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The difference with motorbikes is that you do it much faster and often use the whole road, getting close to the verge on the 'wrong' side of the road. Calculating the best line while taking all hazards into account at high speeds is a new skill.
Or you can just slow down, nothing wrong with that. But as you get more confident your speed may well increase. You could be one of the few bikers who doesn't break the speed limit. But you seem like one of the ones who will.
The electronic aids don't have a role to play in a high proportion of bad crashes. If there's a smidsy, ABS doesn't help if you freeze in terror. This is very common. If you pick the wrong line and suddenly realise you won't make the corner, the aids don't stop you panicking or allow you to lean past the point of no return.
Study other people's crashes on youtube and try to work out how the riders could have prevented them, especially when a car driver has made an obvious mistake. Bikers always say that drivers are trying to kill them and that drivers are to blame for this and that and the other, as if staying alive is a lottery or not in your hands. But you make your own luck. You have to factor others' possible mistakes into your riding. If you don't, you're also guilty of making a mistake. The driver is hardly ever the one who gets hurt, so if you want to live you need to be the responsible one who plans with everybody's mistakes in mind.
nick_h.-
This is partly about rider aids:
So literally the second roundabout before home, straight over, I was very very hot into it. Now, there may have been a margin of error on what the speedo says and what the speed limit might be…
The car entering the roundabout on my right was at that awkward “will they won’t they” pace. I wasn’t going hard enough to make it worth gunning and hoping. I closed throttle as soon as they were in sight, then full progressive brakes.
Problem was that they were positioned left to turn left, slowing, but no indicator. Okay, so no indicator means probably straight over? Nope.
Full U-turn around the roundabout and back where they came from. At walking pace.
In real terms (because they were lost) their hesitant speed meant I was fully using all of the brakes. Coming from fast A roads back into town traffic, I went back into town mode and didn’t want to second-guess anyone else by gunning it and chancing a t-bone from my left.
Anyway. As I was full progressive brakes I could feel that I wasn’t 100% on the front so I wouldn’t lock it, and I was adding rear as you would. I stopped literally on the line of the junction, and their pace around the roundabout was so slow, that I actually had to wait for a while for them to clear and go all the way round - I could see the person’s look of confusion talking to her passenger like “okay so where am I supposed to go?”
Hot-hot tyres (albeit old), relatively light bike, not toooooo fast (slow enough to stop, fast enough to be at fault). I was upright but braking heavy. Still felt the back end shimmy for the last few feet, or maybe yard or two.
Modern bike, abs would have kicked in, and I’d expect the stopping distance would be the same but no skid. However, it still relies on the rider braking early enough. Which relies on the rider paying attention. Which a lot of riders don’t.
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I feel it's s never the car's drivers fault.
pdlouche
bright
I honestly can't imagine not reading the road and being sure my line of sight has some distance to it. Even on roads I know.
I guess you can let your guard down here and there, and one days all the variable turn you into a statistic. Probably how it happens.