It’s somewhere between annoying and insulting to hear people start on the age old “oh, be careful they’re dangerous” followed by some enlightened piece of incredibly obvious advice relating to an accident they heard talk of. I’ve actively sought out many bike crash videos over the years with the intent of learning from other people’s mistakes. Just like sports coaches watch other teams play: there’s value to be gained from watching others.

This article (with video) shows the sort of deadly behaviour on a motorbike that result in such a high accident rate amongst motorcyclists.

The video
Here’s the video, it shows the speeding and crash (note: it’s not particularly gory, but you know from the article the outcome):

Sure most people might zip around a little bit, open up the throttle on the freeway a bit, but are by and large, sensible enough to listen to the training they received. This video I think really gives you a bit of an idea of what motorcyclists have to look out for on their own:

On some rides I’ve come across pretty much all of the hazards in that video. The hugely variable part is what other drivers and riders might do. That’s why I watch videos of other motorcyclists getting into trouble to add their situation to my road knowledge. Just to be clear: I’m much happier when I see the rider get up and walk around at the end though, even the twits doing wheelies in singlets and no helmets: because maybe, just maybe they’ve learnt a lesson.

Anyhow: on to this video..

Analysis of this crash – causes

CAMERA or “THE YOUTUBE EFFECT”: I think the camera on was probably one of the first mistakes made in this unfortunate ride.

First time I stuck a camera to the side of my bike in the French alps I began to ride, well, like a moronic show-off. Not pulling wheelies and knee down on corners type moron, but riding faster than I had been minutes earlier and somewhat distracted. As it turned out the included batteries last all of 2 minutes in the cold (why even bother including them??!!) so all my fantastic cornering and exciting riding had been missed, instead showing the rather more tame view up the road while I put my gloves, earplugs and helmet on and cutting out just as I got through the second corner. Served me right. I did get some decent touring footage in the end, but without the urgency and stupidity on the road.

Don’t believe this is a cause: Youtube is littered with video of people showing off for the camera. That’s the prime reason I don’t have any desire to pull wheelies on my bike because the majority of wheelie videos seem to be about crashes.

SPEED: The speeds involved are somewhere beyond ridiculous.

It later emerged Bowden was clocked at a top speed of 156mph, but his speedometer had reached speeds of 170mph, Truro Crown Court heard

That’s around 260 km/hour for the civilised metric world.
In more interesting forms:

• about the landing speed of a 747 jumbo jet
• double any speed limit on a freeway in Europe (Autobahns excepted of course). To look at it in relative terms: were you travelling on the freeway at the speed limit and this guy ran up the back of you: he’d hit with the same impact as if you just veered off the freeway into a brick wall.
• 71 metres per second or 233 feet per second
• A football or soccer field every one and a bit seconds
• fast enough to cross the Sydney harbour bridge in 16 seconds, the Golden Gate bridge in 38 seconds or Tower Bridge in a smidge over 3 seconds (those are including approaches)

In short: a ridiculous speed by any measure. Motorcycles do speed well, but don’t stop or steer so well (we can’t really brake hard and turn at the same time like a car with ABS and four fat tyres can).

LACK OF BUFFER ZONE: People don’t watch out for motorcycles. They can be on their phone, drunk, stupid or just bad drivers. That’s why you need a buffer zone to give you room to make up for their lack of awareness of where you are on the road.

The UK has a long running series of ads about “think bike” while I was there, here’s one that shows why you need a buffer zone:

Hasn’t changed too much really:

Australia does it a different way (we reserve our nasty ads for smoking and HIV/AIDS ads):

PEER PRESSURE: The guy in front probably didn’t want to be the slow guy, the one that crashed overtook and had to continue upping the speed. Thing is that perhaps neither of them wanted to be speeding that day but they might have thought they had to to not be slowing the other one down.

• Front guy: “man this is a bit fast, but he’s still on my tail, better give it a bit more throttle”
• Back guy: “jesus he’s off quick.. Don’t want to lose him, better give it a bit more throttle”
• Front guy: “he’s still there, better go faster..!”

You can see how that just keeps spiralling up until someone comes unstuck.

HIGH TO LOW SPEED PERCEPTION LAG: Best term I can come up with to describe it. So when you go from high to low speeds your brain stays in high speed mode for a while.

The rider that crashed did a bit of a hasty zip around his friend (who had been leading). Maybe he was still in “high speed mode” and misjudged the braking of his friend a bit. I had that happen after a long freeway blast in Europe, took the exit and thought I’d slowed down enough. Got up to the sharp exit corner and a glance at the speedo/gear indicator showed I was still going too fast and in 3rd gear, even though it felt like I had (the human brain is amazingly good at adjusting). Luckily I had a good line, cornering braking/downshifting habits and time to contemplate a safe run off area, but it was a good lesson in not trusting your perception of speed. He probably had a bit of a scare and extra adrenalin probably contributed to the later mistake (high as a kite: gunning it harder).

