Crash bull****

Originally Posted by kwak zzr

When i come off i tend to just wake up in the road or in a field lol.

LOL!

I seem to end up in wet ditches.

[dizzyblonde]

Originally Posted by alpinestarhero

It seems crashes of the type mentioned at mainly due to "target fixation" becasue the rider knows they've over-cooked it (for their abilities) and have locked eyes on the target they fear they are going to crash into.

Matt

Unfortunatley in my case the target had a fixation on me. It flew over a wall and hit me ehad on rather than me hit IT.....lol. I didn't have a chance to lock my eyes on it, as it got splattered across me and the road before I had chance to wonder what it was. I didn't over cook owt, I was in a straight line. I'm lucky I stayed on cause otherwise I wouldn't be here

Originally Posted by cartwrim

I think what this topic is trying to say though, is that if you have time to consciously 'lay down your bike', you also have time to consciously just steer out of the way. Potentially if you 'lay your bike down you might just slide it in to the back of your mate who's just crashed. (Hopefully you avoid him / her though!) There's an article on 'Panic' and how not to, in this month's Bike, quite good and very relevant to this thread.

Thank you for writing that. I didn't want to be insensitive. I'm guessing her 4 mates (??) who have done this each tried to say that they had done it as a hero gesture to avoid hitting their friend whereas they probably just couldn't avoid the crash, panicked and stuffed it... same as 99% of crashes.

[northwind]

But don't worry folks, even if you're not now allowed to say you "laid it down", you can always blame the crashy biker's friend, DIESEL! (apologies to everyone who genuinely has crashed on diesel, but I bet at least 1/3 of the peoplepeople who claim they did, didn't.)

You can't learn if you're not honest with yourself, and if you're not honest with your mates you tend to end up believing your own lies, and then you'll just do it again. IMO

Ah, DIESEL. I'd forgotten about that one - and 'some crap in the road' as well.

Totally agree with the honesty thing.

[yorkie_chris]

I've had some scary scary slides on diesel. Still my own fault for not seeing it.

I've had some scary moments on imaginary diesel, me.

Originally Posted by seedy100

I know that my off was not my fault.

It was gravity wot done it!

yeah..Gravity sucks dont it!

[northwind]

I think I described one of mine this way: "This idiot ran the junction on me, I saw him just in time, stopped going round the roundabout, stood the bike up and braked... Avoided the car by the skin of my teeth, then rode up an exit that wasn't there" Put like that it's just poor road planning, if that exit had existed I'd have been home and dry.

Also "I rode into a ditch. I'm not sure why"

Originally Posted by leatherpatches

Thank you for writing that. I didn't want to be insensitive. I'm guessing her 4 mates (??) who have done this each tried to say that they had done it as a hero gesture to avoid hitting their friend whereas they probably just couldn't avoid the crash, panicked and stuffed it... same as 99% of crashes.

I put it a bit more diplomatically than Stu did, but fair play to Stu for writing your true thoughts mate! Lol!

Obviously, there are times when a crash simply could not be avoided, but evidence shows (as carried out by proper researchers and written in Bike) that most crashes are purely rider error and the accident should not have happened if the rider had trusted in the abilities of the bike to make it round the corner, steer out of the way, etc, etc.

I was thinking last night about the MotGP race at Donington, can't remember whether it was last year or year before but Rossi came in to the Foggy Esses at normal entry speed (60mph for that corner?) and someone had stopped / gone down in front of him and Rossi just stopped almost dead and steered round him . Because he could. Obviously 99.99999% of people couldn't do this, but it shows that the bike CAN. Scale this down and it's easy to come to the conclusion that almost every accident must be rider error.

I had an accident (touch wood my only one ) about a month after I passed my test. Came round a slight bend, wet road, car pulling out, I panicked, pulled front brake on and went down. In hindsight, and now that I'm a more experienced and more confident rider, I know I could have avoided going down by not braking so hard and simply steering around the front or rear of the vehicle pulling out. I've since had several cars pull out on me but I've not panicked as I know that if I do I'll go down and it'll hurt again.

We live and learn. There's a lot of crash bull said but it's probably not hard to see through those who can always blame something / someone else.

Just to stat again what I said above, 'obviously there are times when a crash simply could not be avoided'.

Cheers,
Matt