Code:
How to post on BARF:
1) never admit to wrongdoing or own your mistakes
2) mock endlessly anyone dumb enough to violate rule #1 as if you've never made such a mistake yourself.
You must be immune to irony, as the last thread was 6 pages of you people mocking me for a minor detail that I had already conceded being in the wrong about while ignoring entirely the purpose of the thread. Now you're doing it again in a thread entirely dedicated to owning a mistake so others don't repeat it, and you're accusing me this time of failing to own my mistakes.
I've read Keith Code. I've attended numerous riding schools. I've been riding for nearly decade, and about half of that without any 4-wheel transportation, rain or shine, in harsher climates than the bay. I have about 100,000 miles of riding under my belt, about 80k of that on a litre bike, and incidentally, this was my first time ever laying one down. Bottom line is you can try and criticize my riding skills, but my actions saved the bike and my hide, and it's already back on the road and good as new with under $100 in weekend repairs, which is pretty damn good as far as laying down bikes in corners goes. I didn't dump the throttle. I didn't target fixate. I didn't lowside. I very nearly rode it out off the road.
The purpose of this forum is to post about mistakes so that people can learn from them, but you're too busy criticizing other people from atop your high horse to learn much of anything. I suggest taking a closer look at your own riding, because that's the riding you're personally responsible for.
While there are situations where this is true I really don't subscribe to this particular philosophy. There are also situations in which after a particular mistake or failure occurs that losing the turn is unavoidable, in which case the rider has to analyze the situation for the least dangerous exit route and go with it. In this case I believe I made the right choice in slowing it down and putting it in the dirt. Had I attempted to follow through the turn at those speeds and with those traction hazards, the probability of making it through and not suffering substantially more damage or injury was very low.
I didn't immediately respond to your first reply because I wanted to give this thread some time and see what other sort of responses you'd give first. Much as RR mentioned, I'm getting an odd vibe from all of your posts, be it the way you crafted your replies in the other thread about the BMW, those in this thread, and some in the other threads that you've made. You don't seem to take criticism well, and your posts seem to have an air about them of... these are my feelings on the issue, and I even though I posted them in a public place, I'm set in how I feel about them, and am not open to change. I don't think you're genuinely interested in learning anything from the replies you're getting - it's almost a passive aggressiveness of sorts, with a bit of pride and ego mixed in. Maybe I'm wrong - it's tough to read people on the net sometimes, but that's the vibe I seem to be getting from these, and a few other of your posts.
I was a pilot in my past life, spent a little bit of time dealing with a lot of aviation safety related issues, and entirely too much time reading over accident reports. In the vast majority of these incidents/accidents, the issue is *very* rarely mechanical, and can often be attributed to human factors. There is almost always a chain of errors being made. By themselves, these errors aren't an issue, but when made one after the next, they tend to lead to an overall outcome that is less than desirable.
The pilot's attitude is a large factor to consider... The "macho" personality, an individual being anti-authority, feelings of invulnerability or even those of resignation can lead to poor outcomes. Don't take offense, but I'm seeing a lot of that here. You seem to be positive of exactly what it was that went wrong, and are ignoring a significant number of other options that could have (and likely *did*) contribute to this accident. You tout a high mileage riding record, various riding schools etc, yet made what are beginner mistakes in a corner that shouldn't have been a problem for a rider with your sort of record. Your comments on riding technique do not seem to match up with the training that you listed.
In regards to your second quote, had this been a right hand corner, do you simply 'give up' and decide to cross the yellow lines? If a car had been going in the other direction, there would have been no 'dirt' to allow an attempt to coax your bike in under control. It very easily could have been you crossing the double yellow, and slamming into the front end of a truck. While you claim it was an easy $100 dollar weekend of fixes, I think you've got a $1000 dollar much larger group of riding issues and attitude corrections that need to take place. There are clearly cornering issues that need to be addressed here. The reason we tend to instruct folks to never give up is because more often than not, the bike has more available lean angle for use than they are aware of, often allowing a rider to make the corner.
Referencing your original post...
I had just overtaken another vehicle and entered the corner too hot, reacted to noticing the reducing radius by slowing and adjusting my line, but the brakes were soft and I didn't slow fast enough. I went wide, piled on more brake and started losing traction on the sand near the edge of the road. I stood up the bike and shortly after locked the front wheel before going off the road into the sand.
We know you were coming in too hot after having just passed a car. You had mentioned what you thought to be poor conditions - sand and so on... What about lane placement? Is it possible that your fear of debris on the road edge was causing you to apex earlier than should have been done, resulting in your running wide in this turn? Generally speaking, staying as far to the right as possible would have allowed you better sight lines on a left hand turn. Shooting for a late apex would have kept you upright for a longer duration of time and allowed you to bleed off the excessive speed from your pass. (Passing right before a blind turn was not a great idea, as well!)
4) Unfamiliarity with the route: I entered the turn too fast and was not prepared for the reducing radius.
Plain and simple, you outrode your sight lines. "Familiarity" with any road, allowing for excessive speed, is based on the assumption that you know what is around *every* single corner. The street, however, is not a race track, and so even on roads that one commutes or riders every single day, conditions
will vary. Assumption
will kill you. This makes reason #4 a poorly justified 'cause' of the wreck, given that your justification itself is a very dangerous mental viewpoint to take, and is not the solution in this case. While familiarity might assist you in more 'casually' riding a road with less mental effort, good riding practices (not outriding sight lines) works for EVERY road, every time. There was no reducing radius present in this turn - it was a straightforward and sharp 90 degree bend in the road. The warning sign posted on that road should have given you a hint that it was tighter than you had assumed. Right angle turns like that are, again, best served by a late apex, in more the point and shoot manner, rather than with high corner speed.
On BARF, I'm sure myself and many others could cite countless examples of 'chains of errors' that posters have made. It's seen on a thread to thread basis... Some mistakes or comments made here in one thread, more in another thread, and then a large issue or crash in yet another thread. It happens more often than you'd think, and folks can honestly see it coming after looking at the greater trend. I've only touched on a couple of the issues, but there are a lot more at play here than have been mentioned. You've been fairly vague with your 'fix it' list of mistakes you made, and I don't quite believe a proper crash analysis has been done here. I'd like to hear more about your corner entry. I just rode with my father this past weekend (Newer to riding) and noticed a slew of dangerous mistakes he had been making, many of them due to poor line selection. You mentioned changing your line, but given a safe late apex, there should have really only been one 'best' line for this turn.
Again, with the resignation thing... This was a left hander. What if it had been a right hander? Give this accident the thought it deserves - it was *not* just an easy $100 dollar fix... Maybe mechanically that's all it took, but the rider is the hardest part to fix. Had the conditions been slightly different, this would have been an egregious error that could have resulted in your death.
