Motorcycle Thoughts…From the Road
Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 at 5:56 pm by angrybob
My job has taken me on the road for the remainder of the week…literally. I am on a ‘Ride & Drive’ for brakes on a soon-to-be launched product that started in Phoenix and will end in Denver, CO the long way. Tonight I am in Albuquerque, NM and drove through some pretty crappy weather to get here (it rained from Phoenix to Gallup, NM).
I noticed a couple things today as a cager who rides motorcyles:
Phoenix riders are not prepared for foul weather. That goes without saying, but I have to admit that we just ended a record setting 140+ days without rain last weekend. Well, it rained again today and the HD guys seemed to either be caught off guard or enjoy pain & misery - probably a little of both.
I saw several guys without rain gear and/or helmets cruising through the percipitation. Not having rain gear happens, but I woul not go riding in the rain without a helmet…at any cost. Like I mentioned, I saw a couple of these riders.
Loud pipes ‘might’ save lives. Its the first time in a while that I have been in a car and not been the driver for an extended period of time. I noticed something that was consistent for sport bikes that had aftermarket exhausts: I COULD HEAR THEM FROM ABOUT 100 FT AWAY COMING TOWARDS ME on the other side of the freeway! No, I’m not kidding. And no, I’m not intentionally trying to piss gothicbeaST off!
Several sport bikes went by with the same result. I can only guess that their HD bretheren with the louder open pipes would have the sam results, but it was not comfirmed. The HD guys I saw in traffic were on city side streets and not the freeways. Also, I could not confirm the passing rider as througout the entire day, no bike passed us from behind.
I’ll keep this updated over the next couple of days. I’ll also keep it honest because I really don’t care either way. Heh - I’ll report, you decide.
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AB - I think you may have made a mistake in your comment about loud pipes: after stating “I noticed something that was consistent for sport bikes that had aftermarket exhausts: I COULD HEAR THEM FROM ABOUT 100 FT AWAY COMING TOWARDS ME on the other side of the freeway!” then you state “Several sport bikes went by with the same result”. Were you being redundant or was a comparison of American vs. Japanese bikes desired and you mistakenly used “sport bike” twice when you wanted to say “HD” in one of your statements?
As to 100 ft being adequate to “save lives”, I believe 60 MPH equates to 88 ft/sec. That only gives a little over a second of reaction time (half that if the vehicles are traveling in the opposite directions - typical accident scenario), well below what the average driver or rider needs to make a decision and an evasive manuever.