Kawasaki Sportsbike Riders Club - Australia - Online Forum

My Rant......Ive been a rider on and off for some years now and the wife has even warmed to the idea of riding with me on the odd occasion with me hoping this will lead to a nice holiday with just us, no kids, and a bit of scenic roadway. We have been doing really well and my dreams seemed to be coming closer to reality untill recently, with this new campaign for motorcycle saftey, showing all these terrible images that the general public will always associate with motorcycle riding.

FAAAAAAAARK!!! Now all of a sudden i'm getting all this "i don't want to get hurt" "i'm scared of falling" or the ultimate "i'm scared of the kids ending up on thier own" (god bless her!) which is fair enough, but wasn't as much of an issue before hand.

BUT she still wants to come on little rides down the street with me!(in my little town thats about 4 blocks away......everything is about 4 blocks away). I think that when your riding in a town/city, with all these tools around, is the worst place to be. Its when there's intersections and cars around that i think most risk is present. Not the open road.

Anyway, i think daytrips out on the bike is what makes owning a motorcycle worth it, now it seems the government/traffic knobs have taken away any chance i have of trying to show that to my wife!! (for now).

i'm sure i have other issues and points but that'll do for now.

The other day I was riding a country road, 60kmh, only one car in sight, and it was in front of me, it started slowing down and pulling to the left hand side of the road, no indicators or any indication of what they were doing,I slowed to prepare for anything, I could see the driver was looking right, and that got me thinking, what if they are going to do a u-turn or something here, sure enough as I got closer, and still no indicator, the card shot straight across in front of me, it was just lucky I had slowed to a point where I was able to stop in case something like this happened.

When I ride I try and judge every situation, dont take nothing for granted and dont just expect people to do what you think they may do.

If you watch you tube, 98% of the crashes are from people doing stupid things, but there are 2% that are accidents, and probably due to lack of concentration on the driver or riders behalf.

You have to ask what are you scared of most living or dying, I can understand where you wife is coming from but what is life about? Living so go on and live, you can't control the future so why worry about it. Yes you can catch the bus and limit your risk but is that living for you?

My dad has a saying, he was never worried if it was his day to die, only worried if it was the pilots Hey they these things you can not control, so why live that way. If jumping off tall building rocks your boat good on you. I say this of course with the belief no one goes out with the intention to end up in the morgue.

I don't want to be 70 wishing I had done something.

Nick

I know what you are saying BUT if it has caused your missis & friends to ask the question
" why do you ride " ........then the ads have worked !
In other words, they just might remember next time they're driving to actually "look" for the bike

dutch80au wrote:We have been doing really well and my dreams seemed to be coming closer to reality untill recently, with this new campaign for motorcycle saftey, showing all these terrible images that the general public will always associate with motorcycle riding.

It's quite simple really. These motorcycle "safety" campaigns are only there to try and discourage people from riding. Plain and simple.

2ndclasscitizen wrote:

dutch80au wrote:We have been doing really well and my dreams seemed to be coming closer to reality untill recently, with this new campaign for motorcycle saftey, showing all these terrible images that the general public will always associate with motorcycle riding.

It's quite simple really. These motorcycle "safety" campaigns are only there to try and discourage people from riding. Plain and simple.

Not really guys - the ads were and are designed to show cage drivers just how easy it is to
"not see" a motorcycle.
They actually had good results in reducing m/c accidents in the UK....let's hope they do here hey ?

As an old b'stard that's probably been riding longer than you have been born , you learn certain survival tricks......... watch for the wheels of the car at the junction to move, not the car itself / don't ride in the blind spot of mirrors of the car / truck you are following....... it pisses me off greatly,that when driving for work, that I can spot the m/c coming from behind only for him to disappear into the spot between side mirror and rear view mirror vision and don't forget we can accelerate far quicker than these numpty's have ever dreamed about, and it can catch them unaware - what they perceive to be a reasonable gap to pull out in to we can cover in seconds........so any advert that makes them think twice about looking for a bike is good in my book