"Had to lay it down"???

[flightdoc]

Boy Dan,
I am a MSF rider coach and could not have said that nearly as well as what you just did. I agree 100000%. Laying it down is never an option unless, as Dan said, you're trying to save your head.
For those of you that have never taken ANY kind of bike riding instruction ( professional) laying the bike down is never presented as an option. I'm no math wiz but I can see Dan's point perfectly, a bike sliding down the rode on it's side will go further than one under control and using the brakes correctly. Those of you that have taken a riding course Im sure were taught how to use those brakes to the max. The only way you stay good at those things you learned are to practice them and occassionally take the course again. I encourage folks to sign up for the intermediate course to start off the season. Great time to brush the rust off and it'sjust one day.
Dan, very well said.

Flight Doc, I hope you don't mind me putting this at the end of your post, I don't know of any other way to get it to the top.

In a period of frustration, I deleted my original posts. In case anyone in the future reads this thread I'd like to paraphrase what I said.

A motorcycle stops the best/fastest when both tires are on the ground and maximum braking is used.

For illustrative purposes picture a nomad laying on its side on a low flat trailer. Now picture a good rider following alongside, both vehicles going 70mph, and at a certain signal, the Nomad on the trailer gets tossed out onto the road. As it slides down the road you do a maximum brake at the same time.

The friction and grip of both your tires and brakes are greater than the friction and grip of the hard parts of the one sliding. You will out stop it. As you are stopped, you will watch it keep on going down the road till it eventually stops.

If somewhere between where you stopped, and the one off the trailer stopped, there had been an obstacle, you would have stopped and missed it, and the sliding one would have hit it.

Another angle of this is that the destructive forces in a crash square with the doubling of speed, and vice versa. So if you can get from 30mph down to 15mph, you will have 4 times less impact energy. So getting rid of all the speed that you can is vital, even if you do hit in the end.

Unless you are in danger of decapitation (farm machinery etc) it is best to hit the brakes at maximum braking all the way to impact if you can't stop soon enough.

Do not lay it down as if that is a viable strategy for dealing with an emergency.

That reminds me of some footage I saw recently of a car that flipped over on the freeway and slid for over 1,000 feet on its roof on dry pavement. It looked like a hockey puck sliding down the ice. I guess you never know for sure how good your skills are though untill you actually face a real life "panic moment" and see how well you react under real pressure. Last summer I was riding at night going through a fresh yellow light and a car turned left right at me. Somehow at the last second they managed to swerve around me. My instinct was to jam both brakes. I thought for sure I was dead just because how close they came to me, I could have reached out and touched them. A better choice in that scenario for me would have been to roll the throttle because they turned right at me rather than in front of me. I think they had to have been punk kids trying to scare me because they were already stopped and waited for me to enter the intersection then they gunned it. Who knows?!

[flightdoc]

The best way to deal with those situations is always assume that car will pull in front of you and be ready to take some kind of action. That's why it's so important to practice emergency manuvers. So you are more readywhen the time comes. When it happens for real, there is never time to think about what to do.

[Yellow Jacket]

Dan, I have to agree with your statement, "Going for the brakes is the best default response. In a perfect world we would always know if accelerating would work, but it's just a guess in the real world. And a guess with bigger consequences for guessing wrong. "

The Georgia Drivers Manual even states, "In some instances it may be better to accelerate to avoid a collision than to use the brakes."

I don't believe that is what you need to be teaching new drivers. Therefore, I have taught all four of my kids that the brakes will slow a vehicle many times faster than the engine will accelerate it.

For example, a moderately powerful car will get up to 100 mph in a quarter of a mile. The car with the worst brakes will stop from 100 mph in far less than a quarter of a mile. A few years ago, Hot Rod magazine did a feature called 0 to 100 to 0. They took several cars to a drag strip and accelerated from a dead stop to 100 mph and then braked to a dead stop. Every one of the cars in the feature stopped from 100 mph in far less than the time it took them to get up to 100.

I also learned this by experience in my drag racing days in the early 60's. Some of our "impromptu" strips didn't have much shut down length so quite often one would be standing on the brake pedal trying to stay out of the corn field.

P.S. Most of the early muscle cars would go like stink in a straight line but don't try to turn or stop in a hurry! The brakes especially stank.

