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Guy Martin in Reckless


Darren72

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Those Police Bike cops can seriously ride their machines.

I recall when I was despatch riding in London on a Suzi 250 and I was having traffic light drag races with an E-Type - loads of fun. Suddenly the E-Type disappeared and I heard a clattering. I looked round, and there was a smiling cop on his Bonneville, waving me over. His words were prophetic: "I saw the whole thing. Looked like fun. The car driver saw me and you didn't, so you get the ticket."

 

Tony

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Won't ever catch me on a bike again.

 

When I was 21 got knocked off my bike by an inattentive car driver - nose dived onto a traffic bollard.

smashed my nose up, broke my jaw & lost 5 teeth.

 

Took 5 plastic surgery operations to get my face straight.

 

Got compensation from the car drivers insurance and went out and bought a Fireball sailing dinghy!

Edited by Ray T
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A peice of advice I try to remember

 

"Don't drive faster than you can see"

 

Hard to keep to though

 

An army soldier biker was killed on one of our lanes last week because he did just that.

 

He met a tractor.

 

clicky

 

tone

Edited by canaldrifter
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Won't ever catch me on a bike again.

 

One of the things I was planning to do post retirement was learn to ride. Jan and other family members were desperately unhappy about it but weren't putting any heavy pressure onto stop me.

 

A former colleague got knocked of his last month and is still in hospital with a double fractured femur the most serious injury - various other bumps and scrapes. He is likely to be off work for months. He was travelling at thirty in a thirty when classically a driver pulled out of a side-road into his path. He went over the bonnet and landed opposite side of car.

 

I know some of the advanced rider training is good and I've read the theory on defensive riding but nothing can totally legislate against a numpty doing such a thing.

 

I may be a bit of a 'chicken' - but I've given up on the idea.

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He was travelling at thirty in a thirty when classically a driver pulled out of a side-road into his path. He went over the bonnet and landed opposite side of car.

Second best bit of advice I was given: "If you see a car in a side road and you look at the driver and can't see pink, he's not looking at you"

 

These days I guess that's not as valid as it was in the late 60's.

 

Tony

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He was travelling at thirty in a thirty when classically a driver pulled out of a side-road into his path. He went over the bonnet and landed opposite side of car.

 

I know some of the advanced rider training is good and I've read the theory on defensive riding but nothing can totally legislate against a numpty doing such a thing.

 

 

 

Advanced training is a very good idea as it significantly shortens the odds (but not to zero) against the type of accident you describe by a combination of good observation and postioning.

 

To do the advanced training I think you need a couple of years on a bike first so that most of the bike handling is second nature.

 

One thing I found unsettling about the test was riding fast with the police examiner's bike bobbing around in my mirrors.

Edited by andywatson
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Won't ever catch me on a bike again.

 

When I was 21 got knocked off my bike by an inattentive car driver - nose dived onto a traffic bollard.

smashed my nose up, broke my jaw & lost 5 teeth.

 

Took 5 plastic surgery operations to get my face straight.

 

Got compensation from the car drivers insurance and went out and bought a Fireball sailing dinghy!

I keep saying "You won't catch me on a bike again." Then last week my mate invited me over to view a couple of bikes in his garage: A sunbeam S7 (or 8?) same age as me, and tried to sell it to me. I had to draw on all my willpower. It is exactly the sort of bike I would now love to own; slow, old and lazy. Bit like me :)

 

I have seen that wooden bike before in the pic, and agree it is brilliant. Would it be actually road legal? What lengths would one have to go to to register it, approve it etc?

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the thing about bikes is they are the most logical way of transporting a person from A to B.

 

Anything else is an overengineered mass of complication and waste.

 

a 2nd hand £4k bike will do 0-60 in under 3sec and top 180mph, ride it economically and it will still return about 45/50mpg!

Get on it and drive past stationnary traffic, enjoy cheaper insurance, road tax, never pay for parking again, never have to actually find a space!

 

Of course the economy and practicality aspects get a lot better if you use commuter type things.

 

And then you have the whole aspect of trying to ride the thing properly which can be exhilarating. I have come off bikes on three occasions, twice on race track and once on the road. Always through my own fault though, I have always managed to keep myself safe from others.