Analysis of the crash – stuff that usually matters but didn’t here

ROAD SURFACE: As anyone who has ridden in the UK will tell you: those stripey bike overtaking sections of the road are a shitty shitty surface to depend on. For one they’re always littered with rocks, glass, bits of truck tyre. For another: they’re where the two sides of laid tar join (poorly).  That’s without the fact that the painted surface is not great for grip on top of that. But for this case the quality of the road surface made no difference but it should have been another reason to slow down.

GEAR: This guy was wearing decent gear, but at those speeds and in that mess of cars on both sides of the road it wouldn’t matter what you wore.

TARGET FIXATION: This guy was throttle fixated, not target fixated. He probably didn’t even notice the car until the very last minute, so it wasn’t like he had a chance to lay eyes on it long enough to steer towards it. So I don’t think that was the issue.

Analysis of the crash – How the rider could have avoided it

Less speed and ensuring proper buffer zone are where I’d put my money on avoiding this outcome.
Maintaining buffer zones is the primary reason some riders are safe and others are not safe. I keep a buffer zone pushing out ahead and to the sides of me. 3 seconds is the goal (or more if possible or at speed). It’s a habit I continue when I get in a car which is a nice thing.

Easiest way is to have a habit of picking a stationary spot that the vehicle in front passes (e.g. reflector pole, mark on the road etc) and count back until it passes your front wheel. Three thousand, two thousand, one thousand.. check. If you cut yourself off talking then that’s probably the point you’d impact. Roll off the throttle a bit and drop back or else (check blind spots), indicate and change lanes to give yourself more room. If someone’s doing something stupid start braking and/or cover the brakes to reduce your reaction time.

You’ve generally got a bit of time to think on the bike and nothing else to focus on except improving your riding craft, so any boring time: just practice spacing.

The guy in the video had no buffer zone in front or to the side (the downside of filtering through gaps with oncoming vehicles), he’d be lucky if he had 1 second between the car in front doing something stupid (as they do) and hitting it. It takes probably that long to start braking (reaction time). That and 160km/h (100 miles per hour) impact velocity meant with any sort of buffer zone he’d be hard pressed to keep it together while yanking on the brakes.. Accelerating through that sort of congestion coming up is an easily avoidable issue with a bit of scanning up the road and less urgency to get up to top speed ASAP to show off to your mate with the video camera.

Anyhow, my condolences to the family/friends left behind and I hope it makes some people think a bit and focus on good riding habits.

Neumann’s daughter Madeline died from untreated diabetes on March 23, 2008, surrounded by people praying for her. When she stopped breathing, her parents’ business and Bible study partners finally called 911.

Prosecutors contend a reasonable parent would have known something was gravely wrong with Madeline and that her mother recklessly killed her by ignoring obvious symptoms, such as her inability to walk or talk.

Praying simply does not work and it’s particularly stupid to pray for things which you yourself can fix. In this case prayer was not necessary because no miracle was required just standard treatment of a diabetic child. Modern medicine shits all over this particular problem thanks to insulin. Prayer and wishful religious inspired thinking however do nothing.

Praying for a cure list of steps. Just jump to the last one right away

It’s such a shame that a child ended up dead because of their parents’ superstitious belief that appeals to made up beings could work better than a trip to a doctor. The only trouble is that tolerance of this archaic practice of prayer is pretty widespread.

During closing arguments, Falstad described Neumann as a religious zealot who let her daughter, called Kara by her parents, die as a test of faith.

I wonder though if the witnesses in the trial were ordered to place their hand on a bible before giving testimony?

So is it really any wonder that a Christian might be prepared to sacrifice their child as a test of faith? Isn’t the whole idea of Christianity about a father sacrificing a son. One of the appalling parts of the bible I remember vividly from my (albeit limited) exposure to the bible thumpers for some reason let into school was the story of Abraham and Isaac:

“Take your son, your only son – yes, Isaac, whom you love so much – and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will point out to you.” (Genesis 22:1-18)

A decent, moral parent would tell God where he could stick his idea and ask what kind of fucked up thing that is to be saying. Up there with “love thine enemy” and “turn the other cheek” type lessons in stupidity.

This woman probably blames herself not because she didn’t go to the hospital with its evil science and real medicine. No, she probably blames herself because she didn’t have enough faith. With more faith her prayers would surely have been answered. Or maybe she just thinks this is God’s will and she should be thankful for the chance to go to jail for 20-25 years to learn some divine lesson or fulfil some punishment.

