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Commuting is only worth a poo poo if you can lane split. Otherwise? Eff that.
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Jul 23, 2013 18:41
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Spiffness posted:I miss Marv. What happened to that guy anyways? He was a cool dude.
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Jul 24, 2013 02:24
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MoraleHazard posted:Yes. I've gotten pulled over for it before (though thankfully no tickets yet). It's illegal in every U.S. state but California where it's not illegal, but not specifically legal. CA explicitly legalized lane splitting about a year ago.
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Aug 9, 2013 17:50
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Safety Dance posted:Waze is my go-to at the moment. Top notch all around. Also owned by google now, if that sort of thing matters to you.
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Sep 6, 2013 01:15
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SimplyCosmic posted:I feel for everyone living the in the Washington, DC area today with that Two Million Biker event. quote:did not release a route, citing "security reasons" Let's not get an overblown sense of our value to Islamic fundamentalists now.
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Sep 11, 2013 20:59
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Check your wiring diagram, you might be able to disconnect the wire that is paired by the parking position.
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Sep 16, 2013 21:28
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Pope Mobile posted:I'm so sick of people almost merging into me. Check your loving blind spot people! Stop hanging out in their blind spots. Blind spots are one of those places that should be like hot lava to motorcyclists.
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Oct 6, 2013 20:20
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nsaP posted:I'm pretty sure he's been here long enough to read a few paragraphs of your's on the matter. Maybe assume he's not hanging around in blind spots and the drivers might just be dumb instead of handing out the sage wisdom? I don't waste any time in blind spots and I still have occasional lane changes into me. I guess if you live in the conservative paradises where freedom acts like lane splitting are illegal that might be a possibility. But I dunno, I haven't had someone merge into me in ages because I work really hard to minimize the time I spend in around cars, and by extension, their spots. Sometimes that means finding a gap in traffic and moving to the slow lane and doing the speed limit because that's what maintains the best safety buffer. "Drivers be dumb" is just an excuse for not paying better attention and planning better. If you're in a place where you can anticipate what's about to happen, you can do something before it happens to avoid the situation. If you're expecting them to look to their right or left before turning, you're doing riding wrong.
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Oct 6, 2013 20:38
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Pope Mobile posted:I don't "hang out" in blind spots. I'm either passing someone or being passed. I also have keep in mind cars behind and in front of me. The reason I said that is because you said this: quote:I'm usually following a good distance from the car in front of me and going a reasonable speed. If you're "A good distance from them and going a reasonable speed" how are you anywhere near their blind spot or having to take evasive maneuvers to avoid accidents? Lane choice, speed choice, moving through traffic to find the gaps in groups of cars, are how I avoid these things. Most of the time if you're doing it right, after a mile or 2 on the freeway you can find the gap in the traffic pattern.
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Oct 6, 2013 21:31
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Backov posted:You are so tedious, Z3n. You know what's tedious? Driving to pick up someone's crashed bike because of an accident blamed on "dumb drivers" rather than just avoiding the situation entirely with some forethought and awareness. The number of accidents that would have never happened if riders would just loving let their egos go about being first or "owning their lane" or the rest of the bullshit that gets them into pissing contests with cars that they're guaranteed to lose eventually is staggering. Related: Video in GBS with the range rover guy. It's one of those things where the number of "near misses" you have goes down dramatically when you start looking at the things that led to a situation where someone merged into you. Someone comes flying up on you on the left and you're near an offramp? Maybe it's best to slow down a bit because they're probably going to cut you off. You're passing someone on the left? Maybe it's best to wait if they're coming up on a car as well and see what they're doing first. It's one of those situations where it goes past blind spots and into planning when and where you even enter those blind spots. Of course, the dirty secret is that being a safe rider is very tedious and boring. Z3n fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Oct 6, 2013 |
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Oct 6, 2013 23:08
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Motorcyclists are terrible.
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Oct 6, 2013 23:25
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:I'm pretty awesome, theory destroyed Exception that proves the rule boom
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Oct 6, 2013 23:28
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Pope Mobile posted:What I mean is that I'm trying to maintain a good distance from the car in front of me, not the car I'm going to end up in the blind spot of when passing/being passed. I never considering myself safe from other vehicles unless there isn't anyone anywhere near me. The whole point of bringing up this "beep boop" logic is so that you can apply it in the future. The fact that there's a lot going on is exactly why you should be thinking about it during times you're not actually riding the bike. And it's why you have people merging into you all the time, and yet there's a bunch of other riders here saying it happens to them very rarely. You're not unlucky, you're just not planning or paying enough attention yourself. And that's why I started this "tedious" conversation in the first place, so hopefully you'd wake up and realize what the gently caress is going on here.
