"Had to lay it down"???

[dantama]

I decided that this thread turned into something that I did not intend it to be (pats on the back for losing control of your bike and crashing it, becoming smart safety advice) and killed my participation on it by deleting my posts.

After a few day of thinking it over, I decided to post explaining why my posts got deleted.

I understand folks wanting to make board members feel welcome and giving pats on the back, but perhaps thinking of what the intent of the thread is first would be helpful. I started this thread pointing out why getting on the brakes is wiser than dumping your bike.

Somebody got defensive about the time they dumped theirs, and came trying to prove how much more wise it was to dump it, than to scrub off speed. Inexplicably, he found many people willing to agree that it was the wise thing to do. Clearly not what I intended for the thread.

So after a few days of digesting it, I decided to respond. So we are to accept that if somebody walked away from an accident that proves it was the best course of action. Jeezze, people have driven drunk the wrong way down the freeway and gotten in a head on crash and walked away, therefore getting in head on collisions is now the wise thing to do if you walk away?

And the part about sliding tires first into the trailer. So now the safety merits of tires as airbags comes into play. So what, you were still seated on the bike sliding on its side and used the little bit of give from the tires to absorb the energy of the collision?

For everyone to jump on the band wagon and say what a great move that was, as evidenced by walking away defies logic and physics. If staying on the brakes slows you down, anything else can be seen as accelerating by comparison. Say I'm going 40mph; If I'm at one point in time (the end of my braking)I am going 20mph, and instead I dump it on its side and at that same point in time I am now going 30mph rather than 20mph, it could be said that I accelerated 10mph.

Somebody has come to the discussion and in effect said that when faced with an emergency situation, he decided that it made the most sense to accelerate into the object, and he found people who also thought that accelerating into it was the smart move. Or were unwilling to call BS when they heard it for other reasons.

No matter how you look at it, if you hit something faster than you would have by braking, you accelerated. Overall you decelerated, but because you didn't decelerate as much as you could have, you have a net acceleration of 10mph in my example.

Say we have a brick wall and you have a choice to accelerate (by giving it throttle) to 30mph and hit the wall, or can choose to accelerate to only 20mph and hit the wall. Some would choose 30mph? I think it's safe to say we would all choose to only accelerate up to 20mph if given the choice, why would we choose 30mph?

But for some reason we are willing to suspend logic when it's the brakes that are used to get to those same speeds, rather than the throttle. The brick wall doesn't care how you got there, it's going to give you a 30mph whack once you hit.

Motorcycles stop faster staying on their tires and using the brakes than sliding on their sides. Choosing to hit something at a higher speed is not wise (even if you walk away). The destructive forces in a crash quadruple when the speed doubles. Getting rid of speed pays big dividends. Can you Monday morning quarterback other people's crashes? Sure you can. No matter who you are, or why you did it (so my tires will hit first) twice as fast will have four times the impact.

We can all agree to disagree on this, and hopefully enjoy each others company here. I think that accelerating into objects is not wise; others can think that it is. But give some extra thought into whether or not bad advice should be given pats on the back. You never know who might take your advice to heart.