I mean I really hope she has come to her senses and blames herself for believing that prayer was going to work. But sadly blaming lack of faith is how the logic of these religions work to strengthen their stranglehold. Hell, even the two faced Mother Theresa knew praying was bullshit and didn’t really believe it all.

It seems like never occurs that God must have been responsible for the bad thing the first place, or perhaps (if you have to have god in the picture) blessing you with close proximity to a fully stocked, clean, modern hospital.

Let’s hope this is the trigger for the people involved to realise that they need to stop just accepting “god speaks to me”, “I believe in the power of prayer”, “God will answer our prayers” and maybe religion will die out a bit quicker.

The Attorney said this in her closing statement:

“Basic medical care would have saved Kara’s life — fluids and insulin,” Falstad said. “There was plenty of time to save Kara’s life.”

It was an arrogant exercise in self delusion that meant that the real help (which they all knew was just a 911 emergency call away) was requested. It was the adults involved gambling a child’s life on the unlikely event that she might recover by herself (from a state of not being able to walk or talk) so that they could happy-clap each other and praise the lord. So for that reason alone they all need to go to jail.

I love how it appears that people involved still think the parent is praiseworthy.

He said Neumann was a devout Christian and took good care of her four children.

Aah, what part of killing a child makes her a good parent? I’m no parent, but I’m pretty sure that’s a “you have failed parenting” situation. My parents never killed me as a child and I turned out ok.

From an Earthly and morally good (e.g. not Isaac’s old man) standpoint – parents should look after their kids by taking them to a doctor when they’re sick or injured. If this was “mother high on crack lets baby die of neglect” these religious types would be treating this entirely differently. Both are a tragedy for the poor kid, both are situations where someone’s mind is not working quite right. One gets special government subsidies (tax free status) to promote and pollute people’s minds with rubbish, the other is illegal under anti-drug laws.

I’d suggest that the prayer group who sat by with the parents should also be charged for contributing and not calling a doctor when it was pretty obvious that the kid wasn’t getting better. But maybe they thought an exorcism could fix it right at the end.

By the way, if you’re reading this in Ireland: it may be illegal to do so thanks to rediculous “blasphemous libel” laws proposed by the Irish PM.

After all, my saying prayer is stupid, useless and dangerous is insulting to a whole bunch of religions.. *shrug*

Anyhow, let’s hope we see less prayer and more action and maybe people won’t end up unecessarily dying while good people stand by looking skyward when they should just get in and do something.

The story so far.. (an introduction to “normal” motorcycle brakes)

For car or scooter riders (which sometimes only have one brake lever) here’s how proper motorcycle brakes work. Motorcycle brakes are operated by two levers: one on the right hand for the front brake, right foot for the back brake.

Motorcycle brakes explained

The right hand/front brake is just like bicycle brakes if you’re from Australia, UK, South africa, NZ. but the opposite to bicycles in Europe, USA. Ask me how I know they’re different and I’ll show you the scar on my arm from trying to ride a mountain bike with a USA setup.

It’s easy to remember: all brake levers are on the right, all gear stuff (clutch lever and gear pedal) are on the left. Brain is hopefully in the middle coordinating things.

What’s good and bad about motorbike brakes?

Before I tell you about the pros/cons of having front and back brake separate I need to tell you about motorcycling’s dirty little secret: we can’t really properly use our brakes while cornering. This is because, just like cars, most braking is done with the front wheel(s) and because it will either stand the bike upright in a hurry or else slip out from under you: you can’t use your front brake while going around corners. Yep, that’s right: 60-90%  of the braking power of a motorcycle is completely unusable whenever they’re going around a corner. Keep that in mind when you next have to yank on your car brakes while hammering around a corner at speed.

So the advantage to separating out the front brake from the rear brake is that you can apply the rear brake without having to use the front brake. How is that useful? Well another name for the rear brake is the “steering brake”, that should give some hints. If we have to brake while going around a corner a bit of rear braking is possible. Too much though and you’re stuffed, but a bit is certainly possible. For slow speed maneuvering the back brake is quite handy for giving you more control by using it to hold the engine back and thus having more “drive” available for the wheels at slower speeds.

Generally speaking: the way you most effectively use motorcycle brakes is to apply the front and back together smoothly avoiding skidding. If you try to use just the back you’ll find it locks and/or takes a long time to stop (when you finally do you’ll smell burning rubber that you’ve left for the last 50 metres or so).  If you just use the front: it’s likely you could brake better by having the back brake involved to “bed the bike down a bit” and spread the gripping effort across two wheels rather than just one (which is safer if you hit a patch of oil/gravel/sand etc with one wheel).

