Kansas motorcyclists that actually obeyed that rule, but it is the law.
So, before your son makes a lot of plans about riding his bike back and forth from the school, he might want to consider whether or not he can legally ride it back and forth.
Waaait a second.
If you put on maximum-before-lockup braking on a modern motorcycle, you’ll stop at around 1.1-1.2g.
Sliding down the road on its side, a bike can’t stop any faster than .2-.3. Once you’ve hit the ground, it definitely feels like it takes a lot longer to stop, and you can certainly see how far the thing travels - in my case, all the way across the intersection.
If the intent is to get slowed down as far as you can before bailing, you’ll scrub speed four times as fast while you’re on the bike and might even stop in time.
Most motorcycles that come off the road on curves never reached their maximum lean angle. They will also stop a LOT faster than you think they will (as the guy with the Volkswagen behind me found out when he punted me into a highside).
I’ve also had a rock put a 1" x 1/4" star in my helmet visor and am pretty damn sure it woulda gone right through my head instead.
I am ok with people not wearing a helmet as long as they can’t use their insurance to pay for head injuries. Because I don’t want my insurance rates going up because someone else won’t wear safety gear.
But you’re aware of it’s presence. Which is the whole idea. Once motorists stop claiming"I didn’t see him", then cyclists won’t have to resort to such measures.
Umm, cite?
From Wiki
I have a few things I’ll add later today. But this is too dangerous to ignore for now.
I urge you to disregard anyone that contends that riding without a helmet is safer in any situation than riding with a helmet.
Adults can make up their own mind about whether they want to wear a helmet or not. But there can be no doubt, no matter what anyone or any group says, that riding without a helmet is ever a good idea in terms of safety. And - a full-face helmet offers considerably more protection than a half-helmet.
Yeah when it first shows up, then I find myself looking at the opposite curb, the car in front of me or the yellow dividing line…anything but the bike itself. Use the normal headlight and it’s not an issue. I can look (more or less) right at it.
When on a motorcycle do you really want me to be aware of your presence but actively looking away from you?
Helmets don’t reduce the number of injuries - they reduce the severity of injuries when they happen. You’ll have the same number of accidents, but helmeted riders are far less likely to come out of those accidents as vegetables than bareheaded ones.
Keep the shiny side up and the rubber side down, it works best that way in all conditions. “Laying it down” looked cool on CHiPs when they slid the bike under a jackknifed semi, but in real life you’re far better off braking with the tires down than sliding. The coefficient of friction between rubber and asphalt is far higher than between chrome and asphalt, and much less painful than between flesh and asphalt. My plan is to be on the brakes as hard as possible and make the pads, disks, and tires absorb as much energy as possible before I go into the side of that SUV that pulled out in front of me.
Oh, that reminds me, for the OP, a good thing to be sure and practice in parking lots is panic stops. Practice using the front and rear brakes without locking up either wheel, or doing an endo.
As for protective clothing, yes, absolutely, ATGATT. Real leathers (armored and designed for protection, not just looks) or textile gear are tremendously important. At this point in your son’s riding career, I’d suggest some good quality, but inexpensive ($100-200 range) textile gear. You can try things at local dealers, but their selections tend to be less than ideal. I’ve had good luck buying online from Revzilla and New Enough.
As for helmet price, that $10 head thing is ad copy. All helmets sold in the US (unless labeled “for novelty purposes only” or some such) will meet minimum safety standards. Either DOT or SNELL. One may be better than the other in one crash or another—one crash might be better served by a harder foam core, another by a softer foam core, but any rated helmet is going to provide protection. If your son fits perfectly into an $80 HJC full face helmet, then great, it will provide the same amount of protection as that $500 Arai. The more expensive ones will have more features, and prettier graphics, but aren’t really safer. The safest helmet is the one you’ll wear.
littlespeedysuperbike, of course your first choice would be just to stop. I’m talking about a situation in which there is not enough time to stop. The options are to hit the car and go over the handlebars head first or to lay it down and slide into the car feet first with the bike between you and the car. Been there, done that.
Bijou Drains, it is the insurance companies statistics that show there is no difference in overall injury rates due to helmet vs no helmet. People who wear helmets are less likely to get injured when they are in an accident, but people who don’t wear helmets are less likely to get in an accident in the first place.
Your argument could just as well be flip-flopped to say “I don’t want my insurance rates going up because someone else wears a helmet and got in an accident I would have avoided.”
The choice to wear a helmet should be a personal one. There is no evidence that forcing riders to wear helmets provides any benefit to society at large. If there were, the insurance companies would certainly have lobbied to pressure the state legislatures to retain mandatory helmet laws.
On preview, some others have piled on so let me clarify once again: Yes, when a motorcyclist is an accident a helmet can be statistically shown to help prevent injury … but there are no statistics available specifically showing the number of accidents that helmetless riders avoided. The (insurance company) statistics that are available show that helmet laws do not lower the total number of injuries – the effect of mandatory helmets is that there are more accidents but fewer of those accidents result in injury, leaving the total number of injuries unchanged.
[anecdote]
Neighbors friend is in the hospital right now and they can’t even operate on him yet (multiple broken bones and internal injuries) because so much of his skin was turned into street pizza.
He wasn’t wearing leather.
[/anecdote]
This page disagrees with you:
See particularly #46