Okay, losers. This is for you. I can understand your decision to not wear any protective gear other than the skateboard helmet that you borrowed from your older brother who works at IHOP. It's your hide, and some people really like the sensation of a cheese grater against exposed tendons and teeth getting knocked into sinus cavities. I can understand your decision not to get any training. After all, you once rode a motorcycle (both in terms of history and frequency) and think "I had to lay it down" and "using the front brakes means I'll flip over the bars" is God's righteous advice to the uninformed. But JEEBUS ON A STICK...do you somehow think that wearing a tube top at night on your too-ample-for-a-tube-top-at-night body exposing your pasty-white skin combined with that stupid black lid will somehow make your wobbling, untrained, non-mirror-using ass more visible? Jeebus. No wonder scoot riders get classified as non-riders. Woman is riding home last night on some chinese pissant 4-stroker that must've just come out of the crate, running like a diesel on pancake syrup. Of course, I didn't see her in the adjacent lane until I was about 20 yards behind her 2w taillight. Using my spidey sense, JM smarts, and MSF RC eagle eye, I notice that she is wobbling down the road, elbows-out, looking straight ahead stiffly, exuding "I just got this today" fear-amones so I backed off to give her room to crash w/o scratching my POS Jeep. Sure enough, just prior to an intersection, she darts into my right front fender. Didn't know I was there. About a nanosecond before her Jing-Ma Happy Flea would've bounced off the mighty jeep, I laid on the horn. Not the polite "hey, I'm here" honk, but one of those 5-second YOU DUMBASS blats. Sure enough, she jumps, a lump appears in her spandex britches, and she wobbles off in another random direction. I rolled down the passenger window and yelled GET SOME TRAINING AND REFLECTIVE GEAR DUMBASS. Which probably sounded like "DID YOU BUY THAT TUBE TOP AT KMART OR WALMART?" Feck.
Yer gonna see LOTS of those little buggers around town with the price of gas holden steady. I already see it. No license or license plates needed here in Indiana if its 50cc or under. You see them all the time, parked in front of the bars and taverns at eight in the morning. Scooters are the DUI's transport of choice. They are really big with the Meth cookers also.
Around here those are called "liquor-sickles". I live near a college campus near downtown so I see a lot of hard-core commuters, whether they are the college kids or professionals. They usually are pretty cool--good gear, all-weather daily riders, pretty much like most of us. It's the "Oooo! It's cute so I'll buy it and save gas!" dumbasses or the DWI types that are usually doing their best to paste themselves to cagers. Saw one of those likker-cycles the other day--guy in his 50's, getting on and off the throttle with lots of elbow action, skateboard helmet straps flapping in the breeze, cutting in and out of traffic with all kinds of erratic cartoonish body english. They're annoying as hell.
It may not be law in other parts of the world, but here if its got 2 wheels and no pedals you need a bike lisence to ride it on the road. Mom and dad both ride scooters and are fully lisenced, as am i. However they cruise around with a variety of other scoot riders and the number of them continually grows, but only one other person besides ourselves is actually lisenced/trained to ride motorcycles or scoots... And non of them wear any gear besides their bicycle lids.
I can certainly understand the road rage associated with all these people who are riding scoots now because of the gas prices. They should be required to have motorcycle endorsements, get the instruction and pass the test on a bike, but the business owners who want to sell the 50cc liquor cycles don't want it that way. And in this country today, the wealthy make the campaign contributions, and in so doing, they write the laws. So, I doubt that the safety concerns are going to make much headway until more nouveau riders get squashed. I do believe that is inevitable and said so in an earlier post. When I encounter these people on the roads... and you know who they are because you can tell that they are totally unpredictable ... I devote all of my attention to evasive action. Blow the horn and they jump under your wheels, and then you spend the rest of your life in court and wondering if this could have come out some other way. BTW: On the older, light bikes, with drum brakes (like a 70's vintage Honda 100), a panic stop chomping down on the front brakes DID mean a trip over the handle bars. Locked em up. Been there. Done that. Wife, who was riding behind ended up on top of me (real glad I was able to break your fall, dear!). Actually, panic stops used to be just panic slides. That's why we were taught how to ride the bike down. (Been there. Done that. Got a bump, bruise, a scrape and real pissed off). ON THE OTHER HAND, I have been riding a new Kymco BW 150 for the last few weeks, and those front and rear discs really dig. I had to semi-panic stop last night on my way home from work when the car in front of me almost creamed a drunk in a rust bucket. I was relatively surprised when my butt left the seat and the BW scoot stood right there. Stops on a dime! I hung on and have a deeper appreciation for these new-fangled things called disk (disc) brakes. Oh, yeah. And when I came back down on the seat, I found my thumb jammed into the horn button, my visor up and a whole lot of nasty coming out my mouth. It's human nature. Next intersection ... it was 911 to report a 1050I-IDA ready to happen ... or a road rage assault, whichever came first. J2
Not really. They may have sucked, but I can put a properly-trained rider on the worst drums Sochiro ever dreamed of, and they can do some pretty impressive panic stops. Nothing like an R6, but enough to dispel some myths based on self-taught riders who found out the hard way about the physics of braking. In the advanced classes (post-ERC) the emphasis is on keeping the bike upright for the 2nd maneuver, which is the escape maneuver. Doing that helps with the first phase, of course--avoiding the lowside. I teach on drum-brake bikes--the Nighthawk 250 has the same drum brakes as some of its ancient predecessors. Never had a student go over the bars in an upright properly-executed stop, and assuming they've paid attention, they can haul that bike down to a stop in a heartbeat on the range. I have flogged the shit out of those bikes to find the real-world limits as well. Teaching a student about threshold braking, even as a rudimentary skill in the BRC, and front-wheel skid recovery, means getting rid of a lot of rumors about drums. The training is available now. No reason not to take advantage of it.
