I had a rather nasty accident back in October presumably involving leaves, so I've had to re-examine some of my thoughts about safe cornering and would welcome any thoughts on the matter.
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Basically it was a nice right hander, on my favourite local bit of road, which I have ridden at knee-down speeds dozens of times without any kind of incident whatsoever (but that was in the summer). I guess the few months' layoff must have been due to all my commuting making taking the bike out for the same old local play a bit tedious...
Anyway, this time I knocked the bike over into the corner at 60 (as always, something I worked up to over many repeat runs) and take the right line, only this time first the rear steps out and then the front end goes. Result: me into tree, badly shattered tibia, dislocated hip/ankle and some nerve damage.
The road was dry, but there were leaves - I'm not sure why I didn't take this into account. I've since learned that apparently the underside of the leaves can still be wet?
It was kind of a shock to me really because I had considered myself to be a fast but safe rider rather than a nutter, which was generally the accepted assessment amongst friends too, and I've never so much as had any "ohshit" moments in the twisties before then. Complacency?
I had been led to believe that so long as the road surface is decent and dry, the tyres will handle peg-down lean angles without any problems at all (this is a Fazer we're talking about, not a CBRGSZX10000 with knee height pegs...), and that had certainly been consistent with my experience up until that point. Now I'm pretty sure wet leaves must have been the culprit of this accident, but it begs the question, how can you possibly tell the safe lean angle just by looking? How can you trust the tyres to work as they should, when the consequences of getting it wrong are so catastrophic?
I used to be a very confident rider, but now hopefully being able to ride again within a couple of months, I'm left wondering if it's at all possible to have fun in the corners without putting yourself in mortal danger at the same time.
And now I'm worried about diesel and suchlike - I've never been unfortunate enough to hit diesel in a corner, but how the hell do you prepare for something like that? With a leg that's going to take two years to heal properly, I can't afford to come off again.
How do you eliminate this risk without riding as if you have stabilisers on? Is being able to judge the exact levels of grip available something that just comes with experience, much like the "sixth sense" that develops from riding in traffic?
Any number of factors could have caused your get off its easy to overlook the obvious when searching for an answer that doesnt include your possible error!. When you started knee down stuff how often did you do this bend and how often did you check your tyres closely before doing so. Familiarity breeds contempt. Knee down stuff isnt really essential for racers unless they are dropping the bike, like has already been said, go to the track for that kind of riding.