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the thing about bikes is they are the most logical way of transporting a person from A to B.

 

 

Providing a higher-than-average rate of arriving at A&E/Morgue instead of B is an acceptable design parameter.

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Providing a higher-than-average rate of arriving at A&E/Morgue instead of B is an acceptable design parameter.

Well, I do know that A&E units often refer to bikers as "donors." Speaking from my own experience, I have ended up at A&E once because of a bike accident, and once because of a car accident. I was a nutter on a bike when young; many said I would never see 21, but I'm 56 and they are all dead now. What they never told me though, was that my job would do for me, and effectively render me disabled.

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Rode m/cycles for 15 years with a few spills until one day a young lady tried to do a fast u-turn from behind a parked car and scooped me up on her bonnet, came within a fraction of killing me but I still ended up with a shattered wrist( got nearly £10k for that!) problem was it is impossible to avoid such a collision and it really is like rolling a dice every time you get behind the bars, ok majority of the time if you stay alert but the odd unavoidable accident is waiting to happen so I decided to knock biking on the head and surprisingly don't miss it one bit especially as it was becoming a bit of a chore using it to commute to work. It really is a risky pastime even if you are trained and experienced but then a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do B)

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An army soldier biker was killed on one of our lanes last week because he did just that.

 

He met a tractor.

 

clicky

 

tone

 

I ride a bike round there very often, these two idiots were as usual having some kinda race. The bend by the carp pond is a very sharp 90 degree job. He did not bother to look up, had he done so would have seen tractor over the hedge. I wouldn't mind but the riders were local, so no excuse whatsoever. But Tone, you no we loose a biker a fortnight up here. You see the idiots leaving the biker cafe at sherburn in Elmet, travelling cross country (ulleskelf, cawood, kelfield, riccall, stillingfleet), they all drive/ride like idiots. I have them overtake me just about every day. Oh and they think that just because I ride a Hayabusa I want a burnup. I ride a Hayabusa so I don't need to prove anything, and can get out of trouble..

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Second best bit of advice I was given: "If you see a car in a side road and you look at the driver and can't see pink, he's not looking at you"

 

These days I guess that's not as valid as it was in the late 60's.

 

Tony

 

Problem is a driver can be looking straight at you and still pull out. A psychologist once explained it by saying we all look at things such as people and vehicles etc, on a subconscious level, as a potential threat and immediately classify it as one or the other, if it doesn't constitute a threat then we dismiss it. It would explain why this is such a common accident and why it may be wrong to just say people don't look, they do look but not in the correct way.

 

ETA: Only real solution is to blip your horn each time you approach a vehicle waiting to pull out, after all that is the purpose of the horn, a means of warning of your approach, a bit of a pain maybe but better than being in collision with a very hard and painful object.

Edited by nb Innisfree
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I reckon I'm qualified to talk about this one...why..??

 

First bike at 16 - Moped

Second bike at 17 - 250

5 months later at 17 1/2 years old banned for 5 seperate speeding offences.

 

That ban saved my life i reckon. Never road a bike on the road again until I was 28. For that 10 or so years I had crappy old cars and vans and went bike racing. Since packing up racing however I have ridden a bike on the road everyday...I'm 50 now. So for 20 odd years I've never had a problem. Then a couple of years ago I too hit a tractor.

 

Comming home Friday afternoon on a nice sunny day....massive 4 wheel drive tractor and trailor waiting to turn right up the road...slow down from my admittedly ridiculous speed staring at the driver all the time...he's looking straight at me for the whole time I approcahed him. I get to point blank range and he pulls across the front of me...I was just about to nail it aswell convinced he had seen me. Instead I hit the brakes, so hard the back wheel was off the deck and turn with him into the field. As I hit the mud in the opening before the field gate I laid the bike down. I very slowly bounced off his huge front tyre sidewall and the bike stopped just in front of his back wheel with not alot wrong with it. Unbelievably he still hadn't seen me and proceeded to drive over my bike. It was only the tractor rising up on one side alot that stopped him. He was 80 years old, in total shock, and just kept muttering "I never saw you, I never saw you, I dont believe it". "you were looking straight at me", "I know but I didn't see you", "Its allright mate, no worrries, no harm done". Theres still no way anyone would get me in a 4 wheeled box sitting in lines of traffic looking like a load of clones letting other people dictate how fast they go.