Your strategic maneuvers sound interesting. We will have to go over those sometime. A Nighthawk 250, however, is a tank compared with a 70's era Honda 100. In the particular incident to which I refer (and there was only one such incident because I only chomped down on that front brake once thereafter ... without applying the back first) the front wheel locked, the back of the bike went skyward and we were thrown like being thrown from a horse. I am fairly sure that, when it locked, the front wheel slammed over either full right or full left against the frame, but that happened after it locked and probably after I was already airborne. Where the heavy bikes are concerned, the accident scenes I visited (and you would understand, Photog, why I saw quite a few) showed one nice, long black stripe to point of impact. Only two tractional surfaces plus a lot of weight and a lot of speed equals forget stopping the thing. I don't know what your escape manuever is, but I do know that the riders who survived bailed off the bikes before impact. I have used that escape maneuver a couple of times, and in those incidents the bike was trashed, but I was relatively OK ... scraped, bruised and pissed, but OK. You can ride the bike down into the impact and hope to shield yourself with the bike, or you can bail out and take your chances with the median, roadside ditch (hopefully grassy) or if it has to be ... the gravel. It's going to be a lucky call because, in my experience, it happens too fast to weigh the issue and decide upon a course of action. You either do one or the other, and depending upon the other variables, you live or you die. A cop I know patted me on the top of my new, Snell-approved helmet and said, "Nice hat, man! We will pick it up about 20 yards from the point of impact ... with your head still in it." Cops get a kind of jaded view, much like newsmen, because they count the dead ones, not the millions of live ones. ER nurses have another name for our modes of transportation. They call them "donor-cycles." ON THE OTHER Hand, I have been riding for about 40 years (all light bikes), and I still have all my fingers and toes and the meager amount of gray matter with which I entered this world. Still loving the wind on my face! J2
Oh, and I am going to have to pick up some trendy cycle togs. Do you suppose they make an armored tube top?
oh yea bretherens of the faith, the all righteous........ Gods of the scooter..... Folks of the cloth, all things scooter..... May all those who do not abide by your laws of scooterdom be damned and leave not a trace of existance of their souls upon the face of this scooter earth.... My brother, it hath happened to you that a mistake was made. Good for you my brother that thou hast taken this sinful ride to attention of others. Let's then make laws, new laws, more laws, restrictive laws, countless laws, enumerable laws, that restrict all riders. Yeah when we drive down the road shall the road have no signs of other existence that we can wipe out...for all shall be wearing michelin suites, a foot thick, so that if any shall be hit they will be spared the wrath of the scooter rider ( or any other rider not paying attention or a bad scooter rider which ever comes first) Yeah, my brothers and sisters, let's make more laws.....(not that anyone can remember all the the laws on the books already until of course they get a ticket for one) But thank you my brother for reporting such sin...had she been wearing gloves she would have been a better rider, had she the sinner been wearing a leather suit her soul would have been saved and you would feel glorified and fond of her atemp at riding....You truly are righteous....And had she done an MSF course she would be en-route to Saint-Hood... dde
I followed a scooter 2 days ago from Anchorage for about 3 or 4 miles. It was dark, the traffic was light, but this Darwin proof angel couldn't keep it in a straight line for 20 feet. A nervous shake and wobble at 70 MPH. I couldn't take it and left the sceen as quickly as I could. Gonna be some dead, maimed, and disfigured scoot riders soon. It's a shame.
No, she'd probably have a better chance of staying alive. But then, you're unable to grasp this. Dumbass.