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Oct 7, 2013 03:51
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HNasty posted:Right behind the layer dan story is the, I hit gravel bru excuse for crashing. I swear this magical gravel that takes people out must account for 50% of crash stories I've heard. It's super easy to crash on gravel, all you have to do is see it, freak out, grab a handful of brake, and it doesn't matter if you were on gravel or not!
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Oct 7, 2013 04:02
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I'll be sure to let it pass when you rant about it again then. 
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Oct 7, 2013 05:54
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Please dont post my patented parallel parking secrets Yeah let's go with I was trying to parallel park. I like that.
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Oct 7, 2013 19:04
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Spiffness posted:Parallel with the curvature of the earth Just trying to figure out how much traction is REALLY available.
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Oct 7, 2013 19:19
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Wootcannon posted:Your desperation to get the last word in every time, like a 16 year-old on a work night out, is pathetic. Everyone else seems to take my posting so much more seriously than I do. 
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Oct 7, 2013 20:56
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:He's right though about people taking his posting (whether quantity or quality) very seriously here for some reason and as annoyed as people get with it, its just as annoying to hear(see, I guess) them complain about it. Well you see, all the posts I make also mean that no one else can post anything because there are only so many posts the internet can handle before all the tubes get full. Clevermuldoon posted:Pulling the "  Is it the part about "being aware of the other drivers and minimizing not just time in blind spots but also when you choose to enter those blind spots"? Or the bit about "experienced riders seem to get merged into less because they make better decisions based on their beep boop riding logic"? You're the only hope for an end to the bullshit of cycle asylum, true internet patriot! Do your duty!
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Oct 7, 2013 22:43
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well I never cared in the first place" routine in an argument because people are calling you on your bullshit is real dumb.
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Chichevache posted:As someone who hasn't started riding yet, but will hopefully have their bike in the next three months, would it be possible to throw a much louder horn on the bike? I was thinking it would be pretty sick if I could get a semi's horn on somehow... I run Stebel Magnums on all my bikes. Mainly because when I hit that button, I want something to happen. It's also good for beeping at people who lane cut in the carpool lane and drawing the attention of cops to them, or warning people, or the things you would use a horn for (ie, not a sound forcefield to stop people from merging into you). And I'm glad you've found my posting informative - that is, once you set aside all of the silly back and forth trolling that goes on, the point. I learned a lot from people posting on the internet when I started riding, and I like doing it, so it's sort of a win/win. Drifter posted:I'd rather have people constantly forcing me to think critically by saying "what else could you have done to prevent that," than people just accepting that something happened and moving on. This is really what it comes down to. It's the point where people get the most righteous indignation about how they've been wronged where they probably need to look the closest at how that situation could have been avoided. You're not angry when someone does something stupid that you know is coming, you're only angry when they catch you off guard. On a larger level, it's the difference between someone who's gonna write of an accident as a "cold tires/unavoidable accident" vs. taking responsibility for the conditions, the bike, that car they saw and didn't plan for it pulling out in front of them, etc. I wouldn't ever try and convince any of the GBS keyboard jockeys that motorcycling isn't as dangerous as they think it is, but the reduction in accidents if you do the basics like get trained, wear a helmet, and don't ride drunk is staggering. And if you further remove any accident where the motorcyclist could have taken reasonable precautions to avoid the accident (appropriate speed, respecting the conditions, planning for the idiocy of other drivers), it drops to a fraction of that already small number. Yes, it takes a lot more investment to get there, but after nearly a decade and hundreds of thousands of miles on motorcycles, and a lot of willful stupidity and I'm still riding, I'm either a total statistical anomaly or motorcycling can be done in a way that's safe. And frankly, I don't think that's a dialogue that exists in any meaningful way, even among motorcyclists.
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Oct 8, 2013 17:24
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Spiffness posted:The only thing worse than Z3n's posting is his intolerance of dairy. troof. Jim Silly-Balls posted:children please, dont even front on the im helpful thing. ive been mad helpful since before z3n was even born Help I am a literal child.
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Oct 8, 2013 18:16
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It's a schooner!
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Oct 8, 2013 18:40
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Group rides suck.