[jlamz]

Every rule has an exception. I recently was faced with a truck pulling a trailer that ran a red light at high speed while I was turning left. I had a choice, either hit the trailer head on, braking was not going to stop me before the impact ( I applied both brakes hard), or lay the bike down and slide rubber first into the trailer. I decided to lay the bike down and slide into the side of the trailer hitting the wheels. I walked away and the only damage to my bike was to the front fender. I was wearing kelvar jeans, a jacket made of leather and kevlar, and leather gloves ( a helmet of course). I had a slight bruise to my elbow. So, I agree stopping is faster straight up with both brakes applied, but there is always an exception.

[rcashell]

thanks Dan. Trip might have to appoint you to a staff position with all of the truly great knowledge you are sharing.

[mikesth]

My question is more about time and it's relation to the thought process as a wreck is setting up and underway.

Though time seems to slow, I find it hard to understand how, in an immediately presented emergency like the trailer scenario, one can judge the distance, a panic stop result given tire condition, pavement condition, physical response, physical response latency, gear, possible physical results given the possible scenarios and then act after all the variables have been processed. It's just too much to process if the time available is truly short due to diligent defensive driving.

Now if I was not focused on the area in question and I brought my focus to the unfolding scenario and it was too late and I panicked, I would easily see the response would be to lay it down. In my case, I would consider it a failure to anticipate others stupidity that resulted in me performing a get-off.

In short, I believe if I am paying attention, I should never need to 'lay it down', but that only applies to me and my skill level and expectations.

[jlamz]

[quote:6fimftuq]
Every rule has an exception. I recently was faced with a truck pulling a trailer that ran a red light at high speed while I was turning left. I had a choice, either hit the trailer head on, braking was not going to stop me before the impact ( I applied both brakes hard), or lay the bike down and slide rubber first into the trailer. I decided to lay the bike down and slide into the side of the trailer hitting the wheels. I walked away and the only damage to my bike was to the front fender. I was wearing kelvar jeans, a jacket made of leather and kevlar, and leather gloves ( a helmet of course). I had a slight bruise to my elbow. So, I agree stopping is faster straight up with both brakes applied, but there is always an exception.

It seems that if your bike, sliding down the pavement on the crash bars, hit lightly enough to only do very minimal damage, then it would have been even less so had you stayed on your tires and stopped a quickly as possible.

Not sure that I understand how hitting at a higher speed on your side causes less damage than at a slower speed still on your tires?

It is impossible for the friction forces of a bike on it's side to out stop a the friction forces of a the tires with brakes applied.

I'm glad that slamming into the trailer didn't do any more harm than it did, but it does seem a little illogical to think that going slower when you hit would not have been preferable. [/quote:6fimftuq]


I didn't say I "lighty" hit the trailer, that is your conculsion which is wrong. I hit the trailer very hard. The A__h___ ran the red light at a very high rate of speed, he was not even close to the intersection when I started across. I could not accelerate in front or I would have been killed, I couldn't brake enough to go around the rear because he was pulling a trailer. I was to hit the trailer after braking as long and hard as I could. My only choice was to hit the trailer with my front wheel and then be thrown over the handlebars or slide rubber first and roll off the bike. I make my choice and considering the results, I made the right choice. Theory is just that...


If you are faced with this situation and you want to hit front wheel first into a speeding trailer, that will be your choice. I doubt that you would walk away.

[jlamz]

My question is more about time and it's relation to the thought process as a wreck is setting up and underway.

Though time seems to slow, I find it hard to understand how, in an immediately presented emergency like the trailer scenario, one can judge the distance, a panic stop result given tire condition, pavement condition, physical response, physical response latency, gear, possible physical results given the possible scenarios and then act after all the variables have been processed. It's just too much to process if the time available is truly short due to diligent defensive driving.

Now if I was not focused on the area in question and I brought my focus to the unfolding scenario and it was too late and I panicked, I would easily see the response would be to lay it down. In my case, I would consider it a failure to anticipate others stupidity that resulted in me performing a get-off.

In short, I believe if I am paying attention, I should never need to 'lay it down', but that only applies to me and my skill level and expectations.

Must be nice to know it all. Hope you never have to make the choice.

I don't know. If you were turning left you were probably not going that fast to begin with so it probably wouldn't make much of a difference either way. In some scenarios crash avoidance is IMPOSSIBLE I don't care what anyone says. If someone wants to kill you they can. I for one have gone over the handle bars on a peddle bike when a car pulled out in front of me and thats not very fun either.

