Cam229 wrote:The only way a rider...could hit the signs on that roundabout meant that they have failed to slow down for the roundabout...
Cam, that's the kind of closed minded thinking that leads to more speed enforcement. That the rider has hit a directional sign is a given - that it was due to speed not so.
Early last year I crashed on a corner I've done
hundreds of times. At the time, I was doing a speed below the posted limit and considerably lower than I have done previously around that same corner.
As far as I can work out (and I'm still not 100% sure) I took a pretty average line through the corner and when I realised I adjusted accordingly. Because of the brain fart I didn't have my body in the right position and had to lean the bike over a lot further than normal - in turn the stand grounded and the back wheel shot out from under me when the weight transferred. Bang, bike into guard rail, and luckily no bang for Shifty who went UNDER the guard rail after the bike had lifted it up and taken out the support rail.
Now had I been killed, the coppers (and you) would show up to the scene and say excessive speed was the cause of my accident. Which is not the case as I've done the same corner many times and much faster.... it was simply a fuckup and nothing more.
This guy could have braked poorly, the pillion could have moved suddenly & unsettled the bike, or he could have approached on the wrong line not being familiar with the road. At that time of day he woud likely be very tired & inattentive; be it after an all-nighter or having only just crawled out of bed.
An animal could have run across in front of him, he swerved to miss it, the pillion couldn't see it from his position behind the rider and the zero witnesses at 5am couldn't justify it either.
Remember that approaching a roundabout at 100km/h and washing off half your speed before crashing, leaves an
identical mess to approaching at 60km/h, panic braking with the rear & only washing off 10km/h before you crash.
I'm not saying the accident where this rider was killed WASN'T speed, everything I know about 19yos riding sportsbikes tells me it probably was, but you can't just assume or you're no better than the closed-minded gits that would take my license away for doing 140km/h on a straight & open piece of country road with no intersections. Speed isn't the only killer and if you put a more experienced rider on that bike at whatever speed it was, they might very well be alive - they also might not.