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Oct 17, 2013 00:49
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Rime posted:I arrived home this evening to find that some cocksucking mainlander backed into my bike, knocked it over and totalled the front end, and drove off leaving it lying there in a pile of gasoline and shredded rain cover all day. Since I have no hope of tracking down who did it, my deductible is $700. Aww dude, that sucks 
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Oct 17, 2013 06:50
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chia posted:All of you saying group rides suck are doing it wrong. You need some non-retarded people, a leader who knows where he's going and what he's doing, nice roads and then just let everyone ride as fast as they want to (if you want to go faster then go in front, if slower go to the back), just make sure the guy behind you sees you make the next turn so no one gets lost and everyone ends up at the same place. That sounds like a lot of work to ride by yourself. A fun group ride is an open trackday. Once you do that, there's nothing that'll ever bring you back to "normal" street riding.
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Oct 17, 2013 08:14
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chia posted:Well that's one way of seeing it Honestly - I don't deny the fun of going out and riding with a casual group of friends. I have one friend who organizes group rides, does a really good job of it, and has had 2 crashes in 6 years of organizing rides. But most of the time, someone starts to red mist, people get in pissing contests, and it goes downhill fast. Rides like yours are the exception, not the rule, and after awhile I just got really tired of going to get the truck to pick up someone's crashed bike because the egos and bikes started to collide. Once I got passed on the outside of a corner while on what was supposed to be an 80% speed training ride by a guy on an R1 who then promptly blew off the road.  That's why generally these days for group rides it's less that 5 people so I know them and know that I'll probably be the squiddiest rider in the group, or just signing up for the same trackday (ideally one with no groups).
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Oct 17, 2013 08:39
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I saw my first stretched bike on the commute yesterday...it looked like a dog dragging it's rear end behind it, all done up in Michael Jordan replica plastics.
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Nov 6, 2013 19:39
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From the seller side: I am selling a Daytona 675 with revalved/resprung suspension, a non-repairable salvage title, verified straight, salvaged while I owned the bike, I can recount it's history, the compression specs, the current specs on the valves, the number of trackdays on the brake pads, and I've been up front with everything about the bike. I post up saying "Hey, don't lowball/only message me if you're ready to buy, i really don't need to sell this thing", then I get this message:some random dude guy posted:Sounds like you're getting lowballed! I have 2.3k cash ready but I'd like a major service done and the ram air fully repaired in addition to the bike Z3n posted:What's the price going to be on that? some random dude guy posted:You'd have to call them, I think the price on a major service is $300. I mostly care about the valve clearances Z3n posted:So that, plus the OEM cost on the ram air, an hour of labor, and you're offering me...$1600 for the bike? loving seriously?
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Nov 6, 2013 21:35
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BlackMK4 posted:...zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. I actually hate that book. Just coincidence. * joke about long, meandering book and my posts * But the z-three-n thing is way more common than I thought it'd be when I started using this screen name. Most of those people just shortened it to "Z" though. Also I just realized if I stopped posting today it'd still take years for me to drop out of the #1 spot. 
Z3n fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Nov 30, 2013 |
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Nov 30, 2013 03:10
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Bring the front wheel into reserve for safety.
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Dec 4, 2013 07:20
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Slavvy posted:I certain woman in my neighbourhood has decided her new calling is to camp outside my driveway and call the cops literally every time I go to work, regardless of whether I'm speeding or not. I would like to believe I would be cognisant enough in the moment to say something like this if someone ever started in with me on the "Think of the kids" lecture: quote:Let me tell you, man, do I ever agree with you. Children these days have no sense of the majesty of the world, of the wonder that is out there, waiting for them to experience it, with their computers, their cell phones, their post modernist reconstruction, their redefinition of normal trends and goals, their basic lack of appreciation for the arts, sciences, and everything else that goes into the individual pieces of the modern world, like my motorcycle, why not only does it contain a beautiful aesthetic and scientific appeal, it is a height of engineering prowess, the very beauty of modern metallurgy, the characteristics have been lovingly developed by a nearly unbelievable stream of engineering talent, culled from the best students of the best schools for decades, iterating tirelessly to move forward each characteristic of the bike, giving an endless steam of beautiful revisions that lead to a great whole. What an inspiration for a child, what a beautiful thing, to see the progress of man realized in a form of elegant transportation. I do think of the children, I think of them every time I ride and how the very existence of the motorcycle is a beautiful example for them to see, live up to, and experience. To say nothing of the priceless appreciation for the outdoors, the acceptance of the good and the bad, the experience of a microclimate at 80mph, and to see the world in a way most people could never comprehend. So yes, ma'am, I am thinking of the children. Are you? But the reality is it would just come out like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8pC8iYQSXI&t=0m25 Z3n fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Dec 18, 2013 |
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Dec 18, 2013 21:03
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The Royal Nonesuch posted:Get a GoPro, smile to the camera/show that day's newspaper before each leg of the commute, and mount it aiming at your speedometer especially in your neighborhood. It'll be a boring month of riding, but video evidence is king. This is the best idea. No interacting with the crazy, plus you discredit her. Do it on your zx10, then after a month speed with impunity forever while giving her the finger and pulling a wheelie across her yard.
