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I'm now pretty close to getting my China license. I was looking for video's of riding tips and what have you, and stumbled across this horror video.
It's enough to make you stop and wonder, is it really worth it? That could easily happen to any rider out there.
I do't know how to upload videos but check this link. It aint pretty.
http://www.mototu.com/moto/Kawasaki/ZX-10R/video/444/
Sorry, just realised this thread is in the wrong forum.
You should realise that dink is a very pejorative term against Chinese and absolutely unwelcome here, shows your ignorance if not deliberate intent. You have been around here a bit so you get a chance to please explain, change title or it and you will be deleted.
Jape, nothing like that was meant by the term 'dink'. If it's a slur against Chinese people then plz change the title or delete the thread. I've tried and i can't do it.
Where i'm from a dink means a minor crash or bump. For example "Oh, he's dinked it", or "Don't worry, it's only a little dink" I've never heard the term used in any other way.
I'm not ignorant mate, my wife is Chinese, i've lived in China for 4 years and love the country and it's people. It's my home.
Maybe my grasp of language is not as good as yours Jape, so for that i apologise.
I gave you the chance to explain, and you have, that is all I ask. Don't take it personally. It may be generational as much as anything, for my generation it was definitely an insult along the lines of slope and gook so you should understand me well! I felt all would know of that thus my accusation of your ignorance but I am quite happy to accept you use it as you do, it is also mentioned as such in Wikipedia. I am very pleased to see you love the country and people both individually and as a group. You know them more than I do but I have be aware of such things as a moderator. Glad I am wrong.
wikipedia: Dink
Slang, first 4 entries
A person of Chinese/far-eastern origin
A pejorative term for a North Vietnamese soldier
D.I.N.K: Dual Income No Kids, a financial term used for couples with no kids
A 'jerk' or 'goof'
If I had felt you did it deliberately, it would just have been deleted, but instead it was done publicly to show why, NOT AT ALL to have a go at you. I tend to say when I am doing that! If you ever need to change a title , then just sign in to edit and go advanced, I think that allows it. Please keep on with us, you are a valued member.
cant belive that what a nice bike, average woman car driver, i liked the way he wasnt hurt and just stepped over his wreck lmfao
That's really shit luck, what a nice bike!
I hope the chick in the car didn't sustain any trauma from messing up her make up or making a typo in her text message or whatever else she was doing instead of driving her car.
it is very cool how he just walked off it though!
Look at the gap between the cars after the crash. That could have gone horribly wrong.
Apparently he was also a bit surprised by the van stopping in front of him.
He was a very lucky man. He just kind of bounced off the car infront and landed on his feet. Mental! His bike was squashed to about a third of it's original size.
It kind of worries me a bit because cos there's absolutely nothing you can do to protect yourself from an incident like that. You can ride defensively but like Felix said, if some clown is texting or 'off with the fairies' it's your life that's on the line. I wonder if any of the experienced riders have any pearls of wisdom regarding bike safety for a new rider?
Jape, fair enough. I had no idea. Hope i haven't offended anybody.
He was riding casually. There is defensive tactics for christmas three lights. First you keep distance to the car in front of you and you position yourself not to the middle back arch of the car but on the side back arch so you can just vroom vroom to the side of the car if you see from mirror a square block coming on your six.Quote:
Originally Posted by dewsnap
I think you'd be wrong in coming to that conclusion, young dewsnap. We can't see everything that the rider saw, or didn't see, but riders have eyes and swivel joints called necks, and bikes have mirrors. Seeing only what we could see, this rider was maybe doing a bit of daydreaming himself, following too closely to the car in front, slowing too slowly, and probably paying no heed at all to what was going on behind him. Or perhaps he was able to see the car behind him bearing down because its driver was doing her lipstick, but he saw too late, or responded too late. Bottom line, he was in a situation that an experienced rider would not likely find himself in -- sandwiched in between vehicles at a speed that was too fast to be safe given the distance available in front and behind. Given the height of the car in front, he was unable to see what was ahead, yet allowed himself to assume that the driver in front of him was also paying attention.Quote:
Originally Posted by dewsnap
Others may have different views, but I think we can safely say this rider was not riding defensively. He was not alert enough to the conditions around him, both in front and behind. You can feel how tardily his reactions came. He placed way too much trust in the drivers around him. You cannot do that on a motorcycle.
