Who is responsible for your safety while riding?

[PhotoAl]

7 hours ago, kilo3 said:

So if ABS fails, is that your fault as a rider? You are now relying on ABS for your safety.

Good comment - I never trust ABS but it is there as a backup.  If it fails in a situation in which I need it then I'll probably crash just like I would have if I didn't have it.  For me it is there for those moments I do not see the oily patch or misjudge traction.  I already ride with safety margins but the ABS is an additional margin above and beyond my safety margins which has not been relaxed due to having ABS.

Bought a bike one time that the dealer swore had ABS - it didn't.  On the ride home I resisted the temptation to see how well it worked - LOL it would not have worked at all.  Later after carefully checking the bike discovered it didn't have ABS.  Dealer gave me $1,000 and I took the bike and traded it on a new model with ABS - verified it before I purchased.

Same reason I wear an airbag vest, don't ride wanting to crash and have a back protector in my jacket that is worn over the airbag vest just in case it fails.  ABS it like the tether on my Garmin Zumo XT.  I put it on very carefully and always check it but just in case have a tether.  Tether has save it twice in 2 years and 30,000+ miles of riding.

[NormR]

Two weeks after picking up my 2019 I was driving thru town and a cop car blew thru an intersection on a red light with no siren. The ABS saved my arse. It wasn’t pretty but the bike stayed up and I heard/felt the abs for the first time EVER! Not sure it would have ended the same way if I was on my first gen FZ1

[duckie]

Since gear was brought up, gonna share one of my incidents. To date, it has been the most severe one. 

I was wearing a helmet, leather jacket, gloves, jeans and work boots.

The incident occurred at 10mph. I was following a really slow car in the hills. There was a 180, decreasing radius hairpin turn coming up with a long straight after it where I was planning to go around the car. 

When the car was near the corner exit, I pulled out to pass, but for some reason the car slowed a bit requring me to use some front brake.

Unfortunately for me, I rode over a lane reflector while braking and at not much of a lean angle. The front locked up and the front slid out and down I went. I hate lane reflectors.

I got up and took inventory of myself. The motorcycle ended up on the shoulder with no real serious damage.

I felt as if the wind was knocked out of me and thats all. No road rash, no bones broken.

The motorcycle was ridable so I rode it home, bout 45 minutes away.

During that time, I never got my wind back and there was a growing level of pain on my left side.

Got home, went to the ER. Seems my spleen had a blood blister form where the blood vessel enters the spleen. It had to come out. Spent 9 days in the hospital and had 39 metal staples from just under my breast  bone going down and around my belly button……its a nice scar.

It appears when I landed, my elbow punched my side where the spleen is located hard enough to cause the blood blister…..and I was wearing a leather jacket.

I had a exit interview with the surgeon. First words out of his mouth….”You are lucky to be alive cause that blood blister could have popped at anytime, and you would have bled out”. Sobering words…..

Since then, Ive had a few more incidents while wearing full gear. Ive had broken bones, bruises, sprains but never road rash.

Gear is good at preventing road rash but dont be fooled into a false sense of security just because you are wearing gear. 

That incident taught me that your injuries from a incident is all in the luck of the fall, not the gear you wear.

To back this up, here is my account of my first incident. I was wearing t-shirt, jeans, no helmet, no gloves and sneakers. I went into a turn and for some reason, target fixated on a bush on the shoulder…….yep, I went right where I was looking. Motorcycle hit the bush, I was lauched off and landed 10 ft or so down the road. Got a broken collar bone and three stitches on the side of my head where it hit the ground.

I had a friend that was riding his knucklehead on the freeway doing 80 wearing a beanie helmet, tshirt, jeans and boots. The rear cylinder exploded locking the rear wheel and down he went……….just a quarter size scape mark on one of his elbows.

It all the luck of the fall……

Dont get a false sense of security cause you are wearing gear…….sometimes gear makes for a convenient body bag.

Edited December 3, 2022 by duckie