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How long before your first off?


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See the common quote come up that you're not a true biker till you've come off but how long had you been riding until you came off? (either self inflicted or with a helping hand from a passing car driver).


Tbh considering how my first CBT went (ended up going up the kerb and into a bush very first corner in car park) I expected it to be quite soon... But now I've done a years riding and whilst not much distance wise (about 1200 miles) I've managed to keep bike shiny side up despite a few of my best efforts (wtf did I do there moments) and some blinding efforts from the local car drivers.


Had my closest call this morning in some torrential rain where someone decided to pull out in front of me, didn't think I braked too heavily but nevertheless locked back wheel and ended up fishtailing down the road just managing to keep it upright and far enough away from parked cars to recover.


But does get me thinking now is it just delaying the inevitable and as I grow in confidence is it going to be more detrimental when it happens?

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Morning after I bought it I shot across a road, while attempting a u-turn, into a metal fence. A week later I overcooked a corner and ploughed into a tree. Four months in, it was written off into the back of a parked Mini.


Then a bright spark had the idea that riders ought to receive training before they took to the road. :D

Edited by Mawsley
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Then a bright spark had the idea that riders ought to receive training before they took to the road. :D

 

Health and safety gone mad!

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About 3 months......courtesy of a diesel spill on a blind corner......There was nothing I could do to avoid it......so the bike went down the road on its side, with me following it!........not much damage to the bike, or me...... :wink:

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I've came off a bike as a pillion (roundabout + desiel spill) but never came off my own bike in any particular "style".


I did get stuck in thick mud on a verge not long after I got it. Ended up laying it down on its side so I could get off it to then push it out. :-)

I've been riding just over 2 years now so I'm doing well I reckon.

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See the common quote come up that you're not a true biker till you've come off

We only say this to make the fallee feel better :lol:


Fell off the 125 about 8 months after my CBT, wet road.. traffic lights changed... grabbed all the front brake ended up on my side. Lept up and apologised the the actually concerned drivers who had come to help :lol: found out later I'd broken my foot and toe.


Then I fell off about 14 months after doing my DAS when I braked on black ice. Luckily I was only doing about 5mph so no damage to me and only a smashed indicator (although the bulb was fine!) and a few more scratches to add to the collection (and this is why I didn't buy a mint condition bike as my first one :lol: )

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Day 1!


My 16th birthday was on the Sunday and I did my CBT. Accident was on the Monday morning on the way to school. Car pulled out of a give way on me and I was too naive to realise right of way means feck all when you are on a motorbike. Luckily the chap in the transit van behind me was a biker. Car driver got done for careless driving.


I learned something that day, and that was my last collision with another vehicle now 25 years ago. Every other accident has been due to pretending I was Barry Sheene. About 10 years ago I grew up and realised that every time I crashed I was doing something stupid to deserve it, those famous words "watch this!!", so stopped doing stupid things and stopped crashing.

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3 Months, too much front end brake in greasy conditions.


I've since found, if it's been lightly raining after a few days of sunny dry weather the conditions are probably at their worst. I much prefer it torrential than that now :lol:

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The fourth time on the bike.


I was both building confidence and teaching myself gears, so the first three times on the bike were just riding the local side streets next to mine. The fourth time was the first I went out of the the neighbouring areas, and was approaching a box junction when the traffic light for a crossing beyond it turned yellow. It was early on a Sunday morning and the road was empty, but I grabbed the brake not wanting to stop on the box junction and instantly went over.


Having never driven, and not ever ridden a bicycle since a child, and that was in a town with cycle routes so never on a major road, it never occurred to me that they would never put traffic lights on the far edge of a box junction. So I just instinctively reacted before seeing that there was space on the other side of the box where I could have stopped safely.


I did not ride much more that year as around the same time I became ill, but there were a few times I fell on junctions of local roads due to stalling, and then almost a repeat of that accident. I had only managed around 200 more miles since, and a lot of that practicing in a car park, when someone on a forum offered to ride with me to help build my confidence. On the way home a light turned yellow after he crossed a junction, and I felt too close to it stop safely so was going to continue through when he put his hand up in a stop gesture. So instinctively I did, with the same obvious result.


At least since then all my accidents have just been bad luck rather than stupidity! And I can still say I have not hit anything.

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Practice not grabbing a shit load of the front, that's what threw me off. I insintively panic when I need to break sharp, but gently squeeze and put some rear break on. Weird feeling but took some practice to come naturally.

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Without wishing to tempt fate i've been upright since i started in May 2016. Surprising as i almost wheelied into a bench on the CBT* Although had some bloody near misses and thought to myself that was tupid and to stop doing that. Did managed to lose balance riding up the drive and kind of dropped it onto the wall, but i half caught it so it doesn't count. Another near miss i will call it.


*not sure how i wheelied a Honda CG when i cant wheelie my FZ6 :D

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Not long.

In the days just prior to actually having to have some form of training before heading out on the open roads :shock:

Binned it in the snow.

Dislocated shoulder etc.

The jeans n bomber jacket didn't hold up well :crybaby:


Times they have changed

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Year and a half I think it took me. Don't ride tired folks, the brain didn't work out quick enough someone was stopped on their handbrake.


Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

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Mod 1 Practice on the test pad. Went at the speed trap and then snatched at the brakes and slid the whole bike :D


Became a biker before passing by all accounts then!

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Had 3 or 4 this year :shock:

 

I had 3 in the space of 5 years, all down to cornering too fast or silly decision making.


1. Black ice on a corner, 55mph, through a barbed wire fence, I knew the roads were icy but decided to risk it and take the twisty route rather than the motorway.


2. Low side on a left hand hairpin. From the shower of sparks my mate behind reckons I dug some part of the bike into the tarmac and levered the rear tyre off the ground. Tarmac surfed onto the opposite side of the road, and came to a stop just before the oncoming car came to a stop, bumper about 2 feet from my head.


3. Into a bend with high hedges and little visibility of the road surface ahead, came across a patch of gravel, already had my toes scraping the tarmac, tried to tighten my line but I'd pushed it too far already and not left enough room for error, it highsided me and I face planted the tarmac.


No serious injuries, not anything that couldn't be healed in six weeks anyway. Nothing that was going to kill me, or so I thought.


Accident number 3 was on a trip with mates, and I was sharing a twin hotel room with a 60 year old chap who'd been around bikes all his life. As I was sat on my bed cleaning gravel out of wounds, he sat on the end of his next to me. All he said was:


"Mate, I know three people who have died on motorbikes. One hit a fencepost at 50mph. The next lost it on a left hand bend and was hit by oncoming traffic. The next highsided the same as you did today, and it wasn't hitting the ground that got him, he caught his gut on the bar end as he came off and ruptured his spleen"


It dawned on me that accident 1, a split second earlier or later the barbed wire, could have been one of the posts holding it. Accident 2 a a split second earlier or later a car could have been hitting me as opposed to stopping in time. Accident 3, killed somebody else in a way that could never have been forseen or expected.


Until then I'd kind of accepted that riding motorbikes, you ran the risk of getting injured, a attitude that perhaps came from competing, but unlike competing, on the road, with traffic and road furniture and landscape to hit, you don't choose whether it's an injury or a death. That comes after you have lost control and is entirely down to fate.


I realised I was alive through LUCK. Just a lucky set of circumstances, which had meant injury not death. Touch wood that was 10 years ago and I haven't crashed since.


The more often you have an accident, the more chance you have of that unlucky set of circumstances and end up dead.


There is no "safe" way to come off a motorbike. The only safe way to ride one is DON'T CRASH. The tiniest little accident, can result in a serious injury or death, given the wrong set of circumstances.


Without any details I don't know what's causing your accidents, but you need to do something about your accident rate, or you're going to be the subject of an R.I.P thread.


I only write this because I don't want to see that happen.


If like me it's because you are pretending to be Valentino Rossi, slow down, and give yourself room for error. Never corner as fast as you could, never brake as late as you could. If it's collisions with other traffic, go get some advanced training.

Edited by Anonymous
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Something to do with racing other people Baloo ;-)

 

Errm, accidents 2 and 3, in part, yes.


Both of those I was leading a rideout, so there's probably a combination of showing off, leaving people behind who are trying to keep up behind feeds the ego, I was with some other pretty quick riders, so you want to set a decent pace so that they enjoy their ride.


And I say in part because had I been on my own I probably wouldn't have been going any slower, because I really enjoyed riding balls out.


I sold my bike after accident no. 3, what my mate said and the realisation it bought me to really scared me, and I had a baby by then, so I plodded around on an XT600E for a while which only has 34bhp. Then when I bought my Daytona promised myself if I couldn't behave on it. I'd sell it again.


I ride like an old man nowadays. I just needed to realise I was being an idiot, and grow up.

Edited by Anonymous
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I was talking about cockercas!

 

Without any details I don't know what's causing your accidents, but you need to do something about your accident rate, or you're going to be the subject of an R.I.P thread.


I only write this because I don't want to see that happen.


If like me it's because you are pretending to be Valentino Rossi, slow down, and give yourself room for error. Never corner as fast as you could, never brake as late as you could. If it's collisions with other traffic, go get some advanced training.

 

If he slows down and doesn't be like Vale he won't be winning any races ;-)

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I was talking about cockercas!

 

Without any details I don't know what's causing your accidents, but you need to do something about your accident rate, or you're going to be the subject of an R.I.P thread.


I only write this because I don't want to see that happen.


If like me it's because you are pretending to be Valentino Rossi, slow down, and give yourself room for error. Never corner as fast as you could, never brake as late as you could. If it's collisions with other traffic, go get some advanced training.

 

If he slows down and doesn't be like Vale he won't be winning any races ;-)

 

Gotcha!


Well I've no idea how I got through my 20's and 30's, so I can't judge, I'm just glad I did.


I don't know what to say to convince a young man that he doesn't need to win, and has nothing to prove, I can only tell the story of what convinced me.


If people want to ride like 'Vale' nowadays I just say on you go lads, fill your boots, and I ride along behind hoping I'm not going to come round a corner and find I have to pick one of them out of the hedge.

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