Safe Speed Forums

The big flaw in existing research is that they fail to take this into consideration.
One infamous Australian paper (which is widely referenced by the TRL etc) takes this flaw to its logical extreme.
What they do is take data from actual accident cases, and hypothesise what the outcomes would have been had the speeds been lower.
But the methodology they use is to, in each case, calculate the point at which the driver first realised the need to stop. Using this same starting point, they then calculate the stopping distance from a hypothetical lower speed, and find that the collision would either have been avoided, or the impact speed would have been lower.
But you cannot use the same starting point, as they do. You cannot change the speed without also changing its position at a particular time, so their choice of starting point is invalid and gives completely erroneous results.
If, in each and every case, the speed had been different, either higher or lower, none of those collisions would have happened at all. Other collisions would, by the law of averages, have happened, probably not involving the same vehicles even, and one cannot hypothesise whether they would have been more or less severe.

Cheers
Peter

When willcove speaks of 5 "spacially unaware" bikers being involved in fatal accidents on this road he fails to mention how many of them were on the wrong side of the road when the accidents happened .

Is this just because he dosen't know or is he intentionally fuelling a "them and us" attitute that seems to be emerging on this thread .

Let's get one thing absolutely clear here - I am very much pro-bike. I wish I was back riding them, but SWBO objects and my marriage is worth more than the open road. So, in the "them and us", I'm very much in the "us" camp.

Now that's out of the way, I didn't say that there were only 5 "spatially unaware" bikers; I wrote that five had been killed. For motorcyles, this road is a blackspot. In the past year, I've seen a lot, lot more than 5 with their heads on my side of the road - and yet another one was the prompt for my original post on this subject. I'm sorry that post was a little terse, but I was still shaking after having the guy's helmet just miss my offside door mirror and having to extricate a small amount of vegetation from the nearside of my rear bumper.

I've fallen into the same trap myself - and so know how easy it is for "gravity" to mess up your perception of up and down. When you're cornering, the force that you feel pushing you into the saddle, isn't vertical (as it would be if you were stationary); it's at an incline along the line that joins the combined centre of mass of you and your bike with the point of contact with the road. Yet, that "feels" vertical, which means that your head can be on the wrong side of the road and you don't realize it.

On a club ride-out to a rally nearly thirty years ago, we were riding in line astern and I noticed the chap in front of me was doing exactly what I described above. At a "chew and choke" stop, I took him up on this when I was interrupted by the guy who'd been following me, who informed me that I'd been doing exactly the same thing

So, please take my post in the spirit it was intended: as an ex-biker trying to impart hard-won experience to help other bikers stay alive.

_________________
Will

So the point is that if the biker can see that the road ahead is clear enough to have his head over the centre line while "clipping the apex", then fine, otherwise keep well to the left.
And in regards to one driver making an error - no problem as long as approaching drivers are driving such that they can compensate for that error through their own driving but if the approaching driver is on the limit with no allowance for the errors of others - bang!

I take it from your lack of further posts that you have conceded defeat on this point - having being presented with positive proof?

Cheers
Peter

Are you ignoring me, or did you just not read this?

Cheers
Peter

I'm still waiting for an answer.

Cheers
Peter

edited

I think the phrase coined by my father ( no accidents/points etc after hanging up licence after 50 years on the roads ) --be a live coward, not a dead hero , makes sense - in other words - if you think that prat is going to hit you - don't argue - get out of his way, then argue. Perhaps IG could incorprate that into a phrase.(ig- not being sarcy)