Half a dozen of my friends lost their lives in motorcycle accidents when I was a young adult.
One had to have his legs rebroken nine times to straighten out his hips and knees after accepting his only one ride home on a motorcycle. Yeah, it was the other driver's fault for the accident and he was almost dead right. After 40 years of hobbling he has developed some internal organ cancer that will fix all his suffering once and for all. Now two of my sons have scooters. What can you do?
The Subject says it all, especially today.
Just received notice that an acquaintance of mine lost her son in a motorcycle accident last night here in SoCal.
No other details available yet.
As a former motorcycle rider, I often wonder how I got out without being hurt or killed.
It was during my junior and senior years in high school.
Sold the bike to go to college.
Rode from April thru Oct.
Winters in Ohio are not for motorcycle riding.
Still remember the line in my yearbook, "He has two loves, his motorcycle and the hardware store."
I used a motorcycle for years as my only transportation (year round). Snow and hurricanes (1 really bad) were killers for me. I survived all that, but a drunk driver rear ending me showed me how vulnerable I could be...
I don't miss those frigid rides, the cold rainy rides. The snow , the power cable knocked down by the hurricane winds, and sparking as it almost hit me as I rode by with my feet out to steady myself in case the wind pushed me over... You do what you have to do.
Yes, motorcycles can be dangerous. They're also a great deal of fun. I'm 75 years old. I've been riding since I was 14. I've been in situations on a bike that could have killed me if I'd been in a car, and vice versa. And for many of the early years I, like everyone else, rode without a helmet.
But a great deal of it depends on the rider. I owe a lot to the guy at the dealer who taught me how to ride. After I got pretty good tooling around a big meadow, he told me to get going about 35, lay the bike down, and get off. I was horrified at the thought of bending or even scratching my brand new bike. I was told if I didn't, I would not be allowed to buy the bike! I learned :-). Can you see the lawyers going into hysterics if a dealer did that today?
The other thing he kept telling me was to always assume that if another vehicle could do something to cause me to wreck, it probably would. In other words, be paranoid :-).
There's also the Hurt report of a few decades back that found something like 80% of one vehicle motorcycle accidents involved a rider on his first or second ride on a new bike - regardless of how experienced the rider was. I kept that in mind every time I got a new bike.
BTW, the majority (I don't recall the percentage) of accidents involving another vehicle was a car turning left or pulling out in front of the motorcycle. See above - ride paranoid.
So there are things one can do to lessen the risk. But I wouldn't give up all the enjoyment I've gotten for all the safety in the world.
One of my best friends was riding his big road bike home in the middle of the night when he was rear ended by a distracted semi driver. His death sealed it with my wife about my desire to get another cycle. When we were married 33 years ago, we needed a new fridge and stove and I volunteered to sell my bike. Flash forward 10 years and I am flush with some unexpected cash and ask her to come with me bike shopping. "You've got two kids ... you can't have a motorcycle." After a bit of negotiating, she agrees I can have a bike when the kids graduate from college.
Ten days after I paid my daughter's last tuition payment, I bought a sailboat, but I still had cycle fever. A few years later, we were in Hawaii and I rented a Harley for a ride around Maui. I gave her two instructions: hold on and don't touch the tailpipe. She ignored the latter and nearly needed a skin graft on her ankle.
In my pocket right now is a raffle ticket for a Harley 883. Yah, I'm 66 but I still want that bike. And a thickness sander.
Computer simulators should be able to satisfy all that adrenaline addiction soon.
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One of my best friends was riding his big road bike home in the middle of the night when he was rear ended by a distracted semi driver. His death sealed it with my wife about my desire to get another cycle. When we were married 33 years ago, we needed a new fridge and stove and I volunteered to sell my bike. Flash forward 10 years and I am flush with some unexpected cash and ask her to come with me bike shopping. "You've got two kids ... you can't have a motorcycle." After a bit of negotiating, she agrees I can have a bike when the kids graduate from college.
Ten days after I paid my daughter's last tuition payment, I bought a sailboat, but I still had cycle fever. A few years later, we were in Hawaii and I rented a Harley for a ride around Maui. I gave her two instructions: hold on and don't touch the tailpipe. She ignored the latter and nearly needed a skin graft on her ankle.