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Dec 19, 2013 05:44
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Snow, ice and salt? It was 55 degrees today. I'd forgotten what 3rd gear, crossed up power wheelies off the crests at the exits of corners felt like. 690 bike best bike.
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Dec 20, 2013 00:06
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The california socialist paradise wins again! BlackMK4 posted:*Presses LIKE button* You've seen what it's like out here and you still live in AZ.  n8r posted:That was probably on the way from a threesome heading to pick up his megamillions winnings. You invent really extravagant fantasies for my life
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Dec 20, 2013 04:08
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Maybe I'm getting old or something but I really dont understand the draw of speeding on the highway anymore. Great, you got somewhere 5 minutes faster (if you didn't lose that time in additional gas stops) in exchange for potentially getting screwed on your insurance, a bunch of time dicking with the courts and the rest of the B.S. that goes into a speeding ticket. If you're going to get a ticket you may as well earn it doing 70 up a twisty back road with a limit of 55.
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Dec 30, 2013 00:26
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If the guy's doing 75-85, why not just drop to 65 for a bit than doing 95-105 to get past him? Keeping lovely drivers in front of you rather than behind you is almost always preferable, unless you're willing to maintain triple digit speeds for an extended time to get enough gap between you and them. It just doesn't really make sense - you don't get away from erratic, quick drivers by getting in front of them. There's this attitude that the throttle is usually the best solution to lovely drivers and oftentimes that's not the case. Edit: As I recall, MSF taught me to split my attention 70% front, 30% elsewhere. That gives me 3 seconds of scan time every 10 seconds, and I find that that really helps maintain proper situational awareness. 1.5 seconds of scanning my surroundings every 5 seconds and usually it's difficult for cars to sneak up on me, making rolling with the flow of traffic much more comfortable. Z3n fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Dec 30, 2013 |
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Dec 30, 2013 01:07
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Covert Ops Wizard posted:Going fast and cutting through traffic is fun, put your cost/benefit charts away you spergy goons. Loses some of it's fun when you see someone dead on the ground from it. poo poo sucks. Sagebrush posted:You don't get away from erratic drivers who are going consistently fast, no, but you do get away from erratic drivers who are arbitrarily speeding up and slowing down and weaving all over the place and so on. Extend and evade. My experience is that those drivers will eventually pull away if you stick to the limit - just trying to provide another option. More tricks up your sleeve, more situational awareness, the lower your chances of getting taken out by someone.
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Dec 30, 2013 07:32
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Snowdens Secret posted:If I'm doing a 400 mile ride and I do 80 it shaves an hour and change off the trip compared to 65. The higher speed also keeps me more alert and helps guarantee threats most likely come from my front quarter and not my sides or rear. If I do 40 instead of 25 my half hour commute becomes 18 minutes and that's 12 fewer minutes each way for other drivers to kill me. This works as long as you don't have to stop for gas more often on the long trips, but does significantly increase risk. Plus in the long run, you're going to normalize to the faster speed, are you going to then do 90mph to "stay alert"? Better to just adjust your perception of things. quote:I am convinced that moving around cars at a low relative velocity - I.e. both of us around the speed limit - is far more dangerous - than doing it at a faster clip. Humans suck at formation driving and the longer you spend diddling around in someone's vehicular personal space, the more likely they will do something erratic and stupid. Target fixation dominates there, you go where you look, eventually they're going to look at you too long and crash into you. Well, you can think that, but all of the research indicates that the most dangerous thing is a high delta between you and the cars around you. If the flow of traffic is ~80mph, then you're safest doing within 5mph of 80mph. I usually do ~5-8mph over as that's the median of flow of traffic around here. Target fixation isn't a significant factor in cars, unless the driver is drunk - then all bets are off. Also, going significantly faster than the flow of traffic is going to mean in the long run you spend more time around cars, rather than moving through traffic until you find the area between groups and sitting there with a larger safety margin and lower overall speed. quote:Cutting speed trades your agility and response capability in the hope other people's are better, which if you're on a bike is hopefully unlikely. Again, it shifts the risk approach vector from front to rear and especially on a bike your visibility in that quarter is the worst. Slowing down is definitely not automatically safer; if it