Accidents

[Mord]

Who is usually at fault in accidents with motorbikes involved? I watched a few videos on Youtube and only a few accidents were caused by car drivers.. 90% was bike rider's fault.

I know that there are many car drivers who completely ignore/pretend they don't see bike riders and that's very dangerous. But what does usually cause accidents?

[NexusDragon]

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DAS Passed 19th April 08. 07' YBR125 > Yamaha FZ6 S2 '08 > 1998 YZF600R ThunderCat

[Newbiker0507]

[Keir]

[The Shaggy D.A.]

[Phoenix]

[Tango675]

Car drivers can often under estimate a bikes speed or completely miss seeing a bike at all, even if they are in view.

One of the faults of humans is they only see what they are expecting to see. If they are looking for cars at a junction they don’t register a bike or a cyclist and pull out - known as SMIDSY.

Its also the same with filtering through traffic. often accidents are caused by lane sheer - one line of traffic moving faster than the other. A car tries to jump from one lane to the other, rushes or "forgets" observations and BANG. It doesn't help if the filtering bike is doing 50mph and the traffic is doing 10mph. (I apply the 20/20 rule. Never do more than 20mph faster than the traffic you are filtering through. and never filter at more than 40mph. It will keep you out of trouble with the law and mean impact speeds are 20mph at the most)

Bikes are also unstable and need balance to keep them upright. Greasy roads, ice, potholes, mud can all cause a loss of balance and control. Add to this corners and it takes a lot of observation and forward planning to get it right. I also think bikes are more complicated than a car to operate.

Bikes are also more exciting than cars. And exciting often means bloody terifying, target fixation, and lots of adrenalin. Generaly you suffer less of these "emotions" in a car and can keep a cooler head (or fall asleep with your eyes open see any cager in a trafic jam).

And this is where I could get flamed... There are a lot of new and inexperienced riders on this forum. And a lot of young men. Combined we don't have the best record on road safety. The older you are and the more experience you have the less likely you are to have an accident. The first 2 years after getting your bike licence are the danger zones.
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Somebody give that windup merchant a torque wrench..

[daemonoid]

I remember on one of those reality cop shows where they said (in yorkshire at least) something along the lines of: "20% of road deaths are bikers, who account for 1% of traffic. The fault is about 50:50 between biker and non-biker". Then they showed a ped rider who had hit a dry stone wall and landed half way into a field.
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@thomasgarrard | www.straitjkt.com | www.racingseven.com

[NSR Mick]

Cause of accidents?

Going too fast, always.
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If you dont like the way that I ride.......Stop trying to keep up!!!

[The Shaggy D.A.]

[Bendy]

Lack of education causes accidents.

When having a 'moment' on a bike, sometimes your gut reaction is pretty much the worst thing you can do. You need to educate yourself about these situations, learn what you should do and hopefully when you have that moment your 'training' kicks in and stops you doing the dumb thing that'll have you crashing. Or at least lessen the severity.

Read 'Twist of the Wrist', and you'll see it goes on a fair bit about 'de-programming your survival reactions. Program your brain to chuck the bike over and have a go at the corner you think you've entered too hot - it'll probably work out a lot better than hitting the brakes, sitting the bike up and running into a ditch. Know that just sometimes, shutting off the throttle has the potential to turn a moment that might become an elegant lowside into an over-the-bars highside and get your brain to stop your hand before it does what it wants to*. Understand braking, understand when hitting an obstacle with the brakes on can be way worse than hitting it with them off. Nobody teaches you this stuff when they give you a licence, it's up to you to actually learn how to ride a bike rather than simply operate one to test standard.

*It's okay to let go once the bike's actually on the floor though!

[NSR Mick]

[Kickstart]

Hi

About 2/3 of car bike accidents are the car drivers fault.

However a hell of a lot of bike accidents only involve the bike, and are the riders fault.

All the best

Keith
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[The Shaggy D.A.]

[Fawbish]

[RidersRest]

All of mine have been my own fault
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[skinny]

All of mine have been my fault even when the guy did a u-turn in front of me with out indicating. Imo I should have read the road better and half expected him to do it. Luckily the insurance companies saw it differently and paid me full with compo.
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oops I did it again....

[daemonoid]

[NSR Mick]

[The Shaggy D.A.]

[daemonoid]

[Tricolor Fan]

It's an old report, but Transport Research Laboratory Report 323 published in 1996 found that 90% of all bike-car collisions were the fault of the car driver.

Other titbits from the report include:

84% of pedestrians KSI by a motor vehicle where at fault.

Only 6% of motor vehicle accidents are directly caused by excessive speed.
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Give me ambiguity or give me something else.

[Bardeey]

Pointless thread really, they're all different........................ Not always going to be 1 of them is it.
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[Mord]

[Tango675]