Last night I got thinking about this thread at work - here are my thoughts: I think in an emergency it is almost always better to keep the bike up, but like jlamz said every rule has an exception. From a logic and physics stand point braking will slow you down quicker, but going slower doesn't necesarily mean less injuries. Take this picture for example:


I don't know what happened but lets say he braked perfectly and went from 60 to 30 before impact. It is possible that he could have laid it down instead and hit the tires of the truck at 60 and maybe he would have only broken his leg instead of his neck -who knows?

On November 1st a lady I work with was pulling out of work and got T boned in her car and was killed instantly. On the other hand, a guy I work with was riding his motorcycle on I-15 and got side swiped by someone changing lanes. He slid down the freeway and didn't even get a scratch on his helmet. If you have ever watched "worlds wildest police videos" you will see that some crashes are impossible to avoid- Like the pickup that runs the red light and is vaporized by the semi before he is even 1/2 way out in the intersection. There isn't any amount of swerving or braking that the semi could have done. Once body parts start hitting the pavement there are too many variables for a one size fits all answer. If you are going to crash anyway it doesn't really matter what you do because when you start talking about head trauma, logic and physics go out the window. I know a guy that fell off of the bottom rung of a ladder and hit his head and is now mentally retarted. My niece fell off the monkey bars on her head from 4 times that height and nothing even happened to her. Similar head injuries can range from nothing at all to death and anything in the middle. I have seen people with multiple gun shot wounds that were completely coherent and other people take one bullet and die instantly.

Bottom line is: I have a hard time telling someone that walks away from an accident that they did the wrong thing.

[blowndodge]

What did Nico end up doing with that ladder anyhow??

[Todd]

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Glad you are OK jlamz............

[mikesth]

[quote:zmxemo0l]My question is more about time and it's relation to the thought process as a wreck is setting up and underway.

Though time seems to slow, I find it hard to understand how, in an immediately presented emergency like the trailer scenario, one can judge the distance, a panic stop result given tire condition, pavement condition, physical response, physical response latency, gear, possible physical results given the possible scenarios and then act after all the variables have been processed. It's just too much to process if the time available is truly short due to diligent defensive driving.

Now if I was not focused on the area in question and I brought my focus to the unfolding scenario and it was too late and I panicked, I would easily see the response would be to lay it down. In my case, I would consider it a failure to anticipate others stupidity that resulted in me performing a get-off.

In short, I believe if I am paying attention, I should never need to 'lay it down', but that only applies to me and my skill level and expectations.

Must be nice to know it all. Hope you never have to make the choice.[/quote:zmxemo0l]
You took it wrong - it's a discussion.

If we were just sitting around talking about it in person, my question would still be how can ALL the information be FULLY processed and leave only the laying it down option in an energency? I think, just like in shooting, a portion of the reaction is physical response(like repetative muscle memory), not just mental processing and since you can't practice laying it down or having an A__H__ trucker try to flatten you every day, there are multiple scenerios.

I'm in full agreement there are exceptions...

[jlamz]

[quote:bbd3rbno]


Must be nice to know it all. Hope you never have to make the choice.

You took it wrong - it's a discussion.

If we were just sitting around talking about it in person, my question would still be how can ALL the information be FULLY processed and leave only the laying it down option in an energency? I think, just like in shooting, a portion of the reaction is physical response(like repetative muscle memory), not just mental processing and since you can't practice laying it down or having an A__H__ trucker try to flatten you every day, there are multiple scenerios.

I'm in full agreement there are exceptions...[/quote:bbd3rbno]

The strange thing about this is that I went through my options mentally in an instant before the impact. (I have been riding for almost 40 years and this is my first accident.) This was a divided road with two lanes on each side. I was in 2nd and was about to shift to third. I thought about accelerating in front, but there was no way --the a-- hole was flying, I braked hard with both front and rear wheels trying to slow down enough to let him pass and go behind him, but he was pulling this big long trailer so I knew I was going to crash. I decided to lock the rear wheel up and slide tires first into the trailer. I hit hard and the bike bounced over and I just rolled out of the way. My bike suffered little because I was returning from an advanced riding school (ironic) and all of my crash bars were covered with heavy rubber hoses.

My point is this, you cannot judge what needs to be done unless you are confronted with the situation. No one plan of action fits all situations. You cannot tell someone who has what they should have or should not have done, especially if they walk away from it, in other words, Monday morning quarterbacks don't play for a reason.