Police cause SV650 to crash...

[Red Herring]

Originally Posted by Fordward

....... You can only be expected to allow stopping distance for hazards you can see.

Actually mate if you want to get all Roadcrafty (and I have a vague recollection that in your case I can...) you base your riding plans on what can be seen, what cannot be seen and what can reasonably be expected to happen.

In this case the SV rider could clearly see his mate up ahead, he didn't have a particularly good view beyond his mate because of the fog, and given the speed they were doing it is entirely reasonable for him to expect his mate to have to anchor up suddenly. I don't think anyone can argue the SV rider got it wrong.

Additionally knowing what I do about what the copper should have been doing I can confidently say he was totally out of order. Anyone doing what he was doing is required to carry out a risk assessment, which includes the suitability of the site and the prevailing conditions. That assessment is dynamic and must be reviewed fat all times, and especially if the circumstances change (fog for example).

Like I said earlier on, both SV rider and copper were lucky to get away with it. The only person I felt even remotely sorry for was the VFR rider, just hope the SV rider was a mate of his and not a random stranger!

[Wideboy]

Yes you could say that if he was going slower he would have had more reaction time but to say that excessive speed was the reason he crashed is wrong, there was no speed limit and as the other two managed to stop in a controlled manner then they were travelling at a speed that they could stop from which was mentioned earlier on in this thread. So that either points to his ability or not concentrating not the overall speed. Which was my original point.

Originally Posted by specialone

if that day it was foggy and you'd been doing 90, would you have avoided it?

Until I was in that situation on that bike I honestly don't know, how well maintained are the brakes, what tyres are on it, I would normally be positioned more to the left for a right hand bend and so would have seen the coppers hi viz sooner, I would certainly have used the front brake better than him, although I rarely brake hard on a bike so I'm not that confident about my emergency braking ability, so TBH I'd probably have said feck the hard braking altogether and taken an escape route.

I leave a 2 second gap in the dry and a 4 second gap in the wet, precisely so that I never need to find out.

The guy on the VFR did a good job of stopping in that distance anyway. Shame he didn't just think 'feck you, I'm not stopping in that time from this speed', and ride past him.

Originally Posted by Red Herring

you base your riding plans on what can be seen, what cannot be seen and what can reasonably be expected to happen.

I agree with you completely, but my post said 'depends upon the circumstances'. Your positioned to the left for an upcoming right hand bend, and a sheep pops out of a hole in a hedge 20 feet in front of you. A no point could you see over the hedge to see if there's animals in the field. Totally invisible until it appears. I don't believe anyone expects, anticipates or even plans for that before it happens. Your not going to ride past every tall hedgerow at 30mph in case it happens.

A loose sheep visible on the grass verge 200 ft in front of you, well then I have no sympathy for someone who hits it.

Advanced riding and roadcraft is about minimising risk, it can't eliminate it. There will always be a tiny minority of accidents where the rider got fecked over by fate, not many, but the circumstances do exist.

These guys were doing 90 on a two way country road in poor visibility, they didn't really have any sensible riding plan at all.

Originally Posted by Wideboy

Yes you could say that if he was going slower he would have had more reaction time but to say that excessive speed was the reason he crashed is wrong, there was no speed limit and as the other two managed to stop in a controlled manner then they were travelling at a speed that they could stop from which was mentioned earlier on in this thread. So that either points to his ability or not concentrating not the overall speed. Which was my original point.

either one of which means that the speed was excessive for HIM (OR he was too close to the bike in front, they are two sides of the same coin, the slower you are going the closer you can be).

If you go out for a ride do you peg your speed to what is safe for valentino rossi or what is safe for you?

Originally Posted by Fordward

You can only be expected to allow stopping distance for hazards you can see.

And RH I think you may be taking this a bit too literally.

If approaching a hump back bridge, you ensure you can stop in the distance you can see to be clear, ie: the crest of the hump, in doing so you are allowing stopping distance for whatever may be on the other side of the hump that you can't see.

Which contradicts what I've said above, but you can see that it's blind, so you can allow stopping distance for it. You need to see that there is a potential for danger somewhere, before you can be expected to plan for it. If due to covering foliage you can't see the hole in the hedge....

[Red Herring]

I would suggest that you can see the fog, you can see your mate ahead, and you can see the speed that you are both doing. Given that you are both riding at the limit of your view (being able to stop in the distance you can see to be clear) it is not unreasonable to expect that should your mate have to demonstrate that measure he will be stopping quite quickly.....

I think Wideboy is confusing "speed limit" with "excessive speed".

A speed limit is set by law, (in this case there isn't one), excessive speed is speed that is to high for the circumstances. These circumstances are all encompassing and will take into account the riders ability, so what may have been appropriate speed for one rider may well be excessive for another, even if they are following each other along the same road at the same time. The SV rider didn't appreciate what was happening up ahead in time to react to it safely (for whatever reason) so his speed was excessive, he got it wrong.

[NTECUK]

A fox. Rabbit etc don't need a need a big hole in the hedge to emerge from.
If you hit one or just go "§hite" grab a handful of brake you can still bin it.
You can't worry about everything. It's a balance

Originally Posted by Red Herring

I would suggest that you can see the fog, you can see your mate ahead, and you can see the speed that you are both doing. Given that you are both riding at the limit of your view (being able to stop in the distance you can see to be clear) it is not unreasonable to expect that should your mate have to demonstrate that measure he will be stopping quite quickly.....

These guys could see the layby too, and if he was positioned better he would have been able to see the copper standing in it earlier. So it's not unreasonable to expect a hazard to develop. But these guys weren't riding to an advanced standard.

All I was trying to get across is that you can't compare the copper to a sheep, and and say it was entirely the riders fault. It's a 50/50 or a 60/40.

PS: Even if this was a staged and planned emergency stop, it doesn't absolve the copper of blame, he should have said 'no, it's too dangerous', or if it wasn't planned he should have seen the speed they were coming at, the distance that they were away, and said 'feck that, I'm not walking out there, they can go back and film a second take'.

I bet he wouldn't have walked off the hard shoulder of a motorway into the carriageway with traffic approaching from that distance.

If 'Stuart' told you to jump off a cliff in order to help with his safety video, would you do it?

If I'd been the Kwak or VFR rider and Stuart had told me to do 90mph in the fog, then all pull an emergency stop together in a straight line, for the sake of filming a safety video, I'd have told him to get stuffed.