Safe Speed Forums

mistake, you put yourself in a position to be thrown over the handlebars




hmmn really, where was that then

Such a low speed accident would not even require any drastic action, now would it

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Steve

When someone posts such a stupid suggestion that increases the risk to drivers, i have a right to voice my opinion, No differant to yourself.



I am willing to enter into any sensible debate, please show my errors, and we will discuss.



Where exactley



The Jump option, is simply not an option, it is crazy.

You are going to impact with something at the speed you are traveling at. To jump from your machine, this loses the most critical braking time, thus increasing the impact speed.

Their is also the risk that your now out of control bike will cause, other road users, which would not of been involved may now have your bike thundering towards them, pedestrians how do they get out of the way.

Whats next, do we suggest drivers jump out of their cars

Exactley when do you make the decision to jump 5ft

10ft

When


Where did you learn this jumping trick, it certainley is not in any m/cycle training. If you jumped off your bike under test conditions, you would not get a bike license in the 1st place.


I am all up for debate, which on this thread i have only received personel attacks.

If you are so right, show me where

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Steve

This is exactly what I am talking about. It's NOT crazy.

The way I read the advice and the way I would try and implement it is that at the exact moment of impact you launch yourself as high off the bike as possible. At that point you have done all that is physically possible to reduce your speed and as the front wheel strikes the side of the car you should already be leaving the bike.

Or, just prior to the other vehicle hitting you side on you lift the leg on that side up and try and roll onto the vehicle as high as possible.

In both situations the crash IS HAPPENING. You CANNOT avoid it and you are trying to save your life.

As for you being attacked, what a joke. In every thread I have seen you post you have shown the same attitude towards anyone who differs from your point of view and now you are getting some of your own back. Get over it.

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Ross

Yes I'm a hoon, but only on the track!!!!

Your momentum is the same way as the bike, forwards



I cannot see you have that time to make the decision, you are talking a split second.



Lifting your leg would be a perfectley natural reaction, however stepping off would now leave on the wrong side of the bike. As the car & bike are now heading towards you.



Yes, you have no time to decide what the best coarse of action is, other than getting your speed as slow as possible or avoiding impact. There is simply no room/time for anything else.

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Steve

So what in your opinion is the limit of a motorcyle Boot, JT

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Steve

Not very much, in comparison with the momentum of a ton and a half of metal travelling at (for arguments sake) 10mph. Even if it was fitted with titanium hoops every half an inch it would still deform and crush your leg, if (say) your shin were trapped between the bumper of the car and your gearbox casing.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Of course your momentum is forward but instead of stopping instantly on the side of the vehicle you hit and having a total certainty of serious injury or death, you can wipe off speed sliding on the road on the other side of the vehicle. Sure you might still hit something hard and be seriously injured or killed but isn't a possibility better than a certainty?



Talk about selective quoting, what I said was:
ROLL ONTO THE CAR NOT AWAY FROM IT!

And BTW, in a life threatening situation a split second is an eternity and decisions can easily be made and implemented.

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Ross

Yes I'm a hoon, but only on the track!!!!

Yep - assuming we've managed to overcome the freeze response. Full brakes - white knuckle steering grip - stare at the crash site.

One scary thing is that it's a awful long time since I've tested my own freeze response - it must be nearly twenty years! Does it come back if you don't get practice? Is planning escape routes enough? Or is it like riding a bike... You never forget?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

In my previous post on this subject here, there was a moment where a 'jump' would have worked.

If only the biker had the foresight to prepare for an instinctive escape in the unikely event of the car pulling out in front of him.

If he had prepared his mind to jump instinctively, he would have been alive today.

I have many other examples.

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Jump where

You cannot change your momentum in this manner.

All your planning comes to an abrupt end the moment you are involved in an accident.

The position of your bike in comparison to a car, would never be known, and there are so many variables.

Then you have the other variable of other traffic, you could be in conjestion, which jumping off a bike is simply suicidal.

Seems to be this myth, that we have so much time to react in an accident. This is just words in hindsight and irrelevant as the light of day of an accident this thinking time is not available.

