The Scottish biker caught speeding

[Red Herring]

Originally Posted by Nelson

RH - It would be interesting to see how many fatal accidents as a statistic have excess speed and driver error as causation factors in them. I would imagine them to be pretty high.

Is that excess speed as in speed above the speed limit, or excess speed as in speed that was excessive for the circumstance? Either way then excessive speed is the cause of a very high percentage of KSI motorcycle crashes, I don't think anybody with any common sense would dispute that the faster you go the higher the risk of being hurt if it goes wrong.... which takes me to your second question. I don't think in 22 odd years of clearing up the consequences have I ever had to deal with a motorcycle crash that wasn't the fault of the rider. Either the rider plain and simple made a mistake and ran out of road, or they were doing something the other party didn't expect and hadn't allowed for that. First rule of motorcycling, don't give somebody else responsibility for your life.

[Spiderman]

i remember seeing a statistic somewhere that said about 80% of bike accidents were Right Of Way violations, ie other vehicles denying right to way to the bikers in question, including the good old smidsy.

Originally Posted by Nelson

Right. So just because nothing happened it isn't dangerous?

So we should all be able to drive around at warp speed until something does happen, and only then has it become dangerous? Braking distances for these machines will be monsterous should something unexpected happen!

These are from Autocar 2004

100mph to a standstill in seconds:

Caterham R500: 3.60
Porsche 911 GT3: 4.00
Ferrari Enzo: 4.08
Mercedes Benz SLR Mclaren: 4.22
Peugeot 206 GTi: 4.39
Aston Martin DB9: 4.42
VW Toureg V10 TDi: 4.52
Subaru Impreza WRX: 4.64
Honda Civic Type R: 4.64
Vauxhall Senator 3.0i: 5.43
Suzuki GSXR-1000: 5.63

I hate to think what it is at 166.

These figures are meaningless as they assume a standard bike. Most people buy different (better) tyres and set the suspension up which will have a massive affect on stopping distances. This also doesn't take into account the fact that many dangers that can not be dodged by a car, can br dodged on a bike do to the physical size difference.

[Red Herring]

True, and in what percentage of those was the bike filtering or overtaking across a junction? Neither is technically illegal, both are rarely expected by the average car driver.

[Red Herring]

Originally Posted by phil24_7

These figures are meaningless as they assume a standard bike. Most people buy different (better) tyres and set the suspension up which will have a massive affect on stopping distances. This also doesn't take into account the fact that many dangers that can not be dodged by a car, can br dodged on a bike do to the physical size difference.

Phil, sorry to shatter your illusion mate but those figures are also based on a relatively skilled rider on a predictable surface. We carried out some exercises a little while back with members of our local advanced riding club on our Force skidpan. Braking to standstill from approx 70mph most were able to reduce the distance they took by almost a third after a few attempts. In an emergency on the public road you only get one opportunity to stop, and you will need to allow for surface changes, manhole covers, and at the moment...wet leaves.

[Spiderman]

agreed to a degree but to my mind they wouldn't smidsy an arctic so its more about improving cagers awareness of ALL road users as well as bikers awareness of just how invisible we are at times.

I regularly have driving instructors (lots of learners near where i live) not educating the students on the whole MSM technique. I challenged one at a set of lights just after his pupil made an almighty mess up of the roundabout and nearly tagged me and the idiot just gave me the finger. Nice way to educate an new driver eh?

[Red Herring]

As bikers we have considerably more freedom on the roads but that does come at the price of vulnerability. It would be great if everybody else was as good as us... but they aren't so you need to be better still.

[Spiderman]

Originally Posted by Red Herring

It would be great if everybody else was as good as us... but they aren't so you need to be better still.

Pretty much the motto i ride by tbh.

Originally Posted by squirrel_hunter

Unfortunately I would say that a video such as that isn't a very good example of what any speed is like, only that the indicated speed was attained.

I've watched many on board videos at many different speeds and can say from my experience it is very different to the real thing as the videos field of vision and focus is fixed. When riding you are able to focus on an object and change your direction of view to suit the conditions and enable you mitigate the potential hazards that arise.

+1

Originally Posted by Red Herring

Phil, sorry to shatter your illusion mate but those figures are also based on a relatively skilled rider on a predictable surface. We carried out some exercises a little while back with members of our local advanced riding club on our Force skidpan. Braking to standstill from approx 70mph most were able to reduce the distance they took by almost a third after a few attempts. In an emergency on the public road you only get one opportunity to stop, and you will need to allow for surface changes, manhole covers, and at the moment...wet leaves.

Good tyres and good suspension will dramatically increase a bikes ability to stop quickly (as many a professional rider/racer/magazine/trackdayer/road rider will happily tell you) and if you ride hard and brake hard regularly, this will also increase the riders ability to brake hard (as you stated), so I will again state that those figures don't really amount to much in the REAL world.

Those figures were also taken from autocar 2004. So that's old data, from a car mag!