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Poquito Loco

On Sat, 12 Jul 2014 11:58:38 -0400, wrote:

On Sat, 12 Jul 2014 11:52:13 -0400, Poquito Loco
wrote:

On Sat, 12 Jul 2014 10:01:30 -0400, Wayne.B wrote:

On Sat, 12 Jul 2014 09:50:40 -0400, Poquito Loco
wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jul 2014 21:13:10 -0400, Wayne.B wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jul 2014 19:46:00 -0400, wrote:

You can make a far worse case against swimming pools.

===

That's an interesting point. We must lose at least a dozen or more
kids to swimming pools every year just in Lee County alone. And what
about the motorcycle toll? That's probably more like two dozen a
year.

Yeah, but that's only true if folks ride their motorcycles. If you don't ride them, they're damn
safe!

But I'll bet that more than 90% of those injured on motorcycles were riding them when injured.

===

South Western Florida has a particularly deadly mix of older drivers,
both cars and motorcycles, combined with very little helmet usage. The
most common accident that I see is a car making a left turn in front
of a bike that they didn't see for one reason or another. We also
have a fair assortment of younger bikers who like to race their crotch
rockets at 150+ in the middle of the night.

That crotch rocket racing is a topic in this month's AMotorcycleA magazine. Up here they've started
using the beltway, 52 miles long, as a race track. I've seen up to ten of them racing at a time.
They start at one exit and see who can get back the quickest. So far none have been killed, but it's
just a matter of time. They're giving bikers a hell of a bad name.

The left turn in front of the motorcycle is the most common of the car/motorcycle collisions. The
excuse is always, "I didn't see it coming." I can somewhat sympathize with the auto drivers. The
other day I almost did the same thing. The bike was black, the rider in black, and the background
was dark. Plus he was going very fast. It used to be that a headlight provided some warning, but
now almost every vehicle has headlights, so they're no help to motorcycles. Luckily I saw the guy
and hit my brakes at the last second. That incident kind of changed my attitude about the excuse
most used by auto drivers. I can understand it much better.

An old biker trick is to always watch the front wheels of any car you
are approaching. That will be the first indication of what they are
going to do. You will see the tire rolling before you see the car
move. If they are steering into a turn, they are thinking about going
and probably not looking at you.

That works very well for cars about to pull into your lane from the side. If a car is approaching
you, it's much harder to spot any tell-tale wheel movement. Best bet is to slow down and be ready to
stop.

....and get good at countersteering!