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Steve

Your momentum is the wrong way, you simply could not change your direction.

For example

As a rider, you see a vehicle coming into your L/H side.

Your first reaction would be to lean the bike right, to steer away.

It would simply not be possible to then get your body back over the bike, as weight force is down to the right and forward.

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Steve

Up and over!

Into the rest of your life!

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Can only talk from experiance, and have never had a car on my m/cycle boot.

Have impacted with a tree at approx 40 mph, with boot and knee, m/cross does not have a speedo. Was in third near the top of the rev band, would put my bike between 35 & 40 mph

Hit the tree with right boot and Knee, smashed my knee armour which caused some bruising, no damage to foot ankle or shin though, the boot took the impact and did its job.

I would guess the impact weight at such a speed to be far higher than that of a vehicle at 15 mph, which also needs to climb above the wheels of a bike and the frame. I doubt at such a speed the car would even get to the gearbox.

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Steve

As you other post depicts the rider went up and over into the roof line of the car.

From what i understand you are saying we should jump up and over to clear the car

Bike riders would need to be acrobats, try standing on a bike and jumping forward, i doubt you would clear the handle bars, it is only the momentum in an accident that carries a rider forward, you would not attain the height to clear the car.

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Steve

Er, no.

If I want to steer a bike I do it with the handlebars - much more immediate and exact.

I have no expertise to back this up, but my feeling is that the "freeze" response stems from a combination of fear and indecision. So we unlearn this response partly by addressing the fear, ie by replacing the feeling of hopelessness in such a situation with the belief that we can still do something to save the day, and partly by rehearsing various courses of action so that there is no indecision.

If this theory is true, then there is little need to physically practice reacting in order to keep the right responses, as long as we mentally rehearse our escape procedures and keep a positive belief about how we would envisage our actions in an emergency, then when that emergency comes we will make the right response.

The other aspect is that as we learn more and more about the processes involved we find that in a situation like this we have more and more things to do, so in reality you are too "busy" to have time to panic.

This whole thing also seems to illustrate that we don't "think in words". When we respond to an imminent emergency our minds respond in an amazingly quick but subconscious way, which we only rationalise as a series of connected logical thoughts after the fact. At the time we live or die by making snap survival decisions based instinctively on our previous thoughts and experiences, not by consciously weighing things up. As we gain experience as drivers we get better and better at pre-programming these reactions, and that is perhaps part of the reason why experienced drivers are so much better at coping with unexpected hazards.

_________________
CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Sorry but this still doesn't work. Firstly, the impact speed would be far lower than your travelling speed as the impact with the tree would not be direct - not unless you had the bike in a perfect 90 degree broadside and hit the tree square on. I suspect what you actually did was run wide and hit the tree a (relatively) glancing blow. For example, a bit of simple geometry will quickly tell us that a 30 degree slide into the tree will reduce the effective impact speed to half of the travelling speed.

As a useful measure of how "glancing" the blow was, how far away from the tree did you come to rest?

Secondly, the momentum of you plus a moto-X bike is a fraction of that of a typical family car striking you, probably as low as a tenth. I'd be very careful you don't delude yourself about the capabilities of your body armour to protect you from these sort of impacts, based on your experiences in what may well be a much less testing situation.


From my understanding the original scenario was that of a car striking the side of the bike, so as such the "worst case" initial point of impact would be the car bumper striking the side of the bike with your lower leg trapped between it. I maintain that even the strongest motorcycle boot in the world would do very little to resist that type of crushing impact.

I may be visualising entirely the wrong sort of situation, in which case I apologise for any confusion this may have caused, but that was the sort of thing I had in mind when I made my previous statement.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Me neither! However, read Keith Code's Twist of the Wrist 2 for more on what he calls 'survival reactions' and overcoming them.



What I'd been doing since 1980.



Google "lizard brain"

This is all new to me, i steer a bike via leaning it, at no time whilst riding would you turn the handle bars.

Unless it is just being wheeled around, from a parked position

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Steve

Oh dear.

Wait for it...

_________________
CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!