[speeder]

Originally Posted by aigel

Sounds good on the side of the finances ... of course one can drive on a track reasonably fast without spending that kind of dough. Take a lightly modified car and keep it to a few events a year. You'll still have a daily driver / weekend car when you aren't at the track.

You have your life in your own hands if it comes to lifestyle (food, exercise, vices). You do not have that if you ride a motorcycle: You put your life in the hands of the average driver. That's what I think is scary.

George

I do not completely agree with this. The reason I say "completely" is that I understand the reasoning behind it, but it is very incomplete, IMO. What you are suggesting is that everyone who rides a street MC in the world, (tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people), is simply playing Russian Roulette and the ones that did not eat a bullet today were lucky only. (The same could be said for driving a car). We have no control over our own safety, it is solely in the hands of some latte-sipping, cell phone-yapping woman in an SUV. The suicidal teenager on a 200 mph sport bike accelerating like a nut through traffic and the cop on the BMW have exactly the same chance of survival on any day, it's just "luck of the draw..."

Nothing could be more inaccurate. The vast majority of MC deaths are the result of rider error, (MC rider's fault), I've studied this. When you eliminate alcohol and reckless stupidity, (mostly excessive speed for conditions), and add in advanced riding skills including defensive traffic skills, the odds change dramatically. Can one still be in an accident or killed? Of course! I am more likely to be in a (non-fatal) collision in my car, however, since I do not take the same extreme precautions while driving as riding. Any collision on a bike will likely result in significant injury.

When riding a bike in the city, there has to be an understanding of the drivers in your immediate vicinity that is not really necessary in a car, IMO. Does the guy in the lane next to me know I am here? Or is he in his own world on the phone and likely to suddenly change lanes into me? Can he see me and/or hear me? In my car, frankly I do not pay as much attention to people like this. I don't park my ass in someone's blind spot and wait for them to hit me, but if they did change lanes into me, I would not be injured, so there is no hyper-vigilance either. Does that make sense? On a bike I am having constant non-verbal communication w/ my fellow drivers and they do indicate whether they are aware of me or not.

On a bike I am categorising fellow motorists into 4 basic sub-sets:

A) competent drivers who are sober and reasonably aware of others around them, like the MC splitting lanes coming up from behind and the traffic slowing ahead of them. Fortunately, the majority of drivers fit into this set and consequently are not involved in accidents often. Safe drivers.

B) Inattentive or partially attentive drivers, admittedly a huge sub-set but not the "certain death on wheels" that some people make them out to be around here. They are generally predictable and actually for the most part have adapted a style of driving that is very non-aggressive as a compensating factor that allows them to yap on phone or deal with kids in car while not crashing every 100 feet. They are so slow-moving that they are like parked cars or speed bumps when you are on a bike. They do not bother me one bit.

C) Reckless/aggressive drivers who may or may not see me or care about my safety, this is unfortunately a significant sub-set. People speeding and weaving in and out of traffic or driving like they are in a NASCAR race on the freeway, usually in a rice car or an M3, or sometimes even in a new M5 or other $100g car. A huge part of defensive riding on a street bike is being aware of these types in your orbit and avoiding them. They are 100 times more likely to crash than the average driver and you don't want to be a part of it.

And lastly, fortunately the smallest subset:

D) People in cars who are actively trying to kill you or driving in such a way that they are endangering your immediate safety. These people do exist, road-rage type shootings occur all too often between cars and on a bike they do not need a gun to kill you. Someone I knew was killed intentionally while riding years ago in L.A. when he got into a pissing match with the wrong person in a jacked-up 4x4.

Even though these true psychopaths are fortunately rare, I am always on the lookout for them on a bike. The good news is that it's fairly easy to avoid anyone in a car or truck on a fast bike. If CA. was a CCW state, I'd pack a little friend every time I rode just in case I encountered one of these people so that I could remove them from the breeding stock. If someone is actively trying to kill you with a 2 ton weapon, that's pretty much a justified shooting in most cases. Even armed only with your wits, there are tactics for avoiding and evading these people that my friend should have used and would be alive if he had.

It's a whole different level of awareness on a bike, and not coincidentally that is a major component of the enjoyment of riding. The level of *being present* required to ride a MC safely in a city is akin to meditation, it is a mind-clearing experience every time I go to the store. Just the ritual of gearing-up and putting the helmet on is so different than jumping in the car w/ a coffee and finding a radio station as you pull away. It's either in your blood or not. I could not imagine going through this short life w/o riding a MC on a warm night through the city.