In my pocket right now is a raffle ticket for a Harley 883. Yah, I'm 66 but I still want that bike. And a thickness sander.
Sounds like my father... A bit older than you and only recently took his Harley off the road... still has his Corvette on the road though.
Bicycling can be a risk too when it comes to vehicles, crashes, and other people. With heavily loaded touring bicycles things don't go well at times. Wind, gravel, cracks, riding at the edge of the blacktop, etc., can lead to loss of control. Last summer on our trip from La Junta CO to Pasco WA my son and I both had crashes from drifting off the pavement. In Frisco CO Jesse did equipment damage but in a superman like fashion managed to avoid the carnage and land on his feet despite the clip less pedals. Me.. in Lowell ID my equipment was fine bit I had a very bloody left knee with a hole where there used to be skin and I cracked some ribs. In Yellowstone, a fellow cyclist whom we first encountered in Frisco, was run off the road by a motorhome. The motorhome driver was arrested for vehicular assault as in addition to Tom's complaint an eye witness to the driver's behaviors leading up to the incident stepped forward. On my FL to NY trip I was attacked by drunk red necks a few times and narrowly escaped robbery another time. I also crashed just north of the FL / GA border when I got into some sand on the shoulder. Next year's trip with my other son will hopefully be less eventful in these respects!
I ride a bicycle(breezer-liberty) a lot, haven't done any touring (maybe one day) mostly day trips. Even if drivers see you it seems as they go brain dead about what to do when they see a bicycle(do I really have to wait at the stop sign for the bike to go by?). Thinking that they will even grant you the right to exist will get you killed. The roads in Al and the drivers aren't very bike friendly, I even had one city cop suggest I should stay off the road.
That's the same with many cars/motorcycles. I had been cutoff many times by someone crossing in front of me even though I had right of way. Here in NJ and NY headlights on motorcycles are on all the time... Yet for some reason the cars wait until you are right there and go..
Your right, I see them too, personally I stay as out of the way as possible, the bike/car contest is a losing one for the cyclist. I do have the right to be there, but I see self peservation as the top prority, a distracted driver will run over you long before he worries about your rights.
While cyclists legally have the same rights to the road as other vehicles there is that "common courtesy" thing that is often missing. Riding 2-3 abreast is fine if there are no cars but to impede traffic is a simple lack of courtesy. It's not just them though. When I ride on some of the local trails the running club takes the entire trail... no "keep to the right" mentality with them. Motorhomes in FL and Yellowstone have been the worst in my cycling experience. They are either arrogant as hell, like the guy who ran Tom off the road in Yellowstone, or they have NO CONCEPT of the vacuum effect their large vehicles have on bicyclists. I had a guy on Rte 41 in the Everglades nearly take me out with his step... he didn't fold it up.
--------------------------------------- Before you are allowed to own and operate a stink boat, you have to be certified as having only two (2) brain cells and at least one (1) of them is dead.
When I got my insurance settlement I thought about getting another bike. Then I thought about the titanium rods in my femurs & the crazy loons on the road and bought an excavator. Not very fast but it sure makes work around the property a lot more fun.
I'd give the percentages 50/50 there. Suckage and luckage.
Ditto here in southern Oregon on spring and summer mornings.
Amen to that. I got rear ended in a parking lot in my big truck with the headlights on. The guy didn't even look. If I'd been on a scoot, he'd have broken my legs, at minimum.
My very first vehicle was a 1969 Kawasaki Street 90. I could drive it alone with my learner's permit at age 15-1/2 in CA. I must have been up and down every single street in Vista at least once before I gave up that bike. A friend had a Swedish trencher. I rode it once and the toggle-switch-like throttle scared the absolute shit out of me. That Husky 400 would dig a trench a whole lot faster than a DitchWitch, lemme tell ya. He was a motocrosser. I never did get a larger bike, but in the one accident I was in, I was happily ensconced in a nice fiberglass helmet. It saved me arse, it did. My helmeted head hit the Cadillac's rear door in the center and it broke the window. My only damage was a rug burn on my right forearm, which I used to put myself squarely on top of the bike when it went down. I was glad I had a coat on that drizzly morning.
-- It is easier to fool people than it is to convince people that they have been fooled. --Mark Twain
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