Ask yourself: Would you have allowed yourself to be in that untenable situation? As a newb rider, you MUST ask yourself that question all the time. Eyes in back of your head as well as in front. Focused on what's happening many cars ahead and many cars behind.
Spend some time with the MSF riders guide that I posted in another thread. MSF spends a lot of time on reading traffic. There's a LOT you can do to protect yourself from an incident like that.
cheers
Leave it to Moilami to say in three lines what it took me 14 to say....
cheers!
Well written Euphonius.
It may be counter intuitive but if you ride a motorcycle and stop in traffic lights you should pay attention more on what happens behind you than what happens in front of you. And don't get trapped between two cars. With motorcycle you have to always have so called "escape route". Remember too that many of those who drive cars are just looking at the register plate of the vehicle driving in front of them or reading text messages from phones. So don't accelerate too hard and brake too hard in traffic jams because it is you who can control how the car behind you drives. Accelerate hard and the car behind can do the same. Brake hard and you force the car behind try do the same. There is no guarantee the car will succeed in that.
Edit: Wrote this before you said write stuff with three lines. That I should do since what I wrote now is not very good and clear writing of important basics.
Dewsnap, I am glad you see it so, thank you.
There is little defence against idiots, even in a car. Nor can you defend against accidents and mechanical breakdowns that may cause disaster except with careful maintenance, regular checks and defensive riding. Sometimes you even have to be quite aggressive to escape danger - I had to overtake a bus by going over a white line today when it pulled out in front of me as I was passing it without seeing me already going past him when he was stopped. Experience had me ready for him being blind, and being relatively high up on the bike I could see there was room to accelerate by, nothing in the dip ahead, safer than slowing with the following traffic or going off-road onto the field boundaries with long grass, which was the other alternative. Experience is the only real answer when things happen out of the blue so quickly as you learn to react rather than think.
I ride nearly empty country roads and small towns yet have a near miss or incident every week or so. You have to consider that when you take up riding. If there are no defensive riding or advanced riding courses in China then the best way to get experience is to be part of a group of experienced riders as often as you can. You will learn subconsciously from how they behave and hopefully pickup good tips. Hanging back and allowing lots of room and just simply expecting people to do stupid things will help. Getting there later but alive is the go. There are plenty of safe opportunities to lean and follow the curves and open her up, wait for them to arrive, don't get impatient.
Sometimes you have to ride and weave and sometimes being defensive means you accumulate problems around you so there is no hard and fast rule, sorry to say. There are some sources of material suggesting defensive strategies available. Have a google but I will look mine out, I have a DVD somewhere, and others may know some links.
Seems 3 of us were writing at the same time,but just shows we care!
Also practise to become more skilled rider. Practise doing different hard brakings before evading an obstacle in different weather and road conditions. Like Jape said, you have to at times be ready to do very hard maneuvers in traffic, and when that happens, you better do it subconsciously. That you can't do well if you haven't practised and toyed with your bike enough. That's why it is good to do some enduro. You will learn much more about handling a motorcycle by doing enduro than you can learn by doing only street riding.
Go get some courses or if you know good and experienced driver ask him to teach you. There is nothing bad in not being a good rider. But it is bad to not try become one. It is very bad for you and to a lesser degree to other people.
And don't become scared because of those vids. You don't have to be the unlucky rider in the vids.
Oh yeah, and those riding with front wheel up in the air stuff should be the last thing to learn. It is not important stuff lol.
Edit: Did I mention by the way we all in this forum suck in riding a motorcyle? And did I mention 99,9% of drivers in traffic sucks? Those are the facts, but since it is so easy normally drive in traffic it is quite rare anything happens.
However it is good to be prepared, and even better to try not suck in traffic.
Thanks for all that guys.
So the rider was partly to blame for the accident? He was riding too fast and put himself in a position where he had to be heavy on the brakes and wasn't aware of what was behind him. As well as tucking in right behind the car in front instead of to the side where he could've made an escape had he seen the situation brewing?
I wasn't suggesting the rider was riding defensively. I meant defensive riding is the best way to protect yourself. I've ridden a scooter round Shanghai for the past year and i go by the golden rule that 'nobody can see me or knows i'm there'. It's been a useful strategy so far as i've been lucky enough not to have had any near misses or scrapes.