was, stopping would be safest, and no one advocates coming to a crashing halt on the highway. This is crazy. Cutting speed INCREASES your agility, your ability to swerve, your available time to react to things in front of you, in exchange for a questionable benefit - motorcyclists are rarely rear ended unless they are the ones slamming on the brakes. Slowing down is not automatically safer, but reducing the delta of speed between you and those around you is. No one stops on the freeway because a 50mph delta is nearly guaranteed to cause an accident. quote:I'm tempted to say speeding never killed anybody, but I don't want to argue semantics. It's about not outrunning your vision, your ability, and your vehicle / road conditions. Speed limits are determined part on hazard conditions - crossing traffic, etc. - part on handling and response estimated using a half-blind old biddy driving a '60s land yacht with bald bias-plys and drum brakes (and with margin to spare there), and part on political concerns that have zero basis in anything related to safety. If you have a vaguely modern bike in good shape, and you're not asleep or drunk, if there was nothing and no one else on the road, there are very few roads out there that you couldn't safely handle at double the speed limit, sometimes more, including the interstate, often even if you've never been down that road before. It's usually not safe in real life, because of all the other random poo poo and other idiots on the street. Speeding increases the consequences of an accident, increases the distance you need to react to hazards, decreases your ability to swerve/avoid hazards, and increases the difficulty of handling your bike. I don't see what theoretical max speed in a perfect world has to do with it...the whole problem with motorcycles is you have to deal with all the other assholes and road conditions, and that's what makes speed limits a good compromise. In CA, speed limits are generally established based on the 85th percentile speed for traffic, because the danger is in the delta - mismatched speeds between users of the road are dangerous. quote:The idea that the maximum speed for safety for both a motorcyclist, on a high performance machine they slavishly maintain, who actively practices emergency high-speed maneuvering, who delberately maintains much higher than normal situational awareness - and your average bungling commuter in their decaying shitbox, music turned up, kids screaming, trying to shove a burger down their maw while they fire off a text - is exactly the loving same is abjectly ridiculous. It's actually not at all, because all the horsepower in the world doesn't do a goddamn thing when you have a 20mph closing speed and that person drifts into your lane. All you've done at that point is increased the closing speed, the consequences of a crash, and reduced your ability to evade. We might have some of the highest performance vehicles on the road but that doesn't matter when the danger is in how fast you go relative to those around you. Same reason 150mph is totally reasonable on the track and 150mph down a public road is probably going to end really badly - the context in which you speed is everything. Plus, if you rely on your razor sharp reflexes to get you out of trouble all the time, you're probably a lovely motorcyclist, cause you're not planning, scanning, and adjusting your riding approach based on those things enough. quote:Z3n if you lost a fellow rider to an avoidable accident, you have my sympathies, but there is always more to the story than 'they were going over the limit.' I don't agree with the "SPEED KILLS" people, but I do know a large number of the accidents I've seen wouldn't have been accidents at all if the person had been doing the speed limit. nsaP posted:Z3n is the best troll, seamlessly transitioning from pulling crossed up wheelies on corner exits thru neighborhoods to lecturing about the risk of death by riding slightly faster than traffic on the highway. If you're going to expose yourself to risk, at least do it when you're having fun and if you get a ticket you can say you at least didn't just blow 300 bucks on getting to work 10 minutes faster. Plus, that's the great thing about risk...it takes into account the amount of time you spend doing something. I spend a hell of a lot more time on the freeway than I do riding like a hooligan, so staying safe on the freeway is far more likely to help me avoid an accident. Of course, I also keep my hooligan poo poo to the isolated areas/track/etc these days now too, cause less risk for the same fun is just flat out better. Z3n fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Dec 30, 2013 |
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Dec 30, 2013 19:44
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Linedance posted:I usually have an espresso before I leave for work to stay alert while I do 90+mph. It usually keeps me going until I can get to work and have another coffee to wake up fully. How long before you're snorting blow and riding 120 to keep your high going man? HOW LONG?!?! 
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Dec 30, 2013 21:37
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BlackMK4 posted:I'm so loving tired of everything I'm surrounded by in life right now, holy poo poo - need a parachute now. Move to CA! Ride motorcycles! Stuff like that!
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Dec 30, 2013 22:12
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