In terms of technology motorcycles (because of lack of electronic systems) have some areas where we have far superior brakes to cars (motorcycle brake pads/calipers are pretty high tech), but that isn’t enough.

The big issue with having control over both brakes is that it takes a lot more skill to coordinate the balance between front and back to get effective braking.

So what’s the problem with riders and current brakes?

Everyone tends to think they’re Valentino “prancing motorcycle superstar monkey” Rossi or Casey “pretty fast for that drug related last name” Stoner and can brake perfectly. They can’t, not even close. The deaths from motorcycling statistics show this.

Riders are also often caught out because their stopping distance is inferior to cars (who have 4 big fat grippy tyres and anti-lock braking that they can apply at any time without too much stress versus two skinny coin sized contact points).

We motorcyclists ride machines that can drag off a jet, but we get out-braked by anything from rusty decades old VW beatles to milk trucks.

Motorcycle riders also tend to be complete and utter Luddites when it comes to new technologies. Some examples over the decades:

• proper suspension – “Oh we’ll lose all feel of the road”,
• disc brakes -  “I like drum brakes because they are much simpler”,
• steering dampers – “but it’ll screw up the steering”
• hydraulic brakes – “what if they spring a leak?”, “I won’t be able to feel the brakes”,
• electronic fuel injection – “but I understand carburettor design” etc etc.

The complaints against ABS on sports bikes today:

• It’s heavier (so is a wheelchair lift on your car or that 15 kilos of beer belly you’re carrying. Really, a few extra kilos on 180 kilos of bike are worth it for safety, just like leathers weighing 10-15kg versus shorts and t shirt weighing few hundred grams)
• it’s expensive (so is intensive care but wait: didn’t you just spend 500bucks on wavy brake discs, 200 bucks on pimped out shorty levers and a 150 dollar tail tidy?)
• I want more control (sorry Mr Rossi or Mr Stoner, I didn’t know you read my blog..)
• I know how to brake effectively (statistically you most likely don’t, if you’re claiming you do then that’s a worry to start with)

Of course if you want to buy a new bike from a company that continually shuns any real technological advances: go buy a Harley.

Keep in mind the same people that poo hoo ABS (despite all evidence of improving braking performance) are the ones who will recommend spending thousands of dollars on uprated suspension to dive less during braking, different brake pads and braded brake lines to reduce fade and so on. Or spend several thousand dollars making the bike more noisy and more polluting by changing the exhaust just to get a few more horsepower. So go figure.

What is Honda’s “Combined ABS”?

In a (long run-on) sentence:

When you hit the brakes hard the electronic magic in the bike uses a bit of both front and back brakes (the “combined” bit) to achieve maximum stable braking while preventing the wheels from skidding (that’s the “anti-lock braking” bit) which it works out via sensors on the wheels.

Here’s the satisfaction results and stopping distances from Honda on earlier attempts at ABS/Combined ABS.

So it’s the combination of ABS with combined braking tweaked to be as non-intrusive for sports bikes as possible. Combined braking is found in scooters all over the place, ABS is in any new car/van and has been available as an option on touring/enduro bikes for decades.

In a picture it is this:

Honda Combined ABS diagram. (Image courtesy of Honda's info)

In video it’s this:

And some more video resources explaining more:

Talking about the test launch where they put down sand to test it.

Having ridden in sand: yanking on the brakes is not something you’d do, so that must have taken some balls to trust the technology. If I wasn’t in love with the triumph daytona 675 I’d probably buy one. If I can test ride one I might consider swapping because you never know what might run out into the road and need you to drop anchor in an emergency.

Conclusions

I love that Honda has taken the lead on this at long last.

I think it has been long overdue on sports bikes and have been a bit annoyed that such an option isn’t available because of the typical macho bullshit attitudes that drive much of motorcycling (particularly in sports bikes). So I’m making a bet that within 5 years Suzuki, yamaha and hopefully triumph will all be offering ABS of some sort on their sports bikes and hopefully across all of the range. BMW already offer it on their “almost sports bikes” I believe.

Weight, expense and “lack of control” are the arguments used since the year dot against anything new in motorcycling. Helmets for example are too expensive, weigh too much, impede rider vision, feedback and control: but they’re safer. I think this technology is in the same realm and probably adds about as much expense and weight as a helmet.

Too many lives are lost while we play pissing up a wall contests over how we can out perform technology and make excuse after excuse as to why it should stay forbidden or for touring bikes only. By all means put a switch on it that goes from “extra safety mode” (on) to “dickhead hero mode” (off) and see how we go.