I've clocked 11.000km's in China so far and i owned a couple of scooters and field/dirt bikes growing up as a kid. I also used to race cross country/downhill MTB's at a county level so i feel confident on 2 wheels. Moving up to a 250 is still gonna be a massive step up so i've still got a lot to learn and many months of practice to put in before i'm aywhere near competent.
Thanks for helping me and anyone else reading this thread.
It is police's etc job to chose who to blame and that is for compensation and punishment purposes.
Our job is to learn and share what we have learned.
Wow that vid was brutal. My bike sets so low that I would have ended up part of someones grill if that happened to me. I'm new to riding and this is one of my fears. The tips above help but I think I will always have that fear. Maybe it will help me keep my skills in check. Nothing like a healthy dose of paranoia to keep you safe.
I was surprised that the guy didn't have an out planned out. Not to blame the victim, but this was somewhere in California where lane-splitting is legal for bikes; he should have just gone out to the left. In all the years I lived there, and all the times I go back to visit family, I never once saw a motorcycle stop behind traffic. Perhaps he was from out of state visiting or recently moved, but he, in hindsight, should have gone to the left--there seemed to be a whole lane open. But good to see he wasn't seriously injured considering he never hit the ground.
*raises hand* I've never hear of "dink" used for anything except a synonym for "wimp". ex - "dinky" would be "wimpy"
Does he really knee over right after the crash, or does he take his helmet off? I think he sort of bows over once (shock of course, I'm not sure what I would do) and then takes his helmet off, using it to record the last few seconds of the video. It's nice that the first thing out of the offending drivers mouth was "Sorry, Oh My God, I'm So Sorry!!!", they ought to be.
*Notice: You could escape reading this tedious reiterative post by just reading the following single line;
*Space between you and everything else except the ground is good, mostly*.
I've got to say, sometimes miracles happen, those are bad falls that end up mostly harmless... I've had two notable one's, and I *hope* (do I? they are the best of the worst thing) no more.
Anyhow, I can only thank this man for turning his camera on (who is he BTW? do we know?), it's the only reason any of us have a chance to analyze this accident. This is just a moment in time and it's easy to criticize someone for not doing whatever thing at one time perfectly. Thank god he wasn't hurt badly, though I bet his shoulders were a bit sore after this, it seems like he was pulled off the bike through his arms.
Ideally, perhaps, he would have swerved into the left lane (after looking, oh of course!) and then just proceeded as usual. He didn't, and lord knows plenty of times I've found myself thinking "I could have done that better" or worse, or "That was a stupid thing to do", but, at least I'm considering it, what was wrong, and what I could have done better. My two times were stupid things I *decided* to do, rather than things I didn't do, or decided not to do. Those miracles (mistakes gone right?) are great teachers, I've never been through one and thought "I should try that again..." (I'm none religious, BTW, I twice used the M-word). It's just a shame you need to have one or two before you really naturalize it and think of prevention as natural behavior.
I'm going to go back for a fourth or fifth time and reiterate the importance of a space pillow or "distance cushion", whatever you want to call it. Space between you and other vehicles is equal to extra time, generally. Sometimes it encourages drivers to dodge in front of you. Like-wise riding in the right half of your lane encourages other drivers to use your left half of the lane for their own random swerving, passing.... etc.... everything has it's equal and opposite, wait, I'm getting a little daoist here.... so I'll spare you all. It would be great if you could look like a semi-trailer truck but just ride a bike. People just see a vehicle that's smaller and I'm not sure what they decide but instead of giving a motorcyclist more space, the squeeze a little closer. I'm preaching to the quire about the potential dangers of motorcycling, but it's so much worse when some inconsiderate (sometimes, spiteful) drivers disregard basic safety or even flaunt a motorcyclists vulnerability by forcing maneuvers, etc, than when they do with another car or truck, as I said, it's obvious.
If the driver behind our subject (this unknown rider, who we must identify!) had just braked successfully, or swerved to the left lane, this would be fine. However, if this other driver (again, behind our subject) had also swerved into the left lane, AND our subject hand BOTH swerved into the left lane, perhaps they would have had a higher speed collision than this. Who is to say, someone in his right lane may have swerved into his lane, knocking him down in moving traffic? I'm quite sure I would not have avoided this accident, if you put me in this (the wrong) spot, with 1/10's of a second to decide, I might literally have been thinking about the color of the car in front of me, or god knows what other inane crap, c'mon, are we all vigilant all the time?
By the way, I love commas, parenthesis, and asterisks so much, why *do* we have sentences?