Edited by Evo
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I reckon I'm qualified to talk about this one...why..??

 

First bike at 16 - Moped

Second bike at 17 - 250

5 months later at 17 1/2 years old banned for 5 seperate speeding offences.

 

That ban saved my life i reckon. Never road a bike on the road again until I was 28. For that 10 or so years I had crappy old cars and vans and went bike racing. Since packing up racing however I have ridden a bike on the road everyday...I'm 50 now. So for 20 odd years I've never had a problem. Then a couple of years ago I too hit a tractor.

 

Comming home Friday afternoon on a nice sunny day....massive 4 wheel drive tractor and trailor waiting to turn right up the road...slow down from my admittedly ridiculous speed staring at the driver all the time...he's looking straight at me for the whole time I approcahed him. I get to point blank range and he pulls across the front of me...I was just about to nail it aswell convinced he had seen me. Instead I hit the brakes, so hard the back wheel was off the deck and turn with him into the field. As I hit the mud in the opening before the field gate I laid the bike down. I very slowly bounced off his huge front tyre sidewall and the bike stopped just in front of his back wheel with not alot wrong with it. Unbelievably he still hadn't seen me and proceeded to drive over my bike. It was only the tractor rising up on one side alot that stopped him. He was 80 years old, in total shock, and just kept muttering "I never saw you, I never saw you, I dont believe it". "you were looking straight at me", "I know but I didn't see you", "Its allright mate, no worrries, no harm done". Theres still no way anyone would get me in a 4 wheeled box sitting in lines of traffic looking like a load of clones letting other people dictate how fast they go.

 

Some tractor drivers have never taken a test. I took mine at 14, way back when... On a good old TE20. To drive todays beasts you really need a HGV licence... He had no excuse.

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... He had no excuse.

 

Sadly it happens all the time. An eighty year old lady turned across in front of my son (in a 30mph limit) She waited for other cars to pass but not the bike. Admittedly she was distracted by the four puppies she had in the car at the time, (not in cages). "I wasn't expecting a motorbike" was all she had to say. Son sailed over the top of her car and was very lucky sustaining only bruised knees.

Edited by tony collins
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I witnessed a fatal acident a few weeks ago where a 4X4 drove over the top of a motorcyclist, it reminds you of how vulnerable 2 wheels can be, she was lying in the road after coming off her bike, the car never saw her!!!!! it will take a major change in peoples attitudes towards motorcyclists and cyclists before it is safe to ride on the roads, maybe more rigourous assesment of hazard awareness during the driving test is needed, or more frequent testing after passing the test. maybe 4x4 vehicles should be banned unless you have a good reason for having one.

Tom

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maybe 4x4 vehicles should be banned unless you have a good reason for having one.

Tom

 

Sorry but no, the number of driven wheels has nothing to do with the risk of a vehicle being involved in the causation of an accident..

Edited by MJG
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I witnessed a fatal acident a few weeks ago where a 4X4 drove over the top of a motorcyclist, it reminds you of how vulnerable 2 wheels can be, she was lying in the road after coming off her bike, the car never saw her!!!!! it will take a major change in peoples attitudes towards motorcyclists and cyclists before it is safe to ride on the roads, maybe more rigourous assesment of hazard awareness during the driving test is needed, or more frequent testing after passing the test. maybe 4x4 vehicles should be banned unless you have a good reason for having one.

Tom

Problem is if we start banning things, where does it end? It is not just 4x4's. Motorhomes for example might pose a threat to motorcyclists, so would we ban those too? I am glad that bull bars have all but disappeared off road vehicles though; I am certain that they are not necessary, or safe from a bikers point of view. Another thing I noticed at weekend was a Landy with a snorkel, which in my opinion must have blotted out a fair bit of the drivers view, like a very fat screen pillar if you like. Not sure I like to see those on a road vehicle, when you consider that a humble pencil can obliterate a motorcycle from your view at a given distance. I am not anti 4x4 as I drive a Shogun, but am aware of the care needed around bikes (having been a biker.) There is room for all means of transport, but we need suitable education in order to ensure the safety of each other.

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