Featured Wear Your Safety Gear

Biker rushed to hospital today with suspected broken arm after hitting HGV on A428 (outside Northampton, UK). This is after a 72 year old died on Friday at the same spot (Yamaha FZS) after a collison with a Jaguar F-Pace which was heading in the same direction. Police appealing for witnesses.

I think some people have gone stir crazy during the lock down and let rip on the roads. Be careful out there......................

 

According to official figures there are 6 deaths and 93 accidents involving motorcycles EVERY week in UK.
Ken.

 

When I started riding there was no requirement to wear a crash helmet and most people who rode did not. The main reason for the law being changed and helmets made compulsory was to reduce the number of motorcycle deaths resulting from head injury's following a crash. I must admit that today based on better education and realising the risk posed by riding a motorcycle I always make sure that I wear good quality safety kit. Thankfully I survived those early years (many did not) and as a result as I've got older I have got a little wiser.......

 

All my adult life I've wanted to ride but in my younger college days I wasn't financially able to buy the bike I wanted so I waited. Sure enough I started dating and then married an Occupational Therapist that has worked with TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) patients for her early career, many of them injured in motorcycle accidents. Needless to say a line was drawn in the sand in that battle and I lost. It took me 20 years to wear her down and with MSF course, cautions riding and commitment to All The Gear All The Time we both have been riding for just over a year now.

I think that I gained a bit of wisdom over my younger years and a healthy respect for gravity and sudden stops. Now I just have to watch out for the idiots on their cell phones.

 

Yeah.. I have done my fair share of car racing and have the $0 balance bank account to prove it. However, at least in the SCCA, rules changes are more or less up for discussion at different levels. Mandated safety gear, such as HANS, were talked about, voluntarily used, and finally required. The cost can simply put you off the grid, so they progress carefully, lest the track ends up empty. Some of the SCCA safety rules are pretty complicated, for example, the arrangement of auto-cross tracks, but I agree with the spirit. Class rules, on the other hand are half fair in my opinion, and prove the saying that there are only two types of racers: Losers and Cheaters.