OT: Motorcycle AIRBAGS???? Believe it or not!

[Robatoy]

It is SO like YOU to bring reality into the mix.

[Mark & Juanita]

good). Kind of a slick-looking car.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[CW]

Been done, been talked about. Read the whole thread.

[David]

I can just see the local Honda dealer letting you lay down a $20,000 Gold Wing for PRACTICE! They don't even want you to fire up the engine until you've paid for the thing.

dave

[Mark & Juanita]

Interesting perspective from one of the survivors of Katrina:

This is a very large slide show with 197 slides, the part most applicable to the above occurs near the end of the slide show where the author and his friend made their way to the Superdome. They got there and encountered thousands of people who had waited all night for the buses that didn't come. What is of note is he and his companions reaction -- it was all gray

-- they didn't just resign themselves to wait with the other thousands (for some very good reasons I suspect), they attempted to solve the problem another way and were successful.

Just further validation of the referenced authors premise.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Dave Balderstone]

Wow.

Thanks for that link.

[John Emmons]

It seems to me that if you've got time to "lay it down" you've got time to get out of the way.

Course I only ride 10 or 20 thousand miles a year...

John Emm>

[George]

Zero-Zero ejection seat. Module in automobiles....

[lgb]

I cerainly can't claim that kind of mileage, but I did have an occasion about 20 years ago where a car ran a light in front of me. I didn't have time or space to turn, but laying it down slowed it enough that the car was past before it and I tried to occupy the same space. In that case, I didn't get off, just yanked the bike back upright and checked my pants for brown stains :-).

BTW, I didn't even know I remembered how to lay it down - I certainly didn't have time for thinking about it.

And there are those times the bike goes down without your consent and getting away from it is required. I've had a couple of those too.

[Charlie Self]

Long years ago, I used to ride a lot. There were times when reaction time had to be quick, choice was minimal, and I laid the bike down as what I felt, in a true split second, was the only option. Possibly, some of the guys I knew could have turned the machine. Possibly not. Most of them, like me, didn't track the miles ridden, because a lot was off-road, some of it competition. Too, I didn't track miles because I usually rode at least a half-dozen different bikes a year, often a dozen. And, too, unlike truck drivers, we didn't get paid by the mile.

[Dick]

I've never been without at least one motorcycle, usually more for the last

45 yrs. and have never even considered laying it down to avoid a collision. Maybe I would if I was going to run into the side of an 18 wheeler and I thought I might be able to slide under but even then you usually high side and go flipping. The brakes and rubber tires on the pavement will slow you up a whole lot faster than steel on the bike or you tumbling thru the air. Dick

[George]

I guess you guys are using another definition of laydown from the one used here in Motorcycle Safety. Laydown is a graceful way of accepting the inevitable, not an attempt to avoid it. Rather than ride the bike into a obstacle, or attempt to stay seated if it is at an unrecoverable angle, you use the laydown to get clear of it by remaining behind, not under.

It's the difference between a three-point heels - ass - head parachute landing versus the PLF, which distributes the momentum along the less vulnerable portions of your anatomy.

[Charlie Self]

Agreed. Of course, today, no shirts, no shoes, shorts and bobtailed helmets seem to be de rigeur amongst the riding crowds of all ages. Coming from the pre-electric start days, I found shoes a VERY useful accessory, and boots even better. Long sleeve shirts, and jeans, were a minimum, along with a jet style helmet, with leathers, even very light ones, preferable to jeans and a shirt.

I tend to envy--I guess that's the word--riders who have never been in a position to have to lay a bike down. One of the reasons I quit riding years ago was my inability to convince my right hand that my reflexes had slowed enough to make less twist a good idea. In truth, tootling along on two wheels wasn't really what I enjoyed. Dragging footpegs, sliding and generally overdoing were, which is why I found off-road riding more fun than road riding, finally.

[Archangel]

How about a big catchers mitt.

[Dave Hinz]

Sorry, man. I tend to be like that, which annoys my boss and coworkers too, believe me.

[Robatoy]

I know the feeling... I hear the whisper "what a picky sunnuvabitch" behind me quite often; the price you pay if you want attention to detail.

[Robatoy]

Homeland Security brown-shirts could have nuked the site. The pictures are no longer available. Lest we see what their screw-ups look like. Bastards are confiscating cameras and memory cards all over that area. One of my closest friends (from South Florida...lost his house twice) was there for a week working the rescue effort. Nothing but harassment from the 'armed officials' about his taking pictures. Hell, he takes them all over the world, wherever there is a rescue effort...First time ever he got hassled like that. In his words: "We are now in a New Babylon of biblical proportions."

[fredfighter]

Probably. And probably also the resulting trajectory, more often than not, will be more survivable than the original.

There is no safe or unsafe, there is only more safe or less safe.

[Mark & Juanita]

Hate to rain on your black-helicopter paranoia, the site was mostly critical of the NO inhabitants as well as the local police for directing people to the convention center and local officials for not arranging for evacuation of the people who showed up there.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Odinn]

On 9/8/2005 6:57 PM Upscale mumbled something about the following:

An airbag won't stop you from catapulting when hitting a solid object. When I went head on with a car in 1988 on my motorcycle, the rear tire lifted off the ground ejecting me up at about a 70 degree angle. No amount of airbag could have stopped that unless it was on top of me instead of in front of me.